We were close to some Picassos on Saturday. Just upstairs in fact. After seeing the Asian art and Paul Mellon's horse pictures, my daughter became obsessed with the glass elevator.
Oysters taste like snot are are eaten raw with Tabasco or something to disguise the flavour; mussels taste like salted rubber bands and are eaten cooked in garlicky sauces which disguise the flavour.
Oysters are slimy, mussels are firm. HTH.
1: Oh, wow, we just missed you then. I almost texted you that we were in the neighborhood, but then I became focused on my mission of being annoyed by Captain Wanker. Plus, we had a secondary mission to go to Trader Joe's on the way home.
You can cook oysters, which makes them firm. Compared cooked to cooked? Mussels are sweeter, not as salty/meaty? I'm not really sure of myself here, because I can't think of when I've had them prepared in a similar enough way to compare them properly. No one eats raw mussels, I think, so that's a difference.
Mussels are more likely to be found in a Belgian restaurant accompanied by frites, if that helps.
Oh, I don't know. I like mussels if they are cooked properly. Never knowingly had oysters, though.
Mussels are more likely to be found in a Belgian restaurant accompanied by frites, if that helps.
Indeed! We were in a French-y place. And there were, in fact, Libyan-freedom fries.
I distinguish them by the shells: Oyster shells are white, layered and have little flakey sharp ridges. Mussels have nice smooth brownish shells.
Given my 8-bit palate I can't really taste the difference other than that they tend to be prepared in different ways. Both are best smoked and eaten with crackers.
Oh, I love mussels, especially in Belgium. But the fact is that for mussels, as a friend remarked of escargots, you could cook little pieces of blotting paper in that sauce and it would be a delicacy.
Oysters Rockefeller are all right (cooked), but not worth the money IMO. If I was Rockefeller I could think of better things to order.
Different varieties of oysters can be as different from each other as mussels are from oysters, probably, but when cooked they're pretty boring, whereas mussels (done right) are plump and delicious. Don't listen to chris y, is what I'm saying, in case you were considering it. And try eating some bivalves!
In my experience, oysters taste like minerals, mussels are sweet. I find them both delicious in a variety of preparations, but I will eat pretty much anything of aquatic origin.
Oh wait Stanley probably wouldn't try bivalves for reasons other than the ones that had occurred to me. Okay, fair enough. Still don't listen to chris y, though.
for reasons other than the ones that had occurred to me
You should, Stanley!
15: Bivalves are pretty damn close to being vegetables.
Declaring love for bacon:Two girls kissing::Declaring love for oysters:?
Declaring love for bacon:Two girls kissing::Declaring love for oysters:?
Oral sex within the bonds of holy matrimony.
"They're just different," he eye-rollingly, mussel-slurpingly insisted.
What makes him obnoxious is that he's too insecure to say "I don't really know! Even though I like both."
Declaring love for bacon:Two girls kissing::Declaring love for oysters:?
If you want bacon with your oysters, it's Angels on Horseback (which is pretty good).
Given my 8-bit palate I can't really taste the difference
This is me, exactly. Also my entire palate ranges from "pretty tasty" to "really delicious".
23: The worst thing you ever tasted, registered as "pretty tasty", heebie-geebie? What a wonderful life you must have, heebie!
At my favorite local seafood restaurant, mussels are an appetizer that you order and choose a sauce (red, white, or mustard), whereas oysters are an elaborate section of the menu labeled by their place of geographic origin, and people who are not me who know things about oysters seem to view the selection of the proper oysters as being a demonstration of their exquisite taste, much like choosing a good wine.
BTW, has julia f been by before? Should she get a fruit basket? I like her food blog.
But yeah, I guess I tend to think of rawness of oysters as the usual salient difference. And I like mussels and have been unimpressed on the few occasions when I tried oysters.
The correct answer is doing body shots.
12: Check out the end of that explanation. It's like reading an explanation that builds to "Fuck you, clam."
12: The answer at differencebetween.net.
I found that too, but reading it made me wonder whether it is a parody site. But I think just an English as a distant second language (or maybe someone without a first language) post. But it is very hard to notice the difference between the two and people hardly find any difference between them.
20: Delayed pwnage by a phantom.
Not only are oysters different from mussels—mussels are awesome, for example, while oysters are TOTALLY AWESOME—but oysters are also different from other oysters. Fresh, small, raw oysters with a touch of mignonette are God's own food, and make a person feel vital as few other things can. In a perfect world, I would have a couple dozen of them in front of me right now, along with some old Champagne.
The worst thing you ever tasted, registered as "pretty tasty", heebie-geebie? What a wonderful life you must have, heebie!
Ah, but to experience the highest highs, you have to experience the lowest lows, as a wise person said.
seem to view the selection of the proper oysters as being a demonstration of their exquisite taste, much like choosing a good wine
With oysters, you can taste the merroir.
I'm taking the other dude's side in this conversation. Why are you pressing about the difference on something you're unwilling to try? Why is saying, I dunno, they're different unnacceptable? The natural gas conversation is less forgivable but at some level I agree with the general sentiment.
36: Finally! The post title was supposed to be the giveaway for me being a big lame-o and your cue to mock me generously. You guys are growing soft. Well, except for Baconbreath Caveman.
There's really no reason not to eat shellfish. They'll probably all be extinct within the century anyway, dying awful deaths as their shells dissolve (at least the parts of their shells built out of aragonite), so you might as well eat them now and put them out of their misery. Which they are incapable of feeling, anyway.
SOME PEOPLE LIKE SNAILSMUSSELS AND OYSTERS.
36: Maybe if Stanley wasn't a vegetarian I'd be mildly sympathetic to your claim, or if he'd been purposefully pestering the mussel-slurper alone rather than asking the whole table, but as is, I don't see how this isn't a fun question to try to answer and the dude's response was annoying. Insisting on difference without at least attempting to explain the difference (while being condescending about it) is exactly the sort of behavior that would have rubbed me the wrong way.
your cue to mock me generously
Mocking is so last year, Stanley. Can't you tell the difference?
38: so you might as well eat them now and put them out of their misery
Maybe make a huge pile of their shells.
42: You know who could probably answer that question well? Itinerant beachcombers.
You know who could probably answer that question well? Itinerant beachcombers.
A subsidiary of Hobo Consultants Inc.
