Bars – Jiamen

Speaking of retro relief, my wife and I had drinks and dinner at Jiamen recently. It’s the newish Asian restaurant at 5400 Edgewood Road NE.

Dinner was not as “innovative” as the sign outside promises and as I hoped, but we’ll go back and try again. I’ll reserve judgment on the food for now.  The place has lots of potential.

Instead, I’ll dwell on the big positive of the night – a bar that boasts a cocktail menu featuring a long list of vintage drinks.

You can order up a Corpse Reviver #2,  French 75, Sazerac, Sidecar, Vesper, Singapore Sling, Old Fashioned and several others. 

I stayed in the rye food group with a Sazerac and a Manhattan. They were hefty, stiff drinks mixed well. Once drained, I was ready to head down to the docks with Sam Spade to check out the La Paloma.

Although, my wife probably would not have approved. Dames.

The bartenders were friendly and fast. The bar  was busy enough to give off a happening buzz but quiet enough for conversation. Big flat screen TVs remind you it’s not 1945, but with March madness basketball on both, there was no complaint from me.

Bottom line, it’s a good place to drink in a little history, or whatever you feel like. They also have a pretty good beer selection.

And if you’re wondering about a Sazerac,  it’s a New Orleans invention and is considered the city’s official cocktail.

A complete history and recipe can be found here.

Cheers.

Today’s Column – Retro Relief

Our past has a very strong pull when the present is so scary.

You don’t have to look hard to find proof that jittery Americans are seeking elusive comfort in nostalgia. We’re clinging to shards of the so-called good old days to get us through bad new days.

Maybe we think the only way to see a light at the end of the tunnel is to throw ourselves into reverse.

The New York Times carried front-page news last week that candy sales are rising while other parts of the economy melt. People are snatching up the same cheap, sugar nuggets that fueled their kickball games and sleepovers. Adults without jobs refuse to go without Skittles.

Women are lining up to see New Kids On The Block, and neither the act nor the audience has been a kid in years. USA Today buzzed about a new book extolling the virtues of play and how harried, unhappy adults make too little time for it.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune carried a report last week on how a few Roman Catholic churches are going extreme-retro, offering sinners indulgences so they can repent like in the old days. The Middle Ages.

Vinyl records are selling. Old TV on DVD is hot. I half expect Bon Appetit to have a tater-tot casserole on its cover next month.

Now, I’m not judging. I, too, am guilty of moonwalking toward the past.

Shuffling things around a basement closet awhile back reminded me that I’m still the owner of an Atari 2600, circa 1981, video game system and a few dozen games.

I also have a 25-year-old, 13inch color TV that’s an analog relic in a digital world.

It was a match made in the heaven of memory.

I hooked up the old system and it worked perfectly.Grabbing a Coke, Classic, from the fridge, I settled in to blast asteroids and aliens and waves of incoming missiles. The familiar hand cramp and thumb callous were not far behind.

Also thanks to the digital TV conversion, we now have the Retro Television Network, beaming oldies all day on KWWL’s channel 7.3. You can watch “Magnum P.I.” every night if you want.

There’s that cocky, lovable Tom Selleck, in trouble again, stopping to use a pay phone and getting his news from a newspaper. He has a “little voice” inside that narrates his adventures. Today, he’d whip out his BlackBerry and tweet “@TC,@Rick: Higgins mad about Ferrari.Being shot at. Ltr.”

On Sunday, I grabbed my copy of “Berlin Diary” by William Shirer. It’s the book I read at age 16 that made me think about becoming a newspaper reporter. Flipping through it reminded me of the excitement I felt about telling interesting, important stories. Now, working in the city where Shirer’s career began, I’m wondering how much longer I’ll get to tell stories.

This is and always will be a sentimental country.

But there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. An economy-sized bag of Skittles is going to give you a gut ache eventually.

It’s comforting to reach back, but getting through whatever it is we’re going through means being engaged in the present. If better days are out there, they’re ahead of us.

Still, if blasting a few aliens makes you feel better, fire away.

