Nazareth Deli

A little spicy chicken on rice action has
been known to elicit an anticipatory
sweat and a giggle of excitement. The
first nibble will hurt a little but each
subsequent bite becomes an exercise
in pleasure. Sweet, savory, with a
touch of cinnamon, the aroma is a
siren call to bliss Odysseus himself
would have willingly succumbed. With
little hope of resistance, the best bet is
to come packed with a little protection.
Feta cheese adds another element to
savor while providing a welcome relief
to the pleasure of pain.

Allow this signature dish to become a
new food obsession at the Nazareth
Restaurant and Deli located in the
Columbus Square Plaza at the
intersection of Cleveland and 161.

Nazareth Restaurant and Deli
5663 Emporium Sq
Columbus, oh 43231

Summer Teeth

During the dog days of summer, there
may not be a better way to while away
the afternoon with a several of beers.
However, the last thing you want at the
end of one of those benders is to wake
up with someone with sum ‘er teeth
here and sum ‘er teeth there.

Columbus Brewing Company has come
up with the perfect concoction to help
you avoid such a pratfall. Their
seasonal brew, Summer Teeth, is a
wonderfully refreshing blond ale with
just enough bite to help you space out
your fermented refreshment.

Available while the weather is warm,
CBC’s Summer Teeth will help you
obey a good rule of thumb; gaps
between beers will help you avoid gaps
between the teeth of the opposite sex
made difficult to spot through a thick
set of beer goggles.

Inglourious Basterds

Screenwriters delight in creating villains personifying evil. Their imaginations run wild creating these vile humans whose ultimate comeuppance serve as a delicious just dessert. The crimes that illicit these euphoric moments of revenge are provided through the safe prism of fantasy; unless of course you were of the Jewish race living in Europe during World War II. The crimes perpetrated against the Jews were unfortunately not dreamed up by a demented writer and those responsible, though punished, got off easy in comparison to the millions of lives they destroyed. No dessert has vanquished the bitter taste in the mouths of the world. The only recourse over sixty years later lies in one purveyor of violent fantasy to invoke retribution worthy of the scourge the Nazis inflicted upon the world, Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, a fictionalized retelling of the war to stop a horrendous genocide.

Normally Tarantino’s villains exist in a blood thirsty world whose characters are as witty and charming as they are murderous. The result is the villains are generally cheered on and identified with, particularly because their crimes aren’t exactly exacted against the innocent. Inglourious Basterds is no different in creating a villain whose charm and wit is a joy to behold through Tarantino’s patented verbal assault. Austrian-born actor Christopher Waltz is captivating as the Nazi “Jew Hunter” Colonel Hans Landa. In another film, he would have been another of Tarantino’s heroic sociopaths. With the historic truths behind the fictional horrors he commits, Landa’s demise is one rooted on with unusual gusto for an imaginary revenge.

Hunting the Nazis in the film is a group nicknamed “the bastards”, headed by Brad Pitt’s Lieutenant Aldo Raine. Though Pitt pulls off the role to near perfection, the group as a whole could have used a more thorough flushing out of their story. The moments spent watching their “punishment” of the Nazis is pure sinful pleasure. One can only hope evil truly feels the pain they administer. As it is their power wanes and they unknowingly need the help of an orphaned Jewish woman to pull off the ultimate revenge fantasy that is decadently beautiful in its wicked execution.

It is frightening to feel such pleasure at the sight of such suffering. Usually you empathize with the suffering of another human being. Yet by dehumanizing an entire race, the Nazis only succeeded in exposing themselves as subhuman vermin in need of extermination. In history, they were punished, went into hiding or took a cowardly suicidal bullet out of this world, but in Inglourious Basterds, the Nazis find the end they deserved. Though no amount of fictional retribution can make up for the loss of millions of lives, for a little over two hours at least, Inglourious Basterds provides one glorious serving of sweet revenge.

District 9

Never underestimate the potential for evil when one entity gains the upper hand over another, forcing the momentarily weaker into submission. For ages, it has been happening all over the world when travelers come upon another culture and it has been happening for decades in the imagined world of Neill Blomkamp’s District 9, where the South African metropolis Johannesburg has had an extraterrestrial space craft hovering over it for well over 20 years.

A mockumentary at the start of the District 9 sets the film in action explaining the decrepit state the aliens were in when contact was first made. Weak and ineffectual, the visitors are hoarded into a settlement where they regain their strength but not their dignity or power as their refuge camp devolves into a violent slum where warlords both human and alien trade in misery, planning for a better future perpetually out of reach.

