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Not Too Far Away

Food & Drink

This preciously-named website has a survey of the single best BBQ restaurants by state.  I’m not that up on BBQ — for the record, I prefer the spicier Memphis type, rather than the sweet Texas manifestation, but when ya live in Texas… according to the folks at Delish, it seems that the place to go is Stanley’s, in Tyler.

Maybe so, but Tyler is over a hundred miles away from Plano, and even for Texas — where distance is measured in six-packs — that’s an awful long way to travel just for smoked meat.  (It also means that because of MADD [spit]  one can’t have a few beers with the BBQ, which I think contravenes some state law.)

Anyway, it’s not like we don’t have any decent places within a couple zip codes of here (also a short trip, by Texas standards).  Most notable among these are Hard Eight (TWO locations nearby!!), Sonny Bryan’s, Winners and Lockhart (both in Old Town Plano).

But (and my non-Texas Readers will forgive the parochialism) I wrote this post to bring to my Local Readers’ attention a place called Delta Blues (just off Windhaven and the Dallas North Tollway), which is the latest offering from the famous Pappas Brothers company (Pappadeaux, Pappacitos, Pappas Steak House etc.) and which replaced the old Bone Daddy’s establishment at that address.

I went there last Tuesday with the Son&Heir for our sorta-monthly meet-up (when we don’t go to the DFW Range, that is), and good grief:  it is, in a word, wondrous.  I didn’t try anything other than the pork (pork-belly starter and a pulled pork sandwich) because PORK, and let me tell y’all:  best pork I have ever — ever — eaten.  And I’ve eaten a LOT of pork, all over the world.

What Delta Blues has done has created a BBQ place that, contra  the usual BBQ ethos of the down-home, slightly scruffy joint, is about as close to fine dining as BBQ will ever get.  It is admittedly quite expensive — at about the same level as Hard Eight — but the food is much, much  better than average, and it’s served by waiters, not self-serve or cafeteria style like many such places.

It’s so good that I’m going to take New Wife there on Sunday for Sticky Pork Belly Bites and a side of giant fries.

(Honestly, my mouth is watering as I write this.)

The only caveat is that like British pubs, Delta Blues has somewhat eccentric dining hours:  11am – 2.30pm and 5pm – 10pm during the week — and it’s CLOSED on Mondays;  but they’re open 11am – 11pm on Saturdays and Sundays.

Don’t care about any of that:  there’s a new kid in town, and it’s got my number.

Sorry, Tyler;  Stanley’s will have to wait until my next road trip out to East Texas.

By the way:  for Memphis BBQ we have Red Hot & Blue, also in Plano.  Are we spoiled, or what?

5 Worst Things To Do For 20 Hours

Friday Feature, The Worst

Yes, it’s back!  For a one-time reappearance only!*

In ascending order of horrible:

  • read Howard Zinn’s A People’s History Of The United States
  • walk along all the streets of downtown San Francisco
  • listen to Hillary Clinton explain (yet again) why she lost the 2016 election
  • be the lone man in an orgy with the female members of the Congressional Black Caucus
  • fly nonstop from NYFC to Australia… on Spirit Airlines or RyanAir.

Your contributions in Comments…

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*unless you guys want more…

Marriage Made In Heaven

The Gun Thing

Longtime Reader DarrellM sends me this snippet from Dan Wesson:

It started as an experiment — a grand melding of Dan Wesson and CZ pistols. Borrowing the crisp single action fire control group of a DW 1911 and combining it with the ergonomics and capacity of a CZ, the resulting pistol emerged as something great.
…
Designed initially for competition use, the DWX has evolved into much more than that, with both full-size and compact variants. Its locked breech barrel system is simple, ditching the standard 1911 link system and using CZ-style takedown via the slide stop. The easier take-down will be familiar to any hammer-fired CZ owner, as is removing the Match-grade barrel due to the bushing-less barrel system that resembles a P-10 or P-09/P-07. Double-stack magazines boost the capacity of the full-size to 19+1 with flush bases, and many standard 1911 parts enable gunsmiths and competitive shooters to tune the X just the way they like it. Sights are easily customized, using a 1911-style dovetailed sight in the front and a CZ Shadow 2 style sight cut in the rear.

Here’s what it looks like:

Apart from the front-slide serrations (ugh) and the somewhat gay red accents (double ugh), this “marriage” pushes all my buttons.  Reader Darrell admits to being a fanboi of both the 1911 and CZ 75 (as am I), but the only thing that puts both of us off is that the suggested retail price for this lovely thing is not a true marriage:  it’s too much Dan Wesson and not enough CZ,  i.e. at nearly $1,800 it’s out of reach for both of us.

That said:  a 1911 single action with 20-round capacity and easy takedown?  Hand me mah smellin’ salts, Prissy…

Put some lovely wooden grips on it, lose the cherry-colored trigger and resist the urge to carve out the front serrations, and I’d be very  tempted to sell a kidney or something.