Snowman Death Baffles Investigators

Mr. "Daddy" Snowman

MARION — Was it the wife, or the sun?

Only Mr. Frosty “Daddy” Snowman knows. And he’s not talking.

Not anymore.

Snowman, age undetermined, was found expired on the front lawn of a home in a north Marion subdivision Sunday afternoon. Foul play is suspected, but natural causes have not been ruled out.

He is mourned today by his young friends, Tess and Ella, who said in a joint statement that they, “made him what he was, and worked hard to keep him from falling to pieces.”

They blamed each other, though both issued high-pitched, indignant denials. Neither is under investigation, police said.

The crime scene (Warning: Graphic)

Witnesses told police that Snowman blew into town on the heels of Saturday’s heavy late-season snowfall. He was last seen standing in the yard next to Ms. “Mommy” Snowoman, his estranged wife. Their marriage had cooled in recent months.

Ms. "Mommy" Snowoman

Snowoman is now considered a “person of interest,” according to police, but remains at large.  They are following leads, but have so far hit dead ends. Investigators say it’s almost like she melted into the thin spring air

Snowman, according to friends, was an irregular columnist for the Snowtown Blow, where he won awards for his reporting on the threat of global warming. He was laid off last month, when his job was outsourced to Antarctica. He soon entered treatment for antifreeze addiction.

Friends said he drifted all winter. But they said he hoped to make a fresh start this spring, or at least lose a little weight.

Still, they said, it seemed like he knew his days were numbered.

“I had to remake his head, twice,” Tess said. “He kept losing it. Then Ella sat on him. She ruins everything.”

He will be remembered at a private ceremony, where Tess and Ella will collect his hat, scarf, sunglasses and carrot nose from the front yard before they blow away or get jammed in daddy’s lawn mower. Snow cones, his favorite, will be served afterward.

Anyone with information about Snowman is asked to contact authorities.

“I can’t believe he’s gone,” Ella said. “Can we get out my pool yet?”

Snowman during happier days

Monday Reads — Buyer’s Regret

Did you ever have buyers regret?

Sure, you drop a chunk of cash on something and later wonder whether it was the smart play. It happens.

Say you’re a Cedar Rapids city official, and you read this morning’s on-the-scene report form The Gazette’s Adam Belz on temporary flood barriers failing twice in Fargo along the Red River, the same ones CR ordered up as part its temporary protection scheme. That’s gotta give you pause over your oatmeal.

The HESCO barries “wouldn’t be able to withstand water at any significant height,” the story says. I don’t think that came from the company’s brochure. But I’m expecting a “they didn’t use them right” or something from the leaky barrier maker any minute now.

Belz also hits a line drive the city’s direction with his description of what it looks like when a flooded town has a strong mayor to lead the way. There apparently is no leadership debate in Fargo, like there is around these parts. Maybe we can hire Mayor Dennis Walaker to be our flood CEO.

So what else are we regretting?

The Register has an interesting piece today on the consequences of Gov. Chet Culver’s bonding plan. Bonding delivers a large up-front pool of infrastructure spending but paying back the bonds will deplete funding over the long run, according to the state auditor. The Cato Institute also says debt is bad.

Anybody want to buy a shuttered dog track on the outskirts of Waterloo? The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier says it’s for sale to anyone who will redevelop the property for another use. Apparently the track’s owner, the National Cattle Congress, is finally giving up hope of ever bringing gambling back to the property.

And will you still buy Old Style, now that it’s fully kreuzened again and more expensive?

The Omaha World-Herald probes this vital issue this morning. Beer fans quoted in the article are wary of the changes, especially the fact that a $12.99 case now costs $18.99. Old Style is trying to follow Schlitz, which went back to its old formula at a higher price and saw sales rise this year.

And may your day by fully kreuzened as well.

Deductibility Spawns Creativity

There’s a part of me that’s tempted to wade boldly into the fight over whether the state should finally dump federal deductibility, or the ability of Iowans to deduct fed taxes from what they owe the state.

It’s a big issue. But, honestly, I sent that part of me out to get kolaches.

In Prague.

