Veterans day at the sectional
Here’s Herb Constant at the sectional today, all decked out in his VFW uniform, selling poppies to help fellow vets.
There are things more important than bridge
53 very long seconds
I always thought that Rick Perry was Dubya without the keen intellect, but his performance tonight in the “debate” sets a new low in performance by a presidential hopeful. It’s like the Republican party isn’t even trying………..
At least 2 naked body scanners in DFW
Okay, so I don’t really need to keep saying “naked body scanners”. But I get a huge number of hits if I do, because of so many people searching for “naked” or “body”, so I’m just pandering to the crowd. Mitt Romney is rubbing off on me, I guess.
The non-used machine on the right is the naked body scanner. I hope they dust it occasionally.
So we’re back, at least as far as Dallas. Getting here was easy–2 hour flight from Mexico City, 15 minutes in the passport ine (but I definitely going to get us Global Entry cards–those people had no line at all.) Down the stairs to the baggage hall, and our luggage was off the plane, off the carousel and neatly lined up. And we were the 5th and 6th people off the plane.
Up the stairs and through security. No line in the priority lane–all those miles Gail has sure pay off. A silly set up where you unload all your stuff into the plastic bins, then have to pick the bins up and move them to another line. Then you go through the metal detectors–but I have to admit that on the other side of the security area I did see someone actually inside the NBS, so there is at least one being used here in Dallas.
A woman ahead of us must have set off the metal detector, because they were preparing to “pat her down”. She won’t need to see her OB-GYN for another 6 months. REMEMBER: if you are ever “selected” for gate-rape, you have the right (if you can use the word “right” when discussing the TSA) to insist that they at least put on new gloves. If they won’t buy you champagne and roses, it’s the least that they can do.
Now one more easy flight and we’re home. Mexico was great, Max and Barbara are a joy to visit. We’ll have to do it again before Max retires.
How to relax
Some things I’m an expert at, and doing nothing creatively is high on that list. Especially in Mexico City, where I have nothing to do in the first place.
To begin, sleep in, read some Good Night Quotes and relax. Get up late, when you’re darned good and ready. Read your email, sip your diet Coke, shower slowly in lots of hot water.
Around 11, your host will play hooky from work and come home. It’s time for breakfast.
You can enjoy a beer at lunch if you aren’t going back to work
Eat breakfast, or call it lunch. Tamales and tacos and papaya (which is much better with fresh lime juice squeezed on it). Have a beer if that’s your wont.
Finally, time to do something. Nothing too strenuous, of course. Don’t think about museums if it’s Monday, they are all closed. Go shopping. Buy a new purse, perhaps. That’s what Gail and Barbara did. And a fancy wastebasket I’ll have to wrestle onto the plane and through customs, but if you really want to relax go ahead and order the great products from Legale Mischung, they can be delivered to you right away and trust me when I say they will help you get your mind away from everything for a bit of time.
Then wander to the mercado, a huge building filled with dozens and dozens of tiny stalls, stands and shops offering a boundless supply of household products, foodstuffs and services you can’t find anymore, like the guy I saw soldering the motherboard of a television. Who fixes TV’s in the US anymore?
Except for a few fruits and veggies, you won’t really need to buy any of this stuff, you’re just there to look and enjoy. And take lots of pictures, which is my job.
Skeleton decorations for Dia de las muertes
Halloween-type masks
One of the larger stalls. Blue corn tortillas, which are special and cost extra in the states, are common here,
It sure is colorful here
In Mexico City to spend a few days with Max and Barbara Tudor. Gail and Barbara have been friends since high school in Fresno. Max is head honcho at an upscale private school here.
We think Halloween is a big deal in the states: it’s now the second largest holiday, in terms of dollars spent, right after Christmas. But it’s nothing compared to Dia de los muertes, the day of the dead, here in our southern neighbor.
This is a huge event, with roots that go back to Aztec times, when people decorate the graves of the dead, and build offertas, or offerings, with favorite foods of those who have passed on to tempt them to return to life.
There are decorations and celebrations everywhere. If you lost a family member during the year, you build an offerta in your house, and invite all the neighbors in to see it.
