Kings of Leon - album review.

I was getting bored with my itunes library of music. There are only so many times you can listen to Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah. My eclectic mix of old, new and inappropriate for my age, was becoming tiresome. I needed a fresh angle, reinvigorate my interest and get me back on the pulse of modern music. Were U2 still around? 

I joke ofcourse. U2 are still around (somewhere in middle-age obscurity) and thank god for it. Whereas my music radar wasn't too far out of sync, it needed the sort of fine tuning that you can only get from buying albums, listening to them over and over, until you form an opinion of what the music does for you. The random single song downloads from itunes were not healthy, they were short-term, stop-gap solutions to a music starvation. I needed an album, shiny cover, off the-shelf, in the charts, on the ipod, listen, enjoy. And so it was: Only by the Night - Kings of Leon. 

Now this isn't a random purchase. It comes from many years of loving and listening to the Kings of Leon, and seeing them in concert twice. I own their first three albums so it was a sequential purchase to add the fourth to that collection. 

I've got to take my hat off to them for a whole bag of reasons. Their music, constantly evolving and instilled with a commitment to producing music (four albums in five years), is consistently good. Nay, consistently better. 

With this latest album they have decided to raise the bar significantly. There are songs in life that seem to be pitched to their audience at a slightly higher level, somehow rising a bit above the normal chart song mould. They go from being catchy tunes with memorable beats to sprawling and compact musical manifestos. The type of song I'm talking about seems to jump out at you and change your perspective on something, whenever you hear it, no matter how many times. 

It may seem like i'm talking nonsense, and quite possibly sounding like the type of douchebag that would hold up a lighter at a concert and sway side to side with his eyes shut, whilst neglecting the person he's just set alight next to him. In truth, for everyone, there is a song like this, that speaks out to you and probably causes you to act like douchebag lighter dude. 

For me, that song used to be Hallelujah by Jeff Buckley. Now I think i've found a few more in the new Kings of Leon album. 

To Do: Buy more interesting music. 

A night in the Premier Inn.

My new vocation as a travelling video-journalist took me to the heady heights of Watford North on Thursday, to the nations favorite budget hotel, the
 Premier Inn.

I was excited. A night in a hotel, hand over the company credit card, grab a full english breakfast in the morning - how was this not going to be at least a satisfactory Thursday night? My anticipation reached its zenith as we pulled into the car park to discover the hotel was nestled inbetween a TGI Friday's AND a MacDonalds. We were here at last, with everything on our hotel doorstep. The Premier Inn logo is a gentle, luminescent moon which looked near perfect when set against the bright yellow of the famous golden arches, both stood side by side, the big sleep meets the big mac. 

We checked in. There was no need for a concierge at this hotel, I thought of asking where the nearest McDonalds was, but considered that it might be a level of sarcasm too testing for this receptionist. The cameraman (Sayed) was currently in fasting mode during the month of Ramadan, and requested a wake-up call at 4am for when he was due to break his fast. The receptionist eyed him suspiciously and said "Oh, yes, 4am sir, I'm sure...". Clearly she suspected him of requesting a 4am call so that he could wake up and take care of some personal business, of a strictly non-religious nature. We had a little laugh and then went our separate ways. 

The hotel room was uniform, clean and empty. If you're already getting the sense that my enthusiasm was starting to ebb, then you're exactly right. Staying in a hotel room on

 your own just doesn't hold the same appeal. I unpacked my toothbrush and it looked odd on its own in a glass next to the sink. The TV was small, and an abundance of mirrors gave the room a slightly creepy expansion. Pulling back the sheets and getting into bed, I decided to retrieve the toothbrush from the bathroom to save it from its lonely existence in there. 

I'm quite positive that staying in this hotel room with another person (I have someone in mind, no, not CR) would have been a genuinely fun experience. The bed was comfortable, the space was a large one, but all of these details dwarfed me when I was left on my own. 

I struggled to get to sleep, clutching my toothbrush, one eye on the door, half-expecting a raid. 

It never came though, the night passed without event and the morning came once more. My attention had now turned to the breakfast. They had informed me at check-in that breakfast (all you can eat buffet = heavenly words) was served in TGI Fridays. And it was actually Friday. What a stroke of luck. The excitement had returned to this event once again. In the wake of the previous night's disappointment, I didn't want to rush things again like a child on christmas morning, excitedly unwrapping his presents at 6am only to be left bored by 10am. So I took a shower, lay on the bed for a while, watched an early morning episode of Frasier. 

