In Guatemala, La Antigua is the Old City; set in the central highlands, it is renowned for Spanish Baroque architecture and colonial ruins. In Nashville, it is the only Guatemalan restaurant, housed in a modest stone-faced block building on Grandview and Woodbine. Inside this family-run establishment, it's basic, but bright and upbeat: The walls are painted sunny yellow, light Latin rhythms play on the radio and the staff is all smiles.
They'll welcome you with a basket of house-made tortilla chips. Crisp, thicker than you might expect, these are lapped in smooth red salsa, dusted with tangy cotija cheese. It's a nice treat while you peruse the menu. If you have any questions, no worries. The owners not only speak English well, but they also take pride in explaining the dishes, and making recommendations.
And, on house recommendation, you'll want to try one of the Agua Frescas: these beverages are designed to cool and refresh. The Agua de Jamaica infuses hibiscus flower tea with simple syrup; the deep ruby drink is berry-like and packed with vitamin C. More sweet-sour, but no less delicious, the Tamarind is fragrant with apple and citrus notes.
There's a steamtable-lunch buffet, if you're in a hurry. But it's worth the brief wait for some of the made-to-order specialties.
LA ANTIGUA
2600 Grandview Avenue, Nashville, 615-770-2900
Hours: 6 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday-Friday; 8 a.m.-8 p.m. Saturday; noon-5 p.m. Sunday
Alcohol: no
Food: Guatemalan and Honduran cuisine
Cost: Breakfast: $4.99. Specialties and Entrees: $3.99-$8.99
Payment: MC/VISA
Parking: on-site lot
Things on my mind about love, art, music, family, friendship, and inspiration.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Monday, August 30, 2010
http://www.deepfriedkudzu.com/2008/07/fried-green-tomatoes-and-blfgts.html
http://www.deepfriedkudzu.com/2008/07/fried-green-tomatoes-and-blfgts.html
It’s Witch-Hunt Season By PAUL KRUGMAN
Now it’s happening again — except that this time it’s even worse. Let’s turn the floor over to Rush Limbaugh: “Imam Hussein Obama,” he recently declared, is “probably the best anti-American president we’ve ever had.”
To get a sense of how much it matters when people like Mr. Limbaugh talk like this, bear in mind that he’s an utterly mainstream figure within the Republican Party; bear in mind, too, that unless something changes the political dynamics, Republicans will soon control at least one house of Congress. This is going to be very, very ugly.
So where is this rage coming from? Why is it flourishing? What will it do to America?
Anyone who remembered the 1990s could have predicted something like the current political craziness. What we learned from the Clinton years is that a significant number of Americans just don’t consider government by liberals — even very moderate liberals — legitimate. Mr. Obama’s election would have enraged those people even if he were white. Of course, the fact that he isn’t, and has an alien-sounding name, adds to the rage.
By the way, I’m not talking about the rage of the excluded and the dispossessed: Tea Partiers are relatively affluent, and nobody is angrier these days than the very, very rich. Wall Street has turned on Mr. Obama with a vengeance: last month Steve Schwarzman, the billionaire chairman of the Blackstone Group, the private equity giant, compared proposals to end tax loopholes for hedge fund managers with the Nazi invasion of Poland.
And powerful forces are promoting and exploiting this rage. Jane Mayer’s new article in The New Yorker about the superrich Koch brothers and their war against Mr. Obama has generated much-justified attention, but as Ms. Mayer herself points out, only the scale of their effort is new: billionaires like Richard Mellon Scaife waged a similar war against Bill Clinton.
Meanwhile, the right-wing media are replaying their greatest hits. In the 1990s, Mr. Limbaugh used innuendo to feed anti-Clinton mythology, notably the insinuation that Hillary Clinton was complicit in the death of Vince Foster. Now, as we’ve just seen, he’s doing his best to insinuate that Mr. Obama is a Muslim. Again, though, there’s an extra level of craziness this time around: Mr. Limbaugh is the same as he always was, but now seems tame compared with Glenn Beck.
And where, in all of this, are the responsible Republicans, leaders who will stand up and say that some partisans are going too far? Nowhere to be found.
To take a prime example: the hysteria over the proposed Islamic center in lower Manhattan almost makes one long for the days when former President George W. Bush tried to soothe religious hatred, declaring Islam a religion of peace. There were good reasons for his position: there are a billion Muslims in the world, and America can’t afford to make all of them its enemies.