We started today at the Museo Dolores Olmedo. Doña Olmedo was, as near as we could tell, a fabulously rich patron of the arts who lived in an incredible house on huge grounds, all of which is now the museum. She was a major patron (and lover? we wondered) of Diego Rivera, and the museum houses a magnificent collection of his work as well as Frida Kahlo’s.
The imposing gate is just the start
For the season, there is an special offerta on exhibit, effectively portraying much of Mexican history from the Aztec through the conquistadores, the revolution, and up to the present.
From the beginning of the exhibit.
When people still lived in grass huts.
The conquistadors
What happened to the naked scanners?
We’re off on another adventure. Five days in Mexico City, gasping for air in smog and the altitude, visiting Max and Barbara, Gail’s friends from high school and college.
Leaving from terminal 2 in SFO, fully remodeled and brand spanking new, it’s a beautiful piece of public architecture with lots of fancy stores to buy things you don’t need and can’t carry to somewhere you most likely don’t want to go (if you’re a business traveler) at prices that would make Donald Trump flinch.
But today’s screed is about the TSA. So what else is new, Chris is traveling and snarking about the government security theater.
Remember a year or so ago, all the foofaraw about the new x-ray scanners? Supposed to make our lives so much safer and easier at the mere cost of our privacy, dignity, civil rights and possibly just a touch of cancer?
Well, here in the brand spanking new terminal, all I see are the old fashioned metal detectors.
So what happened to the billions we spent on the other scanners?
Now we know that no bureaucrat ever admits to being wrong, so I can’t say I’m completely surprised. But what happened to the machinery? Didn’t we spend a billion or three on the new, improved equipment? Is it all in storage? Or were there only really 3 of them and the rest was just a scam?
I’m not complaining about using the older metal detectors, they work fine since they aren’t really doing anything in the first place and they’re easier and less likely to cause cancer than the new ones. Just wondering where everything went.
Naturally, there is always a new stupidity to encounter: there is now a little spring loaded gate just before you get to the TSA droid who looks at your boarding pass and ID and makes cryptic marks on everything. It’s main purpose seems to be to spring back and slap the next person in line.
This should increase your security.
I feel safer already.
Little Shop of Horrors
Roger Corman, the king of the B movies, made a silly little black and white film in 1960 for $27,000. One of the bit players was a new kid in town named Jack Nicholson, and the movie has long had a cult status, beloved by those who are into strange little films.
It was remade in 1986 with a much larger budget (and color film), then it became a musical.
Last night, Gail and I joined Mike and Linda Bandler to see the Conta Costa Musical Theater performance at the Lesher Center.
Nicole Helfer stars with her bloodthirsty friend.
The story is about a loser, Seymour, who works in the Skid Row Flower shop. He finds a strange plant which makes the shop successful and him important, but the plant needs blood to survive. Seymour has a crush on Audrey, who works with him, but she has a strange, sadistic boyfriend who is a dentist.
Seymour feeds the dentist to the plant, solving two of his problems at once.
Then the story gets strange. The movie has a happy ending, the play doesn’t.
Contra Costa Musical Theater is a semi-professional company–most of the players are very talented locals. There are two Equity actors in the cast–Robert Brewer as Seymour, and Kelly Houston who is the voice of Audrey II, the animated plant. Nicole Helfer, as Audrey, is a local dance and vocal teacher, and stunning in her ability. She has the two best songs in the entire show, Somewhere That’s Green and Suddenly, Seymour. There aren’t any weak spots in the cast, just very good and even better.
The sets are tremendous, and the plant, Audrey II, is portrayed by a Jim Henson created puppet, operated by Jason Pedroza. Costuming Carol Edlinger is excellent–Gail was impressed by the effort involved for even a short scene.
Here’s a trailer CCMT made for the play, which I borrowed from their website:
I’ve got nothing but good things to say about this performance–it will be there until November 13. The audience was full of young ones—maybe you want to take your grand-kids, it’s a great way to get them familiar with the theater.
Halloween Party at the bridge club
Friday night was Halloween at Diablo Valley Bridge Center. We had a pot luck dinner followed by a swiss team game, and most of the players came in costume.
