• 50 additional Reasons to Go On Living

    Date: 2013.05.18 | Category: Personal | Comments: 0

    It’s time for Part Two!

    1. Denmark won Eurovision, which means it’ll stay in Scandinavia for another year. Plus, the Danes can’t possibly come up with anything worse than the Swedes’ “Swedish Smörgåsbord” production number (a.k.a. “Stereotypes: Aren’t They Hilarious?!”).
    2. Henri le Chat Noir
    3. Cherry season is beginning
    4. Steve Martin’s Twitter feed
    5. Gail Collins proving to be a fitting heir to the late, great Molly Ivins
    6. I finally found a brand of mascara that doesn’t make me look like a raccoon within five minutes of applying it
    7. Libraries
    8. It’s now warm and sunny enough that I can hang laundry on the line in the back yard and it will be completely dry before the sun sets
    9. The Underground Bunker blog
    10. Food trucks
    11. The Bugle podcast
    12. Forbidden Island
    13. Taking the ferry to San Francisco
    14. Getting my hotel room in Monterey comped at next year’s Left Coast Crime
    15. Dinner at Chez Panisse after they reopen
    16. Advice columns
    17. Cheryl Wheeler
    18. “The Soup”
    19. My favorite childhood ice creams, 88:an and Päronsplitt, are still being produced
    20. Trader Joe’s
    21. “Behind the Candelabra” only a week away
    22. My favorite clients (I’m not naming names, but if you’re reading this, you can assume you are one)
    23. Living in a place where it never snows
    24. Wilhelm Kempff
    25. The DVR was invented in my lifetime (why haven’t its inventors won the Nobel Prize yet?)

    BONUS: Joe submitted a list!

    1. The new Black Sabbath album might not be terrible.
    2. The Giants are already in first place.
    3. The Warriors should be amazing next season.
    4. Chris Kluwe might be the Raiders’ starting punter. (Note: This might be the thing that finally makes me root for the Raiders. Go Chris!)
    5. What is Daenerys from Game Of Thrones going to do with those dragons?
    6. American Oak just reopened.
    7. Mark Jackson’s production of THE BEAUTY QUEEN OF LEENANE – one step closer to seeing all of Martin McDonough’s plays.
    8. The third book in Justin Cronin’s vampire trilogy.
    9. Who’ll die needlessly in the next run of DOWNTON ABBEY?
    10. Little Green Cyclo’s garlic noodles.
    11. My sister might actually get married soon.
    12. FAMILY TREE just started on HBO.
    13. Lindy West will continue to be funny for the foreseeable future.
    14. The continuing struggle to get chosen for JEOPARDY.
    15. Discovering if wireless earbuds are the answer to headphone problems.
    16. Adam Carolla will continue to be funny for the foreseeable future.
    17. Will marriage change Alison Rosen?
    18. The Dana Gould Hour.
    19. Mexican Coca-Cola is finally cheap and plentiful.
    20. The Alameda mayor’s race in 2014 should be awesome.
    21. Perfecting my 3-point shot.
    22. A semi-attractive celebrity will make a sex tape and THE SOUP will make fun of him/her.
    23. I don’t yet own any BUGLE merchandise.
    24. Honeycrisp apples will soon be in season.
    25. I haven’t worn all of my new shirts yet. (Note: When Joe was in Pennsylvania last month, there was a big sale going on at Macy’s and he bought a ton of shirts.)

    There–now let’s all be happy!

  • 50 (or 25) Reasons to Go On Living

    Date: 2013.05.17 | Category: Consumerism, Personal | Comments: 4

    A few years ago, a book called 14,000 Things to Be Happy About was published, and it became a huge best-seller. Naturally, as a cynic, I thought this sounded ridiculous. (I like this Amazon.com customer review: “Should be 14,000 random things to put in a book. I am happy I could use this book to start a fire.”) I’m disappointed that somebody came up with the idea to write a spoof called 11,002 Things to Be Miserable About, because I should totally have thought of that! Judging from some of the items on the authors’ web site (“According to experts, canned tomatoes contain potentially dangerous levels of Bisphenol-A, a chemical that has been linked to reproductive problems, heart disease, diabetes, and obesity”; “More than two-thirds of elderly people will need assistance to cope with the tasks of daily life at some point”), it looks like the book could bear the alternate title, 11,002 Things to Worry About.

