Monty's Unsolicited Reviews
I suppose a lot of reviews are unsolicited. Perhaps I mean to acknowledge that nobody necessarily needs to know what I think. No, that can't be it. Maybe I should say, instead,
Monty's Unexpected Reviews
You weren't expecting that, were you? (Except for the fact that because of the font size you probably read it before you read the paragraph leading up to it. A fascinating topic for discussion, that, but in another forum)
I am not a food critic, a film critic, a book critic, a critic critic, a cricket critic, or a ticker taper parade ticket vendor critic. I am simply critical. Therefore I shall criticize items across any number of categories. Without further ado, I present
Monty's Unrestricted Reviews
1. "Pirates of the Caribbean" - I haven't seen it yet, but I'm sure it's good. Though Gore Verbinski is a weird and uneven director, as his name would suggest.
2. Rocco Dispirito - A total cocksmoke. Either he's an arrogrant, cheesy prick, or he has contrived this character for the TV show, which is even lamer.
3. "The Restaurant" - Stupid, which means that
4. The fact that I watch and talk about "The Restaurant" - Is also stupid.
5. Mama's meatballs - They do look good.
6. Cream cheese - Very overrated. I may never buy it again. I used to always eat it with my bagel and salmon, because that was simply what one did. No longer. After all, what you want to taste is the salmon and the bagel; the cream cheese is just fat for lubrication, and any fat will work (though I have yet to try animal fats). One day my ladyfriend and I found we had bagels and salmon but no cream cheese; The poor dear was all set to sink into despair before I decided to go all Mediterranean on her ass (pardon me, on the bagels' asses). I toasted the bagels and drizzled on some smoky, nutty, deep green extra virgin olive oil. I laid on some slices of smoked salmon. I opened a jar of capers from the fridge.
The capers were bad.
I know what you're thinking: "Capers? Bad?" Or at least, that's what I was thinking. Don't we pickle things specifically so that they don't go bad? Sometimes, though, things I don't expect to go bad, go bad. Here's a list:
Olives. Just like capers. Olives have turned on me several times, and yet it always surprises me. Little white fungi floating on the surface of the brine.
Carrots. Only because they keep for surprisingly long. I have a bag of carrots in the crisper for months and they're fine, so I take it for granted they'll be there forever. Not so. One day I grab a carrot, and it's like it's made out of rubber.
Salsa. Should salsa go bad? It does.
Okay, that list was a lot shorter than I thought it would be. Before we get back to cream cheese, I'll give honorable mention to mushrooms just because they get stinky and brown so very quickly, and, for my ladyfriend's sake, I'll include olive oil, because she says it goes bad and puts it in the fridge, which is why our olive oil is like a half-melted olive-sludge Slurpee unless I leave it out for a few minutes, which I did before I put it on the bagel with salmon (without capers), which was absolutely the most delicious bagel and salmon I can remember. The nutty, tangy flavor of the oil complemented the salmon nicely, and softened the bagel just enough without creating the slippery slimy cream cheese surface which makes it so fucking easy for your slices of salmon to slide off the bagel and down your face, leaving white globs of cheese all over your chin.
I have also tried butter, which works fine but does not add the exciting flavors of olive oil. I would still take butter over cream cheese any day. Without cream cheese you have a nice piece of fish on toast; With it you have a gooey, cheesy confection which leaves nothing to taste of the salmon but its saltiness.
Of course, cream cheese is good for certain kinds of icing, baking and such. But I don't bake things, or ice things.
7. The Dogs of Babel, by Carolyn Parkhurst - A very good book. My first instinct was to say "a very good first novel," but I won't say that, as that is somewhat of a belittling qualification, like "Not bad for something I thought would suck." For instance, Jack Kerouac's first novel was a good first novel, and a shitty novel. Ditto Don DeLillo's. (Playing tonight at Iriving Plaza: White Lion, with special guest The Ditto Don DeLillos) On the other side of the sandwich the notion of the "good first novel" suggests that novelists necessarily get better over time, which is often not the case. For example, have you read Fury by Salman Rushdie? Me neither, because it sucks. Back to The Dogs of Babel: A very good, and daring, book. Carolyn writes well about things that are not easy to write about, such as:
- Linguists. Hard to write about because linguists are boring people. I know that because I almost became a linguistics major. Then I quit smoking dope for a while and changed my mind. There are, of course, some linguists who aren't boring, like Anthony Burgess, who writes very well about linguists, as does Carolyn Parkhurst.
- Grief. Grieving. Very hard to write about without melodrama or cheesy sentimentality (see: Moonlight Mile. On second thought, please don't see it. If the studio makes any money from people renting that crap they might decide to make Moonlight Mile II: Weeping of the Wankers ) Carolyn writes very well about grieving.
- Dogs. Hard to write about.
I read an interview with Carolyn where she mentioned Robert Olen Butler's They Whisper, which made me happy because I like Robert Olen Butler and I think more people should read his books. Butler captures the most nuanced little emotional details of romantic relationships better than most. Carolyn does this too.
I should mention that Carolyn is a friend of the family, though I would not go and praise any novel by someone who is my mother's husband's sister's ex-husband's daughter. If anything, this would make me more inclined to be critical, as I am very competitive. When I first got the book in the mail, I thought, "Dogs? It must suck." But you see, I was wrong. It's great.
7. Nelly - He's starting to grow on me. I used to always sing "It's Getting Hot in Here...," often in an operatic voice, but more recently I actually listened to the song and I liked it. He seems somehow well-intentioned.
8. Ecco the Dolphin (PS2) - A delightful game. I only played it for a few minutes, just this morning, but it filled me with delight. I was a dolphin swimming around, and I ran into a few other dolphins, and I beeped one of them with my sonar to get his attention and he stopped and said to me "We're playing 'Fetch the Fish.' If you want to play go ask Coach." I was so tickled, I just giggled for five minutes and then stopped playing (I had to go to work).
That dolphin called that other dolphin "Coach." Hee hee.
~Monty
3:32:37 PM 
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