Lit City Blues

This week, we continue our march through the strange and off the beaten path category of 'unrecognized' countries out there in the world. We're still sort of sticking in the Russian periphery, but we're not picking on the Republic of Georgia anymore: Transnistria and the Republic of Artsakh!

First up, let's talk Transnistria:
Internationally recognized as part of Moldova, Transnistria is a little narrow strip of land that's sandwiches between the River Dneister and the border of the Ukraine. It's history is a little complicated: it became an autnomous polity in 1924 when the Soviets proclaimed the Moldavian ASSR- which included today's Transnistria- but not anything from Bessarabia, which was at the time, a part of Romania. Eventually, the Soviets took Bessarabia, melded it together with what was the Moldavian ASSR at the time and created more or less modern Moldova.

This lasted until perestroika and glastnost really got going. The liberalization kicked…

We started a theme of all countries strange or 'not-quite-officially-recoginized' countries last week and we're moving forward with it this time a look at Abkhazia and South Ossetia.  Let's start things off with Abkhazia. Let's unpack the flag before we get into the ins and outs of the Republic of Abkhazia itself. Adopted on July 23, 1992. Right off the bat, it's interesting to look at. The hand, the stars, the green and white stripes-- it's a unique combination and actually kind of striking when you step back and really think about it. There's a sort of odd echo of the Stars and Stripes that is undoubtedly something of a political statement on the part of the Abkhazians-- even if it's a subtle and perhaps out and out unconscious one. The red canton is based on the banner of the old Kingdom of Abkhazia-- so what about the hand? Well it means 'Hello to friend! Stop to Enemies!'' The seven stars stand for the seven historical regions of the…

I never thought I'd be writing a post where 'Boozehound' intersected with 'Bookshot' but here we are to take a peek into the strange and exotic world of tiki with the excellent and lovingly knowledgeable book, Smuggler's Cove: Exotic Cocktails, Rum and the Cult of Tiki. Written by Martin and Rebecca Cate, the founders and owners of one of the foremost Tiki bars in America today, San Francisco's Smuggler's Cove, the two of them take the reader on a journey into the origins of the tiki, the hidden depths and complexities of rum and the rise, fall and eventual revival of tiki over the course of the latter half of the 20th century.

Why the sudden interest in the secrets of tiki? Well, two reasons really- one is that over the course of the past few years we've had a stop or two at Psycho Suzi's Motor Lounge up in Minneapolis and the experience was incredible. The pizza was tasty, the drinks exactly what you'd expect and more- the place is out a …

It began seven years and two blogs ago today, so I figured I'd take a post to celebrate it's birthday while at the same time, updating the archives so everyone can see what all we've done over the years. My brief sojourn on Wordpress lost me a years worth of archives, but I'm almost done updating those and we'll see how many more flags we can find to talk about. I honestly feel like I'm going to have to sit down and have a think about the future of this feature- because it's getting harder and harder to find flags to talk about--- not that I'm not up to that challenge, it just makes it harder to churn these out on a regular basis. Plus, I really don't want to get tired of this. Flags are incredibly important symbols and the best of them honestly can rise to the level of art if done right. 
So, Happy Birthday 'TWIV' here's to many more!
The Complete Archive Part One
#201: India
#202: Paraguay
#203: City of Chicago
#204: Lesotho
#205: San Marin…

Watched On: Netflix
Released: 2015
Starring: Jason Segel, Jesse Eisenberg, Ron Livingston, Anna Chlumsky, Joan Curask, Mickey Sumner, Mamie Gummer, Becky Ann Baker
Rotten Tomatoes: 91%
Pick: Mine

I don't know how to feel about this movie. I've never read anything written by David Foster Wallace. I've never even so much as touched a copy of Infinite Jest. Would I read Infinite Jest? Maybe- I don't know. I'm still sort of in recovery from Gravity's Rainbow and Infinite Jest is even longer than that was. It's... I don't know how to feel about this movie. The story of the last five days of David Foster Wallace's book tour, Jason Segel is excellent as David Foster Wallace- it's a nice departure from him and it's almost transformative in the way that Nicole Kidman's fake nose was in The Hours. He inhabits the role- but not in a Daniel Day Lewis kind of way-- his performance is more subtle and nuanced. He feels like he's trying to capture the e…

It's been awhile since I've done this on a regular basis, but I had to do some planning first.  I'm not going to lie: it's getting harder and harder to find new flags to get excited about- at least excited enough to write about it. But I've got the next six posts more or less planned out which will get us to #300 and after that... we'll see.

In the meantime, things are going to get weird. I don't mean that in the sense that any of these places are weird- I've never been to most of these places, but they're the unrecognized countries, the ones at the margins with the exotic names and sadly, many of them has a brutal, bloody history to go along with their flags. These are the places you've gotta go looking for.

First up, Somaliland:
So, funny thing about Somalia. Before 1960, there were actually two of them. British Somaliland and Italian Somaliland. One assumes that folks decided that one Somalia was better than two- so the two Solmaliland's b…