Another adventure begins
Gail and i are in Orlando for a long weekend. It’s Susan Rowley’s birthday, and festivities are in order
Flying here was more than the usual travail. The TSA in San Francisco insists on you telling them your name. Apparently they are afraid of a group of terrorists brilliant enough to plan an attack yet too stupid to remember the names on their fake ID’s. OK, I think it’s just something to irritate people so they look like they are doing something.
Our flight from SFO to Dallas had two trainee cabin attendants, and things went slowly. They have to get some real world practice before they graduate from cabin attendant academy, and we were the guinea pigs.
Then we get to Dallas, and our flight is delayed for over 2 hours for some mechanical glitch. But of course they can’t tell you upfront that it will be 2 hours so you can go off to the Admirals Club and wait in comfort–they have to keep telling you “10 more minutes” like you were a child, so you cannot make an intelligent decision on what to do with your time. I hate airlines.
But we got there. And Susan and Karl were there to greet us:
SR in her jammies with her pillow was waiting for us.
Florida is its usual silly self. I saw something I’ve never seen before at the airport:
He claims to be a chauffeur
A man in a tuxedo and flip-flops? Only in Florida.
Big party Tuesday night. Small party Monday night. Frivolity all the way around, home on Wednesday. Stay tuned, it’s always a wild ride here.
Rush
Chris Hemsworth and Daniel Bruhl compete in Rush
I’m home at last, and Gail had a surprise for me tonight–said to be ready to go out at 5:45 and wouldn’t tell me where.
I’m a lucky guy–she took me to the movies, to see Rush, the new Ron Howard film about Formula 1 racing and the legendary rivalry of Jim Hunt and Niki Lauda. It was, if not great, then pretty damned good.
The story is classic–a monumentally talented but morally vapid playboy, James Hunt, competes against a driven, straight-laced, moralistic Niki Lauda in a duel to the death, or close enough.
Hunt is portrayed by Chris Hemsworth, who Gail describes as a cross between James Dean and Brad Pitt, if Pitt was better looking. Daniel Brühl isn’t as pretty–and neither was his character, Niki Lauda, described often as looking like a rat with buck teeth, small eyes and a pointy nose. And that’s when he was good looking…….
Director Ron Howard takes this true story and makes it wondrously visual–Rush will be up for Academy Awards in cinematography and lighting, I should think. He uses those visuals to tell a compelling story which grips you completely even though it is entirely predictable. The story is so old it would be corny and trite if it weren’t true, but it is true and you get quite caught up in it.
I’m a Formula 1 fan, so I’m predisposed to like this, but I don’t think it matters. This movie is an age old morality play, and you’ll like it even if you’re like Micky and don’t think racing is a sport. He thinks golf is a sport, for some reason.
The 1970’s era racing cars are a treat to watch, and the driving is spectacular. Seeing everyone in their bright polyesters, long hair and big mustaches is amusing, but the cars still look wonderful.
Olivia Wilde costars as Suzy Miller, Hunt’s wife, and is breathtakingly beautiful, while Alexandra Maria Lara, as Marlene Lauda is more classically cosmpolitan and mature.
None of the reviews I have read of Rush even mention the great 1966 epic, Grand Prix, which is described as millions of dollars of star power and a nickels worth of plot–but the photography is stunning and the racing scenes, made without stedicams, CGI, computer controller camera mounts or any of the modern wonders, will still take your breath away. Grand Prix manages an perfect score of 100 on the tomatometer while Rush comes home at a very respectable 87. The opening sequence of Rush even includes, it seemed to me, a tiny homage to Grand Prix, one I had been hoping for.
Ron Howard may well be nominated for Best Director yet again, the movie is that good. Chris Hemsworth is the pretty boy here, but the acting awards will go to Brühl for his performance of the driven, dogged Lauda.
Go see Rush, then watch Grand Prix on Netflix. Then tell me that racing isn’t a sport.
ü
I hope this trip doesn’t kill me
These have not turned out to be the friendly skies.
We’re going to South Africa next June. After years of cajoling, I got Mike and Linda to go visit the dark continent with us, along with Kate and Brad and the granddaughters.
My challenge at the moment is to find us some airplane seat, without breaking the bank. I’d like to try first class on Emirates, but that’s $37,000.
Normally we go places on frequent flier miles, but I spent every last one we had getting the kids and grandkids there.
Fortunately, we have access to a pile of American Express points, which can be turned into miles on many airlines. Not American Air, though, because that would be too easy.
I’ve been on the phone for hours and hours trying to solve this.
I tried Virgin Atlantic, but they have no availability.
