Espresso Blend
So here's the thing: espresso is one of the most flexible beans you can buy. If you wanna brew coffee with it, go right ahead. If you wanna pull shots with it, fair game. If you wanna make iced coffee with it, it's got enough caramel notes to make it worthwhile and intriguing. Or...
You could make iced americano!
Here's why americano on ice is better than most iced coffees you'll ever try:
It's all about body. First of all, I highly recommend drinking your iced coffee black, it's more refreshing, and if you wanna add a little sugar (which you can do effectively by dissolving a little in hot water and pouring of the top), that's a nice touch. The minute you add dairy, however, whether it be low fat milk or a dab of whipped cream to make a caffe olioso, things get a little heavy. Have you noticed that? The coffee literally doubles in weight on your tongue, and the next thing you know, you're full after 12 oz. Ugh!
Americano on ice is a different animal entirely. If you want, say a 16 oz. bev, that probably calls for two shots of espresso, but depending on your tolerance, you can add more or less. Add 6 - 8 oz. of cold water, ice, and dairy extremities if you like, and you will find that you've made a light, refreshing, flavorful caffe bev that doesn't fill you up going down and has the requisite kick.
Go on. You know you wanna try it...
Album of the week:
The Walkmen - You & Me
While we wait for the much-anticipated Lisbon due to come out later this year, we return to the sun-kissed postcard aesthetic of 2008's You & Me.
Interesting narrative arc running through the Walkmen releases. On the first two records, they were focused on urban male ennui to mostly excellent results. Then came A Hundred Miles Off, which you could say was the "divisive" third album, but it was not without its charms. Whereas Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me and the excellent Bows & Arrows evoked a brooding, NYC landscape, A Hundred Miles, as the title suggests, was predisposed with travel, steeped in counter-culture Americana imagery and dry production. There was always a rootsy side to the band, and they decided to indulge it. Detractors found it scattered, unfocused, and something of an aural assault, as Hamilton Leithauser caterwauled his way through various Dylan poses. All true, but compelling, I thought. The band wasn't so much in search of an identity as ready to hop in a van and just get lost, a romantic bro-cation with maracas and Corona.
If A Hundred Miles Off was a road trip, You & Me was the return home, which isn't to say the D.C./NY band went running back to their post-punk start. If anything, the album is even murkier and Dylanesque and waltzier than A Hundred Miles, adopting an orchestral approach to percussion and strings (guitars) that suits the warmer, lived-in vocals about returning home as a man and realizing that it doesn't exist in the way you romanticized. The traveler is always the traveler, then, perpetually in search of a home, even as he makes his return.
Film of the Week:
Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
Dir. Werner Herzog
Nick Cage has given this kind of performance more often than we might recall. You know, when it seems like his character walked off the set of another movie and stumbled into this one? There's lots of stumbling in Bad Lieutenant. And lurching. And sweating. And gun-wielding. The difference between this and, say, Wicker Man, is that Herzog has given Cage room to create rather than flail. The film is Herzogian in the sense that it's the lunacy of the man in relation to his environment that the director is most interested in (see Grizzly Man). The camera is fascinated with the character and what he might do next, not the plot per se, so it follows him around, fretful that it should miss anything. The anti-thesis of uninflected, montage filmmaking.
The role is a tailor-fit; Cage is hitting notes that another actor couldn't. Or simply wouldn't. And that's just it. It's daring, it's inspired, and it's uninhibited. Brilliant.
http://movies.nytimes.com/2009/11/20/movies/20badlieutenant.html?ref=movies
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