So if you’re looking for keen analysis weighing the benefits to our optical tax rates realized by elimination vs. the threat of bracket creep, your flogging up the wrong blog.

All I know is that if the Legislature is going to take away a deduction, they ought to add some back in. It’s only fair.

I have 5 ideas.

1. Drinkability Deductibility — This break would recognize the economic and environmental benefits created by Iowans, like myself,  who buy beer by the keg —  which save aluminum and glass, are reusable and slice fossil fuel demand by requiring fewer beer runs.

And what was I doing when I came up with this concept? I’d rather not say.

2. Gullibility Deductibility — Iowans should get to deduct the cost of any product they buy late at night — Snuggies, Shamwow, Loud ‘N Clear etc., or the loss of any unused gold jewelery they put in a durable envelop and sent to strangers far away.

3. Football Insatiability Deductibility — A tax break for the price of season tickets, NFL Sunday Ticket, tailgating tents, flags, car decals, helmet-shaped grills, jerseys, hats, bumblebee bib overalls, toddler-sized football uniforms/cheerleading uniforms, mailboxes, garden gnomes in team colors, golf club covers, dog sweaters, bottle openers that play a fight song, team Christmas ornaments and therapy.

4. Compatibility Deductibility — Married couples get a tax break for every single blissful year they endure, er, I mean, enjoy together.

5. Twitterability Deductibility — A 0.0001-cent tax cut for every Tweet. That ought to deal the final death blow to the last remaining remnants of your internal dialogue.

I know what you’re thinking. These are really bad ideas.

Oh yeah? Well what have you got, smarty pants?

Friday Reads — Abbreviated

Technical problems at home. So I’m late and brief.

Mainly, I wanted to point to The Register’s story today reporting that U.S. Rep. Steve King’s tax property break was a clerical error, according DC officials. He plans to pay it back.

The big story is the partisan tax reform battle firing up at the Statehouse. Dems want to eliminate federal deductability and plow the new revenue into tax breaks for people earning less than $125,000. They say it’s a middle class tax cut. Republicans say it’s a job killer and a trick and income redistribution. It all promises to dominate the final weeks of the session.

It’s also reminiscent of last fall’s Obama-McCain battle over Obama’s plan to cut taxes for people under 250,000 and raise it on others. The GOP says small biz will be hurt.

Democrats say the move would make Iowa’s income tax rates look better when recruiting businesses. Right now, they argue that federal deductability inflates those rates, so Iowa gets lumped in with high-tax states unfairly.

The Register, The Gazette, Radio Iowa all have coverage.

Today’s Column — “Pork” and Bonds

In the “Tower of Invincibility,” Republicans think they have found an exploitable weakness in Gov. Chet Culver’s big bonding plan.Instead, they’re showing emptyheaded, inchdeep partisan politics.

The tower is a 12-story office building planned by folks in Vedic City, the southern Iowa town built on the principles of transcendental mediation.The governor’s office told communities to submit any and all ideas for using a potential $750 million pot of infrastructure money. Vedic City sent in its tower.

Once the list became public, Republicans eager to shoot down the Democratic governor’s signature legislative proposal swiftly wielded the “Tower of Invincibility” as a weapon. Right-leaning Web sites carried snide banner headlines. The words “exposed” and “scheme” were tossed around. It’s just like Congress, they said, greedy, unpopular Congress.

But is it fair to scream “pork” in this crowded political theater? Nope.

For one thing, the tower and a handful of other projects Republicans latched on to were among nearly 4,000 projects taking up 227 spreadsheet pages. Along with a handful of items that make you go, hmmm, there are scores of road projects, wastewater system upgrades, school repairs, etc.

It paints a pretty good picture of why Culver’s bonding idea is largely a good one – because this state’s infrastructure is badly in need of repairs. Culver deserves credit for trying to do something about it.

But not in the scorched earth world of 2009 GOP politics, where everything that government touches is bad, wasteful, silly and open to sound-bite scorn. Everything is pork. Monitoring volcanoes, important genetic research using fruit flies – it’s all a punch line.