As fear of the unfamiliar and harrowing contact between the citizens of Johannesburg and denizens of outer space grows, a multinational army moves in to the area deemed “District 9” to keep the peace by relocating the refugees to a larger, out of the way encampment. During the eviction, the evil capabilities planned or already in existence come into focus as innocent lives fall by the wayside in the scramble for power.

The strength of the film lies in the story running parallel to the troubles in present day Africa that are tied to the horror of European colonization of the “Dark Continent.” There is an intelligence to District 9 not typically found in summer movies usually reserved for the celebration of special effect wizardry. Which is not to say this film skips out on the CGI or action; rather it is a feast for both the eyes and mind, entertaining but horrifyingly truthful.

Columbus Clippers

Whatever happened to Carlos Carrasco this year prior to his trade from the Phillies organization to the Indians is baffling. Since he has been in Columbus, the man has won all four of his starts including yesterday's game at Huntington Park. If he can channel whatever he has been doing since his arrival into some consistency, the Tribe may have quite a find on their hands. Yesterday, he mixed a fastball that topped out at around 94 mph with a devastating change-up that had the Indianapolis Indians hitters laughably way out in front of a ball that dipped down to 78 mph. Carrasco did this without altering his delivery in any perceivable way. The performance was a pitching clinic that he can hopefully carry on to the big league level.

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

To be fair to the movie, looking back on a childhood spent with G.I. Joe, the characters and especially the villains could have only made sense in the mind of a child. If a film was to be made based on the comic book and action figures, a certain level of absurdity has to be expected if the source material was to be honored. But come on, they couldn’t do better than this? Recent comic adaptations have set a relative high mark for this genre of cinema, so when a film fails, as G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra painfully does, the disappointment is that much greater.

Just last year, The Dark Knight pitted Batman against the psychotic villainy of the Joker. Heath Ledger’s performance of that unbalanced lunatic earned him an Oscar nomination and proved the genre is capable of studying deeply buried human pain and torment while raising that struggle to the artistic level. Even the X-Men series with its ensemble of superhuman characters has been able to create a believable world out of the impossible. Not so with G.I. Joe.

At first glance it would appear an easier task concoct a reasonable fictionalized reality out of a story following an elite group of soldiers fighting a shadowy terrorist group calling themselves Cobra. The terrorist angle certainly rings true today and keeping the name does honor the tradition of the comic. But why did director Stephen Sommers have to rely on so much CGI that half of the film is closer to a cartoon than live action? Why couldn’t any of soldiers use a weapon that is even slightly grounded in the real world? Why couldn’t the screenwriting team come up with at least one decent line of dialogue? Why couldn’t the story lines of vengeance that drove the leaders of Cobra to such depths of evil at least seem plausible to have that sort of effect on a human soul? Why? Why? Why?

Perhaps this is all Hasbro’s fault. The toy making giant has obviously not been able to sell the rights to their franchises to any sort of competent filmmaking teams. Transformers 2 is probably the worst major studio release of the past decade with the original Transformers and now G.I. Joe following closely behind. If any sort of 1980s childhood innocence was still alive and on life support after Transformers 2 earlier this summer, it is dead, G.I. Joe just pulled the plug.

Julie and Julia

It was the best of stories; it was the worst of stories. Apologies go out to Charles Dickens and actually to director Nora Ephron whose film Julie and Julia should not elicit words such as “worst.” Nor “best” for that matter but really, this film is a tale of two stories. Half of the film is a joy to watch, the other insufferably dull and uninteresting. It is the story of how Julia Child became the world famous Julia Child and the story of blogger Julie Powell who spends a year cooking her way through Child’s cookbook, Mastering The Art of French Cooking. Watching the Julie and Julia produces the realization lifted again from Dickens, “we had everything before us; we had nothing before us.”

Everything is what you get from Meryl Streep. It is what you always get. Rare that she fails to produce a superlative performance and this turn as Child is no exception. She brings a whimsy and joy to the task of bringing Child back to life while giving just enough weight to keep the act from teetering too close to a caricature. Streep is balanced perfectly by Stanley Tucci whose portrayal of Paul Child is dignified and restrained. Tucci keeps this portion of the story grounded while leaving Streep plenty of room to take over and own the film.

