Quote from Bruce Sterling's closing keynote. I'm an unabashed Sterling fan, since I first read Distraction fifteen or so years ago. I have read most all of his stuff. Got a signed book. As I was about to run my patter on Bruce, John Perry Barlow showed up and Bruce went into "signing only, not chatting" mode. Fair enough; it's gotta suck signing books for an hour. JPB barely recognized me from our Kyoto night out, also fair enough...he meets a lotta folks.
SXSW is a very, very cool conference. Got in late yesterday, al pastor tacos and shiner bock with my friend Jess. We geek out, talk about scifi and the future, it's fun. The CC party is at the elks lodge and is nerd heaven. There is a pattern to these events: drinks at 8, speech at 9, first appearance of furtive cigarettes smoked by non smokers around 10, spastic nerd dancing at 11. The party follows this pattern precisely. There is amazing spastic nerd dancing. Cab home around 11:15, too much shiner bock...
A nice business hotel is a welcome thing after the last week. Big, comfy bed and nice towels. Privacy. Wifi. Good stuff.
Up early to convene the panel at the hotel starbucks. Starbucks is the leitmotif of my life over the last year. But it's a great thing. Antoun. Sri, a grad student of drew's at MIT. Susy who runs corporate standards at Sun and is a very, very good friend. Barbara, editor of PLoS Medicine. All fun, rowdy, smart, funny people. All but Antoun made the party last night; we're all a little in need of both caffeine and hydration.
Panel went better than I could have hoped. It's the first time I really feel like I knew how to moderate, to move conversations through a panel towards a goal, when to interrupt and when to let the panel find its own way. the hour flies by and we get barraged with great feedback. it will apparently be podcast and i'm going to download it to see if sounds as good on tape as it did on stage.
it's cool to see my picture in the main program. i feel a little weird about feeling that it's cool, but so be it.
lunch with a group of web 2.0 folks and some of my panelists at ironworks bbq. good bbq, not kreuz market, but still very good. i couldn't get a good shot of the "general and rectal surgery" sign hanging...bad light...the doctor's name was "sharpe"?
coming back here for sure next year. it's my kind of place. there is nowhere else you can network with this group of people in such a relaxed setting. it doesn't matter who you are or what you wear, as long as you're here. everyone is energized, techie, and cares about the issues. there are classic geeks, guys with pink hair, girls with cowboy hats and boots and skirts who are starting technology voter organizations, documentary filmmakers, hipsters, wannabe musicians, net celebrities, marketroids, college students, old school texans, everything. it's really a shot in the arm.
Tuesday, March 14, 2006
Hounding in Portland, OR
a great interlude weekend in a hard run of travel.
food pix at http://flickr.com/photos/wilbanks/tags/riggsby/
portland pix at http://flickr.com/photos/wilbanks/tags/portland/
dinner at montage friday night. hipster heaven, tattooed wait staff with little training but spectacular attitude. leftovers are twisted into two-foot tall foil origami. everything is cheap, the lighting is dim, the atmosphere rowdy. nine kinds of mac and cheese, lots of rice and pasta dishes. spam and frog legs permeate the menu. i passed on the spam and spicy mac and went with the ham and smoked cheddar mac.
slept late for body time if not local time. walked into the little village of the neighborhood where ben and terri live in southwest portland for coffee and pastry. dogs everywhere, clean air, big fluffy clouds and intermittent sun. the trees are just starting to burst here, forsythia bright yellow and loud with spring. four coffeeshops in three blocks. came back and went to the grocery with ben - something about groceries in the suburbs compared to my grim stop and shop in southie always makes me a little wistful as a cook.
ben got the smoker started and dropped on the ten pounds of canadian bacon that represented the first part of the bbq day. ross and ben are starting a smokehouse business and this is one of many training runs. also on the smoker today is a 20-lb beef shoulder that will cook down to about 10lbs after the fat renders, and we're also going to make and hang sausage. should be ready to eat in a few months. the next practice run is prosciutto and saucisson sec.
i'm on appetizers and chop duty, so make salsa and guacamole.
terri takes me into portland for a two-hour tour mid-day after the clod hits the smoker. portland is the hippiest town i've even seen. if i need a tapestry or my aura read, i know exactly where to go. there are apparently twelve places within five minutes of ross's house where you can buy nag champa incense. the downtown area is clean, orderly. the city is bisected by a river and there are a lot of bridges. there's a weekend market with lots of carnival food (corn dogs and curly fries) as well as hippie food (heavy on the middle eastern vegan style). handmade pottery, stained glass, hemp clothing. we walk across one of the bridges to look at a skateboard park tucked under the bridge.
back to the house to begin cooking in earnest. ross and ben slice the bacon for vacuum packing. we prep the table and start drinking the amazing beer that can be bought here. the clod is perfect, crusty and peppery on the outside and tender on the inside. we serve it kreuz market style with jalapeno, cheese, onion, avocado, salsa. ben also makes yorkshire pudding cups, puffy pastry drizzled with the drippings from the clod. it's so good.
then it's time to start cooking again. ross and ben start on the sausage, blending together beef and pork and spices and the microbes you have to add to a dry hang sausage to keep it from spoiling. as they start running the mix into the casings i start working on the green chile sauce; we're having enchiladas tonight and i know that i won't want to go back into heavy cooking mode again. i got most of the way through: braised the poblanos, onions, garlic til melting tender, braised the chicken in the mix, pureed the veggie mix back into the stock and shredded the chicken back in. all i have to do tonight is add in the sour cream and assemble enchiladas.
we were going to head to the coast today and get oysters but ben's got the edge of a cold, and i'm not eager to spend four hours in the car. we're instead cooking some of the bacon we made yesterday, eggs and biscuits and juice and strong coffee. then heading into town to the legendary powell's bookstore - which i'm told has a magnificent philosophy of science section.
food pix at http://flickr.com/photos/wilbanks/tags/riggsby/
portland pix at http://flickr.com/photos/wilbanks/tags/portland/
dinner at montage friday night. hipster heaven, tattooed wait staff with little training but spectacular attitude. leftovers are twisted into two-foot tall foil origami. everything is cheap, the lighting is dim, the atmosphere rowdy. nine kinds of mac and cheese, lots of rice and pasta dishes. spam and frog legs permeate the menu. i passed on the spam and spicy mac and went with the ham and smoked cheddar mac.
slept late for body time if not local time. walked into the little village of the neighborhood where ben and terri live in southwest portland for coffee and pastry. dogs everywhere, clean air, big fluffy clouds and intermittent sun. the trees are just starting to burst here, forsythia bright yellow and loud with spring. four coffeeshops in three blocks. came back and went to the grocery with ben - something about groceries in the suburbs compared to my grim stop and shop in southie always makes me a little wistful as a cook.
ben got the smoker started and dropped on the ten pounds of canadian bacon that represented the first part of the bbq day. ross and ben are starting a smokehouse business and this is one of many training runs. also on the smoker today is a 20-lb beef shoulder that will cook down to about 10lbs after the fat renders, and we're also going to make and hang sausage. should be ready to eat in a few months. the next practice run is prosciutto and saucisson sec.
i'm on appetizers and chop duty, so make salsa and guacamole.
terri takes me into portland for a two-hour tour mid-day after the clod hits the smoker. portland is the hippiest town i've even seen. if i need a tapestry or my aura read, i know exactly where to go. there are apparently twelve places within five minutes of ross's house where you can buy nag champa incense. the downtown area is clean, orderly. the city is bisected by a river and there are a lot of bridges. there's a weekend market with lots of carnival food (corn dogs and curly fries) as well as hippie food (heavy on the middle eastern vegan style). handmade pottery, stained glass, hemp clothing. we walk across one of the bridges to look at a skateboard park tucked under the bridge.
