A Hole in the Wall sans Dents in the Wallet

 Sitting under rows of ornate Chinese lanterns with the smell of ginger and fried chicken wafting throughout the restaurant, I forgot I was smack dab in the middle of crowded downtown Athens, Ga. at lunch hour. What appears to be a hole-in-the-wall of a restaurant located on the corner of Broad St. and College Ave. is actually a Chinese food spot that will make your taste buds return for second helpings.
 At Cheng’s Downtown, for a mere $5.37 a person gets their pick of any two entrée items, rice or noodles and a cup of soup. The lunch buffet offers around 15 different entrée choices. Not only does Cheng’s Downtown offer dishes made with chicken, beef or seafood, but they also have a selection of cuisine that is either made with tofu or vegetables. Catering to the ever-growing population of health-conscious vegetarians and vegans, they do not, however single them out from the other carnivorous creatures of Athens. All selections are showcased in throughout the same buffet-style serving case. There are three choices of soup: hot and sour, egg drop, and vegetable wonton soup.
 For my soup appetizer, I stuck with a personal favorite of mine, egg drop soup. The egg drop soup was flavorful but contained many unusual ingredients that made this soup stand out from what you expect in the traditional dish. However, the entrees I sampled did prove to be a cut above the rest. The Kung pao chicken is mixed with the perfect proportion of spices, peppercorns, and assorted stir-fry veggies that culminate in a mild and delectable serving. The tofu dish, labeled solely TOFU in all capital letters on the buffet line, was by far one of my favorite entrees I tried at Cheng’s Downtown. The first flavor to hit my taste buds was the sweet taste of ginger, undercut by the spiciness of chili peppers. The most disappointing dish was curried chicken, which seemed bland to me because I am more accustomed to the more piquant Eastern Indian prepared version of the entrée. According to the waitress, the dish included chicken, combined with soy sauce, curry powder and green veggies, which tinted the final product green. The lack of flavor in the curried chicken was made up in the peppered chicken dish. The peppered chicken tasted largely of black pepper and soy sauce but had a satisfyingly crisp taste that left my palette feeling cleansed. “I’ve never tried anything as zesty as this peppered chicken before at a Chinese restaurant,” said Matt Sanders, my boyfriend who accompanied me on this trek for decent Chinese food. The fried pork rice was fluffy and savory. This was a pleasant surprise after trying rice at other Chinese buffets that have the distinct metallic flavoring that leads one to believe the rice has been sitting in a heated serving bin all day.
&nbspThe service was fast and friendly at Cheng’s downtown. Before deciding which dishes to try, the waitress allowed us to sample several menu items on toothpicks and pointed out which dishes were spicy. She was also attentive to refilling our sodas and making sure we had everything we needed for our meal. From the outside, Cheng’s Downtown looks as if it should have been renovated 20 years ago and I was always wary of eating there. However, upon eating a meal at Cheng’s Downtown, anyone can see that it provides a clean environment, good service and affordably priced delectable dishes in serving sizes that you could only finish if you had gone without eating for a day or so. My meal at Cheng’s Downtown proved to be a purely positive dining experience that I did not expect from appearance of the restaurant’s exterior which goes to show that “you can’t judge a book by its cover.”

Burroughs: Man of his Word?

