James Beard, Sid the Kid, and Damon Wayans walk into a bar and order a pastrami sandwich...

*A great big mazel tov to author David Sax whose delightful book, Save the Deli, won a James Beard award.  Here's his acceptance speech: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esBETl_OOSI  
My two cents, or two cents plain, as it were, can be found here: http://reednext.blogspot.com/2010/03/save-deli-by-david-sax.html. 

Besides, any author who checks the email on his website and then actually replies is okay with me.

*With all the talk about Ipad, Kindle, e-books and their effect on book publishing, let's not forget Google. I thought this informative article gives an idea what's just ahead: http://bit.ly/9q5GKb

Despite my deep disdain for Messrs Bezos and Jobs, I'm okay with Google taking over the world.  Google founders Larry & Sergey just seem less bloodthirsty.  Maybe I'm a sucker.

*Got a wonderful care package from my friend, Jen, filled with books about hockey and baseball.  Especially since my team, the brilliant Pittsburgh Penguins, are one game away from clinching the second round of the playoffs, I'm all over the hockey titles (More about the baseball books in another post):

First off, a novel by Bill Gaston entitled The Good Body, due out in August from House of Anansi Press.  Hockey-themed and well-blurbed, I'm looking forward to starting it.

Hockey Night in Canada has put out two absolute beauties: By The Numbers: From 00 to 99 and My Greatest Day: 50 People, 50 Great Moments, both by Scott Morrison.  These are fantastic, four-color books loaded with photos, facts, trivia and opinion.  My hockey knowledge increases with each trip to the bathroom.

The Year of the Penguins by Andrew Podnieks is a chronicle of, you guessed it, the winning season that led to their Stanley Cup Championship.  This is a game-by-game analysis of all eighty-two regular season games, as well as a look at the entirely-too-long playoffs and finals.

The capper is My Day With the Cup by Sidney Crosby, captain of the Pens and arguably the greatest hockey player on the planet.  After a team wins, the members of the team get to "take the Cup home", and this is a photo chronicle of Sid the Kid's return to his hometown, Cole Harbour, Nova Scotia.  I can honestly say what should have taken 20 minutes to page through took me three days because I kept getting so choked up with emotion.  There is something about Crosby and the team and their incredible season that just gets me right in the ganektagazoink.  Reed Next?  Sentimental?  Who knew?

Go Pens! 

*I leave you with an item of deep concern.  Could this be the fourth horseman of the apocalypse?  If not, it's gotta be damn close: http://bit.ly/bk74yT

Awards, award-winners, hockey

Just a couple of quickies before I go laptop shopping so I can blog on the back deck or in coffee shops or in the middle of a forest or wherever the kids blog these days.  Got to stay hip, you know.

--Save the Deli author David Sax sent me a very kind note about my recent posting on his book.  It's nice to know authors actually check their own websites.  Thank you again, David.

--The National Book Critics Circle award winners were announced.  Fiction award goes to Hilary Mantel for Wolf Hall.  If memory serves, when the book won another award a few months ago, I posted that I needed to read her.  I've still no idea who she is but I had better get on it. 

http://bookcritics.org/awards/

Finally, had you told me I'd ever utter a phrase with 'Margaret Atwood' and 'goalie' in it, I'd have never believed you.  Check out this absolutely delightful video of the Man Booker prize winner in the crease:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkkwEXi-zZI&feature=player_embedded

(While I'm at it, check this vid from America's favorite all hockey rock 'n' roll band, the Zambonis:

http://www.cnchockey.com/videos/hockey-monkey)

Save the Deli by David Sax

The other day, I caught the end of Woody Allen's Broadway Danny Rose.  If you haven't seen it or don't remember, it's a bunch of comedians sitting around the Carnegie Deli recalling stories of talent agent, Danny Rose, and the lengths he would go to for his roster of marginally talented performers, among them a stuttering ventriloquist and a blind xylophone player.

The film was one of my father's faves and he and I watched it together a number of times and recalling that made me happy. Too, the Carnegie Deli makes me happy and giant deli sandwiches make me happy, as does the idea of old comics sitting around telling stories in the Carnegie Deli over giant sandwiches.  So I burst into tears.  Deep sobs, actually.  That day was my father's birthday.  He's been gone since 2006 and I miss him.  My father had an appreciation of those things and passed that appreciation on to me.  Bless him.

After reading Save the Deli, I think author David Sax would understand the sobs.  He treats the topic with a lot of love and respect and while I have no idea if his father is alive and well (I certainly hope so), he gets the idea that deli is just kind of in your blood.  As Ken Kesey said, you're either on the bus or off the bus and I'm on the bus.  So much so, that I was hell-bent on visiting Schwartz's in Indianapolis on a recent weekend trip--they didn't disappoint--and I've been looking into flights to Montreal since Sax' description of a smoked meat sandwich has me more than intrigued.  Pair that with a recent Calvin Trillin New Yorker piece on a dish called poutine, said also to be born of Montreal, and I've got a weekend in the works.

Sax gives readers a history of the deli, really an American culinary and cultural phenomenon heavily influenced by Eastern European Jews, the current state of the delicatessen and a glimpse of the future for the deli.  What was once a thriving food culture has struggled for some time and tastes have changed a great deal but he leaves the reader with the hope the cuisine may be poised for a comeback.  However, without some reinvention and real love, it could just as easily go the way of the dodo.  Eating at a deli isn't meant to be a nostalgia trip or a tourist stop.  It's an experience that should be shared, perhaps over a very large pastrami on rye with some Guldens brown mustard and a Dr. Brown's soda.  Save the Deli captures that feeling very, very well.