back to the house to begin cooking in earnest. ross and ben slice the bacon for vacuum packing. we prep the table and start drinking the amazing beer that can be bought here. the clod is perfect, crusty and peppery on the outside and tender on the inside. we serve it kreuz market style with jalapeno, cheese, onion, avocado, salsa. ben also makes yorkshire pudding cups, puffy pastry drizzled with the drippings from the clod. it's so good.
then it's time to start cooking again. ross and ben start on the sausage, blending together beef and pork and spices and the microbes you have to add to a dry hang sausage to keep it from spoiling. as they start running the mix into the casings i start working on the green chile sauce; we're having enchiladas tonight and i know that i won't want to go back into heavy cooking mode again. i got most of the way through: braised the poblanos, onions, garlic til melting tender, braised the chicken in the mix, pureed the veggie mix back into the stock and shredded the chicken back in. all i have to do tonight is add in the sour cream and assemble enchiladas.
we were going to head to the coast today and get oysters but ben's got the edge of a cold, and i'm not eager to spend four hours in the car. we're instead cooking some of the bacon we made yesterday, eggs and biscuits and juice and strong coffee. then heading into town to the legendary powell's bookstore - which i'm told has a magnificent philosophy of science section.
Friday, March 03, 2006
online presence, techno nomadism
the social software bloggers talk a lot about presence. about how the generation below ours, or perhaps two below, thinks of the net as ever present. they don't really know what it means to be analog, to treasure a piece of plastic as the representation of music, to think of anything that can't be relatively effortlessly copied and transferred. to be lost. to need a dime for a phone call. to ask at the hotel desk where you can get a bite to eat.
to these folks, presence online is defining. think of the little icon in instant messaging software. mine is frequently grayed out, as i rarely leave it logged on but with an away message. this generation - there appear to be semi serious surveys on this - never does that. they tell their friends if they're sleeping, or studying, with the red icon, not by logging out. they're always present. they use the web from their phones. text messages are a way of life.
blackberries can be contemplated, from this perspective, as an infection of youth culture into business culture. they fill very different needs of course. there's a real business need in some fields for constant communication (this may be a pyhrric victory for the short term over the long term, we'll see). but i think few people really need them. those doing international transactions, for sure. no one wants to be chained to the desk through the night, just in case the deal comes through or goes crazy. anyone who works weird hours. people in high value service industries like law, accounting, stocks. people who need to be present.
nearly everyone asks me why i don't have one. i think it's because i don't need one. but i've been wondering why i don't need one, given that i do international transactions and work weird hours. i think it boils down to presence and how i manage mine.
i've got three primary email addresses at this point, which i check with very different levels of regularity. my work email is always on when i'm online, with a noise to let me know when new mail comes in. i'm always logged into AIM in that context, with similar noise alerts. i've got my computer set up to keep making noises after the screensaver kicks in, so i can hear communications incoming for up to an hour after i move away. i can sit around reading, cooking, eating, scratching, and still respond nearly instantly as long as i'm in earshot. to work email, that is.
it's great that no one can email me when i'm walking, given that i typically walk at least an hour a day. walking is a very balancing thing. i think a lot. i space out. my brain slots problems and solutions together. and i can't talk to anyone - i hate walking and talking on the cell. it's an enforced sojourn with my brain, with sensory input. last week i walked in the bitter cold from mit to harvard, without even really intending to do so or even noticing. it's only the lack of presence that lets me be that free.
i check my semi pro account and my personal accounts a lot less. i'll spend a few minutes in the morning and a few minutes in the afternoon on each one, sometimes time in the evening. but those accounts see a lot less presence than my work one. being present this way is a resource drain i only apply to work, or to people who actually get to use my work email without getting banished to yahooland. I don't really talk to non work people on IM.
IM used that way is like a virtual water cooler. I've got the team using group chats as a backend to our staff concalls now, and they're about used enough to it that I'm going to create a CC staff room that we can all just hang out in. This is a great way to manage a virtual team, but it takes a lot of time to get people used to the idea.
All of this is, in its own way, an emergent office behavior system. I once read a description of military etiquette (SIR YES SIR) as a way of behaving that made it easier for a bunch of guys to travel all over the world, doing incredibly weird stuff together, and not kill one another. I suppose, killing only those who are *outside* the system.
This system strikes me as a non killing system that makes it easier for a set of technonomads to stay in touch. my friends are scattered across the country and world, some of whom i only ever see by accident in airports. i know ceos, hollywood directors, rock stars and rock musicians, venture capitalists, and more. we stay in touch by email, almost exclusively. i know many of these people intimately though i see them at most once a year, and never talk to most of them on the phone. there's a personality representation that can come out through email that, disintermediated from physical self, is in some ways more honest and less forced. in some ways the physical reunions are a little forced in comparison to the ease of emails and lists.
It also makes me wonder about that generation below. I feel very fortunate. I remember music as a physical thing, something with *heft*, and both mourn and welcome the transition to bits. It's why i have vinyl records at home. i remember before cable. i remember before video games, when you could only get phones from at&t. i revel in my time online, as well as offline, in the digital and in the analog.
i wonder about the psychological impact of constant presence starting at age 5 and the impact of physical isolation as created by an ipod culture. i don't have one of those either, i like to listen to people on the bus; you'd be amazed what people will say into a cell phone two feet from you. i like being present online when i'm alone, and in the world when i'm in it.
to these folks, presence online is defining. think of the little icon in instant messaging software. mine is frequently grayed out, as i rarely leave it logged on but with an away message. this generation - there appear to be semi serious surveys on this - never does that. they tell their friends if they're sleeping, or studying, with the red icon, not by logging out. they're always present. they use the web from their phones. text messages are a way of life.
blackberries can be contemplated, from this perspective, as an infection of youth culture into business culture. they fill very different needs of course. there's a real business need in some fields for constant communication (this may be a pyhrric victory for the short term over the long term, we'll see). but i think few people really need them. those doing international transactions, for sure. no one wants to be chained to the desk through the night, just in case the deal comes through or goes crazy. anyone who works weird hours. people in high value service industries like law, accounting, stocks. people who need to be present.
nearly everyone asks me why i don't have one. i think it's because i don't need one. but i've been wondering why i don't need one, given that i do international transactions and work weird hours. i think it boils down to presence and how i manage mine.
i've got three primary email addresses at this point, which i check with very different levels of regularity. my work email is always on when i'm online, with a noise to let me know when new mail comes in. i'm always logged into AIM in that context, with similar noise alerts. i've got my computer set up to keep making noises after the screensaver kicks in, so i can hear communications incoming for up to an hour after i move away. i can sit around reading, cooking, eating, scratching, and still respond nearly instantly as long as i'm in earshot. to work email, that is.
it's great that no one can email me when i'm walking, given that i typically walk at least an hour a day. walking is a very balancing thing. i think a lot. i space out. my brain slots problems and solutions together. and i can't talk to anyone - i hate walking and talking on the cell. it's an enforced sojourn with my brain, with sensory input. last week i walked in the bitter cold from mit to harvard, without even really intending to do so or even noticing. it's only the lack of presence that lets me be that free.
i check my semi pro account and my personal accounts a lot less. i'll spend a few minutes in the morning and a few minutes in the afternoon on each one, sometimes time in the evening. but those accounts see a lot less presence than my work one. being present this way is a resource drain i only apply to work, or to people who actually get to use my work email without getting banished to yahooland. I don't really talk to non work people on IM.
IM used that way is like a virtual water cooler. I've got the team using group chats as a backend to our staff concalls now, and they're about used enough to it that I'm going to create a CC staff room that we can all just hang out in. This is a great way to manage a virtual team, but it takes a lot of time to get people used to the idea.
