One of the Hard Days
Gail says that your boss pays you for the hard days, not the easy ones. Of course, if you just write a blog for a few dozen of your friends you don’t get paid at all, but there are hard days nonetheless.
Our friend Dan Scarola has been romantically attached to the mysterious Pamela for over 20 years. She’s mysterious because they don’t live together, or even close–she’s resides in West Marin, and they see each other mostly on weekends. Pam is a dog person, Dan isn’t. Dan is a bridge player, Pam isn’t. It works for them, it is not for me to judge.
Now that’s in the past. Three days after Christmas, Pam suffered an aortic aneurysm and died quite suddenly. Her funeral was today.
Last night, Gail and I drove up to Sacramento for a service at the funeral home. Some people would think that was a long way to go, we think nothing of an hour’s drive, and if you don’t support your friends when they really need you, what kind of person are you?
The service was interesting because Pam was Greek Orthodox. I went to Catholic school, and the Greek Orthodox are sort of Catholic-ish–prayers in both Latin and Greek (I think), mostly similar liturgy but they cross themselves backwards, which makes me dizzy to watch. The proceedings involved much of the backwards signs of the Cross and frequent icon kissing, which seems awfully un-hygenic to this sissy California boy.
The funeral home puts together a video program that includes a slideshow of all the family photos of the deceased. It’s mesmerizing to watch somebody’s life unfold from baby pictures on, even if you don’t really know the person or anyone (except Dan) in the photos with her. Grade school, high school, college, career, trips, aging, all move along smoothly until their eventual and inevitable conclusion.
Pam’s brother and sister and assorted nieces and nephews were there. Dan’s sister arrived from Wisconsin. Gail and I were the only ones from the local bridge community: I hope there were more today for the formal funeral and interment.
Dying suddenly might be the best way to go, but it sure is hard on the ones you leave behind. Slipping away slowly lets everyone go through the grieving process slowly and prepare themselves for the separation of death. The instantaneous confrontation of a loved ones mortality is shattering. Dan is holding it together, but the strain is evident. This is when a person needs his friends the most.
Articles like this are supposed to conclude with some deep and profound observation on life which all too often becomes self-serving pompous pretension. I avoid that by having nothing to wax deep and profound about.
Mother always said that life is short and death is sure. I guess she was right. There is a theory that one should live every day as if it was his last: the theory forgets to say to live every day as if it is your loved ones last, too. Tell somebody you love them today.
Movies, movies, movies
We hadn’t been to a movie in months, then caught up with a vengeance this week. I’ll give you some brief reviews.
AMERICAN HUSTLE
Amy Adams is fun to watch in this movie
Christian Bale put on 40 or so pounds to play the lead in this story of the ABSCAM saga and the con man Irving Rosenfeld at the root of it. The opening screen in the movie is ‘Some of these things happened”, so it’s hard to know what is real and what is fiction, but if you just take it as an old fashioned caper movie in the spirit of The Sting you won’t be disappointed.
Amy Adams is stunning as Sydney Prosser, the bombshell redhead who partners Rosenfeld in the caper and in his life.
This is clearly the year of Jennifer Lawrence. She plays Rosenfeld’s wife, a blonde ditz who steals the show in a limited part. Coincidentally, he co-star in last year’s Silver Linings Playbook, Bradley Cooper, also co-stars as FBI agent Richie DiMaso, who puts the entire scheme in motion and then goes clean off the deep end and nearly brings the entire operation down.
Robert DeNiro has an uncredited part, a brilliant cameo as the criminal mastermind.
I think I’m writing too much about the cast and not enough about the movie, but I wouldn’t want to spoil the plot–this is a caper movie, after all, and the twists and turns, the double and triple crosses, are the heart of the movie and I won’t be the one to give the secrets away. Just go see it.
INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS
Oscar Davis as Llewyn Davis
Joel and Ethan Coen are noted for quirky, odd, strange yet deep movies, like Fargo or No Country for Old Men. I thought Inside Llewyn Davis was odd and quirky, just not deep. Gail liked it much more than I did.
Oscar Isaac plays Llewyn, a would-be folksinger in Greenwich Village in the early 60’s. Mostly, he’s a loser, couch surfing through life with minimal musical skills and no social skills at all. The movie purportedly follows him for a week, but it must be the busiest week in history, including a road trip from NYC to Chicago and back in a blizzard.