I’m certainly not saying that the government doesn’t waste money on stupid stuff. And vigilance is a good thing. I have no problem with Republicans making principled arguments about bonded debt and its future consequences.

But when you start using tactics that assume we’re vapid and stupid, that we’re not interested in the details, only in clever spin, that’s where I draw the line.

Because once you drive past the “Tower of Invicibility,” you’ll find the Anamosa School District trying to make its high school accessible to the disabled and replace a 102-year-old middle school. You’ll see efforts to upgrade aging pieces of the rural power grid, to establish passenger rail service to Chicago and make badly needed storm sewer upgrades in Cedar Rapids.

You’ll read that tiny Blanchard “is without an adequate sewer system.” Yeah, pork. Ha ha.

All this GOP angst is just noise. They don’t have the votes to stop it. Really, only Culver can screw this up.

An 11-member board is planned to decide how this money is spent. I hope it runs like the first few years of the Vision Iowa Program, which I think is one of the most successful state programs in history. We need tough, independent-minded people to put applicants through their paces. A team of rivals, perhaps.

But if the governor packs it with cronies and political patsies, it could be a boondoggle yet. He may win a great victory, but in politics, nobody’s invincible.

Thursday Reads — Give the King a Break

The Sioux City Journal and Iowa Independent each follow a report in Roll Call naming U.S. Rep. Steve King as one among four members of Congress wrongly benefiting from property tax breaks on their second homes in the District of Columbia. From Iowa Independent:

The exemption allows people who own homes in Washington, D.C., to receive a $67,500 reduction on the assessed value of their home. The deduction also caps increases on the assessed value of homes at 10 percent above the previous year’s tax assessment. It is not supposed to be available to those who claim residency in another state even if they have a home in the District.

King, who bought a one-bedroom condominium in D.C. in 2005 for $325,000, told Roll Call he believes “the D.C. tax department made a mistake.” A King spokesman declined further comment to Roll Call.

 You can see how a mistake like this might be made. On the other hand, this is exactly the sort of thing King would jump on if it involved some liberal Dem, so fair game. It also doesn’t help, as Iowa Independent notes, that King has played a key roll in stopping a bill that would give DC real representation in Congress. Taxation without representation is apparently working out well for him.

How about some good news? The Register reports that Balltown’s historic Breitbach’s restaurant is rebuilding again after a second fire in less than a year destroyed the landmark last October. If all goes according to plan, customers will be sitting down to home cooking and great pies in July. Then they’ll take a short stroll, or perhaps too-full waddle, down the street to enjoy the view. All will be right with the world.

Elsewhere:

A man was stopped trying to break into the set of Dacing with the Starsto see contestant/West Des Moines Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson. Police searched his car and found loaded guns, duct tape and love letters. A restraining order has been issued.

One of the country’s most wanted fugitives was working in a Boone tattoo shop, says Radio Iowa. Goes by the name “Suicide.” Of course he does.

There’s lots of love among Democrats at the Statehouse. A House committee stripped some key provisions out of a big health care reform bill that passed the Senate. The DMR reports that didn’t make Sen. Jack Hatch, D-Des Moines, very happy at all:

The deletions outraged Sen. Jack Hatch, a Des Moines Democrat who shepherded the bill through the Senate. Hatch blamed House leaders, who he said caved in to pressure from the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.

“They’re doing it because they want to be friends with some very powerful people,” Hatch said. He vowed to fight to reverse the deletions.

House Speaker Patrick Murphy scoffed at Hatch’s allegations. “Give me a break. Jack’s full of it,” he said Wednesday evening. Murphy denied having anything to do with the amendments, though he said parts of the original bill “went a little bit too far.”

 Full of love and respect for the legislative process. I’m sure that’s what he meant. If this keeps up there are going to be some very uncomfortable moments at Legislature Prom.

This year’s theme? “Just Me, and You, And Rapidly Declining Revenue.” Magic.

And finally, in this morning’s how bad is the economy, I turn to the Omaha World-Herald. It’s not a local story, but the paper fronts it’s Web page with a NY Times story about tent cities popping up around the country. Evidently President Obama was asked about this phenomenon at his press conference. I must have missed it, distracted at times from our dear leader by a feverish game of Hi-Ho Cherry-O!

