what the world needs now is a new frank sinatra, so i can get you in bed

one of the benefits of working the the education field is the built in vacation that comes during the christmas-new year holiday time. with the exception of a cold that hit right around christmas day and lingered for a few days (hitting jp much worse than me), it's been a fine week+ off from work. jp and i took a short trip to tahoe for a couple of days. it was not only my first time up there, but once we hit the cross-country ski trail it was my first time on skis ever. a bit of falling down, well, lots of falling down....but that was ok. once i got the hang of it, i had a great time. next time i'll try downhill.

the rest of the week has been pretty darned slothful. a bit of work, lots of movie and "the office" (bbc version, series 2, via netflix) watching. idle hands may be the devil's plaything, but idleness is a good tonic for getting over a cold.

last night we went to see camper van beethoven & cracker at the independent. i haven't seen camper in god knows how many years. jp works with a guy who plays in both bands, so not only did we get comped tickets, but access to an upstairs area where we didn't have to get jostled and could actually see the stage clearly. camper were as good as i remember from way back...equal parts of a variety of musical styles that work in a surprising but cool way .cracker seems to have morphed from the more alt-country/blues of their origins to a sort of harder-edged, bluesier and more jam-band type of camper that seem to be as much a showcase for johnny hickman's guitar as for david lowery's songs. their set was shorter than the cvb set, not just in overall length, but in number of songs. and some of the songs went on for, well, a long time. and jp has to ask her colleague what was up with the computer that lowery kept checking on during both sets. was he im-ing friends during the set?

tonight it's off to a party to ring in 2007. here's to a great year.

all the young punks...new boots and contracts

happiness is a new pair of doc martens.


pain is breaking them in. ouch. thank heavens for moleskin.

we had some massive nights

it's december 21, solstice, the shortest day of the year. happy winter. the good news? the daytime only gets longer for the next 6 months.

i know people whose idea of fun is throwing stones in the river in the afternoon sun

why haven't i been watching the office more regularly? huh? the christmas special is hilarious. even better than last year's christmas episode. interesting piece on the office in the dec 11th issue of the new yorker. i'd post a link, but it'll expire soon. if only the new yorker was better about their on-line content.

how is it that i found news gingrich oddly reasonable on meet the press this week? it's like in early 2004 when i as listening to npr, heard a guy who's voice i coulnd't palce, but he was saying some interesting stuff. i just about crashed my car when he was introduced as al sharpton. i still don't trust gingrich to not be a nutjob (his recent take on the possible need to curtail free speech is very worrisome), but he was ok today. and also on meet the press? tom friedman? dude, the sunni-shia thing erupting in iraq isn't just the result of what happened during hussein's rule, it's not baed on a 30-year build up of animosity. how ridiculously shallow an analysis, but then, nothing i shouldn't expect from him. and timmy? would it have killed you to have someone from the dem, liberal or progressive camp this week?

the netflix queue has been revived...jp and i watched a very long engagement friday. yes, a touching love story, yes, very beautifully and inventively shot. but also? reminds me of 12 angry men, in that mathilde was the only one among her inner circle to not take the evidence at face value. also, like 12 angry men and name of the rose, mathilde proved her case by way of some basic deductive reasoning, marshalling the evidence point by point.

i also watched broken flowers, arguably jim jarmusch's most mainstream film. i liked how he made bill murray's road trip geographically anonymous. the device was clearly used to mirror murray's quest -- just like he wasn't sure exactly what it was he was searching for, you were never exactly certain where it was he was during the search. i would like to see bill murray break his recent string of playing guys who look like they overdosed on prozec.

had the occassion to met the lovely and talented leah and simon of a girl and a boy, thanks to going to see simon's band play. they're both cool people and simon's band is a kick-ass honky-tonkin' quartet.

and yes...today was an amazing day to be out and about...

they shifted the statues for harboring ghosts

morning at ft. point, the presidio...