One of the couches on which he surfs belongs to Jen, played by Carey Mulligan. Jen is married, and pregnant, and fears that Isaac is the father. She spends considerable time excoriating him for sleeping with her, and causing this paternity question, as though she had no part in the issue. She’s very pretty, though.
It wouldn’t be a Coen Brothers movie without some outré characters, and they deliver brilliantly with John Goodman as Roland Turner, a verbose, overbearing, crippled, drug-addled musician whose car Llewyn shares on the way to Chicago. Turner travels with his “valet”, Jim, very well played by Justin Timberlake. There is little here to advance the plot or Llewyn’s life, but the characters were the highlight of the movie for me.
Nothing good happens here. Llewyn starts out a loser and tapers off. He proves that things are blackest right before the completely go to shit.
To be fair, Inside Llewyn Davis got a 92 on the tomatometer, meaning the critics love it. Gail loves it. I didn’t hate it, I just didn’t think it was great and I could never work up any sympathy for the protagonist. I’ve been out of step with the universe before.
DALLAS BUYERS CLUB
Jared Leto and Matthew McConaughey star in Dallas Buyers Club
Here is a movie I can get behind. It concerns the story of one Ron Woodroof, a bigoted, low class, homophobic, bull riding, good old boy electrician in Dallas who contracts AIDS in 1985. Matthew McConaughey lost 40 pounds to play the skeletally think Woodroof (making the universe balanced for Christian Bale in the first movie we saw).
Remember the early days of the plague? There was no cure, no real treatment. AZT had just been developed, but they didn’t know if it worked or not. Woodroof can’t get into the clinical trials, but is not a man to be denied. He finds an orderly to steal the drug for him, and when that well runs dry he heads to Mexico, where he finds an unlicensed doctor who provides him with vitamins and proteins that at least ease his symptoms and prolong his life.
The rest of the movie is how he turns this into a business, providing unaccredited drugs to the Dallas gay community and constantly looking for more and better ways to treat HIV and AIDS. He is pursued by the FDA, harrassed by the IRS, rejected by the courts but never stops fighting.
In the process, he loses his homophobia and develops a friendship, what might well be love, with a gay man named Rayon, brilliantly played by Jared Leto. Leto may be the prettiest man I’ve ever seen–he completely dissolves into this role, and is sure to be on the Best Supporting Actor list this year.
Dallas Buyers Club is a very good movie. We all know someone who died in the plague, and iconoclastic, driven, outside-the-box individuals like Woodroof made advances in treatment that the medical establishment would have taken years to develop. You want to see this movie.
Happy New Year
Gail and Kate celebrating
I think this says it all.
Izzy isn’t very good, is he?
Out to dinner tonight with BJ and Handsome Larry, we went to the new place in Alamo I’ve heard so much about, Izzy’s Place. I liked the salad, and 60% of the dessert. That isn’t enough.
Izzy’s Place is in a strip mall across the street from the Safeway. It used to be an old fashioned Italian restaurant. I wish it still was.
The facility is indeed attractive, with a large kitchen visible behind enormous windows that keep in the sounds and smells but let you see the work. The tables are formica covered, with brass around the rims–no tablecloths. I try to avoid sitting in a booth, but the three booths along the wall sure looked attractive, with light fixtures reaching down right over the tables to lend an intimacy while providing good illumination.
The waitress started out by telling us the long sad saga of the two owners, their desire to recreate an Italian family dinner atmosphere, and the chef they imported from New Jersey to accomplish that. Then there was some talk about wine and their complex way of offering it. So far, I wasn’t impressed.
We started with good news–I like the way they serve iced tea:
Not only a great presentation, but the coolest ice tea spoon I’ve ever seen.
Larry and I had the bibb lettuce salad, with dried cranberries and a buttermilk thyme dressing. Not only was the salad good, but the savory herb biscotti it came with was superb. I don’t usually like these tiny slivers of rock-hard bread, but this one was everything you could ever want in a salad accompaniment.
BJ had the brown sugar smoked salmon, and was thoroughly underwhelmed.. In what was to be a harbinger of the evening, the fish was simply too bland, lacking in spice and character. Further, she felt that the wine pairing suggested by the waitress was ill-advised and not complimentary to the dish.
Brown Sugar smoked Salmon
Gail and BJ both chose the 18 hour pork, but there was no way that this pork was slow cooked 18 hours.