I won, by the way.

Newspaper Bailouts

Area bloggers are concerned about my troubled industry. I had no idea they cared. But they do.

 Blog for Iowa carries an interesting piece from The Nation by media reformers Bob McChesney and John Nichols, who advocate government action to save the news media and newspapers from collapse.

Please, read the whole thing. But here’s their idea for giving newspapers a federal financial breather:

What to do about newspapers? Let’s give all Americans an annual tax credit for the first $200 they spend on daily newspapers. The newspapers would have to publish at least five times per week and maintain a substantial “news hole,” say at least twenty-four broad pages each day, with less than 50 percent advertising. In effect, this means the government will pay for every citizen who so desires to get a free daily newspaper subscription, but the taxpayer gets to pick the newspaper–this is an indirect subsidy, because the government does not control who gets the money. This will buy time for our old media newsrooms–and for us citizens–to develop a plan to establish journalism in the digital era. We could see this evolving into a system to provide tax credits for online subscriptions as well.

This was a new one for me, and I clearly have some problems with it. For one big thing, I worry about journalistic independence being exchanged for government help. I mean, this idea has a government-imposed ratio of content to ads. That’s a lot of control. How far would it go?

Although I suppose this might be in the same ballpark as giving out $40 coupons for digital converters so people can watch local TV channels. Both are about making sure people stay informed. And no one would be required to subscribe to a newspaper, a particular paper or any rag for that matter.

But the key question is, will I still be employed? The article, for some reason, fails to directly address this critical issue.

On the other side of the political street, The Iowa Republican, news for Republicans by Republicans, says the secret media bailout has already begun. Shhh. Don’t tell anyone.

TIR’s chief truth trooper Craig Robinson says Gannett, parent company of The Des Moines Register, is dishing out cost-saving employee furloughs in one-week doses so that its employees can claim unemployment benefits for those unpaid vacations. Horrors.

And this scheme is so insidious that it’s perfectly legal:

The Gannett Company isn’t doing anything illegal, but when more and more Iowans are losing their jobs, it’s distasteful for their employees, who still have jobs, to drain funds from the unemployment system. The unemployment system is funded by Iowa businesses who pay taxes into the Iowa Unemployment Compensation Trust Fund, and Workforce Development then makes payments to eligible jobless workers.

 Iowa business like The Des Moines Register?

And this is from the same party featuring hero governors that are refusing to take federal stimulus dollars because they would have to expand unemployment benefits. To jobless people. The ones you’re so worried might starve because some liberal editor got their scratch.

I love this brave new media world. Can I get a tax credit for moving into a mountain top cabin?

Obama Teleprompter Obsession (OTO)

What’s with this teleprompter obsession among Obama’s critics? And is it treatable?

It’s rolling again this morning after Obama used a TV monitor that scrolled the words of his opening statement at last night’s press conference. AP’s Ron Fournier calls it his “familiar crutch.” 

U.S. News’ Robert Schlesinger counters that it’s receiving a disproportionate amount of attention. Amen.

Google News yields several pieces focused on the great debate.

Of course, this is all supposed to fit into a pair of “narratives”– that Obama is so cool and detached that he can’t speak from the heart and that he’s really not as great as advertised when it comes to speaking. The liberal media built him up, but the truth is he’s a big faker.

Still, snark and paranoia aside, who the hell in his position, at this point in history, wouldn’t want to choose his words carefully and stick with them? He also answer about an hour’s worth of questions without a net. 

Back in September, Republicans couldn’t heap enough praise on Sarah Palin’s fiery, emotional, hard-hitting speech at the Republican National Convention.

I was there. Which meant I could read the speech along with her on the giant teleprompter screen in front of her. It even offered her a pronunciation-guide spelling  for the word “nuclear,” so she wouldn’t pull a W.  

What’s the big deal? Politicians use teleprompters, which the Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder notes is harder than it looks.

Even Moses had tablets to read from. Big stone ones. Easy to read.