after some walking and running at ft. point we got some breakfast at the grove cafe on chestnut st, and damn if i did't have the most amazing breakfast burrito ever. super flavorful and spicy mix of salsa, guacamole, egg and beans. get it with bacon, if you're meat/pork inclined. the staff are very friendly.

i got lost in all the lights but it was ok in the end

taken in jp's living room, the night of her hosting a party for her book club

tv party tonight!

it seems that lately i've been posting less than intermittently. it's not like i've got nothing to say or that i'm not thinking about anything. and it's not like i haven't been doing anything...like what?

well, beyond vacations and shows (written about), there's my yuppiefied acquisition of a new hdtv, a westinghouse 27". i feel odd about the purchase. for one, i've been on a binge (for me anyway) in terms of spending...an apartment in the city, the egypt and morocco trip, a new mac, a new tooth (titanium implants are expensive)...so it's been hard to save like i'm used to. i'm also not prone to profiligate spending on big stuff. i tend to blow my cash on food, drink, books and music. the pleasures of daily life.

that said, the tv is awesome, and watching a hockey or football game in hd is lightyears better than conventional tv. plus there's the fact that my last tv was so old it didn't have inputs for a dvd player. i had a radio shack rf converter box which required unhooking cables, and that resulted in me never using the dvd player which resulted in my netflix subscription languishing (i got netflix when with roommates, one of whom had a newer tv...but the tv stayed with her). plus, old tv was purchased second-hand from a friend while in grad school, for the low, low price of $50. after 9 years it was time.

the other problem i have with the tv purchase is the mere fact of buying it makes me feel like i'm some tv addict, as if i need it. at jp's book club party on sunday the discussion came up what tv size and cable service says about one's level of tv snobbery and/or time spent reading. i read enough (thanks in no small measuree to the bart commmute) and i'm hardly a tv addict. and i take with a grain of salt and a healthy dose of suspicion people who claim to watch hardly any tv. half the time i think it's said for effect, for status. that said, i felt like anything more than a 27" tv was ridiculous, and as it is i only had hbo because of a great new subscriber deal from comcast.

in any event, it's hooked up and i've got the hd service from comcast. and i'm slowly warming to it and not feeling sheepish for buying it. that said, i downgraded the cable service today, ditching hbo (though it'll come back when the sporanos returns).

i am, however, going to get a bit more serious about saving...the 403b will be opened soon, and lunches will be more often brought than bought. after all, i can watch a ball game while i'm cooking for the week.

we get wet and we corrode and we get covered up in rust

the rain that's hit us this week takes me back, oh, a few weeks ago...to the sunny gulf coast of florida...the in-laws of one of my brothers moved there a year or so ago, and this year they invited his side of the family down for thanksgiving. that extended into a short family vacation to clearwater beach. so while you dodge the rain and light your fireplace at night and keep warm with whomever makes you warmest...some images to remember what the sun looks like...

take a step up then a quick step back in time

saturday night at the red devil lounge was another installment of "touring through my musical past", this time with the plimsouls. yes, the plimsouls, up with big star on the top floor in my power-pop pantheon. the plimsouls, who had a so-called "minor hit" with "million miles away", thanks in no small measure to the song and the band being featured in the 1983 movie valley girl, featuring a young nicolas cage.

this version of the band features all but the drummer from the line-up that recorded everywhere at once, one of my all-time favorite records (it's one of the few albums i have where i can honestly say that there isn't a bad song on there). so it was peter case singing and playing guitar, eddie munoz on lead guitar, dave pahoa on bass, and bryan head on drums. peter's looking a bit more, eh, filled out than in years past, but then he's 52 (!), so these things happen. but his voice can still carry a loud power-pop band, and he and the rest of the band had the kind of energy i'm sure they did way back in the early 1980s. they played the hits and then some, including "how long will it take", "million miles away", "everywhere at once" and "zero hour". i wasn't the only one in the packed-house crowd singing along to every song...we were mostly a bunch of kids of the 80s who came out to see a band that (like big star), although they didn't last long back then, have left a lasting impression on us even after all these years.

ask me ask me ask me

some questions...

