Live in New York, every dictator & villain

Well, this has been a great week for reality Television. Turns out the United Nations in New York has been running the best and zaniest show of all. What a cast! -- Can you believe it -- First of all we have President Barack Obama reprising his favorite role, the messiah spouting pious platitudes and feel good m really good intentions just dripping with high grade kumbaya and making apology after apology for all the evils his bastard of a country has committed again and again. Spare me Dude, like a Cook County Democratic office holder really is a saint. The worse thing for me is that he apparently believes this gushing load of good intentions and feel good aspirations. At the peak of his messianic pitch Obama talked about abolishing all atomic weapons. You’ve got to wonder if Barack looked around the UN at the parade of tyrants, criminals, crooks and patently crazy “world leaders.”

What a big wishful bit of dreaming and willful blindness. Right now the tragedy of our times is not a delay in getting rid of existing atomic bombs, it is keeping every piss ant little banana republic from getting its very own nuclear arsenal. It is clear Iran and North Korea have done it already and at least a dozen other nations like Saudi Arabia and Turkey, Egypt and Dubai are serious about it. This week a Brazilian cabinet member seriously suggested Brazil nuke up. So far only two nation who have had nuclear weapons have given them up: South Africa and the Ukraine. Three others have stopped their progress to nukes, Iraq and Syria because Israel bombed the hell out their facilities and Libya which threw in the towel before it’s facilities were bombed. We are facing a world where it is ever more likely that Egypt and Bolivia, Nigeria and Burma, Brazil and Kenya, Saudi Arabia and Honduras could be nuclear powers. Like Jackie Gleason used to say on his TV show fifty years ago, “You can be the first on your block to RULE THE WORLD.”

But it turns out President Obama was just the show’s up beat opening act. Follow the Bamster was a nearly two hour performance by Libya's ever popular dictator for life, Colonel Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi. Peace be upon him. Now this guy was socko, I mean he was everything you could want in a dictator from from a fly blown hot dusty Islmanic third world country. He talked, then he shuffled his notes and hitched up his flowing cloak and then he talked and talked then talked some more. He tossed around booklets of the UN charter and the Security Council rule book.

Gaddafi has rambling episodic style, his performance was not classical oratory building slowly to a grand summation. Naw, Muammar rambled and wandered, he returned to the topic and segued away to something new then segued to an unexpected insult or demand. He went on and on, causing at least one of the UN’s staff translators to have a total breakdown -- normally at the UN the translators have a printed text of the speech to prep for translation ahead of time. No such luck, the guy talked and talked and not in the formal rolling cadences of cultivated classical Arabic, but in his unique Sahara dialect mixing in back county idioms and obscenities and sometimes utterly incomprehensible talk. What a show and just think beside his Earol Flynn costume picture outfit and glazed eyes, he also came to New York with his own tent. Sound track, “I am the Sheik of Araby.”

Now of course we had other mad dog horror film freaks at the United Nations high marble rostrum, leading the pack of villains was Iran’s ever popular President and election fixer Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or AJ as they call him in New York tabloid headlines. While Gaddafi is an old style Arab strongman complete with flowing robes, AJ from Tehran is a modern urban rat face tool of Satan. He dresses like somebody in an almost cool ‘80’s working class dance hall kind of way. His rodent shaped face is always insincere and his eyes glow in the dark like the flaming eyes of a heathen idol in an Indiana Jones movie. You just know in the words of Randy Newman’s great song, AJ can not wait to “drop the big one.”

Then of course we have supporting characters including the Cholo in a red beret, the great hombre himself Hugo Chavez. He is the clown version of the traditional “my people love me” Latino strong man. For some unfathomable reason all the hip Hollywood “progressives” are now hobnobbing with Hugo. I will grant Fidel Castro some gravitas and a real histrionic swagger. But Hugo Chavez is a garden variety caudillo in the long and sleazy tradition of Latin American tyranny and megalomania. What in hell has got into Sean Penn and Oliver Stone among many others to get taken in by a central casting Latino Dictator? I just don’t see how he looks good in their eyes. Even serious left-wingers in Latin America are repulsed by Chavez and his macho postures and barely literate drivel and constant vulgarity.

