A Port In A Storm

The Shrimp Basket

301 Gulf Shores Parkway

Gulf Shores, Alabama

We blew into town with Tropical Storm Lee, and after portaging our stuff into our condo, went off in search of dinner. It being The Coast, we wanted seafood, and this is the place we chose. It's one of 11 locations this local chain has along this stretch of coastline.

It was pretty late in the evening, which might explain why the place was filthy. The table had been bused, but the floor was littered with napkins and bits of food. The dining room wasn't particularly large; certainly not large enough for the number of tables and chairs stuffed into it. The management may have taken this into consideration in their hiring policies, as the employees were, without exception, lithe young women who would look as much at home in bathing suits on the nearby beach as in a grease-pit seafood house. Management may or may not have standards of physical appearance, but certainly it has standards of competence, and these young women knew their jobs and did them with easy competence and gracious hospitality. They were quick to accomodate a request for something not on the menu; and they did a good job sliding unobtrusively behind the chairs of some of the restaurant's grotesquely fat patrons. This place seems quite popular among those who have to buy two seats on a Southwest Airlines jet.

There's also an outdoor dining area, but even if there were not a tropical storm passing through town, I don't think it'd be the place to dine. Laying aside the shredded awning (which appeared to have been shredded during some previous big wind event) the proximity of the busiest street in town suggests that it's no place for people without earbuds to enjoy themselves.

The food was just the tiniest bit above average for this sort of restaurant. The seafood is available grilled or steamed, but clearly it's all about the fried food. At our table we had a grilled chicken platter, billed as two chicken breasts but consisting of surprisingly greasy chicken tenders; a fried clam po-boy, which was good; and mahi tacos, which were also good; the chicken platter and the tacos were both served with small, tasty, garlicky hushpuppies. I had the fried oyster po-boy, which was nicely dressed and loaded with oysters that were coated in a tasty batter and fried just right. I had a side order of new potatoes, which were also well-cooked, although coated in what seemed to be a cheap flavoured butter substitute (which may have been the same stuff that made the chicken seem greasy).

The Search Is Ended!

The Roller Skate, 2008

Some time back, I wrote a little piece about my inability to find anything worthy of replacing my little roller-skate. Seems no new convertibles have the combination of looks, luxury, legroom and, most importantly, trunk space that I need for the kind of long trips I take down the back-roads of North America.

As everyone who knows me has heard, this Jaguar XK-8 is not the car I wanted. My dream car is a 1961 Series 1 Jaguar E-Type roadster. My first-runner-up dream car is a 1949-1953 Jaguar XK-120. My second-runner-up dream car is a 1954-1957 Jaguar XK-140. Those are the three most beautiful cars ever to come off any assembly line, anywhere.

First Choice

Unfortunately, they don't come with mechanics, and while I can change the oil (or could, if I needed to) and change a tire (and have, too many times) and put gas in the tank (again, done that too many times), that's about it. So when I got to the point where I felt I could afford that sort of indulgence, I decided that, I'm not the kind of guy who can keep one of those gorgeous classic Jags up and running. Not to mention that those old brakes fade when they get wet, and you have to put additives in the unleaded fuel we have now, and there was no such thing as anti-lock brakes, or crumple zones, or all the other things we now take for granted, when these cars were built. And comfort was a luxury undreamt-of in a roadster back then.

Second Choice. Photo by Paul Fisher.

Hence, the roller skate. It's almost as pretty as an E-Type, and much nicer for long road trips. It has a modern suspension system, and air conditioning, anti-lock brakes and traction control and all kinds of bells and whistles that didn't exist as concepts when the E-Type was on the drawing board. And, despite Jaguar's well-deserved reputation as "the prettiest car you'll ever see broken down by the side of the road," it's been a good car. Still is, even with 130,000 miles on it. It's only broken down twice in the years I've had it: once while in warranty, when the rack-and-pinion was replaced and the new one lost a seal after 12 miles and had to be replaced again; and once in the Upper Midwest, when the insulation on an electrical line wore through and blew the fuse for the fuel pump ... over and over, until at last I had it towed to a Jag dealer in suburban Detroit, where the problem was identified and repaired. (That problem, I thought, was the sort of thing a first-year Electrical Engineering student would have known how to prevent.)