As an aside, I absolutely love Frasier. I think it's hilarious and witty. But I declare this love whilst realising that it is part of a series of middle-age sitcoms that reveal I watch the sort of television only someone in their middle fifties might watch. Others watch Family Guy and laugh out loud, I just don't get it. Some watch hip and trendy shows like Arrested Development, but I miss the youthful humour. You could surmise that the type of sitcom you watch reveals a lot about the type of person you are. If this is true, what do Frasier, Will and Grace, and Friends reveal about me?

After a morning of middle-age television, I arrived at TGI Fridays, ready for my breakfast and full of friday feeling. 

The simple and crushing fact is this: TGI Friday's is not a good place to eat at 8am. Even on a Friday. It has nothing of the joy that you might find of an evening time. There are no silly waiters whisking around with a hundred badges attached to their braces - how stupid they look, but also how cool. Around the walls, in block hollywood font there are quotes like "It's always Friday at Fridays",  and "Live the dream." American dream memorabilia lines the walls, brazenly stuck on as ornaments - extremely tacky, but once again, so very cool. The drinks are "botomless" at TGI Fridays, allowing you to request as many drinks as you want. All of this joy, all of these wonderful attributes, they all disappear at 8am. 

I quickly finished a bowl of cereal, and the waitress (devoid of badges) came over to take my order. I asked for a full english breakfast. It came too quickly, leading me to believe that someone must have ordered and left, allowing me to have their unwanted breakfast. Not that I wanted it either, the eggs were rock hard, the sausages tasted funny and the beans already had a crust. I cried out for a burger, some friday fries and a botomless diet coke. 

None of these things were forthcoming. The hotel stay-over had been a disaster. Better luck next time I thought, a lesson learnt. Rather upsettingly, I shall never view TGI Friday's in the same light ever again. 

To Do: Give TGI Friday's a grace period, to allow it and me to overcome our difficult experience together. 

I am well-read. In Menus.

Going for a drink with a friend recently to a local bar/restaurant, I was perusing a rather interesting menu. I'm not going to lie, menu reading (regardless of purchase) is one of my favorite self-amusements. People often throw around this term 'well read'. "Are you well read?" they ask. And I answer "Yes, I am well read. In Menus." 

There's just something about reading a menu that gets you straight to the core of what that restaurant is all about. It's an opportunity for them to show a bit of personality, not just in the dishes they serve. The presentation of the menu should mimic the dining experience. 

Modern bistronomoque translates to high quality thick card, with a matt finish, bold black print on a white background. The wording of the dish descriptions in a modern restaurant is normally always a little creative, trendy and a little try-hard. My favorite example of this is what one restaurant referred to as 'Tempura codfish, chips and Manchester Caviar', which was in fact Fish, chips and mushy peas.

Handwritten menus can be a greasy breakfast cafe or a cool, hip place that cares more about its food than its printed menus (which one depends entirely on the style of the penmanship). Really upper class fancy joints tend to leave off the currency signs from their prices, assuming that their punters know enough about money to presume that they would pay £9 for a foie gras starter and not 9 of any old random currency. 

Yes, a menu really is the key to understanding what you're dealing with when you sit down at that table. It's a chance to impress and of course it's the main way of getting a punter to order a dish. I love the sound of "Pan Fried Sea Bass with Fennel and Potato Dauphinois & Honey and Soy dressing", but i'd be less inclined to order it if I saw it scribbled on a post-it note. 

Menu speak is something we're all familiar with, but often overlook how annoying it is. When a restaurant advertises a £16.00 steak as part of its main courses, but requests a £2.00 supplement on that dish, I wonder if they could not have factored that into the original price. I often wonder if I could request a steak without a supplement, perhaps they could cook it a bit less and save on some gas. 

Please notify staff if you have any nut/other allergies is another favorite of mine. "Excuse me waiter, I have a nut allergy." "Very good sir, i'll just go and remove the nuts from our satay chicken and pecan pie."