Perhaps with those performances as a backdrop, it shouldn’t be surprising that Powell’s portion of the story is so dull. It certainly isn’t fair to the actors portraying the Julie and Eric Powell. Really, Amy Adams and Chris Messina do a perfectly fine job. But their story amounts to nothing. Their travails are dry, the fights feel forced and though the idea of cooking the entire cookbook and documenting it as a blog is interesting, Powell’s writing as shown in the film falls as flat as an improperly made soufflé. Even with an amusing use of The Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer” while cooking a lobster dinner, the Powell’s entire story is nothing but an unsatisfying appetizer to the Streep main course.

Given the talents of Streep and Tucci it would have been delicious to explore the rich background of the Child lives. Child’s career as a possible spy in the forerunner of the CIA and her husband being targeted by Joseph McCarthy’s Red Scare could have provided a more complete tapestry to the life Streep resurrects. As it is, the film provides an unsatisfying counterbalance to the story of one of the first cooking superstars. Powell’s tale is nothing more than a personal story of discovery that should have stayed personal saving an unnecessary tale of two stories.

Dime A Dog

Cold fries, cold dogs, cold beer. They got 1 out of 3 right but that's not so bad considering a cold beer is one of the great things on earth.

500 Days of Summer

Sometimes, love does not work out. Despite what countless films that fall under the genre of “romantic comedy”, the relationship between two seemingly perfect matches that an audience invests a couple of hours of their time in will not always work out in the end. It is a harsh lesson the real world knows all to well. It is a lesson 500 Days of Summer dishes out from the outset of a romantic comedy that obviously never heard it was supposed to follow a hackneyed formula to a blissful cinematic end.

With the outcome of the relationship out of the way, the film simultaneously reconstructs and deconstructs the relationship between Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer (Zooey Deschanel) in an attempt to understand what went wrong between these seemingly perfectly matched characters. In another nod towards real life, the mystery is never really solved but the journey of attempted discovery is a joy to watch.

Though a little gimmicky at times, the story incorporates quite a few cinematic tricks along the way to highlight how sweet and wonderful Tom and Summer seemed to be for each other. The sugary perfection is so intense, the cavity it develops in Tom’s soul when the relationship ends exposes a raw nerve that he is never quite able to numb. It is over-the-top but grounded in genuine human emotion.

It is this authenticity along with some quirky humor and the performances of Gordon-Levitt and Deschanel that makes the film a delight even though the outcome of the romance is pre-ordained to failure. Love might end but life moves on, sometimes without any sort of explanation or closure. It is a cruel lesson but one that rings true for real life long betrayed by the common and stale romantic comedy that 500 Days of Summer rises well above.

Columbus Clippers

Though the performances came during a loss to the Gwinnett Braves, the Cleveland Indians have to feel good about a lot of what they saw today in Columbus. Matt LaPorta's ability to play the outfield has been a topic of concern as the Tribe tries to determine just where he fits into their future. Some of those questions may have been answered today as LaPorta manned left field. Two nice running catches and a rifle throw home to hold a runner on third were augmented by his talent that was already known. At the plate, he crushed a ball off the wall in dead center highlighting his immense power. As impressive as he was, it may have been the batterymates Hector Rondon and Lou Marson that provided the most hope this afternoon. The Indians deperately need pitching; today Rondon showed why he should compete for a spot in the rotation on the big league club next year. Other than hiccup he had on a home run to Clint Sammons in the fifth inning, Rondon was in complete control of the flow of the game. He did not allow any baserunners fluster him and was rewarded when two of them were thrown out by Marson as they attempted steal second base. Marson, one of the players the Tribe received in exchange for Cliff Lee, may not hit enough in the majors to be a starting catcher, but that arm should make him a valuable defensive back-up for years to come. If not for a balk call Greg Aquino in the 10th that ultimately cost the Clippers the game, it was not a bad day highlighting the future of Cleveland Indians Baseball.

Bacon Camp

Looking to the left and right at Wild Goose Creative during an afternoon at Bacon Camp, it was not difficult to find a bunch of happy campers. There's just something about that salt cured pork that brings a smile to faces. Those joyous visages this afternoon certainly enjoyed their bacon, particularly as it was served up with a little creativity to highlight the versatility of this breakfast staple.

In no particular order of service or taste there were bacon scones, bacon pierogies, apple pie with bacon lattice work, bacon ice cream, corn chowder sprinkled with bacon, chocolate dipped strawberries rolled in bacon, bacon Bloody Marys. Serious creativity producing some serious taste adventures. Some obviously more successful than others but nothing disappointing outside of a cardiologist's approval.