On the other hand, there’s always the CZ 97 B:

…even if it does only hold 10 rounds of .45 ACP.  (Full disclosure:  I once owned a CZ 97, and loved shooting it.  But it’s no carry piece, lemme tell y’all — it’s a heavy beast.  Still, I should never have sold it, because now that I think about it, the 97 would make a perfect bedside gun.  Oh well.)

NIMBY

Elections, Politics

…which stands for “Not In My Backyard”.  The expression is usually reserved for people like the Kennedys who are all cool about wind power as long as the turbines aren’t located off the Kennedy rat’s nest compound in Martha’s Vineyard, Mass.

Today, however, we look at the term in its more positive sense.  Over at The American Thinker, Bill Gensert talks about the coming political violence when Trump gets reelected to POTUS in the 2020 election.  While what he says is quite plausible, he does utter a basic truth:

Notice there were no Antifa at Trump’s Texas rally [last week].  I wonder why?  I’m joking, I know why.  It’s because Antifa is comprised of cowardly children playing dress-up and preying on the weak.  For those with sociopathic tendencies, it’s fun to punch people who won’t punch, back but unlike in Minneapolis, Ilhan Omar’s stronghold, Texas would have slaughtered them.

Yup.  Some dweeb was arrested while wearing body armor and carrying bear spray, but word is that he was there just in case anyone from the Pantifa Brigade showed up.

It is, as they say, to LOL.  Trump’s audience at the rally was massive — people waited for over a day just to be able to get into the venue — but what was really impressive was that at least twice that number of people stayed outside the arena to hear what he was saying via loudspeakers.

I have absolutely no idea of the truth of this, but I wonder just how many of them were (legally) carrying guns?  Hours before Trump even touched down at DFW, all the local radio hosts were telling people that the place was already full;  so people knew they wouldn’t be getting into the arena but showed up anyway.  I’m willing to bet that a goodly number of the crowd outside were armed, knowing that they wouldn’t have to go through security in the streets outside.

But no Pantifa showed up in Dallas.  I don’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed.

The 100

Music

Let’s face it:  Rolling Stone  magazine was always awful.  I think it was them Frank Zappa was talking about when he characterized their writing as “people who can’t write, interviewing people who can’t talk, aimed at people who can’t read.”  (I still miss Frank, a lot, as much for his intellect as for his music.)

RS‘s latest attempt at a “greatest” list (of singers) is a typical example:  muddled, ignorant and open to ridicule.

The muddle is easy:  they attempted to combine several genres of singing — rock, r&B, blues etc. — but while there may be some crossover in those particular ones, it falls completely on its face if you try to include people like Sinatra and Mel Torme, especially when it comes to ranking  the singers.  The muddle is also ignorant of actual vocal quality — and even worse if one tries to include “iconic” as part of it.  There are singers of extraordinary quality (such as Paul Rodgers of Free/Bad Company) who don’t have iconic tonality, and “ordinary” singers of limited range (like Ozzy Osbourne) who almost define an entire genre.  You can’t attempt to rank Rodgers and Ozzy against each other because they are two totally different singers, albeit in more or less similar genres of music.  Now rank Rodgers against Aretha Franklin, which the hapless Stoners did.  It is, as they say, to laugh.  (And by the way:  any compendium list of 100 singers which does not include Ian Gillan of Deep Purple or Steve Marriot of Humble Pie — to name just a couple which caught, or rather didn’t catch my eye —  is fatally flawed.)

Each genre of music requires a different kind of voice, and very few singers can cross over without failing.  And a singer’s inclusion in whatever genre is horribly personal, in any event.  (In the “jazz crooners” club, for example, Harry Connick Jr. is an infinitely-better singer than Sinatra, but without Sinatra there would likely be  no jazz crooners club.  YMMV.)

So Rolling Stone should have broken up the list into genres, just for starters, with the first being the aforementioned “iconic”voices — those which defined the genre — and then some attempt at vocal quality if they’re to be ranked at all.

I’m not going to do that, at least, not today.  But here’s an example of ten of my favorite Rock vocalists in no special order, just as I think of them:

Robert Plant (Zep)
Joe Cocker
Paul Rodgers (Free, Bad Company)
Cilla Black
Graham Bonnet (Marbles, Rainbow)
Stephen Stills
David Bowie
Freddie Mercury
Ann Wilson (Heart)
Ian Gillan (Deep Purple)

And just for the hell of it, ten from R&B/soul, likewise unranked:  

Otis Redding
Wilson Pickett
Aretha Franklin
Joe Tex
Tina Turner (who could equally have been classified under Rock)
Al Green
Ella Fitzgerald
Sam Moore
Lionel Ritchie
Etta James

And both lists could change tomorrow.