But I come from a time when you didn't keep a car past 100,000 miles. They just didn't last that long. I know, intellectually, that these days they do, and I figure I ought to be able to get 200,000 miles, or close to it, out of that car. They're all highway miles, you know, very little city driving on those wheels.

But emotionally I'm already grieving for the Roller Skate, which I feel will die any day (or become too expensive to keep; same thing, in a car), and some time back I started looking for a replacement car. But I found nothing. Everything is too ugly, or fails on some essential criteria ... most often, the trunk space with the top down.

But now, everything is changed. The search is ended. My next convertible is out there, just waiting for me. Not only is it a gorgeous, luxurious convertible, it is actually even prettier than the 1961 Jaguar E-Type. It is the Eagle Speedster Lightweight.

Handmade by the world's premier restorer of classic Jaguars, this all-new car captures the beauty of the E-type and marries it to the most current technology.

And it's only about $800,000.

I figure in a few years, when my little roller skate finally does give out, I ought to be able to pick one up second-hand. In the meantime, I'm saving up my pocket change.

Worth A Dollar

Fast Five

directed by Justin Lin

Starring Vin Diesel

Paul Walker

Dwayne Johnson

Jordana Brewster

Today I packed away all my pretensions at sophistication and taste and went to see Fast Five at the second-run cinema. The shedding of all ideas of intellectual capacity and artistry was necessary to give a movie of this ilk any chance at entertaining. Had I gone into the theater with some expectation that there would be any sort of high art in this movie, I would have been severely disappointed. Had I paid for a full-price ticket, or even a bargain matinee ticket, for this piece of ... well, let's just call it computer-generated imaging, I'd've been really pissed off.

This movie is not intended to entertain adults. It is intended to entertain virginal adolescent boys, who fantasize about touching women and driving really, really fast with no unfortunate consequences. It's intended, in other words, to get the video-game generation out into the public realm, where they might at least see and be seen by non-virtual representations of other people. There is a little touching of women in the movie; it actually plays, if I may use the term loosely, a meaningful part in advancing what passes for plot. Other than that, there's no sexuality, unless you count mention of a pregnancy of a character who may or may not be married. In other words, just enough sex to tease a 14-year-old middle-school student, who has some idea of what causes pregnancy, and who's always nursing a semi anyway, and doesn't need anything explicit to produce a more tumescent state.

No, this movie is about cars. Exotic, high-priced cars that seat two and can drive off a moving train without suffering a dent, or studly second-generation muscle cars that can drag a giant steel bank vault around the streets of Rio de Janiero fast enough that police cars in pursuit can't catch up. 

The supposed plot is complicated enough that it would take at least three sentences to describe with any kind of completeness. Luckily, though, it's not worth that kind of investment of time or energy, as any of the many SUVs in the film (all of which are destroyed, of course, save one) can be driven through the holes in the plot without leaving a mark. The whole thing is executed with an artless stiffness by people who might have learned acting at the local junior college. They were selected more on the basis of appearance than ability. They are good enough to pull this picture off, since they can at least remember the words they're supposed to recite. Suffice it to say, then, that the good guys win, the bad guys lose, and crime pays big if you do it with honour and panache. There are a number of references to things that apparently happened in earlier films in the franchise; if you're like me and haven't seen any of them, you won't know what they're talking about, but don't let that worry you. None of it matters.

I'm sure this movie is now available at DVD rental boxes everywhere. If you're fourteen, literally or figuratively, or want to be for a few hours because the wife is out of town, or whatever, by all means, run down and rent a copy of this action-packed film. Call up your buddies from college (or junior-high) and get together to watch it. Just remember to use coasters.