But I think just an English as a distant second language (or maybe someone without a first language) post.
One of the main differences that can be said is that oysters come a little fleshy than mussels.
Can it be said, indeed?
47.2 makes me curious about the implied unspeakable differences.
Declaring love for bacon:Two girls kissing::Declaring love for oysters:?
Also two girls kissing. See MFK Fisher's "The First Oyster".
What I want to know, though, was whether Stanley's companion (a) failed to endear himself in another way, in addition to the way he had already failed to endear himself, or (b) failed to endear himself more than he had already endeared himself.
First reaction: huh? That's like wondering about the difference between pork and the other white meat, then I remembered that Stanley doesn't eat meat. The notion of a non vegetarian never having tried oysters sounds strange to me, but it would - northeastern Americans and French people are very into their oysters. I want some good oysters with Muscadet now, something about the combo turns a relatively pedestrian wine into the elixir of the gods. And both snails and mussels clearly have a taste. No idea what chris is talking about.
I submit that a non-answer like in the OP, while wanky, may often be much less so in the world outside Unfogged where adding value is not as strong a conversational norm.
What I want to know, though, is how the Picassos were served.
Wait, were supposed to add value, now? Shoot.
Was this wank part of your party, Stanley, and if so, why?
49.2: This be close WMYBSALBing.
54: It's my party and I'll wank if I want to.
Farmed oysters are among the most environmentally friendly animals you can eat -- the farms are clean and super low impact, the oysters don't need environmentally damaging food, they don't escape and screw up the nearby ecosystem, and their water-filtering ways can even be a boon to the water nearby. (The same is probably true of mussels, too, but I don't know.) Between that, the simplicity of their nervous systems, and the fact that eating raw oysters is so unlike anything else, they are the non-vegetarian food I'd be most likely to deliberately eat.
57: and their water-filtering ways can even be a boon to the water nearby.
They metabolize it into pure win.
57: Indeed, there are (otherwise? does it count as otherwise-making?) strict vegans who will eat oysters for the very reasons you mention.
If the oysters filter the water, does that mean they incorporate into themselves that which they filter? Do they remain good to eat?
60: For certain values of "good". See also: lobster.
It depends on what they're filtering, I suppose. The Chesapeake Bay Foundation says, for instance, "Sediment and nitrogen cause problems in Bay waters. Oysters filter these pollutants either by consuming them or shaping them into small packets, which are deposited on the bottom where they are not harmful." Small packets!
Seabeds, covered with millions and millions of neatly wrapped brown-paper parcels...
The worst thing you ever tasted, registered as "pretty tasty", heebie-geebie? What a wonderful life you must have, heebie!
Occasionally I get sick of eating a particular item. And there are a couple things that can be cooked slimier than I like. But hardly anything is bad. Either that or I have a happily selective memory. (Which, hey, leaves the impression of a wonderful life.)
56: You would wank too, if it happened to you!
Most of the oysters I've eaten came from relatively pristine waters; I would hesitate to eat oysters from the Gulf of Mexico, say, without looking into where exactly they came from.
And there are a couple things that can be cooked slimier than I like.
So, what, you didn't like the mountain yam with okra?
mountain yam with okra
And natto! If I thought about that for long enough, I could probably make myself throw up.
my entire palate ranges from "pretty tasty" to "really delicious"
If you're into the whole mucilaginous food thing, you'll be happy to know that the BP oil spill has resulted in a surplus of sea snot.
Seabeds, covered with millions and millions of neatly wrapped brown-paper parcels...
Stacked neatly in the old redbirds.
If the oysters filter the water, does that mean they incorporate into themselves that which they filter? Do they remain good to eat?
They excrete only the bad part, neb: the yucky 'pure' water. This is confirmed in the eating. Oysters taste like the sea: briny with aromatic tones. Benzene, typically.
Was this wank part of your party, Stanley, and if so, why?
I did not organize the outing. The person who likely invited the wank is a significant other of a friend of a significant other. Clearly, I need more oysters filtering my social life.
And nosflow's 49.2 brings me great shame regarding the placement of the word "further" in the OP.
68: I got sick three times from eating Gulf oysters while living in New Orleans. And one of those times I ended up spending a couple of days in the hospital. Which, it turned out, was worse than whatever ailed me. New Orleans hospitals: to be avoided. Still, I'd eat a dozen oysters from Casamento's this very second if you put them in front of me, though I might be tempted to have a full Shrimp Loaf and a Barqs instead.
I forgot about my St. Paddy's Day Cake! Mmmm, how light green and fun.
Oyster wars are more interesting than mussel wars.
80 reads frighteningly similar to a Pauly Shore comment.
The shift from the funny to the brilliant in Pauly Shore comments has a little to do with their similarity to some kinds of regular unfogged comments, so.
80 I've been listening to the Hot 5's and 7's too much apparently since I started singing that to the tune of St. James Infirmary. ('I went down to St' Paddy's day parade... so green, so light, so fun')
85: I've been listening to those a lot recently, too.
I finally got an iPod. I've entered 2001!
Declaring love for bacon:Two girls kissing::Declaring love for oysters:?
: Cigar aficionadery
Declaring love for bacon:Two girls kissing::Declaring love for oysters:?
Two bros icing.
87 gets it exactly right. Well done.
St. James Infirmary.
More versions than you will ever need.
The missing lines:
I went down to St' Paddy's day parade
Foor to see Heebie Geebie there
She was cookin' a Paddy's day cake
so green, so light, so fun'
Declaring love for bacon:Two girls kissing::Declaring love for oysters:?
I can't say I can fill out the analogy, since I'm not sure what role "Two girls kissing" plays.
Since it's "two girls kissing" (not, say, declaring love for two girls kissing), I'm going to guess that apo gets it right. Since I'm not a fan of the whole mucilaginous food thing in the first place, I'm further confounded.
I've been working on my taxes, so don't shoot me.
We're shooting parsimon now, right?
If you even attempt to shoot me, I will declare that chris y. got it right up in comment 2.
This book about oysters is OK, and I usually hate food writing. For example, I think that MFK Fisher is incredibly annoying.
I've now read neb's original bacon post, which I hadn't read at the time -- on reflection, I was busy at that point in time -- and I'm gathering that the idea is that declaring one's love for bacon is presented as transgressive, JUST LIKE [the act of] a straight woman kissing another, in a bar.