    But we’re not here to talk about misery! We’re here to talk about hope for the future! I went to the Amazon page for 14,000 Things and clicked on the “Search Inside/Surprise Me” link, and came up with pages featuring the following entries:

    • Harvest chowder (But what if you hate chowder? Plus, this looks like vomit.)
    • Baby-sitting (Then I must be one of the happiest person alive, since I babysit my faux-nephew every week)
    • Remembering your sunglasses (I had to share this one with Joe because he is constantly losing pairs of sunglasses)
    • Bean lovers (Does this mean that beans, the legumes, bring happiness? Or that people who love beans should fill you with joy?)
    • Men who explain their behavior, “I’m just a wild ‘n crazy guy” (That would make me think they are ripping off old Steve Martin comedy routines)
    • Little Women, the 1994 film version (Because seeing Winona Ryder portray Jo March is far superior to reading Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel)

    Anyway, I decided to see if I could come up with 50 reasons to go on living in the space of half an hour. Please note that I am not going to mention “family and friends,” because that should go without saying. Also, this is my list. Any one of these things may make you want to throw yourself under a bus; I don’t know.

    1. Eurovision is tomorrow
    2. There are still four August Wilson plays I haven’t seen yet
    3. My tomato plants are already so huge that I figure they must bear fruit sometime this summer
    4. I want to find out what happens to Toronto’s (allegedly) crack-smoking mayor
    5. There’s a new flavor of Mangria
    6. I just found out that there’s already a sequel out to the book I’m currently reading and enjoying (The Professionals by Owen Laukkanen)
    7. John Oliver starts hosting “The Daily Show” on June 10, and while I adore Jon Stewart, that should be an interesting change of pace
    8. The bakery down the street sells macarons
    9. Sue Grafton still has four more letters of the alphabet to cover
    10. I still need to buy and use some of those cool round Global Forever Stamps
    11. The ABBA museum opened in Stockholm
    12. One of my faux-nephew’s other faux-aunts is coming to visit in August, meaning she can babysit and Joe & I can go out for a quiet dinner with our friends
    13. “Parks & Recreation” got renewed
    14. Nathan Rabin’s new book will be published next month
    15. The Tony Awards are coming up shortly
    16. I still haven’t tried all the different Thai curries at Bluefin
    17. Josh Kornbluth’s new play
    18. Sopapillas
    19. Aspiring to not always be in fourth place (out of four) in the Fitbit rankings (though this may require one of my friends breaking an ankle or something)
    20. Sutter Brown
    21. Hoping to visit Australia & New Zealand someday
    22. Waiting to celebrate gay marriage legalization and the end of DOMA
    23. Upcoming reservations at Honor Mansion and Bravas Bar de Tapas
    24. My friend Janet from Ohio has promised to visit this summer
    25. Our third-row tickets to Pinter’s “No Man’s Land” (Berkeley Rep) starring Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart

    OK, time is up, and that’s only 25… so I’ll have to reset the clock and come up with the rest later on.

  • I Blame Gaga

    Date: 2013.05.10 | Category: Consumerism | Comments: 1

    I didn’t mean to leave such a depressing blog post up front for so long; however, I am a slow writer, and I don’t often have time to fit blogging into my busy schedule. This weekend looks to be another hectic one. We’ll be attending a fancy fundraising event for one of our favorite arts organizations. It’s one of the very few occasions where I really have to try to glam it up a bit. This year, I decided maybe it was time for me to get a new pair of heels.

    Because I walk about five miles every day, I own a lot of comfy shoes. After years of searching, I finally discovered the Holy Grail of walking shoes: Easy Spirit Reinvent, which are incredibly lightweight, soft, comfortable, and reasonably priced (they’re listed at $79, but if you sign up for Easy Spirit’s mailing list, you can save quite a bit during their periodic sales). Plus, they don’t look too bad, as long as you avoid the more garish neon colors (I own them in black and the unfortunately discontinued dark red). A good 90% of the time, when I leave the house, I am wearing my Reinvents. I purchase them from EasySpirit.com, so I don’t spend much time hanging out in shoe stores.

    Since the party is tomorrow, however, I hit the brick & mortar shoe shops. First, I visited a cute little boutique in Berkeley. There were three sales attendants, standing around gabbing at the back of the store. No one greeted me or offered to help. They were probably judging me by my shoes (Ecco, Vibration II, silver). I flipped over a pair of snakeskin pumps to see the price tag. $190. Eh, too expensive for shoes I will only wear a couple times a year, at most.

    Then I figured I might as well visit the self-service discount shoe barn in Emeryville. It is the antithesis of a cute boutique. There are hundreds of shoes on display; you find the pair you like, then check the stack of shoeboxes underneath and hope that they have them in your size. I skipped the comfy flats and went straight to the high heeled dress shoes.