But here’s the thing: Mr. Bush is still around, as are many of his former officials. Where are the statements, from the former president or those in his inner circle, preaching tolerance and denouncing anti-Islam hysteria? On this issue, as on many others, the G.O.P. establishment is offering a nearly uniform profile in cowardice.
So what will happen if, as expected, Republicans win control of the House? We already know part of the answer: Politico reports that they’re gearing up for a repeat performance of the 1990s, with a “wave of committee investigations” — several of them over supposed scandals that we already know are completely phony. We can expect the G.O.P. to play chicken over the federal budget, too; I’d put even odds on a 1995-type government shutdown sometime over the next couple of years.
It will be an ugly scene, and it will be dangerous, too. The 1990s were a time of peace and prosperity; this is a time of neither. In particular, we’re still suffering the after-effects of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, and we can’t afford to have a federal government paralyzed by an opposition with no interest in helping the president govern. But that’s what we’re likely to get.
If I were President Obama, I’d be doing all I could to head off this prospect, offering some major new initiatives on the economic front in particular, if only to shake up the political dynamic. But my guess is that the president will continue to play it safe, all the way into catastrophe.
To get a sense of how much it matters when people like Mr. Limbaugh talk like this, bear in mind that he’s an utterly mainstream figure within the Republican Party; bear in mind, too, that unless something changes the political dynamics, Republicans will soon control at least one house of Congress. This is going to be very, very ugly.
So where is this rage coming from? Why is it flourishing? What will it do to America?
Anyone who remembered the 1990s could have predicted something like the current political craziness. What we learned from the Clinton years is that a significant number of Americans just don’t consider government by liberals — even very moderate liberals — legitimate. Mr. Obama’s election would have enraged those people even if he were white. Of course, the fact that he isn’t, and has an alien-sounding name, adds to the rage.
By the way, I’m not talking about the rage of the excluded and the dispossessed: Tea Partiers are relatively affluent, and nobody is angrier these days than the very, very rich. Wall Street has turned on Mr. Obama with a vengeance: last month Steve Schwarzman, the billionaire chairman of the Blackstone Group, the private equity giant, compared proposals to end tax loopholes for hedge fund managers with the Nazi invasion of Poland.
And powerful forces are promoting and exploiting this rage. Jane Mayer’s new article in The New Yorker about the superrich Koch brothers and their war against Mr. Obama has generated much-justified attention, but as Ms. Mayer herself points out, only the scale of their effort is new: billionaires like Richard Mellon Scaife waged a similar war against Bill Clinton.
Meanwhile, the right-wing media are replaying their greatest hits. In the 1990s, Mr. Limbaugh used innuendo to feed anti-Clinton mythology, notably the insinuation that Hillary Clinton was complicit in the death of Vince Foster. Now, as we’ve just seen, he’s doing his best to insinuate that Mr. Obama is a Muslim. Again, though, there’s an extra level of craziness this time around: Mr. Limbaugh is the same as he always was, but now seems tame compared with Glenn Beck.
And where, in all of this, are the responsible Republicans, leaders who will stand up and say that some partisans are going too far? Nowhere to be found.
To take a prime example: the hysteria over the proposed Islamic center in lower Manhattan almost makes one long for the days when former President George W. Bush tried to soothe religious hatred, declaring Islam a religion of peace. There were good reasons for his position: there are a billion Muslims in the world, and America can’t afford to make all of them its enemies.
But here’s the thing: Mr. Bush is still around, as are many of his former officials. Where are the statements, from the former president or those in his inner circle, preaching tolerance and denouncing anti-Islam hysteria? On this issue, as on many others, the G.O.P. establishment is offering a nearly uniform profile in cowardice.
So what will happen if, as expected, Republicans win control of the House? We already know part of the answer: Politico reports that they’re gearing up for a repeat performance of the 1990s, with a “wave of committee investigations” — several of them over supposed scandals that we already know are completely phony. We can expect the G.O.P. to play chicken over the federal budget, too; I’d put even odds on a 1995-type government shutdown sometime over the next couple of years.
It will be an ugly scene, and it will be dangerous, too. The 1990s were a time of peace and prosperity; this is a time of neither. In particular, we’re still suffering the after-effects of the worst economic crisis since the 1930s, and we can’t afford to have a federal government paralyzed by an opposition with no interest in helping the president govern. But that’s what we’re likely to get.