A little bit of humour goes a long way in a Menu, and helps ease the process of reading and selecting, which is particularly important for those of us that are 'well-read' and read often. Even though I was only there for the bar part of the bar/restaurant, I couldn't help but have a glance, and this was certainly a restaurant which mixed comedy with food. It's policy on vegetarians was particularly liberal: "We have a great selection of vegetarian dishes. They go very well with our steaks." 

The thought made me chuckle. A menu should be entertaining, unique and not just conform to standard expectations. It mattered not that the disclaimer could be taken as offensive from some the perspective of some vegetarians. I could hardly imagine that vegetarians picketed outside the restaurants, boycotting the Fruit Fascist restaurant. In my own carnivorous opinion, the words perched beautifully on the fence between confrontational and self-deprecating. It told me that this restaurant didn't take itself or its food too seriously. It hoped that the food was good, and the customers would like it, but it was prepared to laugh about it all. All of this I had gathered from just one line on a menu. And there was no £2.00 supplement on the steak. 

To Do: Read more menus. 

Food cycles

There seems to be a lot on the "To Do" list at the moment. Most pressing seems to be the need to stop eating fast food so regularly, for the typical health/feel better/look like a model reasons. It has often been a personal myth of my own that if a person goes through a surge of eating fast food, peaking in a session which includes a particularly greasy specimen, they will have reached the temporary point of no-return, the crest of the hamburger hill. On the other side is a gentle downhill stroll, full of yoghurt and fresh fruit, good times and model looks, right before you reach the bottom of the valley where another great hamburger hill is now in front of you. The appetite grows once again, the fast food makes a comeback to the diet, and you can't help but draw the conclusion that eating is a cyclical process. 

But this is nothing new. Eating has always been a cyclical process, wherever you live. In America, the Turkey trolley is rolled out but once a year. Thanks are given for its arrival, and then the annual feast begins. In England, it is tradition to eat Toffee covered apples on Fireworks Night. If ever there was a novel way of finding your five a day fruit and vegetables by covering its entire surface area with teeth-rotting glucose, then it was the Toffee Apple, but thank god and Guy Fawkes that it only arrives every November. 

In Spain, custom dictates that when the clock strikes midnight on 31st December, everyone must rapidly consume 12 grapes, one for each chime of the clock. The habit began in 1909 when grape growers from Alicante considered it a good way to offloade surplus production for that year. Seedless to nay, ever since Spaniards have loved the custom (Mexicans also jumping on the bandwagon), and so have the grape growers. 

A bible could be written about religious eating cycles. Christians indulge in a bit of bread and wine every Sunday, which is certainly not sustainable for the low-carb Atkins Christians. Unless of course the bread was to be wholegrain, but then how can we honestly consider the body of Jesus Christ to be wholegrain? In France, do they break the brioche and drink the wine on a Sunday? Aside from this weekly binge, one festival stands out in particular: Shrove Tuesday. 

This particular gem of a religious holiday (my favorite, let it be known) works on the wonderful premise of using up all of the plainest foodstuffs in the cupboard, rich ingredients like eggs, milk and sugar go into the pancake recipe to prepare for the Lent fast. A useful way of getting rid of those high-carb food bombs that you wont need for this 40-day fast you're about to embark upon. All of this sounds great in theory. In practice, this yearly food cycle sees Christians and non-christians alike out in the supermarkets, stocking up on chocolate dipping sauce, maple syrup, lemon juice, blueberries and ice cream. All of this is piled aplenty onto their pre-fast pancake drive, and the surplus is left to rot in the cupboard, possibly for an entire year until the cycle repeats itself. 

But my own eating patterns don't possess the same historico-religious importance, and they certainly aren't high-brow enough to use phrases such as 'historico-religious'. No, I started by saying that this week's "To Do" list was a busy one, but the main task is to beat the bulge of the fast food enticement. Currently, I have a craving. Even after coming off the worse in a greasy battle between myself and a Sausage Egg McMuffin last Sunday, I still craved a quarter pounder on Tuesday, and gleefully ate one. But this has got to stop, pancake day is only six months away, and I shall have to start stocking up on Nutella any day now. Not to mention the twelve grapes at new years, both Novemeber and December turkeys, and all of that bread and wine in the meantime. Yes, if there is anything "To Do" this week, it's to make sure that my diary knows of the important food cycles. 

To Do: Eat less fast food.