Letter to the writers of an awful article:

In the April 22, 2010 issue of the Twin Cities Onion, the A.V. Club ran a feature of 5 places the authors would hope Anthony Bourdain would visit should he create a Twin Cities No Reservations episode. That bucket of swill that some might call writing can be found here.

In response, I wrote the authors a reply that will hopefully shake them out of their WASP-y bubble. The point of food culture is it's vast, delicious diversity. I will have no one misrepresenting Twin Cities food culture in the deplorable way the Onion writers did.

	from:	Cristeta Boarini
to:		avclub@theonion.com
date:		Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 7:54 PM
subject		: Feature Piece Concerning Anthony Bourdain is a Disgrace

To Steve McPherson and Lindsey Thomas, writers of the No Reservations Twin Cities Feature.

It has come to my attention that you two know nothing about the Twin Cities food culture except cheap places to get beer and dives wherein you can cure your hangover the next morning. If you had done any decent research, other than to throw darts at a map of your favorites, you might have produced a mildly entertaining article. Instead, you print a completely oblivious feature for which, I question if you even left your offices.

If you had read the book that propelled Anthony Bourdain into the spotlight in the first place--Kitchen Confidential--you would have noted in the end how he praises Minneapolis as the only place in the world to get authentic Vietnamese food outside of Vietnam. If you had ever walked around the streets of Minneapolis and St. Paul, you would've noticed that the largest Somali population outside of Somalia resides in the Twin Cities. Even walking around downtown, you would find places like Subo or Fogo de Chao--places whose food is not based on what is traditionally white and "safe."

I challenge you to go down University in Midway and find a seedy Vietnamese place where the staff doesn't speak English. I dare you to walk around Cedar-Riverside and sit & eat in a Somalian cafe with the locals. There you'll find food that's more precious to the proprietors than the commercialized fare than that which is peddled at Target Field.

Minnesota is not a place where you can get just Scandinavian food on a stick anymore. Anthony Bourdain, a man who's profession is travel and cultural awareness, recognizes that fact with all his shows and publications. It's a shame you published an article as ethnocentric as yours in homage to him.

Changes not for the better, not for the worse, but for progress.

A few months ago while shopping at Kohl's, I was horrified to discover pre-scarved, pre-layered shirts on the racks. Basically, what the designer of this shirt was saying to consumers was: "Love that indie style but don't want to put in the effort? Buy this and you'll be just like them!" Just like them--those who came before and spent years tailoring their unique fashion through bargain hunting, traveling, meaningful gifts... These are experiences made manifest. Elements of fashion do not only look good, they often hold a special importance for the wearer that makes them unique. Suddenly that uniqueness is lost as the public copies the trendsetter. Fashion-wise, what sets the trendsetter and the copiers apart other than time? Mass commercial reproduction of an individualized and meaningful object devalues that which is special about it. Mom's homemade pie can only be sliced into so many pieces before the slices are too small to be fulfilling.

Now instead of a pie, take a band: The Avett Brothers. For years, they have been cultivating a musical sound unlike any of their contemporaries. By taking the driving pulse and rhythms of bluegrass and country, mixing those musical ideas with the contemplative nature of folk music, but reworking them all to align with modern indie rock sound, the Avett Brothers perfected a new musical amalgamation of beauty in their albums from 2002-2008. Their tone has often been described as honest, reminiscent of Bob Dylan. And like Dylan, these North Carolina boys are the best kinds of poets: poets with musicality. They understand what themes and riffs and harmonies actually assist their words to resonate even more strongly with the listener.

But the pure forms of bluegrass, country, and folk music are not accessible to mainstream culture. These are acquired tastes, and the Top 40 radio station does not have the time or money to acclimate an audience to anything that's too different. So for six self-produced albums, The Avett Brothers have been accruing a dedicated following of adoring fans and have been content to sit outside the circle of pop culture (one might even venture to say The Avett Brothers used to linger only on the edge of the parallel and ever-growing circle of indie culture, where folk singers like Devendra Banhart, Bon Iver, and Sufjan Stevens take the limelight). I and Love and You marks their hopeful breakthrough to indie-pop stardom. This new album has all the right parts for the success equation: A new thick, swelling polyphonic sound of drums, piano, and electric instruments + Big Label Producer + Handsome Musicians = #7 on Billboard Charts!