    What I saw there was truly horrifying. What has happened to shoes? These… things didn’t look like shoes. They resembled bizarre modern sculptures, or something you might imagine would be used in an S&M torture chamber. And there were rows and rows of them! Good God, are people buying them? Are they wearing them? If so, how?

    I remembered seeing pop star Lady Gaga wear this extreme footwear, but I had no idea it had trickled down to the masses. (The ones in the photo had been marked down to $19.99.) People, Lady Gaga may be a fashion icon, but no one should emulate her style in shoes. For one thing, not even she can walk around in these so-called “heel-less platforms” without tumbling down. And the singer’s career is now on hiatus due to chronic pain, which some are speculating may have been at least partially caused by her shoes. (Gaga, may I suggest you pick up a pair of Easy Spirit Reinvents while you’re recuperating?)

    The shoes do not have heels. I guess you’re supposed to put your weight on the front of your foot. They’re so high that it must feel like you’re walking around on tiptoe. In the interest of science, I decided to try on a pair. You can see them at left. It did indeed feel like the back of my feet were sort of floating in space. I walked about three feet in them, and almost twisted my ankle. Plus, they are super ugly. I remember hearing that when Oprah was still filming her daily talk show that she would wear sneakers until the moment she sat down in her chair. At that point, an assistant would whisk away the athletic shoes and O would don a pair of Louboutins. Heck, if I only had to sit, and if I had mad Oprah money, I’d wear Louboutins too. These are SO pretty! You could display them on a shelf when you weren’t wearing them! The Gaga-esque shoes, on the other hand, look like something you might use to tenderize steaks (perhaps they come in handy when you’re assembling a meat dress).

    Anyway, after an exhaustive search, I finally found a pump with a reasonable heel. I walked up and down the aisle a bit without tottering over. They were actually pretty comfortable… something I could imagine myself wearing, maybe not for a long walk, but to a restaurant or party. I noticed the name on the box… Easy Spirit. My old friends.

    It’s easy to laugh at these bizarre shoes, but to be honest, I find them pretty disturbing. Women are literally being crippled in the name of beauty. Some women are even undergoing surgery so they can better fit into pointy-toed stilettos. Obviously it’s a free country and anybody can choose to wear whatever they like, but it seems that a lot of women are making the choice to be really, really uncomfortable (in the now) and risk serious damage (down the road) in the name of fashion. I agree with this Jezebel.com poster, who contributed a comment on an article titled “Wearing Heels Does Not Make You A Bad Feminist”: “The fact is as women we ARE pressured to dress and look a certain way, even the most intimate aspect of our appearance is judged and regulated by a culture that says ‘beautiful women wear heels, are white, have hairless bodies, etc etc etc,’ so it’s never that simple and it’s certainly worthwhile to keep challenging the emerging status quo. Indeed there is a certain privilege that comes with being the kind of woman who pulls off a pencil skirt and high heels, it can be difficult to get taken seriously when you’re a woman who wants nothing to do with the heels, make-up etc that we associate with being ‘dressed for work.’”

    There is one big advantage to heels, though (and this goes for men as well as women–if you think men can’t wear heels, well, check out the drag queens on parade in Broadway’s smash “Kinky Boots”): height. When I put on those horrible studded shoes, I was suddenly close to six feet tall. I imagined myself at a show at Bottom of the Hill or the Great American Music Hall, clubs where I usually wind up stuck behind some super-tall dude and have to settle for catching an occasional glimpse of the band’s lead singer over his shoulder. In those shoes, I could tower over almost everyone else. Then again, I wouldn’t be surprised if standing on actual stilts would be more comfortable.

  • After Words

    Date: 2013.04.23 | Category: Personal | Comments: 2

    The telephone rings. You pick up the phone and you figure it’s probably another one of those junk calls you get on your landline, the recorded message promising you that you can cut your utility bills, or inviting you to participate in a survey of registered voters. The phone is in your hand, and you don’t realize it, but at that moment, you are standing on a precipice, perched on the border between two lands: one called before, and one called after. Once you have said “hello,” you leave before, and that’s it; a gate slams shut, and there’s no going back. You will henceforth dwell in the land of after, for ever and ever.