All of this is, in its own way, an emergent office behavior system. I once read a description of military etiquette (SIR YES SIR) as a way of behaving that made it easier for a bunch of guys to travel all over the world, doing incredibly weird stuff together, and not kill one another. I suppose, killing only those who are *outside* the system.
This system strikes me as a non killing system that makes it easier for a set of technonomads to stay in touch. my friends are scattered across the country and world, some of whom i only ever see by accident in airports. i know ceos, hollywood directors, rock stars and rock musicians, venture capitalists, and more. we stay in touch by email, almost exclusively. i know many of these people intimately though i see them at most once a year, and never talk to most of them on the phone. there's a personality representation that can come out through email that, disintermediated from physical self, is in some ways more honest and less forced. in some ways the physical reunions are a little forced in comparison to the ease of emails and lists.
It also makes me wonder about that generation below. I feel very fortunate. I remember music as a physical thing, something with *heft*, and both mourn and welcome the transition to bits. It's why i have vinyl records at home. i remember before cable. i remember before video games, when you could only get phones from at&t. i revel in my time online, as well as offline, in the digital and in the analog.
i wonder about the psychological impact of constant presence starting at age 5 and the impact of physical isolation as created by an ipod culture. i don't have one of those either, i like to listen to people on the bus; you'd be amazed what people will say into a cell phone two feet from you. i like being present online when i'm alone, and in the world when i'm in it.
Saturday, February 25, 2006
Mardi Gras in Boston
Mardi Gras and Boston don't exactly go together. This is, after all, the town founded by people who thought England was too much fun in the 1600s, so they came to Cape Cod and New England to pass along smallpox, live a life of repressive religion and cook their food without spices. A lot of that still reverberates here: classic boston cooking tends to involve a hunk of white fish covered in breadcrumbs and broiled, then served without sauce or pepper.
The whole idea of a multiweek outdoor pagan celebration also doesn't work as well in the depths of a real winter.
There is a lot of Mardi Gras activity on the various ski resorts. Unfortunately nearly all of it happens after Fat Tuesday, which is even worse than having a Halloween party the week of Thanksgiving. I saw the Radiators at Killington one year in such an event, and when the doorman offered me beads I intoned that I'd given them up for Lent. Blank stare in return. New Orleanians love that story.
Anyhow. Last night the good folks at Harpers Ferry booked a real New Orleans show during the real Mardi Gras weekend. My friends in the band Juice came up for three nights with Brotherhood of Groove, and Big Sam (trombone player from the Dirty Dozen Brass Band) came along for the ride, sitting in with everyone. Boston Horns opened the show. Juice was a little sloppy but energetic, funky and well received.
It's easy to forget to go see music and your friends and dance and all that good stuff, especially when work is fun and fulfilling itself or when life is...hectic. But it's an imbalance. Mardi Gras is in its own way about addressing that - having fun in the face of impending abstinence, laughing at tragedy, inverting rituals. It's also about making fun a priority sometimes, an organized and specific part of life for a date certain. For a few days a year at least, Dionysus is in charge. He even gets his own parade in New Orleans. And I'm glad I got to see him last night, if briefly.
The whole idea of a multiweek outdoor pagan celebration also doesn't work as well in the depths of a real winter.
There is a lot of Mardi Gras activity on the various ski resorts. Unfortunately nearly all of it happens after Fat Tuesday, which is even worse than having a Halloween party the week of Thanksgiving. I saw the Radiators at Killington one year in such an event, and when the doorman offered me beads I intoned that I'd given them up for Lent. Blank stare in return. New Orleanians love that story.
Anyhow. Last night the good folks at Harpers Ferry booked a real New Orleans show during the real Mardi Gras weekend. My friends in the band Juice came up for three nights with Brotherhood of Groove, and Big Sam (trombone player from the Dirty Dozen Brass Band) came along for the ride, sitting in with everyone. Boston Horns opened the show. Juice was a little sloppy but energetic, funky and well received.
It's easy to forget to go see music and your friends and dance and all that good stuff, especially when work is fun and fulfilling itself or when life is...hectic. But it's an imbalance. Mardi Gras is in its own way about addressing that - having fun in the face of impending abstinence, laughing at tragedy, inverting rituals. It's also about making fun a priority sometimes, an organized and specific part of life for a date certain. For a few days a year at least, Dionysus is in charge. He even gets his own parade in New Orleans. And I'm glad I got to see him last night, if briefly.
Monday, February 20, 2006
Saturday, February 18, 2006
Living in Public
180,000 miles in the air last year. 88 nights in hotels. Innumerable tagamet and maalox. I feel like the guy they made fun of in the onion sometimes - in case you don't know, the domestic terminal at SFO has great chow mein by the delta / northwest security gates.
Travel is weird. I have friends in rock bands, they travel even more than me. But they travel with other folks, a shared experience, with varying levels of support staff and stuff from the sublime (major label) to the ridiculous (my couch). I travel alone for the most part.
The last few months I've done a lot of thinking about it. What's good, what's bad. Why it's worth it. Why sometimes it's fun and sometimes it sucks. The fun part will define another post. This one's about some of the reasons it sucks.
For me it's about living without privacy. I like people. I like to talk to people. It's pretty much what I do for a living - go around, talk to people, try to get them to agree with what I'm doing and either join the movement or give me some funding to push the movement forward. But I'm a deeply private person and travel, for work or for play, rips privacy to shreds.
I love my apartment, my peace and quiet, my instruments, my pots and pans, my staple foods. I really like my own bed and towels. I like having a full set of clothes around. I don't really like houseguests, and the band couch above is one of the only exceptions to that rule. They don't come around a lot and I get a lot outta them.
I don't like the hours and hours of non private travel time. Right now I'm alone in the airport terminal, blogging because I don't want to watch TV in the airport bar or run through my book before the flight. The airport is a public space like the subway - no one talks to you unless they're drunk or think you're cutting in line. So we all pretend to have some privacy, we pretend not to smell the farts or notice the nosepicking. There is ubiquitous taupe, grey and blue carpeting. Ambient noise. I hate it. It doesn't stress me out anymore, but I still hate it.
Two nights ago, at dinner with a board member who travels way more than me (actually two of them, both of whom put me to shame) I heard him say that when he gets to the airport he enters a timefree, stressfree zone in his head. Never gets tense about lines, never thinks of where he is as being grounded in a specific time zone. It's a good way to think about it. I've certainly lost the habit of being stressed at the airport. But can't quite grip the time concept. He flies from Japan to Germany twice a month, so perhaps that's different.
This is all just carping because I wish I were going home instead of another hotel in another town. Ah well.
Travel is weird. I have friends in rock bands, they travel even more than me. But they travel with other folks, a shared experience, with varying levels of support staff and stuff from the sublime (major label) to the ridiculous (my couch). I travel alone for the most part.
The last few months I've done a lot of thinking about it. What's good, what's bad. Why it's worth it. Why sometimes it's fun and sometimes it sucks. The fun part will define another post. This one's about some of the reasons it sucks.
For me it's about living without privacy. I like people. I like to talk to people. It's pretty much what I do for a living - go around, talk to people, try to get them to agree with what I'm doing and either join the movement or give me some funding to push the movement forward. But I'm a deeply private person and travel, for work or for play, rips privacy to shreds.
I love my apartment, my peace and quiet, my instruments, my pots and pans, my staple foods. I really like my own bed and towels. I like having a full set of clothes around. I don't really like houseguests, and the band couch above is one of the only exceptions to that rule. They don't come around a lot and I get a lot outta them.