why does mccarran airport have free wifi (from whence i post, on a 2+ hour layover en route from sfo to the fla gulf coast on a red eye) yet sfo does not? sfo, which is after all the gateway airport (all due respect to san jose) to america's tech heartland? why is t-mobile's pay to play service all that's available?

why does mccarran not have more of the attractions of vegas? would it kill them to have a real casino here? (i wouldn't mind an hour of blackjack to kill some time) a strip club? (not that i'd necessarily go, just asking rhetorically). why do the slots not take coins, but tickets which you have to get from an attendant?

taken together, i guess what i'm asking is, shouldn't a city's airport more or less reflect the city, highlight its virtues (or vices)?

(update...6:45am eastern time, thanksgiving day) and guess which airport also has free wifi? tampa-st.pete. gavin....mayor mcdreamy...dude...talk to someone at sfo. let's get with the times.

ashes of american flags

i heard about this yesterday on npr's (well, american public media's) marketplace...seems that mothers against drunk driving are advocating for ingition interlock devices aimed at reducing the incidence of drunk driving. though madd's stance is for devices to be mandatory on cars owned by convicted drunk drivers, a reresentative from the insurance institute for highway safety (iihs) actually said that sobriety-check devices should be in all cars.

two things about this are unsettling -- first, to mandate devices on convicted drunk drivers sends the signal that the convicted are thus no longer entitled to the presumption of innocence. this is much like the laws enacted in many cities and towns that convicted sex offenders must register and announce their presence in a neighborhood, and/or that they cannot live within some proscribed distance from schools or playgrounds.

i know that convicted drunk drivers tend to be recidivst. however, there is some evidence that expedited treatment results in lower rates of recidivism. there are similar findings for sex offenders. in other words, treatment, not stigmatization and scarlet letters, are what a free society should demand of convicted criminals.

relatedly, i was troubled by an assertion made in the marketplace story by susan ferguson of iihs that all cars should have sobriety check devices. is it just me or does this violate a fundamental tenet of american society, that of presumed innocence? the country was founded on such priniciples specifically as a reaction to the encroaching police state of 18th century british colonial rule, principles which date back 5 centuries from that time to the magna carta.

ultimately this all comes back to (for me, anyway) the erosion of civil liberties we've seen with the enactment of the military commissions act and the proposed legislation to legalize the warrantless (and thus illegal) domestic wiretapping currently being conducted by the nsa with the full approval of the president. proof of how pervasive (and silly) domestic spying activities by the government have become is illustrated in a series of reports foia'd by the aclu documenting how legal, first amendment-protected activities have been entered into a pentagon database designed to track terrorist threats.

how are sobriety-check devices and sexual predator residence laws in the same league as habeas corpus and wiretapping? simple -- they are all symptoms of the same mindset that allows freedom to be curtailed in the name of security.

freedom entails certain risk. the fact is, no matter how hard we try, we will never eliminate the threat of a drunk driver on the road. we will never fully prevent sexual predators from acting out. we will never fully protect the country from terrorism. that's not to say we shouldn't try and reduce the risks -- no, we should demand that risks are reduced while freedom is protected. treatment for those types of crimes where there's some evidence that treatment works. legal forms of surveillance, monitored by an impartial court and subject to detailed review by congress. that's not to mention the plethora of port security and air cargo screening that the current congress and administration have inexplicably refused to ensure are in place, this despite it being a centerpiece of the 9/11 commission's findings.

freedom and security are not mutually exclusive. and eroding freedom for the sake of security makes us both less secure and more importantly less free.

no reason, just seems so pleasing

it's not often you get an opportunity to eat at a michelin guide 3-star restaurant on a day's notice, but that's what i did tuesday night, joining jp for an amazing dinner at the french laundry in yountville (napa). jp had reservations with a friend (for whom she did a huge favor...nice payback), but friend was unable to go. given that tables are hard to come by there, even more so after it was rated 3-stars in the michelin san francisco guide, i jumped at the chance. what kind of man would i be, not to want to join the girlfriend at a romantic and sumptuous meal in what's considered one of the best restuarants in the country.