If I were President Obama, I’d be doing all I could to head off this prospect, offering some major new initiatives on the economic front in particular, if only to shake up the political dynamic. But my guess is that the president will continue to play it safe, all the way into catastrophe.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
"Fortune's Fool: Edgar Bronfman Jr., Warner Music, and an Industry in Crisis
The collapse of the old music industry — the happy business of spotting talent, pressing millions of LPs or CDs and wondering how to spend the profits — is so well documented that it is almost a surprise to find a new book on the subject.
If you were starting now, you might tell the story by dissecting Guy Hands' disastrous buyout of EMI, studying the Lady Gaga-to-Amy Winehouse hit factory at Universal Music or even revisiting the Japanese-German culture clash that followed the Sony-BMG merger.
Warner Music Group Corp. seems unpromising by comparison. After Edgar Bronfman Jr. bought it with private equity backers in 2004, they rapidly recouped their money in an initial public offering, cushioning the blow of subsequent share price falls.
In his new book, "Fortune's Fool: Edgar Bronfman Jr., Warner Music, and an Industry in Crisis," journalist Fred Goodman uses Warner as an effective starting point for a crisp account of all the industry's recent dramas. Goodman's earlier book, "The Mansion on the Hill," chronicled record labels' boom era, and there is a pleasing symmetry in him tackling their crisis years in a crisp insiders' account.
Published by Simon & Schuster, "Fortune's Fool" tracks Bronfman's route from the family's Seagram liquor business, through the MCA and Polygram deals that created Universal Music, to how he fell for Jean-Marie Messier's patter and sold his holdings to the Frenchman's doomed Vivendi empire.
Goodman never quite backs up his thesis that Bronfman's attempt at a new beginning with Warner Music was driven by the need to atone for the Vivendi debacle, "as high-profile a humiliation as any businessman not sent to prison is likely to endure." Indeed, Bronfman derides the argument in the book, saying, "I made all the money I squandered."
But the story gives Goodman a structure for a sweeping tale, from the Bronfmans' days running "boozoriums" across the Canadian border during Prohibition to Time Warner Inc.'s retreat from rap after hits such as Ice-T's "Cop Killer" drew unwelcome political heat.
It is almost too sweeping. Goodman seems happiest writing about the heady era from the 1960s to the late 1980s when conglomerates fought to get into the soaring record business. Those days seem to be another age, and it takes a while to get to the industry's stark post-Napster challenges.
Reviewing Bronfman's pursuit of digital bundles, patchy investments in start-ups and "360-degree" deals with artists, Goodman concludes that they add up to "a confounding picture," with wiser moves balanced by questions about Bronfman's judgment.
Bronfman emerges as an elusive character, "as languid and patrician as a French king" one minute, an unpretentious mensch the next.
Much of the value in Goodman's account lies in interviews with the likes of Ahmet Ertegun, the late industry legend who steered artists as diverse as Ray Charles and Led Zeppelin. The book is full of anecdotes, such as a former EMI chairman's indifference to a $3,000 bottle of Château d'Yquem with which Bronfman had hoped to woo him.
Bronfman's quotes to Goodman, although often self-serving, are also sometimes disarmingly frank. "It's the downside of a family business," he says at one point. "Anything good is because I'm somebody's son; otherwise, I'm a schmuck."
"Fortune's Fool" comes alive with its portrayal of Lyor Cohen, the insatiably competitive former president of Def Jam Records, whom Bronfman picked to run Warner's record labels. "In the best way, Lyor's an animal," Bronfman says admiringly, and Goodman nearly allows Cohen to steal the show.
Bronfman's deal is as much a private equity story as a music industry tale, but readers hoping for deep financial analysis will have to look elsewhere.
Goodman's most compelling argument emerges in his epilogue, where he tells Internet users who refuse to pay for music that they are creating a more unfair economy for artists than the old record industry model.
"Why advocate fair-trade coffee but not fair-trade music?" he asks pointedly. In his nostalgia, Goodman fails to come up with much of a prescription for the future of an industry redefined by Napster and Apple. That, perhaps, will take another book.
Book reviewer Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson is the New York-based media editor of the Financial Times of London, in which this review first appeared.
Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times
If you were starting now, you might tell the story by dissecting Guy Hands' disastrous buyout of EMI, studying the Lady Gaga-to-Amy Winehouse hit factory at Universal Music or even revisiting the Japanese-German culture clash that followed the Sony-BMG merger.
Warner Music Group Corp. seems unpromising by comparison. After Edgar Bronfman Jr. bought it with private equity backers in 2004, they rapidly recouped their money in an initial public offering, cushioning the blow of subsequent share price falls.