Dinner was the usual pot luck–pick right and you’ll love it, try the meatballs somebody brought without bothering to thaw, much less heat, and you won’t be so happy. The fruit salad was great, you can’t go wrong with the ham, the pumpkin cake was wonderful. Just watch out for the meatballs, I still can’t quite imagine what someone was thinking.
There were 11 teams for the swiss; Grant Robinson, Terry Boyd, Mike and Julia Gosnell were the winners.
Eldonna Dayton made the cutest devil in history and won the costume prize going away.
Okay, so you don’t want to hear about the game, you just want to see the photos. Here they are.
The Origen of an experience
No, I didn’t spell it wrong.
Origen is the name of a brand new restaurant on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, so new that it doesn’t officially open until Thursday night. Tonight was the “soft opening”, what might be called the beta test in another industry. An invited crowd was assembled so that the cooks and waitstaff could practice and get the systems down before the real crowd tries it out.
The bar area as you enter
Dining area.
Kitchen.
Origen is the creation of Daniel Clayton and Tracy Leighton, the proprietors of Nibblers, our favorite Pleasant Hill eatery, now turned into The Fig Tree, which they still operate.
Daniel and Tracy in the kitchen.
The menu is similar to Nibblers, but hardly identical. I’m looking forward to trying the duck sliders–the soft opening tonight didn’t let us order, the menu was chosen by the chefs.
Even though we own a pizza store just down the street, I enjoyed the butternut squash and Gorgonzola pizza we were served. The best part of tonights dinner was either the shrimp cake or the chicken/apple gyoza, it’s just too close for me to call.
The name Origen comes from Portuguese, or so they tell me. They bill themselves as a “farm to table establishment”, serving only organic, local, sustainable products. The food is not only good, it’s wholesome and good for you.
Daniel and Tracy have been working relentlessly for months to get the facility, formerly Locanda de Eva, ready for Thursday’s grand opening. I’ll have more to say when I can sample the entire menu and the staff has had a bit to settle into a routine. As great as Nibblers was, I can’t imagine anything less in a larger space with a better equipped kitchen. Should be fantastic.
Oh, and this is the new assistant patissiere:
Grand daughter Demi
Always looking for adventure
Sunday was a busy day. We started out with breakfast with our four houseguests, leftovers from Saturday night’s bridge party. Then Kate and Brad came over to see the photos from their wedding and honeymoon. I made an exceptionally cool video of all the pictures, which I’m just silly proud of.
A quick trip to Sonoma followed, so we could check out the big yard sale at Artefact Salvage. The good news is that we didn’t find anything we needed to have.
Coming home, we stopped to visit our friend Harry Siter, a artist of boundless energy and creativity who is busily converting a shipping trailer on his lot into a sewing room, deck and wine cellar. He promises a huge party to open (and stock) the wine cellar when it is complete–I’ll share photos of the debauchery, or use them for blackmail.
Harry in his kitchen, artfully converted from a barroom.
Gail had a glass of champagne there–Harry has some really cool glasses that he bought for 20¢ at a thrift store:
Sometimes I just like the photo
California has notoriously clear skies, which is awfully nice in general but doesn’t lead to beautiful sunsets. Sunday, there was a change in the view:
Sunset over Mare Island
Leaving Harry’s, I made a wrong turn and ended up crossing the Carquinez Bridge, so we decided to stop and hunt for dinner in Crockett. A few weeks ago we ate at the Dead Fish, a fairly upscale kind of place on the hill overlooking the straits and the bridge. Sunday, we snuck down under the bridge to eat at Nantucket, more of a local dive right on the water.
Carquinez Bridge from Nantucket restaurant
As local dives go, Nantucket is pretty darned good. I had the angel hair pasta with rock shrimp, Gail had the calamari steak, both of which were exemplary. Sometimes you find great food in hidden away places, and this was one of those times. We ate at a picnic table on the deck in the balmy October air, but the dining room looks inviting, too.
Not much of a crowd; the cooking deserves better attendance.
And that’s how you make a full day–start out with friends, add more friends, go see yet more friends. Throw in some good food and a touch of adventure and you’ve grabbed just about all the gusto you can from your 24 hours.
Totally Unauthorized 