As a fan that is intensely familiar with their work pre-I and Love and You, I am extremely skeptical of The Avett Brothers' new sound. The honesty of previous albums is drowned out by layers of pop staples encroaching upon their bluegrass roots. Where drums and piano were used to accentuate particular phrases or feelings in songs past, now they appear on almost every track. The intensity and variation of feeling is lost to a blanket of upbeat sound. Torment, weariness, quirks, mistakes, adoration, family--all these concepts are sharply represented through a deft balance of music to lyrics on older albums. With the bare exception of a couple tracks, the songs contained on I and Love and You use pop-typical instrumentation, which in its popularity and common, banal usage detracts from the uniqueness of lyrics and purpose. That which was original and grand about the Avett Brothers' music has now been reconstituted in order to be digestible to the masses.

Having already compared The Avett Brothers to Dylan, then I and Love and You is their version of Highway 61, maybe not nearly as drastically--nor is the former nearly as much as a touchstone as the latter--but in the same vein. I and Love and You, like Dylan's masterpiece, has the potential to change the face of pop music. The little banjo and country themes that The Avett Brothers have carried over into their new pop sound is unheard of on pop radio. It's new to the public; it's exciting.

But, just like Dylan's followers in the 60's, fans are having trouble adjusting. The Avett Brothers have provided album upon album of emotional work untainted by popular demand to their band of devotees. Now as they project their particular brand of music through the device of pop sounds to a wider audience, much of their original simplicity, feelings, and individuality are lost in translation. That which might be taken as meaningful or striking on I and Love and You pales in comparison to that which is heartrending on their 2007 self-produced album Emotionalism.

So is the case of The Avett Brothers just another disappointing story of a band selling out? Were they tired of backburner status? For anyone who has listened to their work, it is apparent that their talent alone deserves the most praise; they deserve to be high on the Billboard Charts with rave reviews from Rolling Stone and other big publications. But did all the fame have to come only through the transition to pop music?

Maybe. I hesitate to point the finger at selling out. I like to believe that anyone with an emotional and artistic range like The Avett Brothers has greater motives than monetary ones. Granted, this foray into pop-rock is uncharted territory for them. Could they be testing the waters, seeing if this works? Or, more subversively, are they playing into the hands of the Big Producers in order to get back to their former style in albums to come? Who knows? What it all comes down to is that I and Love and You is a transitional album. And like all all transitions, it's pretty awkward at first. Although, from an established fan's perspective, the change is fairly disappointing, it is important to consider that these creative explorations into pop sound may only help The Avett Brothers to streamline their sound in the future. Like Edison, The Avett Brothers have not failed with I and Love and You, they may have just found a way that doesn't quite work.

"Birds flew off with a fallout shelter..."

That one verse from Don McClean's "American Pie" never seemed more appropriate..

Here's a great sign from The Bell Museum, only visible in the colder seasons (note the vines). It's so kitsch! The Bell Museum is a campy Natural History museum from the 60's--loaded with dioramas of taxidermy wildlife. I chuckle each time I pass it. It's hard to believe that people actually had confidence in fallout shelters.


Or that people even believed in this for example: duck and cover, even a newspaper can save you from the atomic bomb!



Ah, ignorance is bliss...

But the Bell Museum is absolutely fantastic. I'm a nut for animals; if I could make money, I would totally be a Zoologist (not to mention you get the really cool perk of saying you're a Zoologist). Something about stuffed grouse and raccoons put into "natural positions" is such a gas to me. My grandpa hunts, and his house is full of his trophies (and, no, they're not trashy). He's got this really sweet lynx that's been stuffed into an alert/pouncing position. Scared the bejeezus out of me as a kid.