Right. Sorry about that.
Man. By the way, SP, it looks to me as though you can download BofA bank statements up to 12 months in the past, at least statement by statement, in a variety of formats -- not just PDF.
Transgressive and decadent for the young people :: Transgressive and decadent for the old people
Wait, is the idea that downloading your last year of BofA statements in other formats than PDF is transgressive and decadent, at least on the old-people scale?
Ah.
I still have questions, but I don't want to pain anyone.
98 -- Who knows what will shock the elderly. We've learned that saying the phrase "24/7" makes their infirm, senile heads explode.
If heads must explode, it's best that infirm heads do; bystanders are less likely to be injured by flying pieces of bone.
Guys, my aside to SP was in reference to a recent complaint of his that BofA was forcing him to abandon paper statements, which things he had preferred because he labored under the apparent misunderstanding that he could only download statement older than 6 months as PDFs. Try to keep up.
If heads must explode, it's best that infirm heads do; bystanders are less likely to be injured by flying pieces of bone.
Do you posit this as through the intermediary of softer skull material, or lesser explosive force?
100: I remain firm in my view on that, so don't test me. Just you try communicating in an official capacity with my Great-Aunt (aged 93) without addressing her as "Mrs. [Surname]." Mind your manners, young man.
That sounds vaguely familiar, Parsi, but I drank a lot on Friday, and the last week or so's a bit of a haze.
103: I was thinking of the former, but the latter would probably also be a factor, since the softer skulls wouldn't be able to tolerate as great a pressure buildup before exploding. (Assuming that the explosion isn't of such force as to dwarf the strength of even the strongest skull.)
Sure, but 106 also suggests why the infirm heads of the elderly are more likely to explode under less pressure than the rest of the adult population (you can blow up their heads by means of shouting "24/7" at them, for example). This is why old people are a public health hazard. In conclusion, ice floes.
The ice floes represent the dark side of the Paleo Way.
I am too infirm to withstand this onslaught of callous disrespect. For the elders. Were you people raised in a barn?
I suppose you think everyone uses tax preparation software also! (Reference to this comment.)
I just spent 10 minutes looking for an old post of Ogged's about our society's respect, or lack thereof, of its elders, and how wrong that was. Alas, I couldn't find it. It was grand, as I recall.
"Grand" is the kind of thing my spinster great-aunt would say, as we all snickered at here behind her back.
"Awesome" is the current term, but I admit I was channeling. Find the post, though, please. It was about the extent to which we marginalize elders in our (western) societies, the degree to which we collectively suffer for it, the moral burden involved in all this, and so on.
Maybe I'm the only one who even remembers that post.
Also, I would have said "great", but that's not much better than "awesome," and I do think "grand" adds something. So there!
I always liked it when the CTA Red Line said "This is Grand".
112.1: Not finding it, but forgot that Timothy Burke could get pretty pointed when aroused.
115: Good find. Pointedness is good.
112: Not sure if this is the one, pars ("A Reminder: Don't Get Old"). It seems to refer to an earlier longer discussion.
115: holy shit, from that same thread, down at 583: words fail me.
117: Thanks. That's not it, no. The mood of the blog right now seems as though it wouldn't be of a mind to revisit what I recall as an extremely sober, mature, reflection specifically on how we situate older people in our communities, and how we're doin' it rong. I'll look for the post again later.
24/7 is ok, but 24x7 is confusing.
(I'm not completely kidding. I don't think I've ever seen 24x7 outside of that earlier thread.)
118: Turns out that's part of an old tradition.
120: Thank you! Thank you thank you thank you.
I hesitate to inform you that this may mean that a pillow will explode your head. Luckily, that's a load of horseshit, as we used to say in the old country.
118: Ha! I had seen that again just recently, and could not recall where I had seen it first (although I suspected Unfogged).
87 is quietly brilliant. 2nd glass of wine + vodka gimlet (bc I have been reading Raymond Chandler, people) and shitty mobile access have rendered me incapable of further participation (beyond: yay please continue, it's fun). Do not rend your garments, nor gnash teeth. (God I am a light weight now. Embarrassing!)
I just read again the second paragraph of the post linked in 117, and it's worth reviewing.
It seems to me that there's just no old-person role in America. You can be more or less lucky in how long you can cling to the one role we do have, that of independent, productive worker,
I found NickS's recent post on the hypothetical overpayment of older workers very uncomfortable, since it was framed in terms of worker productivity. I tend to refuse to view human lives in those terms, so I can't even enter the conversation.
It seems to me that there's just no old-person role in America.
Profanity spewing old prospector? That's what I'm aspiring towards.
Also, there's "bitter, senile, arbitrarily mean rich old person with many possible heirs and an ever changing will", but that mostly makes you a candidate for murder on a train car, or something.
I had forgotten about 118. That was... something. Those guys should get Ark Music Factory to make them stars.
I vaguely recall that video being famous enough at the time to get a not-so-funny parody on The Daily Show.
It seems to me that there's just no old-person role in America.
Somebody's always doing King Lear.
130:
Kickin' on the love seat
Sittin' on the settee
Gotta make my mind up
Which piece should I hump?
Ottoman, ottoman
Gotta get down on the ottoman
Everybody's lookin' forward to the armchair, armchair
I always liked it when the CTA Red Line said "This is Grand".
He sounds so dispirited is what makes it funny!
132: Derek Jacobi must be about 100. Did I miss that? I kind of half meant to go. Like I wanted to have seen it but wasn't sure I wanted to do the seeing of it.
Also 133 made me laugh.
135: I think it starts in the latter half of April -- a couple of friends and I were talking about seeing it, in honor of, inter alia, CLAVDIVS, but also because we regret missing the last big Lear production.
It seems to me that there's just no old-person role in America.
Tangentially related, but anybody within shouting distance of Philadelphia: I cannot recommend highly enough Anna Deveare Smith's play Let Me Down Easy.
If you were ever born, if you're ever going to die, if you've lived life as a human being on this planet in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, you have got to hear these stories.
Do not go by the superficial write-up or the annoyingly irrelevant posters. Think of this woman as the Studs Terkel of our generation, a magnetically charismatic middle-aged black woman who manages to absorb the essence of everyone from a Midwestern rodeo rider to a Jewish medical-school dean, and spin their stories into pure, compelling drama.