      Is Augusten Burroughs a man of his word or is he the grown-up version of a child with an overactive imagination residing in another world? Burroughs, a gay writer whose mother gave him up for adoption to her shrink when he was at the ripe young age of 14 years old is the author of Running with Scissors: A Memoir. Originally published in 2002, it was reprinted in 2006 with the release of the movie based on the novel and bearing the same name, recounts the early childhood of Burroughs. Despite being labeled under the non-fiction genre, there has been recent scandal and lawsuits against Burroughs for his depiction of life with his shrink’s family, whose name was changed to the Finches from the Turcottes in the novel. This second edition of Running with Scissors: A Memoir, included an author’s note to the readers of the novel: “The names and other identifying characteristics of the persons included in this memoir have been changed.”
      In Running with Scissors: A Memoir, Burroughs’ mother Deidre is a neurotic, bordering on psychotic, aspiring poet who causes his father, a math professor at the University of Massachusetts, to become increasingly more estranged from the family and slip further into an alcoholic coma-like state with occasional violent tendencies. Deidre seeks help from Dr. Finch, an absurd man psychologist who has a “masturbatorium” at his practice, parades the streets of town in a suit covered in balloons, proposes to adopt random kids of his patients and lives in a pink house with his outlandish family. Agnes Finch, the mother of the Finch household, is described as being a hunchback who insists that Kibble and Bits dog food is fine for human consumption because it is “just a little kibble.” Hope Finch is a daughter of Dr. Finch and Agnes and is a strange uptight girl.
      When she swears her cat Freud tells her he is dying of feline leukemia, she places him under a laundry basket without food or water for five days and watches him starve to death. The other daughter, Natalie Finch is the chubby and unkempt, wears the same skirt and halter top daily and becomes Burroughs’s confidant. Their 30- year-old adopted son, Bookman, is who Burroughs has his first sexual encounter. He falls madly in love with Burroughs before running away and never being heard from again. Running with Scissors: A Memoir chronicles the beginning of Burroughs’ childhood to his parents’ failed marriage to his first love through his time spent at the Finch household and all the madcap happenings that ensue in between.
      Running with Scissors: A Memoir is a hero’s journey where the protagonist comes of age in an unhinged world where everyone Burroughs is close to is slightly off their rocker. “Eventually, the pans will be washed, the glasses returned to their roach-infested cabinets, and the silverware scrubbed free of debris. But Christmas trees and turkey bones tend to stay awhile.” This excerpt from Running with Scissors: A Memoir is a classic representation the style of writing Burroughs employs throughout this novel. Burroughs prose is blunt and descriptive in the illustrations it creates for the readers. The depiction of the Finch family is the most vivid in its portrayal in Running with Scissors: A Memoir, and its excessiveness is the cause for the lawsuits brought against Burroughs by the Turcotte family.
      Running with Scissors: A Memoir is a great read with a plot that never bores and I could definitely have a second or third look at this novel. However, after reading the novel, labeled as a memoir and under the assumption that this book was a truthful account of Burroughs’, life I fell mislead and as if I was betrayed by a close friend. Though people experience memories differently from one person to the next, I think the biographical aspect of Running with Scissors: A Memoir should have been deemphasized and left out of its title. Perhaps “loosely based on truth” would be a better subtitle for Running with Scissors: A Memoir. However, in the same breath, I would recommend this work of literature to anyone searching for a hilariously tragic narrative on the muddled life of an adolescent coping with an eccentric family and the abnormally strange occurrences that accompany this peculiar situation.

Augusten Burroughs' website has information about his books, photo albums, tours and a blog written by Burroughs himself! http://www.augusten.com/index_flash.html

Music in a Seedy Bar

      The chewed up bubblegum underneath the table sticks to my fingertips as I attempt to pull the table closer to me while sitting alone in the seedy upstairs section of a downtown Athens bar. The announcer, who only moments before appeared to be a member of the audience, hops on stage and proceeds to drop f-bombs as he attempts to coerce the seated crowd to stand up. “Tasty Tuesday” is a recurring event of spoken word, rap and jazz hosted by Tasty World, music venue and bar in Athens, the second Tuesday every month with a different lineup each occasion.
      The opening acts of “Tasty Tuesday” were an eclectic mix. Amaris, the first poet, spoke her verses slowly and steady, akin to the style of the beatniks of the 1960’s and discussed themes of freedom and makes reference to major players in Black history. Celest Ngeve, the second poet to perform spoken word, had a style reminiscent to that of rap icon Missy Elliott –up-tempo and racy. All of her poems were about sex. They were often drowned out by the competing noise of the drums flooding in from the concert downstairs and a poetry reading seemed to sedate the audience who came to hear a live music show. The final opening act was an underwhelming R&B artist named Fly (Cedric). Fly attempted to serenade the ladies of the crowd by singing into a microphone over the tracks of a karaoke tape.
      When A is A started playing their jazz-infused pop tunes the crowd shifted from a segregated audience to an amalgamation of all races. Created in December 2006, A is A is made up of four and is made up of solely students from the University of Georgia. The band members of A is A include Disha Chhabra on vocals and acoustic guitar, Vikas Shah on the drums, Jason Collier on the trumpet and Aaron Miller on the electric bass, keyboard and the synthesizer. They began their set with a jazzy cover of “Killing Me Softly”, originally recorded by Roberta Flack. The well-known cover helped the band to ease into their original numbers. Chhabra’s voice is full-bodied and soulful while the mood of the music is dreamlike laden with ambient sounds. Though A is A touches on some depressing themes, such as losing someone important in your life, the lyrics of the bands songs transform everyday occurrences into memorable happenstances. The ambiance of A is A’s sound is reminiscent to the music of Carol King and Aimee Mann. While listening to A is A play their set I got the mental image of being on a long train ride and just noticing that abandoned house by the railroad tracks for the first time.
      The Flagpole failed to mention the names of any of the poets, Fly or A is A when advertising for “Tasty Tuesday.” A is A does has a Myspace profile but did not promote their recent show at Tasty World on their webpage. I found it interesting that A is A gathered a crowd at Tasty World through a grassroots advertising schemes. I heard about A is A through a Facebook message I received sent to all people in the band members’ extended network, which is a system of acquaintances based on who you take courses with. This alternative to mainstream advertising caught my eye because I knew they were an up-and-coming band that was created by students and I wanted to check it out. Overall this show put the melody back in my otherwise grueling tuneless Tuesday.