    This is the thing about after: not everybody arrives there at once. At first, it’s just close friends. You all post cryptic things on Facebook: little heart graphics, messages of support. Stay strong! I love you! Twenty-four hours pass; forty-eight. You are waiting for the news to spread beyond the inner circle. It shouldn’t be you who breaks the silence, but no one else is. So you do it, reluctantly. And then comes the flood: on Twitter, on Facebook, on the web sites of Rolling Stone and USA Today and Pitchfork and countless blogs. The emails start coming to you; hundreds of them. You released his final recordings; you published his book; you kept the web site going for years and years. That, I guess, makes you something of the public face of Scott fandom. You try to answer all of the emails. It’s exhausting, draining. It takes ten, twelve hours a day. Days for days. Not everybody hears the news at the same time. One week later, you wake up at six; you have thirty new emails. You go back to sleep, wake up at eight; fifty new emails.

    You aren’t asking for pity–that should be reserved for his family–but you still wake up every morning and remember that he’s dead, and it never stops feeling like a gut-punch. You just want life to return to normal. But this is the new normal: he’s not around anymore, and he never will be again.

    Memories. Easter Sunday: you are meeting with a producer to discuss plans for a new recording. He is quiet, subdued. You feel loud and clumsy, like you do when you’re in London and your American accent seems to bray across the subway car, no matter how hard you try to modulate your voice. You and your husband: you tell the producer, “We met because of him!” The shared love of music, obscure enough that it always seemed like a secret handshake, known only to a few. “We know at least a half-dozen other couples who did, too.” You think back over that day, wondering what you would have said or done differently had you known it would be the last time you’d ever see him. Your final memory: you quickly hug and say goodbye; he is getting into his blue Prius. You don’t watch him drive away; why would you?

    You have two groups of friends: Scott friends and mystery friends. For a while, you only want to be with the other Scott friends; you just want to talk about how much this all sucks, and ask each other why why why why why

    There is talk of tribute nights, cover albums featuring his songs, performed by famous musicians, and all you can think is that you never wanted him to be like Nick Drake, “discovered” years after his tragic death; you wanted him to be around to enjoy it. You had your vocation, but for almost twenty years, one of your primary avocations was trying to make Scott more successful, more recognized, as a musician, as a writer. It didn’t work very well. His popularity never grew beyond a small cult of diehard fans. You wish you could have done more. Much more. But at least you never gave up. You believed. You have regrets, plenty of them, but you’ll never regret the attempt.

    I realize this post is pretty f&#king maudlin. It’s been a rough week. Maybe you could consider making a donation to his family’s memorial fund.

  • Just Gone

    Date: 2013.04.19 | Category: Music, Personal | Comments: 0

    …And all advice is ways of saying “let it go”
    Some form of “smile, the world has found a way around the issue”

    Go how you want to
    Say it in a goodbye letter
    Doesn’t seem like waiting’s better
    It doesn’t take us in

    I’ll take it well
    Find quiet ways to gather
    Close around me what I’d rather
    That there would have been

    And there’s been water at my neckline, I sank low,
    And it was all that I could do to keep myself from swimming

    Form your thoughts now
    It’s going under, baby
    And where it goes I wonder, baby
    Can it just be gone?

    –Scott Miller, “Just Gone,” 1996

    http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/scott-miller-game-theory-and-loud-family-singer-dead-at-53-20130418

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2013/apr/18/scott-miller-game-theory-loud-family-dies

  • When Someone Great Is Gone

    Date: 2013.04.16 | Category: Music | Comments: 1


    I wish that we could talk about it
    But there, that’s the problem
    With someone new I could have started
    Too late for beginnings
    The little things that made me harassed
    Are gone in a moment

    I wake up and the phone is ringing
    Surprised, as it’s early
    And that should be the perfect warning
    That something’s a problem
    To tell the truth I saw it coming
    The way you were breathing
    But nothing can prepare you for it
    The voice, on the other end

    The worst is all the lovely weather
    I’m sad it’s not raining
    The coffee isn’t even bitter
    Because, what’s the difference?
    There’s all the work that needs to be done
    It’s late, for revision
    There’s all the time and all the planning
    And songs, to be finished.

    And it keeps coming,
    And it keeps coming,
    And it keeps coming,
    Till the day it stops

    And it keeps coming,
    And it keeps coming,
    And it keeps coming,
    Till the day it stops

    When someone great is gone
    When someone great is gone
    When someone great is gone
    When someone great is gone
    When someone great is gone
    When someone great is gone
    When someone great is gone
    When someone great is gone

  • Ordinary Grace

    Date: 2013.04.16 | Category: Books, Personal | Comments: 1

    I’m not a religious person, despite the many years of Lutheran confirmation classes I took as a child. I’m not even that “spiritual,” to use the new agier, Berkeley-approved term. But a couple of weeks ago, I read a novel called Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger (disclaimer: he’s one of my clients, and I consider him a friend; but even if he wasn’t, I’d still think he was an amazingly good writer). There was one section I read over and over again. It stuck with me, for some reason. It’s relevant to me now.