I don't like the hours and hours of non private travel time. Right now I'm alone in the airport terminal, blogging because I don't want to watch TV in the airport bar or run through my book before the flight. The airport is a public space like the subway - no one talks to you unless they're drunk or think you're cutting in line. So we all pretend to have some privacy, we pretend not to smell the farts or notice the nosepicking. There is ubiquitous taupe, grey and blue carpeting. Ambient noise. I hate it. It doesn't stress me out anymore, but I still hate it.
Two nights ago, at dinner with a board member who travels way more than me (actually two of them, both of whom put me to shame) I heard him say that when he gets to the airport he enters a timefree, stressfree zone in his head. Never gets tense about lines, never thinks of where he is as being grounded in a specific time zone. It's a good way to think about it. I've certainly lost the habit of being stressed at the airport. But can't quite grip the time concept. He flies from Japan to Germany twice a month, so perhaps that's different.
This is all just carping because I wish I were going home instead of another hotel in another town. Ah well.
Tuesday, February 14, 2006
my funny (sf) valentine
I hate valentine's day. Whether single or coupled, it's almost impossible to live up to the hallmark corporation's depiction of the day. That said, today wasn't too bad, for being solo and on the road...
Full day at work - concalls to the east coast in my boxers, good day at the cc offices (fully clothed), group lunch of burgers. Only here is the burger meal 1/6 beef. Salmon burgers. Turkey burgers. Veggie burgers.
Work meeting in the late afternoon, battling jetlag through four double espressos over the course of the day. Vanilla lemonade, no booze.
Thence to a flashmob pillow fight. Best part was hearing the bell toll six pm and seeing about 50 people carrying pillows drop into a full sprint. It was like the blizzard in boston, except with down feathers flying everywhere.
Drinks with a work colleague at a used-to-be-a-dive, now looks-like-a-dive-but-with-dj bar. Solo dinner of chow mein with pork at Sam Wo, a venerable chinatown dump. Not the best. But $5.50 with tip is hard to beat, and there's something about a plowing through a pile of noodles, alone in the second floor of a garret, that just screams valentine's day...
Full day at work - concalls to the east coast in my boxers, good day at the cc offices (fully clothed), group lunch of burgers. Only here is the burger meal 1/6 beef. Salmon burgers. Turkey burgers. Veggie burgers.
Work meeting in the late afternoon, battling jetlag through four double espressos over the course of the day. Vanilla lemonade, no booze.
Thence to a flashmob pillow fight. Best part was hearing the bell toll six pm and seeing about 50 people carrying pillows drop into a full sprint. It was like the blizzard in boston, except with down feathers flying everywhere.
Drinks with a work colleague at a used-to-be-a-dive, now looks-like-a-dive-but-with-dj bar. Solo dinner of chow mein with pork at Sam Wo, a venerable chinatown dump. Not the best. But $5.50 with tip is hard to beat, and there's something about a plowing through a pile of noodles, alone in the second floor of a garret, that just screams valentine's day...
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Snow Report
Ah, the Boston Blizzard. A unique phenomenon.
I grew up in Tennessee. We have different standards for "blizzards" mainly involving around 2" of snow, massive shortages of white bread / toilet paper / canned goods in the stores, and hysterical drivers in SUVs careening through intersections. Folks are calmer up here, local news staff notwithstanding.
It was a good weekend to lead into a day sequestered in the snow. Friday night dinner at Silvertone, drinks at the Enormous Room (verdict: worth the hipster factor when the DJ is of high quality...which it was, barely - but don't wait in line to get in). Up at 5AM Saturday to ski Loon, a crushing wreck on the ice and a sore thigh. Made it easy to spend today chowing junk food watching the olympics while it was whiteout outside. Wasn't nearly as bad at any point as the short blizzard in December, but it went on and on and on. I was crusted with snow after a walk to the 7-11 for essentials. But, for the first time ever, I was able to find a parking spot less than 100 feet from Taiwan Cafe for late lunch on a Sunday (well, my friend with the 4-wheel drive found it, but I got to walk from it with my gimpy leg). Small victories.
I grew up in Tennessee. We have different standards for "blizzards" mainly involving around 2" of snow, massive shortages of white bread / toilet paper / canned goods in the stores, and hysterical drivers in SUVs careening through intersections. Folks are calmer up here, local news staff notwithstanding.
It was a good weekend to lead into a day sequestered in the snow. Friday night dinner at Silvertone, drinks at the Enormous Room (verdict: worth the hipster factor when the DJ is of high quality...which it was, barely - but don't wait in line to get in). Up at 5AM Saturday to ski Loon, a crushing wreck on the ice and a sore thigh. Made it easy to spend today chowing junk food watching the olympics while it was whiteout outside. Wasn't nearly as bad at any point as the short blizzard in December, but it went on and on and on. I was crusted with snow after a walk to the 7-11 for essentials. But, for the first time ever, I was able to find a parking spot less than 100 feet from Taiwan Cafe for late lunch on a Sunday (well, my friend with the 4-wheel drive found it, but I got to walk from it with my gimpy leg). Small victories.
Saturday, February 04, 2006
Postcard from Zagreb
Greetings from Club Mama, the brainchild of my hosts in Zagreb and the unofficial home of Creative Commons Croatia.
Got to Zagreb on Thursday afternoon for the "Freedom to Creativity" Festival (in Croatian, "sloboda stvaralastvu"). It's the second annual version of the festival and last year was the launch of CC - Croatia. This year the theme is science and technology which is why I'm here. Lectured Thursday night at the exposition - they had translations of open science web sites, including ours, open source organic seeds, and a set of microscopes that lent themselves well to pictures.
Dinner Thursday was with my host Tom at a Dalmatian fish restaurant. He had the black risotto (black from the cuttlefish ink) and I had salt cod with boiled buttered potatoes. Tasty. Although I prefer what a cream poach does to salt cod, this was good. Dessert was a local specialty - caramel cake - which was more akin to a caramel custard or flan, but with rose liquer added for bouquet. First of many double espressos with dessert.
Friday morning I got interviewed by a Croatian TV show. I was told afterwards that it's actually more like "A Current Affair" than "Nova" - last week there was a major story on alien abductions - but that it's also the most popular show about science in the country. You pays your money and you takes your choice. I am excited at the idea that the show is frequently digitized in Bosnia and that DVDs of those digitizations are sometimes available on the black market. Me wantee.
Friday afternoon I lectured at the local university, with a solid turnout (let's just say that in my speeches, there's usually more seats than people, but this time it was a sellout). Both lectures had lots and lots of questions.
Friday night I had dinner with Tom and his girlfriend, Ivana. Broccoli soup and kalbschnitzel. Then we went to the first concert for the festival. Tom and Marcel (my other host) also run the largest electronic music label in the country and were promoting a band's first appearance in Zagreb - MistakeMistake out of Belgrade. If you like Hip-electro- ragga-2-hop reggae-step, there appears to be a serious scene waiting for you in Belgrade. It was a lot of fun. They were followed in short order by Ghetto Booties, three women with laptops. Think a modern, Croatian version of the go-gos but based on electronica. Half liters of strong dark beer were $2. And just so you know, if you see a skinhead with white laces in his shoes, beware. Apparently the ones with black laces are much less likely to stomp you.
Slept late this morning - was expecting a reporter from the local daily to call, but she let me be, apparently - then took a long walk around the center of town, the food market, the cathedral. Ate a slice of quite decent pizza, grabbed some apple brandy and plum brandy from the natural products store around the corner and came back to mama for wireless and coffee. Air france home tomorrow just in time for the super bowl and a burger in southie.
It's nice here. It really brings home the divide between the US and the Balkans though - the people my age lived through a civil war that destroyed an entire way of life, after growing up under socialism. There's a brutal honesty and an awareness of the importance of context, art, language and more that is just nonexistent in the states. We're really lucky. But it's made us a lot more boring, and made us ignore an awful lot of stuff we should pay attention to...