Go. See it. You won't be sorry.
I think Blume saw that show in previews and hated it.
Huh, really? I can see hating the surrounding tissue if the event was full of rah-rah propaganda for healthcare reform, but when I saw sections in preview last year it was amazing. You could have heard a pin drop in the auditorium.
Maybe Blume has a secret pin-dropping affinity and found the experience really awkward.
I'd be curious to hear why she hated it, if she wants to share. I can come up with a few hypotheses, but they all seem rather far-fetched. I *think* I know my RL friends well enough to predict who will enjoy it, but I'd like to know if I'm going to be really far off base.
oysters and mussels differ in that oysters are way tastier. (although mussels are plenty tasty). they are good raw, with mignonette or tabasco. at my dad's place we have loads, bed seeded by my great-grandfather (the technology appears to have been: dump a big pile of glazed chimney blocks down in there.) we can go down at low tide to get them, spray the mud off with a hose (there is mud, for sure), and then roast them, south carolina style. get a fire going between two long concrete blocks, put a 1/4" thick steel plate on there, and then the oyster clumps, wrapped in a wet towel. they just cook briefly, and open up, and then you dip them in a mix of melted butter, lemon, and tabasco. nutritional meal-completing supplement: saltine crackers. there are little tiny red crabs that get caught in there sometimes, you can eat them too, whole. I hardly ever eat shellfish anywhere else, because I am spoiled and skeptical. I have been inoculated against hep a but am still disinclined to eat oysters etc in the tropics. I mean, maybe it came from australia, but even so... I make a crucial exception here for the cockles in char kway teow (noodles friend with beef, cockles, and pork cracklings).
oysters and mussels differ in that oysters are way tastier.
Disagree. Never have developed a taste for oysters (not even in Hangtown Fry; I fail at local pride), but mussels are delicious. Mmm, moules et frites.
It seems to me that there's just no old-person role in America.
Yes, because Morgan Freeman gets them all before anyone else has a chance.
make a crucial exception here for the cockles in char kway teow
Two weeks ago I had the biggest, tastiest oysters ever, in Tokyo. Then everything went to hell in a handbasket and I cravenly fled the apocalypse, stopping in Narnia just long enough to enjoy laksa with the aforementioned cockles, which taste like botulism but I nevertheless find oddly compelling.
145: I want to eat at Alameida's. I mean, what's having to go armed to protect yourself against the 'baggers and klansmen and whatnot against that kind of cooking?
THIS IS JUST TO SAY
I have eaten
the oysters
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for a wank
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
and so fair.
Oh, and here's good news: "Numerous reports surfaced over the weekend about a massive, possibly 100-mile-wide oil sheen in the Gulf of Mexico off the Louisiana coast near the site of last year's Deepwater Horizon disaster. "
140, 144: I saw Let Me Down Easy in previews a good while ago (fall 2008), so it seems likely that the show has developed a lot since then. But when I saw it, while Anna Deavere Smith was a force (as ever), and the individual stories were interesting enough, it didn't hang together as a show. I left the theater thinking that ADS's characteristic mining of narratives surrounding one flashpoint event (Crown Heights riots, Rodney King) works a lot better at illuminating larger issues than the attempt to address the larger issues head-on ('now we're going to talk about death'). I actually felt like the piece was a bit emotionally manipulative, I think probably because I didn't get a sense of a how all these individual, often wrenching stories held together.
I also didn't like that so many of the narratives were from famous people.
But again, maybe the show has changed a lot since then.
136: A friend and I went to see a rather pallid revival of Les Liaisons Dangereuses in honor of Claudius. We went so far as to release our inner teenage fanbois and stalk Siân Phillips for autographs on account of her having given the greatest performance ever televised. (She was in a tiny role in the play, but it was a thrill to see her.)
I saw Jacobi in London when I was 13 in a play about Alan Turing but I hardly remember it now except that I was uncomfortable the whole time because it was frank about his sexuality and I was there with my parents and 13.
If you were ever born, if you're ever going to die, if you've lived life as a human being on this planet in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, you have got to hear these stories.
Look, I'm just not interested in the Arcade Fire, OK?
OT: First bike commute of the year, and a lovely ride. It's ridiculous of me -- I still get on the bike thinking "Jesus, thirteen miles? This is going to be an exhausting chore," and am surprised at how much I like it. Sun! Geese! Boats on the river! Exciting new poorly-marked detours! (Okay, the last was annoying, but now that I know where it is it's not particularly bad.)
I still get on the bike thinking "Jesus, thirteen miles? take the handlebars."
Fixed.
156: I get the same thing -- not commuting (it's too short) but when trying to psych myself up to go for a longer ride -- "oh man, I'm sure it'll be nice and all but I really don't feel like getting on the bike what a pain in the ass", and then I actually go and within like a minute and a half I'm like "wheeeee!"
"And then I looked down, and I only saw one pair of stanky chamois, and I said 'Jesus, why did you leave?' and Jesus said 'I never left, brah, that's where I was cradling your junk for you.'"
Jesus, Shmesus. I Holy-Ghost-ride the whip to work.
re: 124
bc I have been reading Raymond Chandler, people
Oooh, me too. I last read them as a teenager and totally didn't appreciate how wonderful the prose is.
It got darker. I thought; and thought in my mind moved with a kind of sluggish stealthiness, as if it was being watched by bitter and sadistic eyes.
162: I think Hammett spoiled me for Chandler. I've enjoyed Chandler, but his books are so close in genre to Hammett that I can't avoid comparing them, and I strongly prefer Hammett.
162: Right? And yet he's actually kind of shitty at plotting, which I remember being impressed by. I've had a number of these experiences recently, where I read a book and it has little in common w the book I remember. It's been odd.
And yet he's actually kind of shitty at plotting, which I remember being impressed by.
The demand was for constant action; if you stopped to think you were lost. When in doubt have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand. This could get to be pretty silly but somehow it didn't seem to matter.Raymond Chandler
I've never actually read Raymond Chandler but every time somebody mentions him, it takes me a minute or two before I realize they aren't talking about Raymond Carver.
You should It can get to be pretty silly, but it's good stuff.
Oh huh maybe I should bike commute home. I just thought I'd say that since I'm almost certainly not going to do it. It's the thought that counts--right, flabby unexercised body? Thanks, pal. I'll get you some Doritos later for backing me up.