from downtown sf it's a good 65-mile trek. our table was for 9:15, so not much rush-hour traffic to battle. got there in just over an hour, with time to spare and relax before being seated. our table was in a small room off the main first floor dining room, a table of 2 next to us and a table of 4 a few feet away. both were well into their meals.

after ordering wine and selecting from the choices in the evening's menu, we were given small appetizers, snacks almost. notable was a salmon tartar in a tiny cone filled with creme freche.

the first course was oysters and pearls, oytsers newburgh and caviar on a cream sauce bed. next up was a confit of squash and asian pears in a very light viniagrette -- light, tart, and (the pears) crispy, a good counterpoint to the richness of the oysters. next up was a return to richness, sea urchin formed to look like a tongue, served over an earthy base given nice texture by small chunks of celery root. it was very much a yin/yang dish, the urchin served cold over a warm base, the urchin soft while the base had a chunky texture.

the main seafood course was 4 small bits of lobster, poached in sweet butter and served atop a curried basmati rice. the lobster was melt-in-your-mouth light, and the curried rice provided a nice balance of spiciness and weight. the next course was another choice, and the only choice where jp and i went different ways -- she had the quail..white and dark meat served in a light sauce with pearl onions and cranberries. i had the tete de cochon (head of the pig). the pork was served in a doughy shell, atop a spinach puree and topped by a quial egg, joined on the plate by a spicy carmelized onion.

next up was the beef, a cap of ribeye atop both a matsuzaki mushroom cream sauce and a veal stock sauce laced with ginger and served with tangerine slices. great balance of sweet, tangy, and spicy. the beef, like the lobster, just about melted on the tongue.

the dessert section started with the cheese course, a lord of the hundreds ewe's milk cheese, hard and tangy, sliced at the table atop small rounds of potato with a tomato marmalade. this was followed by a feijoa (pineapple guava) sorbet served with banana bread. the sorbet was very pungent and had a perfume-like aroma.

chocolate and hazelnut was the main dessert attraction -- a chocolate box was layered bottom-up with a white-chocolate brownie, chocolate mousse torte and hazelnut foam. that wasn't the end of the sweets, though. our captain surprised us with two extra treats from the chef -- in front of jp was placed a small vanilla creme brulee, and i got an eggless custard with meyer lemon. both were incredible, especially the custard. i need to try and make that. a plate of homemade chocolates was offered at the end. needless to say we indulged, despite being just about full.

for wine, jp went with selections from the sommelier -- he started her off with champagne for the oysters and confit, and a white wine that carried the lobster and urchin. a spicy barolo (i think) accompanied the quail and beef. since it was late and i was driving, i went with one glass (though i did sample jp's selections), a very nice pinot noir that was light enough to work with the seafoods and had enough finish for the beef.

all in all, a great dinner. it's hard to believe that such small portions will fill you up, but the richness and that there are 9 courses leaves you quite sated. the service was impeccable -- the wine steward made great choices, and the servers provded clear explanations of each dish as it was placed on the table. it is an expensive indulgence but well worth it. i'm not a serious, serious foodie, but i appreciate good food enough to know that this was not just a great meal but an amazing dining experience.

the devil will find work for idle hands to do

aren't three-day weekends the best? especially when the days are sunny. of course i have some work to catch up on, but i can do it from the comfort of a cafe (revolution? dolores park cafe?) and not cooped up in my office.

last night we went to books inc in the castro for a reading featuring stephen elliott, daphne gottblieb and mark pritchard. pritchard led off with an hilarious story about a guy who takes a job as an assistant in a women's self defense class. excellent stuff. gottlieb and elliott read challenging and moving selections from their latest books.