18 hour pork with gemeli
The pasta, like the salmon, was insipid. The pork was just a slab of meat without distinction. There was nothing here to get excited about.
My buddy Mike can be trusted to order the spaghetti and meatballs anytime they are on the menu: I never do. But Izzy’s Place makes a specialty of their meatballs, so I felt compelled to have a plate, perhaps in Mikes honor.
I ordered my dish with a minimum of sauce, Larry ordered the same thing heavy on the sauce. There was no apparent difference between our plates, they were identical.
Grandma’s spaghetti and meatballs.. This is the “light” sauce version.
This plate of spaghetti and meatballs wasn’t like grandma’s, it was like the dormitory at UC Davis. That isn’t a culinary experience I was hoping to relive.
The meatballs had no taste. No spices, no herbs, no garlic, no damned taste.
The pasta was boring, and I love pasta and can’t imagine getting bored with it. Until tonight.
Everybody told us that the house specialty dessert was the thing to look for, so we ordered a couple.
An array of cones to finish the meal
This is the big deal of the night: 5 small cones, with grapefruit, tangerine, creme fraiche, mint and lemon-basil ice cream or sorbet. We liked three of them (tangerine, creme fraiche, and lemon-basil), were ambivalent about the mint and hated the grapefruit. That’s a great batting average if you’re a utility infielder for Cleveland, but lousy for a restaurant.
Izzy’s is not cheap. The salads were $10. The dinners come in small and large sizes, which is nice, but my large spaghetti was $20, which is a lot for a plate of pasta and 2 meatballs. The wine comes in 1, 3 and 6 ounce pours, and is priced high. BJ ordered a 3 ounce pour of pinot noir and none of us thought it was really 3 ounces. The desserts clock in at $12 each, or $2.40/itty bitty cone. I’ve eaten in much better places for considerably less money.
It’s easy to write a harsh review of a mediocre eatery, but it isn’t any fun. I’d rather struggle to find a new way to rave about the food, but that’s not happening tonight.
The TSA explained
My friend Nancy Ferguson send me this video, and I think everyone will enjoy it. If getting through security at the airport has been confusing for you, this will explain everything.
Nebraska, the movie
Bruce Dern as Woody Grant in Nebraska
For a guy who says he likes movies, I sure don’t get to many of them. This week, though, we did manage to sneak out and see Nebraska, the impressive black and white epic starring Bruce Dern as an alcoholic loser who is convinced he won $1 million in a magazine subscription scam.
Director Alexander Payne has already made two movies I liked–Sideways and The Descendants. He knows how to create a character and tell a story without explosions or car chases.
Dern gives a very deep performance as Woody Grant, the aging, stubborn, cantankerous, half-deaf alcoholic who insists that he has won a cool million in a magazine sweepstakes and needs to get to Lincoln, Nebraska from his home in Boise to claim his winnings. Can’t just mail it in, he doesn’t trust the Post Office.
Will Forte plays his son, David, living out a mediocre existence with a broken relationship and a dead end job selling home theater systems. Partly to assuage the old man, partly to just get away, David agrees to drive his dad to Lincoln to end this foolishness about the non-existent million.
Along the way, the stop in the small Nebraska burg the Grants are from, and have a reunion with the Woody’s many brothers. His wife, Kate, played by June Squibb, comes to join the party. Kate is a piece of work–a foul mouthed, bossy, obstreperous termagant who still follows all the gossip and knows everything that is going on in town.
Things happen. The womenfolk all sit and talk while the men sit and watch football. The town gets excited at Woody’s good fortune, then they start angling for a piece of it. The party ends, Woody and David go to Lincoln to claim the prize that isn’t, and then some more things happen. Some people live happily ever after, some not so happily. The end.
I liked this movie, and finally decided that it seemed to me to be more like a poem than a book. The long shots of the Big Sky country, the corn and wheat fields, the moments with the characters, are impressionistic more than declarative. You get to know Woody as much by the people around him as by his own actions. It’s a different way of telling a story, one that might not work in most cases, but it makes a beautiful movie.
I can’t leave this without mentioning an actress, Angela McEwan, who has a small part as Peg Nagy, a girl Woody dated before he married. She has a wordless scene right at the end of the film that is one of the greatest pieces of acting I’ve ever seen–in just a few seconds, her face conveys a lifetime of feelings. If you can get a Best Supporting Actress award for 5 seconds, she deserves it.
