Pizza Friday
Fat Slice Pizza will always bring out a ravenous horde of players
A couple of years ago, the Friday game at Mosswood in Oakland was pretty small–usually about 5 tables and dwindling. Then, Lorene asked Gail if Fat Slice Pizza could provide pizza for a special game at a price she could afford. Gail made her an offer she couldn’t refuse, and ever since, the fourth Friday of the month, there is free pizza at the game.
The result? That 5 table game is now 13 to 15 tables on pizza Friday, and at least 10 on the other Fridays of the month.
Bridge players are funny–even though in general we have a pretty high average income, free food will get a crowd every time. Of course, Fat Slice Pizza is the best there is.
Three Fridays a month I play with Mike in Pleasant Hill. Pizza day, of course, I have to play in Oakland. Mike agrees to make the trip into Oakland on the condition that I bring a Hawaiian pizza–ham and pineapple. For Mike, anything. For everyone else, there are pepperoni, veggie, cheese, sausage & onion and pesto, artichoke and Canadian bacon. Not usually any leftovers.
Well, somebody has to wear the right shirt
Greg Vance has taken over directing the game, so it runs smoothly and is scored quickly. We’d always like to have a few more players–the fourth Friday of the month, Mosswood Rec Center, Webster and McArthur in Oakland.
They could have danced all night
I can dance like this, I just need a really flexible girl
Last night the movies, tonight the ballet. We went to see Company C at the Lesher Center, and enjoyed it as always.
Company C is hardly classical ballet–I just can’t get into tutus and swans and the hunter in the forest. This is all modern, very modern, dance. And I like it very much.
There were 4 different works presented last night. The first, Dreams to Remember was choreographed by Amy Seiwert, who is also the artistic director of the Smuin Ballet, which we also subscribe to. In it, various couples dance to the music of Otis Redding. It was romantic and exhilarating at the same time, highlighted by the solo performance of Aaron Jackson, the outstanding dancer of the troupe.
The second work was hardly dance at all, more a study in movement. Nine Person Precision Ball Passing was just that–three row of three performers just passing balls among themselves in a rapid fire juggling act. It was mildly diverting, but not great.
Then Cavalcade, which was a lesson in non-narrative dance with minimalist music–I had to come home and Google the composer, Steve Reich, to find out who and what I had been listening to. Too often, it seemed to me that the dancers were engaging in some sort of terpsichorean brownian motion, lacking purpose or meaning. Of course, I might just be the biggest hick in the room.
The final movement, Akimbo was choreographed by Charles Anderson, the founder, artistic/managing director and driving force of the company. Five pieces of music, five different combinations of dancers. Simple black costumes and low, contrasty lighting kept the focus on the emotions ably presented.
Modern ballet isn’t for everyone, but I find it much more accessible, enjoyable and interesting than Swan Lake. Give Company C or the Smuin Ballet a try.
I am the captain of my soul
The mandatory ending for every sports film
This must be South Africa month for me.
Last week we saw the Athol Fugard play, Coming Home, Wednesday Tom Jacobson asked if we wanted to go to South Africa with he and his wife (then told me yesterday that the tour was sold out) and last night we saw Invictus, the true story of Nelson Mandella and the South African Rugby team.
Coming into office in 1994, Mandela (ably portrayed by Morgan Freeman) was faced with a nation completely divided along racial and economic lines. Trying to find a way to close that breach, he hits upon the the Springboks, the national rugby team. Dispirited, disorganized and uninspired, the team was still a favorite of the whites and a negative symbol to the black population. Mandella meets with Francois Pienaar (played by a very bulked-up and buffed-out Matt Damon) and urges him to lead the team to victory in the upcoming World Cup. As a method of inspiration, Mandella recites the poem that he memorized in prison, Invictus, by William Ernest Henley:
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
From here, the movie veers wildly from historical biopic to Rocky XVIII, as the Springboks get inspired, win the hearts of their countrymen and begin their improbable march to victory, and the country achieves some small manner of unity cheering for them.
Invictus is directed with characteristic style and restraint by Clint Eastwood. Rugby is an incredibly violent sport, and Eastwood manages to show this without the least unnecessary gore or glorification. As one would expect from him, there are no significant parts for women in this film–Clint tells manly stories in a manly way, wimmenfolk are just there to assist.
Scoring an impressive 77 on the Tomatometer, we found this movie to be entirely worth our time. Whether you want history or sports, Invictus delivers the goods.
Finbar Yuen
Our friend Finbar
A very sad email from Jeanne Mok today:
Finbar passed away last Thursday evening around 8PM at Kaiser Hospital Walnut Creek.
According to Finbar’s wishes, there will not be any funeral service. A private celebration of life with the immediate family will be held in the near future.
————————
I’ll miss him.
Regrets, I’ve had a few
Gail and I enjoy eating out, and have had the pleasure of eating in some of the finest restaurants in the world–The French Laundry, for instance.
Sometimes, though, you get a clunker. Last night we hit a major pothole on the road to fine dining, King Tsin in Albany.
We went to this place because it was close to the theater where we saw Invictus. It may well have been the worst Chinese restaurant I’ve ever seen.
Start with classic Chinese restaurant decor: none. Garish fluorescent lights, no carpets, bare tables with paper place mats. It was a chilly night outside, and an even colder night inside.
The wor won ton soup, which is won ton soup with extra items added in, was tasteless and didn’t really have anything more than one would expect from the most basic won ton soup.
I’ve had moo shu pork in dozens of places, but never seen anything like what we were served. I guess there was pork in it somewhere.