(update) -- mak pritchard writes about the night on sfmetroblog.

wednesday, we unexpectedly (thanks to free tix from one of jp's coworkers) saw the new york dolls. like when i saw mission of burma, they're one of those bands who i didn't get to see in their original days (maybe because i was a wee lad). it wasn't the original line-up (which would be hard to do given that, sadly, johnny thunders died a while back) but they did alright. david johansen looks a bit old. like OLD. but he sounded great. sylvain sylvain played a mean guitar and a good foil to johansen's glam theatrics. not the same as seeing them at cb's in their heyday, but still a good set.

this is what you want, this is what you get

hooray, a democratic takeover not only of the house but likely the senate as well! this almost makes up for the pain of the 2004 election. at the very least, even if legislation gets vetoed by bush, there'll be hearings and oversight. it also rids capitol hill of idiots and louts like santorum (PA-SEN), hostettler (IN-08), sweeney (NY--20), weldon (PA-07), chocola (IN-02) and pombo (CA-11).

in ballot initiative good news the south dakota abortion bill was defeated. in ballot initiative bad news the michigan anti-affirmative action proposal won, and won big.

(update) and oh yeah, the stem cell initiative passed in MO, as did a minimum wage increase.

and i did my (small) part for democracy, by getting jp to vote in a non-presidential election. now i have to hold up my end of the bargain and re-apply for citizenship. it may be that i'll be eligible to vote in 2008. i have a feeling that'll be a big deal election.

the word of the day is...

halloweening

i've got some creativity in me, but for whatever reason it doesn't extend to good costume ideas. so halloween for me is not so much about the getting dressed up. still, there's still fun to be had, like carving pumpkins. even if the pumpkin gets a bad case of mold and disintegrates in a matter of days....
then there are parties like halloween in the castro. a great idea, in theory...a civic thing where people get together, show off, gawk...and apparently, shoot each other. so sad. another account at sf metroblog and sfist has a list of accounts and discussion here.

jp and i got there early, like 7:30pm early, before the crowds kicked in. maybe some of the freakier costumes hadn't turned out yet, but i still got some good shots. we stopped into some place for a drink, and in that meantime the crowds swelled. leaving was a chore as there were some fenced off areas where you could neither enter nor exit. so off we went into the choked-off area of mass entry around 16th & market. it was totally like swimming upstream against a strong current. we missed the shooting by about 30-45 minutes. i'd be shocked if there's another attempt at doing the event, which is a shame. mass gatherings shouldn't have to mean mass mayhem. most of the people there were just having a good time and an asshole few had to leave a bad taste.

we're only making plans for nigel

delinquency in writing thanks to being butt-ass busy. suffice to say that it's been a good busy, as i actually really like my job. but that's only part of the busy. i mean, it's hard to blog about life if you're very occupied living it.

to wit...last weekend...saturday began at alamo square, getting scout out to play with other dogs. he seemed to enjoy it...
following that, we took a ride to baker beach, stopping first to get vietnamese sammiches at a place at 31st & clement. i don't remember the name of the place,only that it's at the corner of 31st & clement and that the sammiches are really friggin good.

anyway, at the beach...scout happy to be there, and some classic bay area scenery.
for the ride home we took the long way, swinging by the sutro baths and ocean beach.

have i mentioned this enough times? how much i love living here?

sexual chocolate

via sfist.


reminds me that i need to get to scharffen-berger for a tour, and get to the bittersweet cafe in rockridge as well. both of these places were mentioned in the very first issue of the east bay express i read upon moving to berkeley last year. a good start to my life in the bay area, i thought then.

eat to the beat

oh yeah, another season of top chef starts tonight started last week. sadly they've moved the show from the bay area to socal, but that shouldn't matter too much. it's reality tv that i can actually get into, since it's about something i have both an interest in doing and can do somewhat well relative to the people on the show. well, second only to america's next top model -- see, thanks to last week's improv class i found out that i can commit totally and unselfconsciously to being a super-model character. go figure (tyra...call me!).

peter pumpkinhead came to town, spreading wisdom and cash around

in the spirit of the season, jp and i did some pumpkin carving the other night. she went for traditional and happy and did a great job. i went for scary and got what looks more like "drunked up". still, it was fun and i ended up with some pumpkin seeds which need roasting. maybe with this recipe. anyway...the results...