http://www.myspace.com/dishachhabra

http://www.myspace.com/iloveaisa

Both profiles have audio files you can listen to and learn more about the music of A is A.

Discovering Humanity in the Inanimate Tube

      What are we looking to find when we watch a television show? We like shows where we feel like we can relate to its characters and laugh at their blunders as if they are our own. The Office (2005), the American version of the 2001 BBC show bearing the same name, fulfills that yearning for character identification. The cast of characters on The Office meshes so well together that they provide an original humanity that is lacking elsewhere on television.
      Michael Scott (Steve Carrel) is the district manager of Dunder Mifflin, the paper company located in Scranton, Pa. where The Office takes place. Michael is a cuckold who overestimates his ability to entertain people and often tries to do so with humor that is racist, sexist or just lacking in the plain old comedic elements necessary. Sometimes you might feel sorry for Michael Scott, but even though he is a dorky boss who never seems to do anything right, his character, who is the protagonist, makes The Office a worthwhile TV show to watch. “I guess the atmosphere that I've tried to create here is that I'm a friend first and a boss second, and probably an entertainer third,” said Michael in one of The Office’s first episodes.
      By far, the most entertaining interaction to watch on The Office is between Jim Halpert (John Krasinski) and Dwight Schrute (Rainn Wilson). Jim will pull just about any prank on Dwight just to push the neurotic Lord of the Rings enthusiast’s buttons. On one episode Jim puts all of Dwight’s personal effects in a vending machine, including his wallet, and hands him a bag of nickels to pay his way out of the predicament. A very memorable prank which is the premise for the whole episode Dwight asks Jim to be in an alliance with him when the topic of downsizing in the company is brought up. Jim agrees but only to the delight of coercing Dwight to hide in a box in the warehouse where an alleged meeting never takes place and also to dye his hair so he can spy on another Dunder Mifflin branch.       The ongoing torment catches up with Dwight and at the beginning of the third season Jim moves to the other branch for a little while, partially due to Dwight’s request and in part due to his own need to relocate, but returns to the Scranton branch before mid-season.
      Another important aspect of the show is the underlying relationship between Jim and Pam Beesly (Jenna Fischer). Pam has been engaged to Roy (David Denman), a warehouse employee at Dunder Mifflin who seems to lack something in the personality department, for three years without ever setting a wedding date. While Jim and Pam get along better than anyone in The Office and Jim has an obvious schoolboy crush on Pam, she denies any attraction to Jim until the last episode of the second season. This waiting for a crush to evolve is reminiscent of real life relationships.
      The writing of The Office is clever and its hilarious dialogue is not like anything else you would hear on another television show. “Dwight Schrute: Someone forged medical information, and that's a felony. Jim Halpert: OK, Whoa, all right 'cause that's a pretty intense accusation. How do you know that they're fake? Dwight Schrute: [reading from a sheet] Uh, Leprosy, Flesh Eating Bacteria, Hot Dog Fingers, Government Created Killer Nano Robot Infection.” The Office can be categorized as a “mockumentary”, which is a style that parodies the seriousness of documentaries’ claim to capture to reality. Though overflowing with witty repartee, the conversations between its characters are casual and akin to the conversations we have with our coworkers. Employing a dialogue technique called stichomythia, one-liners back and forth that replicate realistic speech patterns, the characters on The Office also utilize asides, which are afterthoughts spoken directly to the cameras that tell what the characters are actually thinking about in any given situation. The interactions portrayed between the characters on The Office are multi-faceted unlike their counterparts of other current television shows. The Office succeeds by turning the seemingly monotonous setting of cubicle living into a fascinating television show about real characters who become your friends in a cathode ray.

NBC page dedicated to their hit show, The Office. This site is loaded with clips, episode synopses, quotes games and extras: http://www.nbc.com/The_Office/