    This is a sermon delivered by the main character’s father, a small-town preacher, after an unexpected death has occurred in the community. I hope Kent wouldn’t mind my sharing it here.

    “It isn’t Easter,” he said, “but this week has caused me to think a lot about the Easter story. Not the glorious resurrection that we celebrate on Easter Sunday but the darkness that came before. I know of no darker moment in the Bible than the moment Jesus in his agony on the cross cried out, ‘Father, why have you forsaken me?’ Darker even than his death not long after because in death Jesus at last gave himself over fully to the divine will of God. But in that moment of his bitter railing he must have felt betrayed and completely abandoned by his father, a father he’d always believed loved him deeply and absolutely. How terrible that must have been and how alone he must have felt. In dying all was revealed to him, but alive Jesus like us saw with mortal eyes, felt the pain of mortal flesh, and knew the confusion of imperfect mortal understanding.

    “I see with mortal eyes. My mortal heart this morning is breaking. And I do not understand.

    “I confess that I have cried out to God, ‘Why have you forsaken me?’”

    Here my father paused and I thought he could not continue. But after a long moment he seemed to gather himself and went on.

    “When we feel abandoned, alone, and lost, what’s left to us? What do I have, what do you have, what do any of us have left except the overpowering temptation to rail against God and to blame him for the dark night into which he’s led us, to blame him for our misery, to blame him and cry out against him for not caring? What’s left to us when that which we love most has been taken?

    “I will tell you what’s left, three profound blessings. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul tells us exactly what they are: faith, hope, and love. These gifts, which are the foundation of eternity, God has given to us and he’s given us complete control over them. Even in the darkest night it’s still within our power to hold to faith. We can still embrace hope. And although we may ourselves feel unloved we can still stand steadfast in our love for others and for God. All this is in our control. God gave us these gifts and he does not take them back. It is we who choose to discard them.

    “In your dark night, I urge you to hold to your faith, to embrace hope, and to bear your love before you like a burning candle, for I promise that it will light your way.

    “And whether you believe in miracles or not, I can guarantee that you will experience one. It may not be the miracle you’ve prayed for. God probably won’t undo what’s been done. The miracle is this: that you will rise in the morning and be able to see again the startling beauty of the day.

    “Jesus suffered the dark night and death and on the third day he rose again through the grace of his loving father. For each of us, the sun sets and the sun also rises and through the grace of our Lord we can endure our own dark night and rise to the dawning of a new day and rejoice.”

  • Yelping

    Date: 2013.04.12 | Category: Food | Comments: 4

    My friend Janet A. posted a link to this wonderful article about Yelp reviews. It sums up most of the reasons I don’t take Yelp seriously–the scathing review based on a single visit during Dine About Town, the irrelevant personal details, the lack of knowledge about the cuisine being evaluated, etc. I have never written a Yelp review, mainly because I am automatically suspicious of the whole “web 2.0″ paradigm of getting people to write things for free. The guy who founded Yelp is worth over $150 million. If everybody decided tomorrow that they no longer wanted to work for no pay to make some dudes in Silicon Valley rich, I strongly suspect Yelp’s market cap (currently $1.68 billion) would decrease markedly.

    I decided to check out a few of my favorite eateries to see what people on Yelp were saying about them. These are all places where I’ve eaten numerous times, and which I would not hesitate to recommend to a friend. Would I find ad hominem attacks and ill-informed opinions? Let’s find out!

    1. Asena: Average rating, 4 stars. I have only had drinks spilled on me by waiters twice in my life, and oddly enough, both times it happened, it was at Asena. And yet I keep going back. The first time, they comped me a dessert, and the second time, the waiter was sufficiently apologetic. The food is just that good, and I like everybody who works there, even when they spill drinks! To err is human, y’know? Reviewer Peter L. gives it two stars, complaining that it’s “overwhelmingly expensive.” He mentions that he selected it for “an end-of-semester dinner.” Now, one of my biggest Yelp pet peeves is people complaining about the price of food. You know, Peter L., you could have looked up the menu online before choosing to eat there. You would see that entrees are in the $14-19 range. That’s hardly “$$$$$$$$$$,” as you write. “I ordered the caesar salad, and given the price of it, was expecting a high-end, mouth-watering salad of the gods. Uh, SIKE.” SIKE? I assume you mean “psych.” When you refer to “end-of-semester,” are you talking about barber college? You’re definitely not an English major. “The bread was delicious. It’s one of the reasons this place isn’t getting a one-star rating from me.” OK, I’m going to have to agree with you there. The bread is freaking awesome.