This year, I've got to start taking some long rides on weekends. I haven't been further than my commute since I got this bike almost three years ago.
168: Email if you want to meet on the bikepath and ride uptown together.
Whenever I read Hammett, I find myself wishing that he hadn't wasted so much of his later life on politics and drunkenness. I'd rather have a couple of shelves of Sam Spade novels than whatever the internecine struggles of the mid-century yielded.
163: I'm exactly the opposite. Chandler shows at the very top of any "Greatest American Novelist" list I might compose.
Having just re-read two Chandlers while on holiday last week, I don't think he has many peers for the things he's really good at: the mental and physical description of people, especially body language, voice and gesture; the dialogue that everyone is familiar with; the descriptions of Marlowe's interior monologue, and so on.
But yeah, his plotting isn't great. Often they are just a hook onto which Chandler hangs Marlowe's picaresque journeys round L.A.'s dissolute rich. Despite that, for a so-called genre writer, Chandler's prose is, to my eyes, pretty fucking stellar.
Also, re-reading him made me a bit melancholic about the state of contemporary 'detective fiction'; which I mostly like a lot, and which are often really elegantly plotted, but the descriptive language and rendering of character doesn't compare.
168: gogogo! It will be all sorts of fun.
174: A lot of the contemporary detective fiction seems constructed on the axiom that alcoholism (for male protagonists) and romantic dissatisfaction (for female protagonists) are the same as character.
Hammett yes, Red Harvest is great, based on Butte. Also Jim Thompson. Early Ed McBain is pretty good.
Patricia Highsmith, too.
173: Completely true. I first read Lady in the Lake when I was really young and thus stupid about most things, and I still recall the realization that he was a great writer developed as growing suspicion: "Waitaminute...WAITaminute, Mr. Genre writer. This is really good."
Further to 176: I shouldn't omit the male characters that are too transparently the fantasies of writers, often former journalists, who have spent most of their time sitting at desks envying people. Cough Lee Child and Jack Reacher cough.
That's something I miss about reading as a kid -- finding stuff that I didn't have any preconceptions about. Gradually realizing that Pale Fire was a joke was lots of fun, as was (when I was younger), finding out that the guy who wrote all the neat stories about the kid who was raised by wolves had actually written quite a lot of other stuff.
179: I love those. You get these wonderful moments when you're looking at the book thinking "The bullet was deflected by his pectoral muscles? You have got to be kidding me."
Remember Motherless Brooklyn? I remember that as at least interesting, though I don't think I finished it due to losing it in a move.
re: 176
Yes, there was a short thread on that topic on C /hrist0pher F0w l3rs blog. I'm pretty tired of reading about mid-career detectives who drink too much, are rebellious loners who don't do team work, have dysfunctional love lives, and so on.
181: I wouldn't mind so much if those characters weren't so unpleasant to others. Jack Reacher is a contemptuous asshole to pretty much everybody. I don't remember Travis McGee, the obvious wellspring for most of these freebooters, being rude or dismissive to quite the same extent.
I'm pretty sure I've mentioned this at least once before, but fans of Chandler who want to read a pretty light but fun book in Spanish can read Osvaldo Soriano's Triste, solitario y final, which features a washed-up Philip Marlowe getting contracted by Stan Laurel (of Laurel & Hardy fame).
185: Huh. You know, I've kind of asked this before, but you wouldn't have any recommendations for YA fiction in Spanish? Manuelito Gafotas fell flat -- I can't tell whether it was too difficult, or just unappealing.
Pelecanos is contemporary, uneven, but has stretches of very nice characterization. Sweden has a cottage industry of moody detailed detective stories, which I always enjoy but never read obsessively like american ones.
Elmore Leonard? Not brilliant, and especially the more recent books are a guilty pleasure, but there's definitely something there. Donald Westlake is similar; I keep meaning to get the Parker novels he wrote as Richard Stark.
184: Specifically the Reacher books don't bother me on that ground because they're so incredibly cartoonish -- I never get to thinking about how obnoxious a character like that would be in real life because of the implausibility of applying any kind of real life standard.
I liked the first dozen or so of Lawrence Block's Matt Scudder novels, for a recovering, rather than current, alcoholic. They've run into the aging series character problem, though.
re: 187
The Parker novels are pretty good, although, again, it's been a few years since I read them. I like Pelecanos a lot, but I sort of lost track with him after a while, and started mixing up the books. Outside of the 'D.C. quartet' they all seem to blend together a little too much in my memory.
187: The Parker books are great. I never tire of the moment when another stupid criminal thinks "Hey, let's double-cross Parker." It's like they've never heard about any of his previous capers.
The Pelecanos books always seem a little inflated by Pelecanos' self-love.
re: 190.2
I don't know, maybe. One of the things I loved about the D.C. Quartet was his writing about music. It's a little thing but it completely hooked me in.
I feel like I've tricked you all into a book rec thread, or assissted ttaM in doing so. Yessss. Go on.
No one ever speaks up for Ross MacDonald in these discussions, but he had a very good reputation for a long time, I gather.
192: An even more acute "cool guy" complex than Pelecanos, as I recall.
you wouldn't have any recommendations for YA fiction in Spanish?
Hm, nothing off the top of my head, but I can ask around.
Ross MacDonald was great, but he's a special case IMO, since his novels are so closely tied to his personal history. I like his books a lot.
Yes, Pelecanos is not particularly humble.
I tried a book by Taibo, published in English by Cinco Puntos press who apparently specialize in translations of Mexican writers. Not for kids, and it lost something in translation.
There have been a few fun books by T. Jefferson Parker, but he's produced a bunch that even an airport delay didn't entice me past the first chapter.
I last read them as a teenager and totally didn't appreciate how wonderful the prose is.
Fun fact: Raymond Chandler and PG Wodehouse were at the same school. They didn't quite overlap: Chandler arrived as a new boy the year after Wodehouse left. But I'd like to think that the same English teacher was responsible for sowing the seeds of "She had a laugh like a troop of cavalry charging across a tin bridge" and "She was sitting behind a desk that was just a little smaller than Napoleon's tomb and smoking a cigarette in a holder that was just a little shorter than a rolled up umbrella".
The transitional stage from Wooster to Marlowe is, of course, The Thin Man.