To be fair to everyone, Gail didn’t like this movie very much. I still think you will like it, but you pays your dime and you takes your chances.
I can’t make this stuff up
There is this guy named Ian Bayne running for Congress in Illinois. He has a website, and posted this:
DUCK DYNASTY STAR IS ROSA PARKS OF OUR GENERATION
Friday, December 20th, 2013 @ 4:23PM
Today, Ian Bayne called Phil Robertson, star of the A&E series “Duck Dynasty,” the ‘Rosa Parks’ of our generation.
“In December 1955, Rosa Parks took a stand against an unjust societal persecution of black people, and in December 2013, Robertson took a stand against persecution of Christians,” said Bayne.
Apparently, negatively reacting to Robertson’s vile bigotry is the “persecution of Christians”. I went to Catholic school, I don’t remember Jesus teaching hate anywhere.
I don’t persecute Christians, I persecute bigots. And idiots, fools, cretins, inbred jackasses and morons of all stripe and flavor. Now I have to add this clown Ian Bayne to the list.
Metro Montclair
This has to be a short review because there are no photos. No photos because the place is dark as a tomb and I don’t want to be one of those clowns taking flash pictures of my dinner. Good thing we have iPhones so we could use them as flashlights to read the menus.
This is the sister restaurant to Metro in Lafayette. They have a very different ambiance, but the same menu. The Lafayette iteration is much more modern and chi-chi. Metro Montclair is more like an old bar with a good kitchen, and what seem to be the wall hangings from what was the Left Bank when it was in Pleasant Hill–I’m sure I recognize those huge Parisian posters.
Restaurants in places with cold weather have two sets of doors so the whole place doesn’t get a blast of frigid air everytime somebody enters. The night we were there, I wished Metro had them, too. We were seated right in the front, and froze with every entry and exit. I think I will be quite literally a fair weather friend of this bistro.
I started with the salad Lyonaisse (which I think should be salade Lyonaisse, to be consistently French), a delightful bowl of frisee topped with a poached egg–breaking the yolk and stirring coats the frisee and makes a dressing. I wasn’t a fan of the extra-hard bread slices passing for croutons, but loved the rest.
Gail and Beth, the Travel Goddess, both had the pork schnitzel and scarfed it down. A pounded pork cutlet breaded and fried, served with mustard sauce, accompanied by braised red cabbage and roasted potatoes, this is the kind of dish you rarely see anymore and it will remind you of your youth and cold winter nights.
I had the gnocchi Parisienne, potato pasta with butternut squash, toasted pumpkin seeds and manchego cheese. It was wonderful, and I kept biting into tiny toasted sage leaves which just lit up my mouth with joy.
Service is decent, but the iced tea is more of that fancy mango hibiscus broccoli stuff instead of just plain Lipton, the way God intended, so they lose a point.
Montclair is only about 4 blocks big, and the parking is horrendous. I’d go again just for the gnocchi, but not until the weather is warmer.
A really hidden gem
Lunch in the city last week with Jan and Keith Gunn. We had left the cartoon museum and were walking back towards Union Square when we passed the St Regis Hotel and decided to stop there to eat.
There is a fine restaurant on the main floor of the hotel, Ame, but it isn’t open for lunch. Instead, we headed up to the fourth floor to their breakfast and lunch spot, Vitrine.
Once in a while you find a spot that just seems like it is not part of our world at all–just completely detached from everyday reality. Vitrine was like that for me. I felt like we had gone up the elevator from 3rd and Mission to someplace in France, maybe Germany. Someplace ultra-modern yet still warm, timeless and detached from the real world.
The menu is upscale fancy California. I guess most of the diners here are guests in the hotel and living on expense account–prices are fairly steep, so they intend to give you some serious value.
Orchids on the table in a severe, minimalist vase. Sort of warm and cold at the same time.
The meal started out tres elegante, and went up from there.
Not many places give you an amuse bouche with lunch. Fresh crab and a bit of tangerine.
A deconstructed tuna sandwich
I had this tuna sandwich sort of thing. Tuna, radicchio, hard-cooked egg, thick bread. Not really as tasty as you would like, but an impressive amount of effort at least.