I've got Literature in the Bell Museum Auditorium--hence why I'm there so often. Probably wouldn't be creepin' around there so much otherwise, who knows. But damn! As of today, that Lit class is my favorite. I don't think I've ever taken a literature class that didn't ruin the material, until this one. My AP English class in high school murdered Gatsby for me through a violent and unecessary use of MLA formatting and Harold Bloom, coupled with insipid class discussions with my so called "peers." Bah! How I loathed working on that novel. I love the prose, love F. Scott... but Gatsby will forever stand in my memory as an assault upon my patience.

Regardless, this Lit class is as different from the torture of high school as The Guess Who's original "American Woman" is infinitely better than Lenny Kravitz's pathetic cover. Reading material under the tutelage of my university teach Dr. Conley enhances my experience for once, rather than hindering it. The work we read for this past unit has been the kind that electrifies my soul (see my treatise on the beauty of Squalor) and the defragmenting analysis through defamiliarization of the text blows my mind like a shot of heroin. Jesus, take any one paragraph, and let's sit down together and take it a part piece by piece. What is the significance of using "it" instead of "he" in this phrase? Why does this specific use of alliteration strike us so potently? How come the author decided to repeat this motif right here? That's how lecture/discussion in Literature 1101 goes. Oooh it burn burn burns me in the deepest throes of intrigue! I love this class. I cannot stop my hand from raising with some half-crazed idea to babble about to share this beautiful text w/ people my classmates. And to impress my teacher, but that, children, is a story for another time...

The main stairwell in Folwell Hall. Probably the prettiest and most collegiate building on campus.

I have to hike up these four flights of stairs to get to my French class, but even as out of shape as I am, I never really notice the climb. Partially because my iPod blasts out the noise of my panting breath, but mostly because I'm so excited to get to class that my mind doesn't really give a damn about my complaining stamina.

In the few weeks since this semester has begun, French 3015 has simultaneously humbled and reawakened my driving love for the language of baguettes and cafés and escargot. For the first time in a very long time, I have to try in French class, something that this overachiever is not used to.

This new found fascination can basically be all chalked up to my Professor. When imagining the university world, professors are usually stereotyped as slouching old men with corduroy pants, fuzzy white beards and thick glasses who are veritable walking tomes of wisdom. Enter Professor Akehurst--exactly fitting the bill. His teaching method is fairly old school (unsurprisingly) when it comes to teaching French. A lot, and i mean a lot of repetition, memorization, and pronunciation. This method, though frowned upon by the new curricula and the creators of Rosetta Stone, has worked for centuries, and (most importantly) works for me. Suddenly I'm discovering vowel sounds that I have never heard nor uttered before in my life. I have to think on my feet, while this aimiable old Englishman retells the class stories from his glory days and tasty tidbits of French culture. Every class period is a treat worth sitting in the front row for. It's such a pity that this is Akehurst's last semester here.

The Blog Cherry

Alright, so not the most glamorous of photos to start out this blog, but considering the title, I thought it appropriate. That's the Cherry & the Spoon, by the way, slightly obscured by a shitty camera and my favorite people in Minneapolis. I'm the one on the left. We're smiling in this shot... that was one of the better days around here.

I'm a writer, and in some personal mission to strip off the pretentious connotations of that title, this blog is supposed to be my very own version of honesty... whatever that may mean. Hopefully I can sharpen my biting wit in the process.

The concept of blogging escaped me for the longest time. I never quite understood. But recently I've taken it into my head that there is this inherent necessity in all artists to share. Share their art, share their thoughts, share whatever may be remotely interesting, share what is intrinsically fascinating, share and discuss. Share and introduce. And from that, we can all connect.

As convoluted and mildly communistic as that may sound, it's something I believe in--maybe even one of the few somethings that I consistently believe in. So I want to share with you. Can we be enthusiastic about what we experience in this high-flying paradox called life? Please?

I'd like us to share. There's so much to experience, and it's all so exciting. Wouldn't you agree?