199: "She was an aunt. An aunt to make a bishop kick a whatsit in the old stained-glass thingummy, as Jeeves (my man, you know) would say."
199: Whaaaaaaat. That is bonkers.
re: 199
Yeah, I did actually know that.* Chandler was well into his 20s when he moved to the US.** He also fought in WWI for Canada and in the Gordon Highlanders. An 'interesting' life.
* blurb at the front of the anthology I have.
** born there but grew up in England.
One thing I like Chandler for is his "Red Wind" short story which is the second best piece of "relentless wind fiction" that I know of*. Gratifyingly available online, the beginning is somewhat famous:
There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.but the ending doesn't disappoint either:
I flipped her pearls out into the water one by one at the floating seagulls.They made little splashes and the seagulls rose off the water and swooped at the splashes.*Second after Dorothy Scarborough's 1925 novel The Wind which is set on the West Texas plains and is relentlessly depressing, but excellent if you're into that kind of thing.
204: It shouldn't, but it usually does, take me aback whenever I am reminded of the relatively universal military (and, to a lesser extent, combat) experiences of the WWI and WWII generations, arts & literature division (e.g., C.S. Lewis, Tolkien, Heller, Vonnegut, Salinger, etc., etc., etc.). Out of pale, four-eyed solidarity gallantry, I won't compare the produce of my generation of bookish whiners.
Some day I will get someone who likes genre detective novels to read Brautigan's Dreaming of Babylon: A Private Eye Novel 1942 by mentioning it on a blog. This is my latest attempt. I also consider it a must read for anyone who has a semi-debilitating richly-structured inner fantasy life.
Since dq has tricked us into a book recommendation thread: I've finally read Cloud Atlas. It was good, but it couldn't live up to the Unfogged hype.
The book I read before that sucked. I'm obsessed with this fact, because of how I ended up reading it. I went into an independent bookstore to buy Cloud Atlas, but they were out. I asked one of the store employees what the best book they'd read in the last five years was, and they said... Cloud Atlas. So I asked them for number two, which I bought on the spot. It was Seven Types of Ambiguity, and I hated it. Given the way I read it, I wonder if I completely misread it or something.
I also consider it a must read for anyone who has a semi-debilitating richly-structured inner fantasy life.
I pretend to read books that people recommend on blogs, so this is perfect!
Is this where we're talking about genre novels? I just finished Charles Yu's How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe and it was totally great. I've been e-mailing friends and long-lost acquaintances out of the blue to recommend it. Also, I said this recently in another thread, but I also finally got around to reading Tana French's Faithful Place and loved it. It is so much better than any of her other detective mystery novels.
I'm not generally a big fan of noir, but I thought Sara Gran's Dope was pretty terrific.
209: Great! I've just been invited to the White House to receive the Presidential Lifetime Achievement Blog Book Recommender Award but have refused out of solidarity for Bradley Manning and am leveraging that minor notoriety into being a regular on The Rachel Maddow Show.
This is a pretty well known Chandlerism but it's also one of the greats:
He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food cake.
You get these wonderful moments when you're looking at the book thinking "The bullet was deflected by his pectoral muscles? You have got to be kidding me."
Ahem:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/26/california_shooting/
you wouldn't have any recommendations for YA fiction in Spanish?
Just basically find out the Spanish for "vampire" and the Spanish for "sex" and google, really.
The Spanish have a hundred words for sex.
I don't know that these would be anyone here's cup of tea, but I've become a big fan of Julia Spencer-Fleming's books. The coincidence level in the plots can be pretty ridiculous even for the small town setting, but the writing is good and the main characters anything but stock. (They should be read in order, beginning with In the Bleak Midwinter.)
Sex on the ground! Sex falling from the sky! Newly fallen sex!
Well find out the one that means "overwrought adolescent pretendy sex with vampires" then.
I've become a big fan of Julia Spencer-Fleming's books
I have read several in that series and they are very good.
I have also read several of Louise Penny's Three Pines mysteries recently which I find somewhat reminiscent. The problem with that series is you can really only set so many murders in one small town. At this point that small town has to have a per capita murder rate to rival the worst inner city.
I remember "Miss Winters and the Wind" being a pretty good depressing relentless wind story.
I just spent 10 minutes looking for an old post of Ogged's about our society's respect, or lack thereof, of its elders, and how wrong that was. Alas, I couldn't find it. It was grand, as I recall.
I remember liking that thread, and also being depressed by it.
I remember Megan contrasting American and Asian cultures and noting that cultures that place a high value on young people taking care of their elders really do impose a burden on the young.
I wonder if I can find that.
At this point that small town has to have a per capita murder rate to rival the worst inner city.
I remember reading somewhere that at Law & Order's murder rate, it would have to be showing literally every murder in NYC.
223: I thought I read that it overshot by a fair amount.
Maybe that was the three NYC-based Law & Orders combined?
I don't get that math. They show a murder a week for fewer than 52 weeks a year.* Even with multiple murders some weeks and adding in the murders from SVU, that wouldn't be more than 75 or so.
*When first aired, I mean. If you were counting the syndicated episodes, we'd be approaching genocide levels.
On preview pwned, but I believe I add value by showing my arithmetic.
As I was commenting, I had the same thought -- maybe what I read drew a distinction between murders generally and murders that are confusing enough to get investigated (rather than just arresting the guy with the gun in his hand saying "My god, what have I done")?
Notoriously, St. Mary Mead, the village where Miss Marples lives, has a murder rate akin to a major city.
||
http://www.musicradar.com/guitarist/the-20-greatest-guitar-solos-of-all-time-403987/
Twenty greatest? Views?
>
maybe what I read drew a distinction between murders generally and murders that are confusing enough to get investigated
As any reader of "Homicide" knows, the terms of art are "dunkers" and "whodunnits".
Sylvester Weaver & Oliver Beasley's "Bottleneck Blues"
Robert Pete Williams "Thousand Miles From Nowhere"
Vieux Farka Toure "Bullet in the Blue Sky"
Dick Dale "Misirlou"
Les Paul "Fly like an Eagle"
Roxy Music's Amazona
I have a weakness for Aerosmith, I dunno, Dream On.
I hadn't particularly thought of choices of my own [will ponder]. Just not especially impressed by the list linked, although there are a couple of decent ones on it.