All Zagreb pix here.
Got to Zagreb on Thursday afternoon for the "Freedom to Creativity" Festival (in Croatian, "sloboda stvaralastvu"). It's the second annual version of the festival and last year was the launch of CC - Croatia. This year the theme is science and technology which is why I'm here. Lectured Thursday night at the exposition - they had translations of open science web sites, including ours, open source organic seeds, and a set of microscopes that lent themselves well to pictures.
Dinner Thursday was with my host Tom at a Dalmatian fish restaurant. He had the black risotto (black from the cuttlefish ink) and I had salt cod with boiled buttered potatoes. Tasty. Although I prefer what a cream poach does to salt cod, this was good. Dessert was a local specialty - caramel cake - which was more akin to a caramel custard or flan, but with rose liquer added for bouquet. First of many double espressos with dessert.
Friday morning I got interviewed by a Croatian TV show. I was told afterwards that it's actually more like "A Current Affair" than "Nova" - last week there was a major story on alien abductions - but that it's also the most popular show about science in the country. You pays your money and you takes your choice. I am excited at the idea that the show is frequently digitized in Bosnia and that DVDs of those digitizations are sometimes available on the black market. Me wantee.
Friday afternoon I lectured at the local university, with a solid turnout (let's just say that in my speeches, there's usually more seats than people, but this time it was a sellout). Both lectures had lots and lots of questions.
Friday night I had dinner with Tom and his girlfriend, Ivana. Broccoli soup and kalbschnitzel. Then we went to the first concert for the festival. Tom and Marcel (my other host) also run the largest electronic music label in the country and were promoting a band's first appearance in Zagreb - MistakeMistake out of Belgrade. If you like Hip-electro- ragga-2-hop reggae-step, there appears to be a serious scene waiting for you in Belgrade. It was a lot of fun. They were followed in short order by Ghetto Booties, three women with laptops. Think a modern, Croatian version of the go-gos but based on electronica. Half liters of strong dark beer were $2. And just so you know, if you see a skinhead with white laces in his shoes, beware. Apparently the ones with black laces are much less likely to stomp you.
Slept late this morning - was expecting a reporter from the local daily to call, but she let me be, apparently - then took a long walk around the center of town, the food market, the cathedral. Ate a slice of quite decent pizza, grabbed some apple brandy and plum brandy from the natural products store around the corner and came back to mama for wireless and coffee. Air france home tomorrow just in time for the super bowl and a burger in southie.
It's nice here. It really brings home the divide between the US and the Balkans though - the people my age lived through a civil war that destroyed an entire way of life, after growing up under socialism. There's a brutal honesty and an awareness of the importance of context, art, language and more that is just nonexistent in the states. We're really lucky. But it's made us a lot more boring, and made us ignore an awful lot of stuff we should pay attention to...
All Zagreb pix here.
Monday, January 30, 2006
Make Levees, Not War, part I...
Just back from a two-day pass to New Orleans.
I used to live there. It has been an integral part of my life ever since. It's where I got hooked on good art, good literature, strong coffee, and live music as a way of life. I still make po'boys. I cook lobsters with zatarain's pro boil, onions, corn, garlic and potatoes. I've only missed three jazzfests since 1991. I hadn't been back since Katrina.
Landed around 2:00 last friday, nerves jangling and brain humming. Had tried to keep expectations down but the weight of so many years just bubbled up as the plane vectored in down over lake ponchatrain. Although it's winter, and winter isn't the greenest season in new orleans, the first thing that struck me was the overal brown-ness of the land coming in. That, and all the leafless trees bent over at 45 degree angles. Greenest thing I saw other than the moss was the signage on I-10.
Coming down the escalators at the airport, a sign directing red cross volunteers to shuttle buses. FEMA presence everywhere. Abita and po'boys in the airport. That part's the same. But there is an eerie emptiness that is a new element of new orleans.
My friend Dave picked me up at the airport and took me to his music studio. We drove down airline highway to earhart expressway into town. The first thing you see is the forest of FEMA trailers on airline, waiting to get pushed out I suppose. As you drive into the city on the route you start to notice that every other house seems to have a blue tarp roof, all the same shade and all nailed down the same way. There are thousands of blue tarps, on houses grand and not so grand. Trash is everywhere in the streets. I can't imagine the fatigue of a resident here, trying to sift through and truly get the property clean.
The waterline was the second thing I noticed. It's an easy thing to miss. But once you see it, you see it everywhere.
Just like the ring around a dirty tub, but you see it on the outside of houses, in some places knee deep, in others above your head. There was one place that struck me most, as the water line was about neck high and all the windows in the area were broken there from floating garbage at the waterline. It finally hit me after a few hours that the water was that high for a very, very long time. Even the view from our hotel room saw destruction. I didn't go to the lower 9th ward or to lakeview. My friend Tim went to New Orleans East. It was much, much worse.
Everywhere you look, there is devastation and rebirth. New leaf buds on the trees arch over empty house lots and cypress stumps bigger than minivans. Vast swaths of the city lay dark at night. It's creepy. I just read the Third Man by Graham Greene a while back, and recently saw the movie. It's set in postwar Vienna and in the movie, the rubble is a part of the set. That's what New Orleans feels like. You start having fun and thinking, hey, the city's back! And then you turn a corner and someplace you used to know sits in front of you in ruins. Jarring.
Uptown survived the worst of the storm. Tulane took a lot of wind damage - but the fact that you don't see a waterline around there tells you everything you need to know. It looks a lot like it used to look, but with more trash. The trash is iconic. There's so much to truck in and out of the city, fresh bricks and old bricks, rotted wood and new wood, that the trash is of the least importance right now. You'll see boats beached in the neutral ground by the Superdome, and thousands of destroyed cars.
Spraypaint over the houses is a feature of mid city and other neighborhoods. There's typically a date that the house was searched. If the paint says "CF" that means a corpse was found there.
But at night, at the right time, it feels like it used to feel like. Free oysters, traditional new orleans jazz and funk at Le Bon Temps on Magazine. The Radiators with trombones at Tipitina's. Juice with Brint Anderson and friends at dba. Mother's serving debris breakfast with grits, huevos rancheros at the Bluebird.
Other signs of drastic change and recovery are everywhere. FEMA trailers blocking streets in Jefferson Parish. Burger King offering $250 a paycheck bonuses, Popeyes starting new employees at $9 an hour. Legendary bars and restaurants with limited menus and desperate pleas for experienced staff. You could come in from out of town, no contacts, and be a badass in six months.
Liminal is the only word for it. It's like noplace I've ever been. William Gibson fantasized about post-earthquake Tokyo and a San Francisco where the Golden Gate became a housing project. New Orleans is that post-apocalypse scenario. It's oddly normal, but completely abnormal, all at once.
I used to live there. It has been an integral part of my life ever since. It's where I got hooked on good art, good literature, strong coffee, and live music as a way of life. I still make po'boys. I cook lobsters with zatarain's pro boil, onions, corn, garlic and potatoes. I've only missed three jazzfests since 1991. I hadn't been back since Katrina.
Landed around 2:00 last friday, nerves jangling and brain humming. Had tried to keep expectations down but the weight of so many years just bubbled up as the plane vectored in down over lake ponchatrain. Although it's winter, and winter isn't the greenest season in new orleans, the first thing that struck me was the overal brown-ness of the land coming in. That, and all the leafless trees bent over at 45 degree angles. Greenest thing I saw other than the moss was the signage on I-10.
Coming down the escalators at the airport, a sign directing red cross volunteers to shuttle buses. FEMA presence everywhere. Abita and po'boys in the airport. That part's the same. But there is an eerie emptiness that is a new element of new orleans.