In his new book, "Fortune's Fool: Edgar Bronfman Jr., Warner Music, and an Industry in Crisis," journalist Fred Goodman uses Warner as an effective starting point for a crisp account of all the industry's recent dramas. Goodman's earlier book, "The Mansion on the Hill," chronicled record labels' boom era, and there is a pleasing symmetry in him tackling their crisis years in a crisp insiders' account.
Published by Simon & Schuster, "Fortune's Fool" tracks Bronfman's route from the family's Seagram liquor business, through the MCA and Polygram deals that created Universal Music, to how he fell for Jean-Marie Messier's patter and sold his holdings to the Frenchman's doomed Vivendi empire.
Goodman never quite backs up his thesis that Bronfman's attempt at a new beginning with Warner Music was driven by the need to atone for the Vivendi debacle, "as high-profile a humiliation as any businessman not sent to prison is likely to endure." Indeed, Bronfman derides the argument in the book, saying, "I made all the money I squandered."
But the story gives Goodman a structure for a sweeping tale, from the Bronfmans' days running "boozoriums" across the Canadian border during Prohibition to Time Warner Inc.'s retreat from rap after hits such as Ice-T's "Cop Killer" drew unwelcome political heat.
It is almost too sweeping. Goodman seems happiest writing about the heady era from the 1960s to the late 1980s when conglomerates fought to get into the soaring record business. Those days seem to be another age, and it takes a while to get to the industry's stark post-Napster challenges.
Reviewing Bronfman's pursuit of digital bundles, patchy investments in start-ups and "360-degree" deals with artists, Goodman concludes that they add up to "a confounding picture," with wiser moves balanced by questions about Bronfman's judgment.
Bronfman emerges as an elusive character, "as languid and patrician as a French king" one minute, an unpretentious mensch the next.
Much of the value in Goodman's account lies in interviews with the likes of Ahmet Ertegun, the late industry legend who steered artists as diverse as Ray Charles and Led Zeppelin. The book is full of anecdotes, such as a former EMI chairman's indifference to a $3,000 bottle of Château d'Yquem with which Bronfman had hoped to woo him.
Bronfman's quotes to Goodman, although often self-serving, are also sometimes disarmingly frank. "It's the downside of a family business," he says at one point. "Anything good is because I'm somebody's son; otherwise, I'm a schmuck."
"Fortune's Fool" comes alive with its portrayal of Lyor Cohen, the insatiably competitive former president of Def Jam Records, whom Bronfman picked to run Warner's record labels. "In the best way, Lyor's an animal," Bronfman says admiringly, and Goodman nearly allows Cohen to steal the show.
Bronfman's deal is as much a private equity story as a music industry tale, but readers hoping for deep financial analysis will have to look elsewhere.
Goodman's most compelling argument emerges in his epilogue, where he tells Internet users who refuse to pay for music that they are creating a more unfair economy for artists than the old record industry model.
"Why advocate fair-trade coffee but not fair-trade music?" he asks pointedly. In his nostalgia, Goodman fails to come up with much of a prescription for the future of an industry redefined by Napster and Apple. That, perhaps, will take another book.
Book reviewer Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson is the New York-based media editor of the Financial Times of London, in which this review first appeared.
Copyright © 2010, Los Angeles Times
Dalai Lama is talking to me today!
Despair is never a solution, it is the ultimate failure. In Tibetan we say, “if the rope breaks nine times, we must splice it together a tenth time”. Even if ultimately we do fail, at least we will have no feelings of regret. And when we combine this insight with a clear appreciation ...of our potential to benefit others, we can begin to restore our hope and confidence.
J. A. Widtsoe
"The troubles of the world may largely be laid at the doors of those who are neither hot nor cold; who always follow the line of least resistance; whose timid hearts flutter at taking sides for truth. The final conquerors of the world will be the men and women, few or many matters not, who fearlessly and unflinchingly ...cling to truth, on whose lofty banner is inscribed: No compromise with error." ~ J. A. Widtsoe
Tea Party Backers
When wolves of Murdoch’s ingenuity and the Kochs’ stealth have been at the door of our democracy in the past, Democrats have fought back fiercely. Franklin Roosevelt’s triumphant 1936 re-election campaign pummeled the Liberty League as a Republican ally eager to “squeeze the worker dry in his old age and cast him like an orange rind into the refuse pail.” When John Kennedy’s patriotism was assailed by Birchers calling for impeachment, he gave a major speech denouncing their “crusades of suspicion.”
And Obama? So far, sadly, this question answers itself.
And Obama? So far, sadly, this question answers itself.
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