And some personal objects of hate, e.g. Hotel Fucking California, and Freebastardbird.
gawd.
1) "Motorcycle Emptiness" is not even the best guitar solo on the "Generation Terrorists" album
2) Gary Moore "Still Got The Blues" (not even "Parisienne Walkways"?) is clearly a pity vote
3) "November Rain" are you kidding me?
4) I have not even heard, at all, of number 1.
Other than that, it's about the pile of classic rock radio stuff that I would have expected from "Guitarist" magazine.
In fact, the best guitar solo ever, deny it who will, is "Another Girl, Another Planet" by the Only Ones. I am only slightly biased by the fact that one of the band members lives in my road. I will also stand up for "Just Like Heaven" by the Cure.
I have not even heard, at all, of number 1.
Yes, this. I had no idea this band even existed. Also, can two of the greatest solos of all time be by Slash? No.
Surely the best guitar solo of all time is Funkadelic's "Maggot Brain." Is there another serious competitor?
I am also partial to Hendrix's "Machine Gun" and the Metallica list is long.
"Just Like Heaven" by the Cure.
Agggh.
229: lots of stuff I don't know on that list, some of which I'd be prepared to disparage even in ignorance (Dream Theater? twice?!). The #1 pick is kind of baffling (one suspects ballot stuffing). But otherwise the list is pretty boringly standard, isn't it?
The list's remit is, obviously, pretty silly. If I had to come up with a list of solos I particularly favor I'd probably want to include Roy Buchanan's "Pete's Blues" and the solo on Tom Waits' "Shore Leave" (don't know who performed it; it's from before he hooked up with Marc Ribot).
Views?
Frank Zappa put out entire albums of guitar solos that were better than a lot of that list.
One suspects ballot stuffing for both #1 and the two Dream Theater entries, really.
Roy Buchanan's "Pete's Blues"
Hadn't heard that before. Very nice.
I just assumed that Dream Theater was huge in Britain or something, but it's true that its placement does not make any sense.
My favorite guitar solo is on "Chameleon" by Herbie Hancock.
I listened to something like 100 minutes of The Cure straight through recently (all of Pornography followed by all of Faith including "Carnage Visitors") and it disordered my mind temporarily.
from before he hooked up with Marc Ribot
That's on Swordfishtrombones, right? I think it was Fred Tackett from Little Feat.
Ranking guitar solos is probably even more subjective than ranking, say, most attractive supermodels. My own list would include some of Robert Fripp's work on Bowie's Scary Monsters, but I'd need to go listen to the album again to say which one.
What about the 10 best guitar solos by attractive supermodels?
I might be being uncreative, but Steely Dan and Dire Straits would both be on my list.
re: 234
"Another Girl, Another Planet" is a cracker, yeah.
Just taking, say, British players active in the 70s -- people likely to appeal to and be known by the a big part of the magazine's core audience -- there's no Bill 'Be Bop Deluxe' Nelson, John McGeoch [with Magazine or later], Andy Gill, no Richard Thompson, and on and on.
It's not even a very good list even if you are aiming at classic rock radio stuff, I don't think. Similar to your point 1, there's loads of better Hendrix, Steve Vai, and Van Halen solos, just taking people who are on the list.
Guitar magazines appeal to two core demographics. Middle-aged blokes who basically like Dad-rock, and who like their guitar playing to be pentatonic, repetitive and a 3rd hand imitation of someone's 2nd hand imitation of Freddie/BB/Albert King; and teenage boys who like prog and metal, and want their solos to be long, fast and use modes other than the usual major and natural minor. So it's not really a surprise who some of the artists might be, but the choices even there are a bit crap.
168: It's the thought that counts--right, flabby unexercised body?
I got to have some heart-to-heart talks with my FUB this weekend as nice weather enabled a lot of yard and garden expansion work (post-hole digging being the real bastard). Semi-relatedly I was looking at my house on Google maps satellite view just recently (playing with a Xoom--very nice, an actual worthy iPad competitor except still way too expensive) and was gratified that I could not only see my garden, but pick out the green bean section (shot was from last summer). And it's not a real big garden.
250: And on street view, two neighbors walking in front of the house. Somewhat "fuzzed" but recognizable if you knw them.
Personally I'm just not that interested in guitar solos. That isn't to say that you can't have better or worse guitar solos, but I don't spend much time thinking about the virtues of the solo independent of the song.
re: 252
To be honest, I'm sort of the same in the rock/pop context, although I listen to quite a lot of instrumental music with guitars independently of that. Whenever I try to come up with my own list it's either the short/sharp sort of thing that appears in 'Another Girl, Another Planet' [as chosen by dsquared above], or various other post-punk/new-wave tracks [Magazine, XTC, etc], or its an entire guitar centred tune, rather than a solo as such. My favourite guitar players are often rhythm players, even where they are famous as lead players [McLaughlin, or Hendrix, say] what I like about their playing is often what they are doing when they are playing behind a voice or other soloist.
I could probably come up with a list of pre-rock solos, though, that I really like.
Nothing from Marquee Moon? This cannot stand.
235: Surely the best guitar solo of all time is Funkadelic's "Maggot Brain."
Seconded.
235, 256: weirodes. It's a totally bogstandard piece of self indulgent acid rock knobbery, made only slightly better by the context. Maggot Brain, and that solo in particular, is exhibit 1 for the case that self styled funk geniuses need someone else to do quality control. (exhibit 2: Prince).
On crime novels read in the past couple years that stand out in my memory Jean Claude Izzo's Marseilles books (available in English) Leonardo Padura's Mario Conde Havana books, Marek Krajewski's Eberhard Mock books set in twenties, thirties and early forties Breslau (available in English) all memorable in a good way. Going a bit further back, there are two Italian set ones that I liked, one a Sicilian cop, the other a Venetian cop based in Rome. Ross Macdonald, so mixed - sometimes excellent sometimes utter crap. Somebody's death in Paris neighbourhood series, not good to downright horrible. I've also found Henning Mankell's much hyped Wallender books only so-so.
257: d^2, you hater, I just like the song a lot -- and don't find it self-indulgent. A lot of that liking is, yes, context-dependent. If I were forced to be actually serious about best guitar solo of all time, I wouldn't choose that. Dunno what I'd choose, actually.