My friend Dave picked me up at the airport and took me to his music studio. We drove down airline highway to earhart expressway into town. The first thing you see is the forest of FEMA trailers on airline, waiting to get pushed out I suppose. As you drive into the city on the route you start to notice that every other house seems to have a blue tarp roof, all the same shade and all nailed down the same way. There are thousands of blue tarps, on houses grand and not so grand. Trash is everywhere in the streets. I can't imagine the fatigue of a resident here, trying to sift through and truly get the property clean.
The waterline was the second thing I noticed. It's an easy thing to miss. But once you see it, you see it everywhere.
Just like the ring around a dirty tub, but you see it on the outside of houses, in some places knee deep, in others above your head. There was one place that struck me most, as the water line was about neck high and all the windows in the area were broken there from floating garbage at the waterline. It finally hit me after a few hours that the water was that high for a very, very long time. Even the view from our hotel room saw destruction. I didn't go to the lower 9th ward or to lakeview. My friend Tim went to New Orleans East. It was much, much worse.
Everywhere you look, there is devastation and rebirth. New leaf buds on the trees arch over empty house lots and cypress stumps bigger than minivans. Vast swaths of the city lay dark at night. It's creepy. I just read the Third Man by Graham Greene a while back, and recently saw the movie. It's set in postwar Vienna and in the movie, the rubble is a part of the set. That's what New Orleans feels like. You start having fun and thinking, hey, the city's back! And then you turn a corner and someplace you used to know sits in front of you in ruins. Jarring.
Uptown survived the worst of the storm. Tulane took a lot of wind damage - but the fact that you don't see a waterline around there tells you everything you need to know. It looks a lot like it used to look, but with more trash. The trash is iconic. There's so much to truck in and out of the city, fresh bricks and old bricks, rotted wood and new wood, that the trash is of the least importance right now. You'll see boats beached in the neutral ground by the Superdome, and thousands of destroyed cars.
Spraypaint over the houses is a feature of mid city and other neighborhoods. There's typically a date that the house was searched. If the paint says "CF" that means a corpse was found there.
But at night, at the right time, it feels like it used to feel like. Free oysters, traditional new orleans jazz and funk at Le Bon Temps on Magazine. The Radiators with trombones at Tipitina's. Juice with Brint Anderson and friends at dba. Mother's serving debris breakfast with grits, huevos rancheros at the Bluebird.
Other signs of drastic change and recovery are everywhere. FEMA trailers blocking streets in Jefferson Parish. Burger King offering $250 a paycheck bonuses, Popeyes starting new employees at $9 an hour. Legendary bars and restaurants with limited menus and desperate pleas for experienced staff. You could come in from out of town, no contacts, and be a badass in six months.
Liminal is the only word for it. It's like noplace I've ever been. William Gibson fantasized about post-earthquake Tokyo and a San Francisco where the Golden Gate became a housing project. New Orleans is that post-apocalypse scenario. It's oddly normal, but completely abnormal, all at once.
Restaurant Review: Ashmont Grill
Just transferring a couple of things off the laptop.
Quick review: Ashmont Grill, right next to the Ashmost T station in Dorchester. Nice room - good design, lots of warm woods and exposed brick. Friendly, if more than a little slow, service. Trainwreck fries were tasty. My pork loin was perfectly cooked. Good crunchy brussel sprouts roasted with pine nuts. Friend's burger was overcooked but a good piece of ground beef. Everything comes a la carte so you order sides with entrees - the prices are a little high, given that, in my opinion. But overall a tasty restaurant and a welcome addition to the neighborhood. If you go, be aware that google maps isn't a good tool for finding it. Call and get directions from the restaurant. There's at least two Freeport Streets along the way.
Quick review: Ashmont Grill, right next to the Ashmost T station in Dorchester. Nice room - good design, lots of warm woods and exposed brick. Friendly, if more than a little slow, service. Trainwreck fries were tasty. My pork loin was perfectly cooked. Good crunchy brussel sprouts roasted with pine nuts. Friend's burger was overcooked but a good piece of ground beef. Everything comes a la carte so you order sides with entrees - the prices are a little high, given that, in my opinion. But overall a tasty restaurant and a welcome addition to the neighborhood. If you go, be aware that google maps isn't a good tool for finding it. Call and get directions from the restaurant. There's at least two Freeport Streets along the way.
Sunday, January 22, 2006
Music review: David Bromberg, Rowan and Rice, King Wilkie
GREAT show.
King Wilkie was the first act. Name comes from Bill Monroe's horse, apparently. Very quiet, cool american acoustic music. Wrecking Ball is a great song. They took full advantage of the acoustics and sedate crowd to play songs that wouldn't have worked in a chatty club (props to Scott for that observation). The folks around us loved their set.
Rowan and Rice were great. Panama Red opener, and the other song that really stood out was the Walls of Time. Smoking hot female mandolin player and fairly hot female standup bass player, fwiw. Smoking players too. Tony Rice is insanely good. And Rowan is a living link to the old days - not too many folks get to tell stories about being on the road with Bill Monroe, playing the Opry and breaking down in Kentucky. What a high and lonesome voice...
I've wanted to see Bromberg for a long time. He looked good. Fit, with it. In fine voice. And plays these amazing little fills and runs in addition to his solos. I didn't know the name of many of his songs, but the six days on the road opener was hot. After about six songs he brought out Tony Rice and things began to really cook. Two songs later Rowan came out and from there on out it was unrehearsed acoustic jamming. The last song was a truly magnificent Wild Horses - not my favorite song, but some of the best music I've seen in a long time.
Sanders Theatre. Great acoustics. Crappy seats. As Jukin said, it's like watching a show from an airplane seat. At least there's some padding on the benches.
We ran into King Wilkie at closing time outside of Charlie's Kitchen. Two of them got thrown out for ordering whiskey and water, then asking if they'd used dishwater as a mixer. Funny guys.
Good times, good times...
King Wilkie was the first act. Name comes from Bill Monroe's horse, apparently. Very quiet, cool american acoustic music. Wrecking Ball is a great song. They took full advantage of the acoustics and sedate crowd to play songs that wouldn't have worked in a chatty club (props to Scott for that observation). The folks around us loved their set.
Rowan and Rice were great. Panama Red opener, and the other song that really stood out was the Walls of Time. Smoking hot female mandolin player and fairly hot female standup bass player, fwiw. Smoking players too. Tony Rice is insanely good. And Rowan is a living link to the old days - not too many folks get to tell stories about being on the road with Bill Monroe, playing the Opry and breaking down in Kentucky. What a high and lonesome voice...
I've wanted to see Bromberg for a long time. He looked good. Fit, with it. In fine voice. And plays these amazing little fills and runs in addition to his solos. I didn't know the name of many of his songs, but the six days on the road opener was hot. After about six songs he brought out Tony Rice and things began to really cook. Two songs later Rowan came out and from there on out it was unrehearsed acoustic jamming. The last song was a truly magnificent Wild Horses - not my favorite song, but some of the best music I've seen in a long time.
Sanders Theatre. Great acoustics. Crappy seats. As Jukin said, it's like watching a show from an airplane seat. At least there's some padding on the benches.
We ran into King Wilkie at closing time outside of Charlie's Kitchen. Two of them got thrown out for ordering whiskey and water, then asking if they'd used dishwater as a mixer. Funny guys.
Good times, good times...
Saturday, January 21, 2006
Restaurant Review: The Independent
The Independent is in Union Square in Somerville. From the outside it looks like any number of Irish pubs, and from the inside it looks like your average Irish pub too.
But it's not.