    2. Bluefin Sushi Thai: Average rating, 4 stars. I know some people who are skeptical of Bluefin Sushi Thai because it doesn’t specialize. Yes, you can get both sushi and Thai food there. Given the choice, I will pick Thai 99.9% of the time, so I have never tried the sushi, but I can say that the Thai food is so good that just thinking about it makes me wish they were open right now so I could rush over and get a big bowl of panang curry. Alicia O. gives it one star, griping about “ugly cheap white plates and silverware… you shouldn’t do sushi and thai pick one or the other. Menu is far too long and pricey. Just because you through some tacky cheap pale green paint on the walls and OLD DINER BOOTHS and hung an elephant tapestry on the door with some cheap fabric around edges of windows doesn’t mean you remodeled!” Yes, she wrote “you through” some paint on the walls. Perhaps we should add proofreading to the skills Yelp reviewers need. Bluefin is in a locale once occupied by a hamburger place, but I found the decor to be perfectly serviceable. And again, “pricey”–the panang curry is $9.95, and it’s enough for two extremely generous servings. When we eat in, I bring my own plastic containers from home (see how environmentally friendly I am!) because I know there are going to be leftovers.

    3. Forbidden Island: Average rating, 4.5 stars. For a few years, Joe & I used to go to FI every week with some friends of ours, until they inconveniently had a baby, and thus ended our fun nightlife. The last time I was there was a few weeks ago with some other, non-kid-having friends. The biggest annoyance was that we had to wait 30 minutes for a table–we were vulturing a group of folks who had paid their bills and were finishing up their water. Their paid-for drinks were long gone! Still, I guess it’s better that the staff is mellow and will let you hang out, even on busy nights. The tiki drinks are superb, and the atmosphere is so pleasant that even Joe, a non-imbiber of alcohol, loves hanging out there. Anna G. gives it two stars: “I would have probably gave this place more stars if we wouldnt of just walked out as soon as we walked in …LOL We came to check this place out after having drinks at La Pinata because we wanted to see what this place was like. So upon entering we hear like this soft Hula music playing which wasnt bad. But then when we looked around it seemed like there was alot of older couples a few young but mostly older than us, We didnt stay also because we couldnt find a table so we just walked out.” Yes, they popped their heads in, didn’t see a free table, saw OLD PEOPLE (it’s possible one of those OLD PEOPLE could have been me–I’m sure Anna G. would be mortally offended by the Crypt Keeper-like sight of my 40-something self), and skedaddled. And yet she felt compelled to run home and write a review.

    Just to prove what a discerning gourmand Anna G. is, I will note that one of her most recent reviews was of a combination Long John Silver’s/KFC in Richmond. “I had been wanting to try this place since I seen signs for this place going to David, Ca years back and I always wanted to try it,” she writes. Seriously, she had been excitedly anticipating the day when she could dine at a fried fish & chicken fast-food joint? “I took a bite of my shrimp and it wasn’t crispy enough batter was BLAH! My cod was fried on one side and the bottom was stuck soggy to my box! UMMmmm NOOO! The fries looked like they needed to change the oil because they were covered in tiny bits of black spots from old god knows how long ago oil.” Anna G., you are literally the worst person in the world.

    4. Sweet Treat Stop: Average rating, 4 stars. I realize that white sugar=evil for a lot of people nowadays. I try to limit my intake of the stuff; I’ve actually gotten to the point now where I prefer dark chocolate to milk, and that was a long time coming. Once a week, this perky pink cupcake truck parks a little over a mile from my house, and I figure that if I walk down and buy a cupcake, the calories and the exercise cancel each other out. While they cost $4, they’re so large that I neatly slice them in half and Joe and I share one. OK, enough excuses: they’re just so darn yummy. Carol C. might have agreed with me if she’d actually tried a cupcake. “The few cupcakes they had left were fancy, looked quite delicious and yummy – nice presentation.  However, the drawback was the price of $4.00 for one cupcake.  I changed my mind quickly, as I wasn’t quite feeling it – to pay $4.00 for a cupcake. It’s nothing against the gentleman selling the cupcakes.  I mean he was helpful and friendly.  It’s just that I’m a penny pincher and cheap.  It’s the principality, man, and again, let me repeat myself – I’m not gonna pay $4.00.  Now if them cupcakes were going at 2 for $7.00 or 3 for $10.50, I might consider buying them. So my visit to this truck was short and sweet.  Let me move on.”