In a recent interview, Chavez talked about how that world class gavacho intellectual Noam Chomsky had visited Venezuela and proclaimed it great and true democracy. Well, dude, if Noam Chomsky says you are the cat’s whiskers, you must be. Good old Noam is a guy who has spent his life telling us that day is night, black is white, lies are true, and down is really up. Only Noam could look at Hugo Chavez and see a great democratic leader, a banana republic Jefferson or Mandella. The rest of the world sees him as a cochino faced clown doing a world class job as the lord of misrule. At least we know sooner or later the oil money will run out and Hugo will end up hanged by his heels when his long suffering peons rise up and end the comedy. By the way Hugo announced he is opening a “peace base” in Cuba to help the poor Cubanos in case the gringos invade. And just think I didn't make any of this up.

It is only once a year that heads of government beeline it to Manhattan for the United Nation’s annual “open mike” week. What a great show. The only favorite world figure missing was North Korea’s beloved leader Kim.

Noriega's Basque Cafe in Bakersfield

Saturday night five of us drove up to Bakersfield for dinner at Noriega’s Hotel. It has been there, near the Union Pacific (formerly Southern Pacific) Station, since 1893. A time warp, it is pretty much like it was and has an authentic feel few places have.

You walk into an old simple brick building into a large bar with the dining room behind it. Unlike the three or four other Basque places in Bakersfield, Noriega’s is very much a traditional place. There are three very long tables with stout “jury room” chairs for about 200 people. Dinner is served in one sitting at seven or a little after with one meal for all hands. Parties are seated up and down the tables more or less in the order they checked in. On this Saturday night, the patrons included half a dozen birthday groups and a dozen of middle aged middle class motorcycle weekend warriors who had rolled up from Ventura County.

The food is basque style home cooking, cooking as it was in my grandmother’s day. It is good, but not serious four star basque cooking. If you want to eat that I recommend the Orozko Dinning Room at the Nugget Hotel Casino in Sparks Nevada. The family that owns the hotel serves beef, lamb and chickens from their ranch and a fine selection of wines from Navarra.

At Noriega’s it is a homey but very good and authentic meal. When you enter the room and are seated the smell is like a country farm house kitchen fifty years ago. It smelled like my grandmother’s kitchen on a Sunday afternoon with a mix of American and Portuguese dishes cooking. The Basques are generally recognized as the best cooks in Iberia and while not the same, their cooking is close to Portuguese and regional Spanish styles. But it has its unique qualities and a heavy influence from the French side of the Pyrenees.

Waiting on the table is a large salad bowl dressed with a blue cheese based variation on Caesar dressing. A large steaming tureen of cabbage and vegetable soup is seasoned to the point and very much homemade. Around it are a large platter of tongue slices in a clean white wine vinaigrette, a bowl of stewed pinto beans, a large basket of sliced french bread, butter, a bowl of herbed seasoned cottage cheese, a plate of homemade American potato salad and a bowl of red tomato and pepper basque salsa picante. It is just this side of very hot. The salsa is added to the soup or pinto beans to bring them to whatever level you prefer. Cuidado, it is muy picante.

The meal went on after the soup and first course were cleared away with a platter of spaghetti marinara that was as good as any I’ve ever had, heavily dusted with Parmesan cheese but with a clean fresh tomato taste. Then Broccoli florets in a white hollandaise and finally the oxtail stew. This was again very tasty like our grandmothers or great grandmothers would have made. It was in unthickened cooking juices and not heavy. Finally we go platters of very crispy fried chicken heavily sprinkled with sautéed garlic cloves and a platter of home style french fries. “We don’t have to worry about vampires,” was Mara’s comment. Oddly the pungent sweetness of the sautéed garlic on the chicken cut through any greasiness and made an interesting dish.

At dinner coffee is not put on the table, you have to ask for it. The bar has some interesting basque liqueurs if you want to try one. Les Fleurs des Pyrenees is very good as are some others. The cost was remarkable in this day and age. Dinner is $20 per person including bottles of a fruity "dago red." Children are charge one dollar per year up through age twelve. Reservations are recommended but not necessary if you arrive before six thirty. It is a wonderful simple and authentic meal if you are in Bakersfield or want to make a day trip. The main courses change each day in a regular sequence.

There are other Basque restaurants and the locals are very seriously split between Noriega's or the Woolgrowers Café as the best. Both have been around for a hundred years. Woolgrowers has a set piece dinner too, but offers a variety of main courses. The two times I've been there I would say the steaks and the lamb chops are first rate. A round of five Picon Punches, the traditional Basque aperitif at Noriega's bar was twenty bucks.