A Side of Southern Hospitality, and No Country for Old Men (or Women)

I haven’t been very blogactive as of late, for what is likely a combination of factors. Although I love the fall, something about the changing of the colors and the inevitable drawing down of the summer saps some creative energy from me, energy occasionally expressed through other means. Add to that a couple recent trips out of town, the fact that I’m growing to detest my job, and my usual holiday-time transformation into Scrooge, and I’ve scarcely felt the desire to call even close friends and family the last month.

So I went and had brunch at Georgia Brown’s, DC’s somewhat highbrow take on low country soul food. The food is as good as advertised, a four course culinary theater billed as a pre-show of drinks followed by three acts of dining. Of course, the doughy and aging bartender works at such a glacial pace that you’ll be lucky to score a drink in this geologic era while you wait for a table in the overcrowded bar (which doubles as a dining area with a smattering of largely undesirable tables) or while you eat. He seemed more interested in flirting with the young, attractive females who make up the bulk of Georgia Brown’s clientele than in actually serving drinks. The first and final dining acts are the buffet-style portions of the meal, the first made up of typical brunch items with the final one the dessert course highlighted by a chocolate fountain. In an interesting and somewhat non-linear dining fashion, the waiters advise you to eat your fill of Acts 1&3 and package your Act 2 entree of choice to take home with you. For the service of their bartender, Georgia Brown’s gets one angry middle finger, or a 1/5. The food is as good as advertised, although hardly anything that you would care to eat on a regular basis unless you have a desire for an early death. The food rates a 3/5. Considering that you get two relatively full meals for your $32.95 prix fixe menu, Georgia Brown’s rates a 4/5 for value. The decor, though stylish, is uninspired, meriting at best a 2/5. The dining room is crowded and rather noisy, lacking acoustical dampers to blunt the din of the room. These scores average out to an overall (average) rating of 2.5/5.

I went and saw No Country for Old Men with the film clubbers yesterday. The film is garnering heavy buzz as a possible Oscar contender, the trimphant return to Gothic Americana for the Coen brothers. Based on the Cormac McCarthy novel, the film has a palpable and relentlessly visceral feel, filled to the brim with the desperate stoicism of life in the badlands of West Texas. The film eschews traditional dramatic conventions, lacking a classical protagonist to Javier Bardem’s psychopathic baddie. Bardem, a favorite of mine since Julian Schnabel’s Before Night Falls, shows yet again why he’s one of the most underrated actors in Hollywood. The movie also lacks what one would consider a traditional narrative flow, with shifting perspectives and a climax that will come for many far too early in the film. This is due in part to McCarthy’s utter lack of sentimentality about his characters and with how utterly impersonally he dispatches them. The film, a requiem for the western and the dying traditions of the American West, will ache in your psyche like an old injury when the weather is changing, a sprained shoulder that came closer to dislocation than comfort would allow. The Coen brothers have crafted a perfect little slice of life from McCarthy’s funereal novel about life, and more importantly about death, in the new West.