    Carol C., you should join Anna G. in the ninth circle of Hell. Of course, Anna G. would find you hopelessly old (in another Yelp review–of AC Transit, believe it or not–Carol mentions that she was a senior in high school back in 1970). Carol has written over 200 Yelp reviews. Not one to restrict herself to restaurants and cupcake trucks, Carol has rated Chase Bank, the I.R.S. (two stars!), KBLX-FM, Costco, the San Francisco Chronicle and Michael’s Arts & Crafts (“What I found somewhat lacking was the supply of gift bags in various colors. However, they do have a large inventory of craft items.”).

    All in all, I give Yelp two and a half stars. It can sometimes be helpful–I’ve found good restaurants in unfamiliar areas via Yelp–but you have to skim through a lot of reviews by morons along the way.

  • Kettle Chips Suck

    Date: 2013.04.08 | Category: Food | Comments: 4

    My friend Neal recently told me that he was glad to see some activity on my blog again. I think the problem is that I am always so busy with one thing or another that writing blog entries becomes a very low priority. However, sometimes something comes along that I simply have to get off my chest. Today, it is this modest proposal: “kettle”-style potato chips should be wiped off the face of the Earth.

    A few weeks ago, the New York Times Sunday magazine ran an excerpt from a new book titled Salt Sugar Fat by Michael Moss. I found the article so sinister and terrifying that I demanded that we make a major lifestyle change: bags of potato chips would no longer be a staple item in our home. Moss reveals how Frito-Lay used a psychologist named Ernest Dichter to get around people’s objections to eating chips; the end result was that “the largest weight-inducing food was the potato chip. The coating of salt, the fat content that rewards the brain with instant feelings of pleasure, the sugar that exists not as an additive but in the starch of the potato itself–all of this combines to make it the perfect addictive food.” I insisted Joe read the article. “Potato chips are an addictive food!” I cried. “You can eat half a pound of chips in a sitting without blinking an eye. We have to stop buying them!”

    Surprisingly, he agreed to this. (He then proceeded to drop five pounds. That is why women who are trying to lose or maintain weight hate men. The female fat cell is far more tenacious.) While I banned large bags of chips, however, I figured single-serving bags were all right. I mean, you can’t overeat if your bag only contains one ounce of chips!

    We are regular patrons of Saturday’s Off the Grid food truck market at Alameda’s South Shore shopping center (slogan: “Sure, half of our storefronts are empty, but we’ve got a Trader Joe’s!”). This past Saturday, both Joe and I purchased sandwiches, from separate trucks. Both of our sandwiches came with chips. Kettle chips. There was no alternative available.

    Back when big bags of chips were welcome in our home, I always bought Lay’s Lightly Salted. To me, they were everything you want from a chip: light, crisp, delicious, just salty enough. Why would anyone prefer a kettle chip–thick, greasy, hard, stale-tasting–to the wonder that is a classic thin chip? Kettle chips were certainly nowhere to be found during my childhood, and yet, these nouveau chips seem to be the rage these days, especially in your more “upscale” environs. I don’t understand it. “They are like eating a bag full of roof shingles,” says one astute commenter on thekitchn.com. “They are an abomination.” YES. Yes they are.

    Personally, I believe that potato chips should come in one flavor: potato. Joe enjoys barbecue chips, but I refuse to go near him after he has eaten them because I find that artificial smoke flavor to be so distasteful. Yes, regular thin and crispy potato chips come in flavors other than plain–besides BBQ, there’s dill pickle, BLT, and various other horrors–but kettle chips always seem to be pushing the envelope of weird flavors. Mango habanero? Maple bacon? Roasted red pepper with goat cheese? There is no reason for these flavors to exist!

    But here’s the worst part: we get sandwiches accompanied by roof-shingle-style chips, and we eat them anyway. Because they are chips, and even bad chips are an addictive food.

    From now on, if somebody tries to give me a bag of these hard, nasty snacks, they’re going into the compost heap. Kettle chips: just say no.

  • Roger Ebert R.I.P.

    Date: 2013.04.04 | Category: Movies | Comments: 2

    I started worrying about Roger Ebert a few weeks ago, when I noticed the astonishingly prolific critic was reviewing fewer films then usual (an assortment of colleagues, including Richard Roeper and Omer M. Mozaffar, picked up the slack). Then his Twitter feed, usually a constant stream of thoughts and links, went alarmingly silent. Finally, there was this, posted late on Tuesday night: “My Leave of Presence: An update.”