Mint and orange cured Hamachi
Keith got the prize for the best looking dish of the day. “Mint and orange cured” is another way to say ceviche, I should think. Yellowfin tuna is cooked in the acid of the orange and scented with the mint. It looked wonderful and Keith cleaned his plate–a clear winner.
Crab cakes
Jan’s crab cakes were nicely done with a light, crunchy exterior filled with fresh, sweet Dungeness crab, resting on a lovely salad.
Chicken meatball sliders.
Gail’s dish has good and bad points. The menu calls them “grilled chicken sliders”, which would make you think you were getting grilled chicken, not chicken meatballs. On the other hand, the meatballs were flavored with garam masala (an Indian spice mix) topped with wild arugula and pickled onion and presented on a house made sea salt and sesame bun, accompanied by salt and cider vinegar chips. It was really a very good dish, I just wish they were more honest about the composition of the meat.
I’ve been trying to avoid dessert, especially at lunch, but they offered me this, and what could I do?
Butterscotch pudding with popcorn whipped cream, whatever that is.
I am congenitally incapable of refusing butterscotch pudding, and this was one of the best I’ve ever had. No, I don’t have the faintest idea of what ‘popcorn whipped cream’ is–there certainly didn’t seem to be any popcorn in it, thank God. The chocolate covered cookie stick was decent, but nothing much mattered to me but the pudding.
Service was impeccable, the iced tea was real iced tea and they had the proper sweetener. The bill was a minor heart attack, but that’s what you expect in a 4 star hotel.
Vitrine isn’t really the place you’ll just pop into for lunch on a regular basis, but if you’re down near MOMA or Moscone center and want an excellent meal with first rate service away from the noise and the crowds, you won’t be disappointed here.
Automotive history for sale in Marin
Gail wants a new car and is going to get a refinance auto loan with bad credit. A few weeks ago we saw a Jaguar F type outside a restaurant, we went and saw one, and now she has to have it.
I used to have a Land Rover, and had it serviced at Cole European in Walnut Creek,. I never once went there that I didn’t feel ripped off, so when the Land Rover died I wouldn’t even look at a new one because I didn’t want to deal with Cole. But we want a new Jag, and they’re the dealers, so what to do? Fortunately, we know somebody. If you use your network of friends, you always know somebody. In this case, we know Alex Lawson, husband of Tuppy Lawson, ceramic artist extraordinaire.
Alex sells Maseratis in San Rafael and has friends in the industry. He put us in contact with Vince, at Marin Luxury Cars, and negotiations were opened, a car of the right color and options was located and today we went to Corte Madera to work out details, thankfully we were able to get the loan from https://local.checkintocash.com/la/new-orleans/4901-chef-menteur-highway–suite-4-16065.html.
All of which leads up to what we saw on the floor of the dealership:
A 1992 Jaguar XJ220 in pristine condition
This was one of the first supercars, produced by Jag in 1992-96 to compete with competition-ready cars from Porsche and Ferrari. It was announced at a car show as a 500 horsepower V-12, with all wheel drive and all wheel steer. It was priced at over £400,000, and people were lining up to put down deposits of about $100,000 for the as yet unbuilt wondercar.
When eventually produced, it had the horses, but in a V-6 with twin turbochargers, rear wheel drive and two wheel steering. Many people were unhappy and wanted their money back–Jaguar sued some for not completing their commitment to buy.
The engine is visible under a glass lid in the middle of the automobile.
This beauty is sitting on the showroom floor, and available for $250,000. I think if you haggle hard you can probably get the price down to $240,000. I didn’t check the mileage, but there is wear on the leather seats so I think it has been driven a fair amount.
It’s all wrapped up for a Christmas gift
The name, XJ220, is supposed to represent the top speed of 220, which made it the fastest production car of its day–and most other days. You can get that kind of speed today in a Veyron or McClaren, if you have $2,000,000 to spend on a new car.
The XJ220 was pretty much a failure: there were only about 200 produced. Looking online, I can find a number of them for sale boasting fewer than 1000 miles on the odometer. These cars were purchased by super wealthy collectors and never driven, which I think is just perverse.
I suspect that this beauty will sit on the floor for quite a while before someone with that kind of disposable income falls in love with it. OK, I fell in love with it already, but I’m about $235,000 short, so I’ll just keep driving my Chrysler.
The view most people will get of this speed demon.
Totally Unauthorized 