Average Irish pubs don't have extensive cocktail lists, hot vegan waitresses, or osso bucco. I was with a largish birthday party and we were able to cover a lot of the menu. I ordered the duck liver pate app, served with ritz-y crackers and cornichons. The cornichons were a nice touch but it really needs to come with toast! Pate was perfect though. Table had calamari and moules as other appetizers and everyone seemed quite pleased. The frites with the mussels were crispy and salty, very good stuff.
Dinner was the pressed pork sandwich. I was expecting a glorified grilled cheese. Instead got a massive amount of tender roasted sliced pork on focaccia with cheese and a pickle relish. Kind of a foofy Cuban. But really good. The steak frites looked great - huge cut of steak for that dish - as did the veal shank. Clam chowder there is great, though the clams are in the shell in the chowder. I was too stuffed for dessert.
Stuck around the bar part for a while. Interesting scene. Two dudes with powerbooks dj'in, and a projection screen showing what appeared to be a greek film with subtitles, all black and white. Good mix of folks. The hipsters haven't totally taken over and the long line of ladies trying to get into Toast next door (hmmm, no guys in that line) sometimes spilled in. I'll be going back there, curious about their burger...they do $2 PBR and High Life for football on sundays.
But it's not.
Average Irish pubs don't have extensive cocktail lists, hot vegan waitresses, or osso bucco. I was with a largish birthday party and we were able to cover a lot of the menu. I ordered the duck liver pate app, served with ritz-y crackers and cornichons. The cornichons were a nice touch but it really needs to come with toast! Pate was perfect though. Table had calamari and moules as other appetizers and everyone seemed quite pleased. The frites with the mussels were crispy and salty, very good stuff.
Dinner was the pressed pork sandwich. I was expecting a glorified grilled cheese. Instead got a massive amount of tender roasted sliced pork on focaccia with cheese and a pickle relish. Kind of a foofy Cuban. But really good. The steak frites looked great - huge cut of steak for that dish - as did the veal shank. Clam chowder there is great, though the clams are in the shell in the chowder. I was too stuffed for dessert.
Stuck around the bar part for a while. Interesting scene. Two dudes with powerbooks dj'in, and a projection screen showing what appeared to be a greek film with subtitles, all black and white. Good mix of folks. The hipsters haven't totally taken over and the long line of ladies trying to get into Toast next door (hmmm, no guys in that line) sometimes spilled in. I'll be going back there, curious about their burger...they do $2 PBR and High Life for football on sundays.
Thursday, January 19, 2006
Movie review: Syriana
Food: reese's bites, buttered popcorn. Reese's bites aren't as good as the cups.
Syriana...geez, if you liked Traffic, you'll like it. If you didn't, or you prefer linear film structure, you probably won't like it. If you like happy closure you'll hate it.
I loved it. Biggest complaint I've heard is that it's too complex. Wasn't a problem for me. There are four intertwined stories: a CIA agent, an energy trader, a DC lawyer, and a young Pakistani. All around the oil rights to a massive field in the middle east (country, unnamed, one can assume is the Syriana of the title).
Nobody is all good. Some have good intentions. Some don't. There's a guy who plays the mandatory evil oil executive (well, one of them) who looks an awful lot like Tom DeLay. He doesn't have good intentions.
More than anything, it felt like a morality play. This is where the gas that runs the SUVs comes from, and this is the real price. The young Pakistani loses his job due to a merger back in the states, gets savagely beaten in line by local military (non US) and becomes a radical Muslim. The imams give him food and brainwashing and a sense of self respect. The scene where he's shoveling food into his mouth with a broken face hit me hard. This was the storyline that really, really connected it all. The rest of the stories are well written and brilliantly acted for the most part. There's a hideous torture scene that I had some trouble watching (yes, I'm a wimp when it comes to ripping nails out). But it's that young guy in my head still, not Clooney or Damon.
Screenplay by the same guy who did Traffic, who added director this time. I didn't think it was quite as well cut and directed as Traffic but Soderbergh is a great, great director. I would have loved to have seen his take on this. The colors were not quite as bright as in other desert films like Three Kings, or the desert scenes in Traffic.
Still and all, one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. Depressing as hell in many ways. Only a few bad guys go down and a hell of a lot of bad guys win. But it moved me and made me think. That's a good thing.
Syriana...geez, if you liked Traffic, you'll like it. If you didn't, or you prefer linear film structure, you probably won't like it. If you like happy closure you'll hate it.
I loved it. Biggest complaint I've heard is that it's too complex. Wasn't a problem for me. There are four intertwined stories: a CIA agent, an energy trader, a DC lawyer, and a young Pakistani. All around the oil rights to a massive field in the middle east (country, unnamed, one can assume is the Syriana of the title).
Nobody is all good. Some have good intentions. Some don't. There's a guy who plays the mandatory evil oil executive (well, one of them) who looks an awful lot like Tom DeLay. He doesn't have good intentions.
More than anything, it felt like a morality play. This is where the gas that runs the SUVs comes from, and this is the real price. The young Pakistani loses his job due to a merger back in the states, gets savagely beaten in line by local military (non US) and becomes a radical Muslim. The imams give him food and brainwashing and a sense of self respect. The scene where he's shoveling food into his mouth with a broken face hit me hard. This was the storyline that really, really connected it all. The rest of the stories are well written and brilliantly acted for the most part. There's a hideous torture scene that I had some trouble watching (yes, I'm a wimp when it comes to ripping nails out). But it's that young guy in my head still, not Clooney or Damon.
Screenplay by the same guy who did Traffic, who added director this time. I didn't think it was quite as well cut and directed as Traffic but Soderbergh is a great, great director. I would have loved to have seen his take on this. The colors were not quite as bright as in other desert films like Three Kings, or the desert scenes in Traffic.
Still and all, one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. Depressing as hell in many ways. Only a few bad guys go down and a hell of a lot of bad guys win. But it moved me and made me think. That's a good thing.
Sunday, January 15, 2006
Boston hounding
Quick report on two good meals this weekend. Going to DC tomorrow, don't expect to do any great eating there, work work work. I caught a cold in London so I've mainly been eating soup. But Dax made sure I got at least two good anti-sickness meals of chinese food and pizza.
Taiwan Cafe in Chinatown yesterday - beef with longhorn peppers, spicy salt and pepper pork, xiao long bao. The beef with peppers is a standby, with mild green peppers and hot thai chiles mixed into the shredded beef. The pork dish is a new favorite - the meat is braised with scallions, then deep fried in the spicy salt and pepper batter. Xiao long bao, aka soup dumplings, are always a welcome saturday food curative. I need to get there with a dinner hunger to go after the oysters with black bean sauce.
This afternoon we were going to go to Pizzeria Regina in the north end (accept no substitute for the mother ship at 11 1/2 Thacher St - it's all in the original brick ovens) but remembered that the Rolling Stones play the Garden tonight. Therefore, Regina's would be a madhouse and parking would be outrageous. So instead we made the trek to Eastie for Santarpio's. I've been there once for takeout but didn't actually go inside. Two years ago or so.
Today we sat at the bar. They are also famous for "BBQ" - I am a southerner, and the improper use of "BBQ" bothers me; if it ain't slow smoked, it ain't BBQ - which in this case means homemade sausages and lamb tips roasted on skewers. Sausage was outstanding, peppery and crusty on the outside. I'm not a big fan of lamb other than braised shanks and such but it was very well cooked. Pizzas at Santarpio's come one size only and are very different from the classic new haven style pizza. We got a pepperoni sausage pie which must have had a pound of meat on it. Maybe more. I bit into a stack of pepperoni six deep at one point. Sauce was very, very peppery from the sausage in the pie. I have to vote with the Regina as my favorite pie in town but am going to reserve judgement til my next visit back to Santarpio's - now I know what to order. Cheese pie. Sausage "BBQ" plate. I have a feeling that's the way to go. Also, they gave us great, friendly service. It's about a thousand yards from Logan airport, just out the Callahan tunnel on the local exit option.