    “The ‘painful fracture’ that made it difficult for me to walk has recently been revealed to be a cancer,” Mr. Ebert wrote. “It is being treated with radiation, which has made it impossible for me to attend as many movies as I used to.”

    “At this point in my life,” he continued, “in addition to writing about movies, I may write about what it’s like to cope with health challenges and the limitations they can force upon you. It really stinks that the cancer has returned and that I have spent too many days in the hospital. So on bad days I may write about the vulnerability that accompanies illness. On good days, I may wax ecstatic about a movie so good it transports me beyond illness.”

    Sadly, just a couple days later, it was announced that Ebert had died at the age of 70. Despite the fact that I’d kind of assumed the worst, it still felt like a gut-punch. Few celebrity deaths hurt as much as this one did.

    Maybe it’s because I grew up watching Ebert, along with his late partner, Gene Siskel, first on PBS, then on their syndicated series “At the Movies.” I was the sort of weird kid who would take careful note of their more obscure recommendations, then take the bus to the Bijou theater (Grand Rapids’ only art house) to see them when they finally came to town. How many tweens do you think rushed out to see “My Dinner with Andre,” “Atlantic City” or “The Return of the Secaucus Seven” after a Siskel & Ebert rave? I am sure I didn’t understand everything that was going on in those movies, but they showed me there was a wider world out there, accessible through the magic of cinema.

    For a while, I saw tons of movies (over 100 a year) and, inspired by Siskel & Ebert, even wrote about movies. I (unlike Ebert) became far less film-obsessed as I grew older, but I never stopped reading Ebert’s reviews. I was even a devoted viewer of his short-lived PBS show, “Ebert Presents: At the Movies.” By that point, Ebert had lost the power of speech, but he still appeared on camera, usually with Chicago newsman Bill Kurtis reading his words.

    The Great Movies Roger EbertI only met Ebert once, very briefly, at a local bookstore where he was appearing to promote The Great Movies. The book was a compendium of essays on many of his favorite films, from the recognized classics (“Citizen Kane”) to the artsy & foreign (“Last Year at Marienbad”) to popular entertainment (“Star Wars”). Before sitting down at a table to sign books, he spoke to the overflow audience for a half hour or 45 minutes, relating one anecdote after another about his run-ins with movie stars over the years and whatever else came to mind. It was all very stream-of-consciousness, but he was one of the best raconteurs I’ve ever heard, floating from one story to another. I recalled that afternoon when, a few years later, he lost the ability to speak. What a horrible fate for one of the greatest talkers of his era!

    Of course, he eventually overcame that horrible hurdle, “speaking” to more people than ever via his blog and Twitter account. He had over 800,000 followers, and was such a prolific Tweeter that I set up a special column in my Twitter app just to make sure his contributions didn’t get lost in the stream; even if I was away from Twitter for a couple days, all of his Tweets would be neatly saved up so I could give them the attention they deserved. Now, that column only contains two entries: a link to a review of a documentary called “The Iran Job,” and that final note about his “leave of presence.” The blog entry linked to that final Tweet mentions so many grand plans–a new web site to roll out, a Kickstarter campaign for a new TV show, a video game, a documentary film about his life produced by Martin Scorsese–that it’s hard to reconcile them with the fact that those close to him apparently realized that his death “was imminent, as sad as it is.”

    But despite his look-on-the-bright-side remark, “I’ll be able at last to do what I’ve always fantasized about doing: reviewing only the movies I want to review,” that final post also functions as a goodbye: “Thank you… However you came to know me, I’m glad you did and thank you for being the best readers any film critic could ask for… [O]n this day of reflection I say again, thank you for going on this journey with me. I’ll see you at the movies.”

    If you want to remember Roger Ebert through some of my favorite videos, check him out (with Gene Siskel) on the animated show “The Critic”; doing a tribute to Gene Siskel (though I can’t watch this one again right now because it would make me cry); and here’s his classic review of the Rob Reiner stinker “North.” While he was writing his newspaper review of the film, he recounts, “A sinister inner force took over and I found myself typing, and I quote, ‘I hated this movie! Hated, hated, hated, hated, hated this movie Hated it  Hated every sipering, stupid, vacant, audience-insulting moment of it!’… I have to give ‘North’ credit for one thing, though–when I was preparing for this show, I didn’t have to spend a lot of time trying to figure out which was the year’s worst movie.”

    The best way to remember him, of course, would be to watch one of his Great Movies (you’ll find a full list here), and then read his essay about the film. For over 40 years, Ebert proved that writing about movies is an art form in itself, and no one did it better than he did.

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