We ordered Kung Pao chicken, but what we got was some kind of Szechuan chicken, sort of like chicken McNuggets with a hot sauce.
The menu opens with a page about how Papa came over from China in the late 40’s to open a restaurant. Apparently, he brought the filling for the pot stickers with him, because the filling tasted like it had been sitting in the kitchen for the last 60 years. Yeeeeech.
I had to ask twice for rice, but the tea was hot. Sort of.
I don’t think I’ll be going back to King Tsin in this lifetime.
King Tsin
1699 Solano Avenue, Albany
Serendipity
They would look more like twins if they both had their coats on
Yesterday, I saw Frank Lowenthal playing at Mosswood, a very rare event. Maybe he was motivated by the free pizza.
Today, Micky B and I are playing in the Pleasanton sectional. Before the game I was chatting with Fred Barnes and Marilyn Vinnicombe when Frank came over and asked if I was playing at Mosswood next week.
Frank had managed to walk out of the club on Friday with someone elses coat, and wanted me to return it and try to locate his. As I took the errant jacket, Fred asked if there was a name in it. Sure enough, there it was, “Barnes”, big as life. So Frank and Fred traded coats, and the universe is back in balance.
This isn’t front page news by any stretch. I’m just always amazed, amused and pleasantly surprised by the small and large coincidences that affect our lives, and wanted to share this one.
Now for something completely different
And yes, you get 5 points if you know what the title line is from.
Here’s somebody’s idea of the 100 cheesiest movie lines of all time. I try to see and write about good movies, but the really funny stuff often comes from the bad one. It’s decidedly NSFW (which means not safe for work, you really really don’t want to be watching this in your office where anyone else could overhear. Not that anyone I know still works, but still…………you have been warned)
There is more scenery chewed in this 10 minute clip than you could build with an entire army of union set builders in a month of hard work. And a hell of a lot of it is chewed by the Governator himself. If there was a prize for overacting, Ahnold would be a shoo in for it.
More flying hysteria
I guess I’m not the only one who feels that shrouding ourselves in nameless dread and constant fear is not the way to handle threats. It just seems to me that if we choose to live in abject fear, throwing all our civil liberties away in the fruitless hope of “safety”, which means some impossible absence of all possible danger, we have already conceded defeat to terrorism.
First there was the story from Wednesday of the flight diverted in panic because some poor Orthodox Jewish kid was praying on the plane. Not only are we supposed to be frightened for our lives, now it’s dangerous to pray, too.
And here’s an article by a pilot–he has to live with this stupidity. Ask the Pilot – Salon.com.
How long before there is a voice of reason? Whatever happened to the thought that it is better to die on your feet than live on your knees?
1515 Restaurant
Caprese salad
I know times are hard, but it still amazing to be the only customers in a good restaurant. Tonight, though, that’s what happened. Gail and I were out with Micky and Linda at 1515 Restaurant and Lounge in Walnut Creek (at the easy to remember address of 1515 N. Main St.) The food was creative, delectable and well presented, the service was fine, the ambience hip, slick and cool. And we were the only dinner guests. We had a 6:45 reservation, left about 8:00, and never saw another customer.
The place is also a lounge, which is the nice way to say a bar. The dining room is separate, but we still heard the chatter and clink.
I started with the Caprese salad, because I always start with a Caprese salad. How they find heirloom tomatoes in January is beyond me, but find them they did. Ripe, full of flavor red and yellow tomatoes, fresh buffalo mozzarella, basil leaf and balsamic vinegar artfully designed on the plate–what more could a boy ask for?
1515 offers traditional entrées, “small plates” and flatbread pizzas. Micky and Linda ordered the pasta Jambalaya, a non-traditional Jambalaya made with penne pasta instead of rice and no sausage or ham. Gail and I both ordered a supposedly “small plate” of chicken enchilada–which turned out to be a 7″ frying pan full of good food, not overly Mexican but good, and decidedly enough for dinner all by itself. I also had a small plate of gnocchi in pesto (eliciting considerably table discussion of how best to pronounce “gnocchi”. My Italian heritage apparently counts for nothing with that crowd.) It’s true I’d eat wet newspapers with pesto on them, but this was the best dish of the meal. Getting gnocchi right is an art, and the chef has clearly mastered it.
The service was top notch, but with only 4 diners in the joint you’d expect that.
We liked the place. We will go back. Why there was nobody else there is a mystery, because they should have a full house.
1515 Restaurant and Lounge
1515 N. Main St., Walnut Creek
Me gusta mucho Penelope Cruz
La senorita Cruz es muy bonita
Penelope Cruz is hot. And she can act. In two languages, no less. I’d watch her reading the Madrid phone book.
Considerably better, though, is her new movie Broken Embraces (Los abrazo rotos). Written and directed by legendary Spanish director Pedro Almodóvar, this stylish melodrama is more entertaining than deep and meaningful, yet thoroughly entertains for its entire 2:05 run time.
Cruz plays a beautiful aspiring actress, loved by two men and in love with one of them. The story plays out over 14 years, flitting back and forth in time as the plot unfolds.
The male lead, Lluís Homar, bears a disconcerting resemblance to Kelsey Grammer but is a much better actor. Forced to do his job without an actor’s most important tool, his eyes (because his character is blind for much of the film) Homar expertly uses his voice, expression and body language to convey the depths of his emotions.
After 31 films, Almodóvar is almost a genre in himself. This film sometimes has the look of a 1960’s spoof, sometimes a noirish thriller. You will often know where the plot is going, and still be surprised when it gets there. It’s definitely worth seeing.
At the Cinemark in Pleasant Hill
Totally Unauthorized 