The Chronicle of Higher Ed Takes a Culinary Tour of Larryville / The Boys Examine This Year's "Bad Sex in Fiction" Nominees / Hipster Pick of the Day

Writers from the Chronicle of Higher Ed were in town recently to take in a performance of KU's much-ballyhooed "original pronunciation" version of A Midsummer Night's Dream, the first full-length OP Shakespearean production in America. As best as we can tell, they haven't published a piece on it yet, but they did publish a piece on their dining experiences at Burger Stand, Esquina, 715, and Wheatfields. The Burger Stand, with its variety of fries, even inspired the article's title: "Our duck-fat tour of Lawrence, KS."

At Esquina, the Chroniclers dined on "a fish taco with ancho-lime coconut cream, plantain, and rice; a tofu and mushroom taco with chorizo-style marinade and chipotle sour cream; and the “Calabaza”—pumpkin and butternut squash puree, grilled zucchini, and goat-cheese cream."

Chip: "I've said it before and I'll say it again: I miss the days when tacos contained meat and cheese."

Our favorite part of the article, however, is when Love Garden's Kelly Corcoran gets a shout-out:

"Kelly Corcoran, the owner of Lawrence’s excellent Love Garden record store, told us that students rarely eat downtown. Which is, I have to say, their loss."

Is this true? We suppose that perhaps downtown is more of a drinking than a dining destination for students.

Read the full piece here:

http://chronicle.com/blogs/postcards/our-duck-fat-tour-of-lawrence-kan/349

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One of our favorite competitions each year is the award for Bad Sex in Fiction, although we've never agreed with the contest's stated goals: "to draw attention to the crude, tasteless, often perfunctory use of redundant passages of sexual description in the modern novel, and to discourage it." "Bad" or not, the nominees almost always give us a boner, and we are thankful to them for their prose. The nominees for this year's award were recently announced, and guess who's among them? Yes, it's our old pal Jonathan Franzen, singled out especially for an over-the-top phonesex conversation in Freedom (we'd happily quote it for you, but our copy is on loan to some of our East-side friends).

Luckily, a Huffington Post article on this year's competition provides excerpts from another of the nominees, Adam Ross's critically-acclaimed Mr. Peanut, which we read over the summer and quite enjoyed. Take a look:

"Love me!" she moaned lustily. "Oh, Ward! Love me now!"

He jumped out from his pajama pants so acrobatically it was like a stunt from Cirque du Soleil. But when he went to remove her slip, she said, "Leave it!" which turned him on even more. He buried his face into Hannah's [vagina] like a wanderer who'd found water in the desert [. . . .]"

Chip: "I suppose Ross should have stuck with the circus metaphor for that final sentence. Perhaps 'He buried his face into Hannah's [vagina] like a lost clown who'd found water in the desert."


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Scenesters love it when international bands grace our local stages, and the Jackpot offers a good chance tonight to catch Aussie rockers Tame Impala, whose album Innerspeaker earns a very impressive 8.5 from Pitchfork:

"...a cleanly executed and frequently dazzling debut: Innerspeaker is a psychedelia-heavy outing that toys with paisley pop, stoner vibes, and an expansive array of swirling guitars."

Richard: "I love paisley pop, yet I dislike stoner vibes. I'm on the fence on this one."

Chip: "The problem with stoner vibes is that they tend to attract stoners. Count me out."