TBH, I think dsquared is right that 'Maggot Brain' is over-rated. It's fine and all, I don't dislike it, but it has an oddly disproportionate place in the pantheon. I prefer Ernie Isley or Shuggie Otis doing that sort of smooth fuzz lead guitar. Isley's lead guitar is such a cool thing in those pop-tinged 70s Isley Brothers tracks.
For simplicity I'm partial to Neil Young's one-noter in "Cinnamon Girl"*. But I'm also a sucker for the self-indulgent stuff like "Maggot Brain" (better that than the interminable "soaring" stuff) and Pink Floyd. I can't really think of a good solo offhand, but I like a lot of Martin Barre's sound on earlier Tull--Stand Up and Benefit ("To Cry You a Song" for instance).
* NY: I mean, Satriani and Eddie Van Halen are genious guitar players. They're unbelievable musicians of the highest caliber. But I can't relate to it. One note is enough.
258: The Izzo books aren't bad -- like a lot of translations, though, a little flat in tone.
171
Whenever I read Hammett, I find myself wishing that he hadn't wasted so much of his later life on politics and drunkenness. I'd rather have a couple of shelves of Sam Spade novels than whatever the internecine struggles of the mid-century yielded.
Hammett also suffered from tuberculosis. And some writers just run out of things to say.
194
No one ever speaks up for Ross MacDonald in these discussions, but he had a very good reputation for a long time, I gather.
I like his books but they do owe a lot to Chandler.
I feel like I ought to have liked the couple of Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther novels that I've read, but the style always seems over-dramatic.
I wonder what portion of fans of Hammett and Chandler like James Ellroy's novels, the L.A. Quartet in particular. I like them quite a bit, especially White Jazz, which is distinguished by its first-person narration.
265
I wonder what portion of fans of Hammett and Chandler like James Ellroy's novels, the L.A. Quartet in particular ...
It's been a while since I read them but as I recall I liked them but thought they were a bit over the top in general and a bit racist in particular.
The Izzo books aren't bad -- like a lot of translations, though, a little flat in tone.
Good then that I held out till I was home to get them, rather than reading them in the English or Polish versions that BPL has. Flat in tone is about the last phrase I'd use to describe Izzo's style.
For 260, I prefer Isley's guitar playing, too, but the question was about the "greatest" guitar solos. Which pretty much requires an over the top performance. I love the Isley Bros but no solo is coming to mind offhand.
The major James Ellroy books are well worth reading, and his memoir about his Mom, who was murdered, is excellent as well. He's not as good a writer as Chandler (who is?) and is baroque where the classic noir writers are sparse, and I of course have various local history nerd bones to pick with him, but I think at his best he does some really amazing stuff.
My Mom, Who Was Murdered would be a good title for a kind of affectless ironic noirmoir.
"Someone left this crappy noirmoir in the armoire!"
re: 268
'(Who's) That Lady'? Which is, admittedly, pretty much just constant lead guitar whenever there's a break in the singing. Or 'Summer Breeze'? Which has a really aggressive solo for such a mellow tune.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYHLVjzf1PY&t=4m10s
re: over the top performance, I still [as a teenage metal head in the 80s] have a lot of affection for loads of big-haired shred merchants, but very few of the solos are really memorable, technically great thought they are. I don't think Van Halen played a bad note from about 1978 to 1985 or so, but the solos of his I really remember are largely the short snappy ones he did guesting on other records, or on VH's poppier singles. Which brings us back to the post-punk/new-wave 30 second explosion type of soloing.
The current(ish) crop of shred players -- Mattias Eklundh, Guthrie Govan*, Buckethead etc -- are pretty great, though, if you like that sort of thing.
* who UK people will have seen as the Catweazle looking bloke in Dizzee Rascal's band.
The list in 229 appears to have been compiled by somebody who had been told who they ought to namecheck but hadn't actually listened to any of them.
Guitar solos are usually boring and always overrated.
Hammet was brilliant.
Is there a chart on the internet showing where all of the fictional detectives in NYC work? It would be especially amusing to try to work them into an actual NYPD org chart.
I wish I had not had to get up this late/early.
Going a bit further back, there are two Italian set ones that I liked, one a Sicilian cop, the other a Venetian cop based in Rome.
Are you thinking of the Aurelio Zen books by Michael Dibdin?
Not a guitar solo, but the piano solo in Nina Simone's version of "Love Me or Leave Me" which I heard for the first time only a few days ago is awesome.
One of my favourite adolescent memories was watching a show called "Ready, Steady, Go!", which was the 'best' music programme on British TV in the mid-60s. Its selling point was that everybody played live, instead of miming as on all the other shows.
Anyway, they got Nina Simone on one night. (I freely admit that at the age of 14 I had no idea who she was.) But she started playing, I think 'Love Me or Leave Me', and got into it and worked out for about 10 minutes, or about twice her allocated slot. I've never heard anything like it - sheer magic. The presenters were doing everything they could to shut her up short of actually shouting at her, but she totally ignored them and just kept on playing like god. And that's how I discovered the blues.
Myintroduction to Nina Simone was with that Aardman created videoclip for "My Baby Just Cares for Me". coming out in that strange period in the late eighties were suddenly old blues and soul were repackaged and hip again -- see also Jive Bunny...
275: are you thinking of "My Baby Just Cares For Me"?
Thinking about the guitar solo issue, I realise I actually don't like them much, and wonder if the very first electric guitarists were actually right in thinking of the instrument as a substitute for a horn section.
However, although D^2 knocks them, the ultra-minimal feedback bit in the Small Faces' Whatcha Gonna Do About It is fantastic in that minimalist anti-solo sense. Shorter me: stop waving that axe around and consult Steve Cropper's entire oeuvre.
re: 279
I don't think that's entirely true re: the first electric guitarists. Guitar was originally a replacement for banjo in big bands, and swing guitar comping is quite un-hornlike. The archetypal early player of that type would be Freddie Green, who plays just a really simple groove but who instantly produces swing.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgVEeZ_noKU
The groove of the whole tune is setup by the guitar comping, especially once it gets to about 2min in and Basie's chordal playing gets sparse.
Although I suppose in small group swing bands that didn't have multiple horn players, the guitar did sometimes play the sort of stabbed percussive riffs/fills that a horn section would in a larger band. IMHO, jazz guitar got _much_ less interesting once soloists got seduced by trying to sound like sax players.