2B - Thursday, February 17, 2011
The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com
28- Thursday, February 17, 2011 The Michigan Daily - michigandailycom
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FOD WARS
Each week, one Ann Arbor staple menu item becomes a battlefield
as Daily Arts editors butt heads over which restaurant makes it best.
Where should you go for your burger, fro-yo or garden omelette?
Daily Arts will fight for the truth.
Chicken Tikka Masala
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Dear Lady Gaga,
We thought of it first.
Sincerely, Spinal Tap
Dear Alan Rickman,
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Happy 65th birthday. Don't disappoint me.
Sincerely, Alan Rickman
a
'THE RUM DIARY' (1998), HUNTER S. THOMPSON
MADRAS MASALA
328 Maynard
The best thing to be said about Madras
Masala's chicken tikka masala is that the
spice levels are actually accurate. Mild
takes it easy, medium has a little kick and
spicy might make you reach for the water
- but at least you know what you signed
up for. Most importantly, the flavor isn't
compromised. The Madras chicken tikka
masala is always a solid choice for any
lunch or dinner.
TASTE OF INDIA
217South State
It's impossible to be satisfied with just a
taste of the chicken tikka masala at Taste
of India. With its rich sauce and spicy
aroma, you'll want multiple plates of this
masterpiece. Its components make a culi-
nary dreamteam, as the powerful flavor of
the chicken is balanced with the lightness
of the basmati rice. It's enough to make
you want to brave the State Street traffic
and its $10.95 price tag.
SHALIMAR
307 South Main
Known for high standards, Shalimar
follows through with a quality - if pricey
- chicken tikka masala. While the creamy
curry sauce is a bit too mild, it blends well
with a generous helping of rice and peas.
Slices of onion and tomato help to compli-
ment healthy chunks of marinated chick-,
en. Order with buttery naan on the side
and a thick and tangy sweet lassi, and the
meal is more than enough for one person.
RAJA RANI
400 South Division
Raja Rani's chicken tikka masala is
unquestionably delicious - unfortunate-
ly its sauce, slightly runny and drenched
with a monsoon of cilantro and onions,
keeps the dish from making you want to
break out in choreographed dance. But
Indian entrees are never meant to be
eaten alone, and it gains points back for its
worship-worthy Peshwari naans and boss
basmati rice.
Gonzo prince's 'Diary'
By STEPHEN OSTROWSKI
Deputy Magazine Editor
Long before the late, legendary
journalist Hunter S. Thompson
loudly crashed into mainstream
culture (be it as a pop culture
appropriation - most memorably,
Johnny Depp as Thompson dop-
pelganger Raoul Duke in Terry
Gilliam's 1998 cinematic bender
and dorm room poster fodder,
"Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas"
- or as the actual talented scribe
that he was, vis-a-vis his break-
through book, "Hell's Angels")
there was Thompson as the strug-
gling artist. Such is the glimpse of
the Gonzo king to which readers
are treated in his electric 1998
novel, "The Rum Diary."
Thompson writes as the
30-years-old-but-already-weath
ered journeyman journalist Paul
Kemp, who's seeking a reinven-
tion with a struggling English
daily newspaper in late-'50s San
Juan, Puerto Rico. However,
Kemp's retreat to the Caribbean
plays less like a Carnival cruise
than it does an Orwellian treat-
ment of Eden, as he roughs the
And the winner is: Taste of India
a ~II
A spatkjeg condy of eak,
pitting inlu get ronrticism
versus conlnsoo good sense.
George Bernard Sh'aw's
arnd the
Directed by Philip Kerr
Feb. 17 at 7:30 PM
Feb. 18&19at8 PM
Feb. 20 at 2 PM
Mendelssohn Theatre
Tickets $24 & $18
Students $10 wiD
League Ticket Office
734-764-2538
www.music.umich.edu
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newspaper's precarious financial
situation (sound familiar?) and an
awkward cultural assimilation.
Complementing Kemp is a
colorful cast of characters -
including a crotchety staff pho-
tographer-turned-best bud and
an alluring-but-taken blonde -
who, when sprinkled with a pinch
of the typical Thompson tidings
of paranoia, romanticism and lust,
only exacerbate Kemp's central
hangover - namely, are his best
years behind him?
"The Rum Diary" is visibly
more reserved than subsequent
Thompson works (perhaps most
notable is the absence of drug use,
though, as the title implies, rum is
never more than an arm's reach
away). As expected, Thompson's
vulgar, tough tongue is on high
alert, edifying hilarious and dis-
turbing character portraits of the
island's oddballs. Nevertheless,
the no-holds, barrels-blazing pace
is considerably slowed for a much
more deliberate and calculated
narrative, affording an emotion-
ally organic experience - not one
of stomach-souring viscera.
Disappointments abound for
any reader expecting "The Rum
Diary" to be an earlier chapter
of or an epilogue to. "Fear and
Loathing in Las Vegas" - argu-
ably Thompson's most famous
work. Not only do the pistons
fire more violently in his Las
Vegas episode, but it's much
more complex and thematically
deeper: In Sin City, Thompson
presents a political, social and
cultural commentary - broadly,
the disillusionment of '60s coun-
terculture - that is absent here
in the Caribbean. Sure, there are
themes of leftist marginaliza-
tion and capitalist boom on the
island, but such undertones are,
for the most part, merely white
noise. It's also s'tartling that a
young Thompson would articu-
late the concerns of the notably
older Kemp - perhaps revealing
a bothered mind that even Chris-
topher Nolan and co. couldn't
incept.
Though less elaborate, "The
Rum Diary" has a universal yet
intimate pulse that connects to
its reader. The institution under
attack in this work is less tan-
gible - the human spirit. Kemp
is constantly dogged by his age
- at 30, as Thompson writes, "no
longer young but not quite over
the hump." It's Kemp's internal
struggle, not his interaction with
the external world, that proves
most enlightening, as it indicates
a fear to which all can relate - am
I approaching the hill, or did I just
walk down it? It is this struggle
that most pertains to the col-
lege intelligentsia, considering
an individual's true worth and
vulnerability will be fully test-
ed outside the less friendly and
guarded campus confines. Sim-,
ply put, the proverbial real world
by which Kemp feels polarized is
that toward which we all inevita-
bly inch.
Yo ho ho and a
bottle of rum -
or a book of it.
To best value "The Rum Diary"
is to learn its splintered history.
The 1998 publication date is par-
tially misleading, as Thompson
began the book during his brief
Puerto Rico stint in 1960 when he
toiled at a doomed sports publica-
tion and freelanced, as detailed in
Douglas Brinkley's superbly edit-
ed collection of Thompson letters,
"The Proud Highway." Corre-
spondences between 1960 and
1967 reveal a young Thompson
lamenting the numerous rejec-
tions and rewrites of "The Rum
Diary" - confidently self-billed as
the "Great Puerto Rican Novel."
And, in a much later television
interview with Charlie Rose -
YouTube it - Thompson simply
suggests that time constraints
delayed the novel's completion.
That Thompson nursed "The
Rum Diary" for so long - what
else is to be expected of the noto-
riously deadline-averse writer?
- only sweetens the read. Wine
ages well. So does rum.
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Department of A~ rgan
Theatre & Drama owt a-
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