Taiwan Cafe in Chinatown yesterday - beef with longhorn peppers, spicy salt and pepper pork, xiao long bao. The beef with peppers is a standby, with mild green peppers and hot thai chiles mixed into the shredded beef. The pork dish is a new favorite - the meat is braised with scallions, then deep fried in the spicy salt and pepper batter. Xiao long bao, aka soup dumplings, are always a welcome saturday food curative. I need to get there with a dinner hunger to go after the oysters with black bean sauce.
This afternoon we were going to go to Pizzeria Regina in the north end (accept no substitute for the mother ship at 11 1/2 Thacher St - it's all in the original brick ovens) but remembered that the Rolling Stones play the Garden tonight. Therefore, Regina's would be a madhouse and parking would be outrageous. So instead we made the trek to Eastie for Santarpio's. I've been there once for takeout but didn't actually go inside. Two years ago or so.
Today we sat at the bar. They are also famous for "BBQ" - I am a southerner, and the improper use of "BBQ" bothers me; if it ain't slow smoked, it ain't BBQ - which in this case means homemade sausages and lamb tips roasted on skewers. Sausage was outstanding, peppery and crusty on the outside. I'm not a big fan of lamb other than braised shanks and such but it was very well cooked. Pizzas at Santarpio's come one size only and are very different from the classic new haven style pizza. We got a pepperoni sausage pie which must have had a pound of meat on it. Maybe more. I bit into a stack of pepperoni six deep at one point. Sauce was very, very peppery from the sausage in the pie. I have to vote with the Regina as my favorite pie in town but am going to reserve judgement til my next visit back to Santarpio's - now I know what to order. Cheese pie. Sausage "BBQ" plate. I have a feeling that's the way to go. Also, they gave us great, friendly service. It's about a thousand yards from Logan airport, just out the Callahan tunnel on the local exit option.
Saturday, January 14, 2006
London Homesick Blues
Hello blogging world.
Three-night trip to London: redeye Monday night, meeting Tuesday afternoon, meeting Wednesday morning, fly home Thursday.
Books consumed: The Survival Game. Lamb. Krakatoa. Mental soundtrack: Jerry Jeff Walker, London Homesick Blues. I'll substantiate the rumor that the English sense of humor is drier than the Texas sand...also Lions by Dire Straits.
Virgin Atlantic is a great airline. Flight was packed going over - Monday night flights across the pond always seem to be crowded. Someone who is a better statistician than I am ought to calculate the odds that I'd get 42C on one leg of about half my overseas flights. "Dinner" was chicken tenders, corn, mash. Actually better than most airplane food.
90 minutes to clear immigration. At least they had the heat turned waaaay up and it was humid in there. Hell. 90 more minutes of train and tube and walking to get to my hotel, which turns out to be in the Chelsea FC football stadium complex. Clean, cheap, highspeed net, five minute walk to the tube. But a lousy bed and a lousy shower.
Fitful nap, good afternoon meeting, fitful nap.
Dinner with a colleague who is also a good friend. Brick Lane Road in the East End of London is just about heaven on earth if you like curry. I Love Curry. Forgot to take my camera on both my nights eating, which is a downer, but ooof, this was good. Light and airy papadums. Perfect hot pickle and condiments. Crispy, lemony fried onion balls. Lamb chili mossala. My friend had the veggie plate and the dal makhni was extraordinary. Washed down with two pints of Cobra, a truly perfect meal against a damp, dank London January night.
I tried out a new strategy for jetlag management - brewed a nalgene bottle's worth of sleepytime extra tea, triple strength, for drinking on the plane and after arrival. When the jetlag wakeup call came at 3AM, I had a third of the bottle left. Chugged it, did some breathing exercices, and though sleep didn't come for a while, I was very much aat peace and got rest. I'm going to keep experimenting with this one.
Morning meeting in north London. Normally I don't care for the Starbucks infestation across the world - the one in the Forbidden City really gets my goat (if they're gonna put it there, it should have wifi, dammit) - but London needed better coffee. At all the train stations now they have starbucks and krispy kreme. Weird. Small, black coffee and a cornish sausage roll for pre-meeting sustenance. Good meeting. Working lunch in a cafeteria.
Fitful sleep, conference call, then out to meet with an friend from the seriously old days. The 80s. He's lived in London for seven years and really knows his way around. Met up at an old, old pub in Clerkenwell for pints and conversation. St Peter's Cream Stout is insane, by the by. French dinner of potted duck rillettes and seven-hour braised lamb shank. Good, good stuff.
Slept right through the night. The sleepytime experiment worked pretty well. Flight home was a lot less crowded. Mental note: check in online and choose only aisle seats on the outer edges of the plane. Many of the aisle seats in the interior row have big chunky boxes that make it even harder to stretch legs.
Back to London in just eight days.
Three-night trip to London: redeye Monday night, meeting Tuesday afternoon, meeting Wednesday morning, fly home Thursday.
Books consumed: The Survival Game. Lamb. Krakatoa. Mental soundtrack: Jerry Jeff Walker, London Homesick Blues. I'll substantiate the rumor that the English sense of humor is drier than the Texas sand...also Lions by Dire Straits.
Virgin Atlantic is a great airline. Flight was packed going over - Monday night flights across the pond always seem to be crowded. Someone who is a better statistician than I am ought to calculate the odds that I'd get 42C on one leg of about half my overseas flights. "Dinner" was chicken tenders, corn, mash. Actually better than most airplane food.
90 minutes to clear immigration. At least they had the heat turned waaaay up and it was humid in there. Hell. 90 more minutes of train and tube and walking to get to my hotel, which turns out to be in the Chelsea FC football stadium complex. Clean, cheap, highspeed net, five minute walk to the tube. But a lousy bed and a lousy shower.
Fitful nap, good afternoon meeting, fitful nap.
Dinner with a colleague who is also a good friend. Brick Lane Road in the East End of London is just about heaven on earth if you like curry. I Love Curry. Forgot to take my camera on both my nights eating, which is a downer, but ooof, this was good. Light and airy papadums. Perfect hot pickle and condiments. Crispy, lemony fried onion balls. Lamb chili mossala. My friend had the veggie plate and the dal makhni was extraordinary. Washed down with two pints of Cobra, a truly perfect meal against a damp, dank London January night.
I tried out a new strategy for jetlag management - brewed a nalgene bottle's worth of sleepytime extra tea, triple strength, for drinking on the plane and after arrival. When the jetlag wakeup call came at 3AM, I had a third of the bottle left. Chugged it, did some breathing exercices, and though sleep didn't come for a while, I was very much aat peace and got rest. I'm going to keep experimenting with this one.
Morning meeting in north London. Normally I don't care for the Starbucks infestation across the world - the one in the Forbidden City really gets my goat (if they're gonna put it there, it should have wifi, dammit) - but London needed better coffee. At all the train stations now they have starbucks and krispy kreme. Weird. Small, black coffee and a cornish sausage roll for pre-meeting sustenance. Good meeting. Working lunch in a cafeteria.
Fitful sleep, conference call, then out to meet with an friend from the seriously old days. The 80s. He's lived in London for seven years and really knows his way around. Met up at an old, old pub in Clerkenwell for pints and conversation. St Peter's Cream Stout is insane, by the by. French dinner of potted duck rillettes and seven-hour braised lamb shank. Good, good stuff.
Slept right through the night. The sleepytime experiment worked pretty well. Flight home was a lot less crowded. Mental note: check in online and choose only aisle seats on the outer edges of the plane. Many of the aisle seats in the interior row have big chunky boxes that make it even harder to stretch legs.
Back to London in just eight days.
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