I tried British Air, but that didn’t work either.
Delta!!! Delta has a great flight–SFO to Atlanta, then non-stop to Johannesburg. True, we need to get to Capetown, but if I can get us to Jo’burg (as the cool people say), I’ll work out the hop to Capetown later.
I find the flights. I call American Express, and try to move the points into miles. Unfortunately, I only have 17 of the 18 meaningless pieces of information I need for “security”. Make a few calls, get the answer and call back.
Success!! I now have almost everything. Except I’m 24,000 miles short. But I knew that, and Delta says on their website that they will be happy to sell me the remainder for a mere $800, which is highway robbery but I can live with it. Better than $37,000.
Oops!! New rule: they won’t sell me the miles I need until the Skymiles account I have just opened is 10 days old, and I must earn at least 1 frequent flyer mile somehow. What you hear is the sound of my head exploding.
How about this? I have a friend, Don Mamula, with lots of miles. Maybe he could give me some, and I’d make it right to him later.
Delta isn’t real big on that, but they will let him buy miles to give me. Fine, I can pay him back. Nope, the same 10 days and 1 frequent flyer mile applies to gifts–he can’t give them to me either.
Well, I guess i can wait the now 9 days. But how do I earn at least one mile? The account isn’t exactly in my name, I can’t take a short flight. I could open a credit card and get 30,000 free miles, but I’d have to spend $500 a month for 3 months and that’s too long.
Skymiles has retail partners. I could send Gail flowers, except she doesn’t really like them.
Perhaps I’ll replace my noise cancelling headphones. Mine are 6 or 7 years old and there’s a new model. Bose will give me 1500 for the purchase, I just hope that they can do it quickly.
My next worry: what’s the best process at this point? I have enough miles to purchase one ticket, which would guarantee that Gail got there and back on the best dates. Then wait until I can purchase the extra miles and hope to be able to get the same flights, or have to leave or come back early or late or on ugly flights, which leaves Gail to navigate the trip and customs by herself. I don’t much like that option, but the alternative is to wait and try to buy both tickets later, which might be perfect and might be a disaster.
I don’t handle frustration well. This has been an incredibly difficult and stressful process, where every time I think I have worked out a solution the damned airline throws another roadblock in my way, and this is extremely stressful for me to point where I even had to find one of the CBD Oil Manufacturers since cbd oil is the only one that has seemed to help me cope with stressful situations where I don’t have control. I haven’t gotten to the point where I am banging my telephone on the counter while screaming at the clerks on the other end, but again, it’s only because of my medication.
I know we will eventually get there, and then have a great time. I just hope my heart doesn’t shoot straight out of my chest in anger, stress and frustration before it happens.
Disneyland without Mickey
Down here in La-La land, everything is bigger that it needs to be, brighter than it ought to be, louder than I want it to be and appearances are always more important than reality. I saw all of this today at The Grove, a fancy mall adjacent to the Farmers Market I remember from 50 years ago at Fairfax and 3rd.
The Grove is in Los Angeles, just south of West Hollywood and east of Beverly Hills. It glitters and glows like Las Vegas in the desert, and reminds me of nothing so much as Main Street Disneyland, without Mickey and Goofy. Getting off the elevator from the parking, (if you haven’t chosen to use the valet parking) you see a concierge desk with very well dressed men and women standing ready to help you with your packages, dinner reservations and whatever else will improve your shopping experience.
Hollywood or Anaheim? It’s hard to tell.
The entire mall is only a couple of hundred yards long–the trolley is for show and giving the kiddies a thrill, not really needed for transportation.
The driver looks like he was created in central casting.
There are good stores here–Nordstrom, Barney’s, TopShop, etc. There is a huge Barnes and Noble and an immense Cheesecake Factory.
I met my brother here, and we stopped into a beautiful restaurant called La Piazza, with dining al fresco to enable better people watching. I thought I was just ordering a snack, but got the greatest cheese plate I’ve ever seen:
Four different Italian cheeses, breads, jams, hazelnuts, grapes, strawberries and blackberries.
The service was slow, but we weren’t in a hurry. Dudley the dog was tied up near us, and the little kids all were looking at him. We spent a pleasant hour watching the sun go down and the crowds go by.
The big anchor stores pay the rent, but it’s the little stores that give a mall character. I saw one here that I doubt I’ll ever see again–a bookstore featuring just one publisher, Taschen.
The best art books in the world.
Taschen is the publisher of the finest art books made. There is nothing in this store that you will find in Barnes and Noble, just gorgeous books printed large and well.
The massive book in the window is the photographs of Sebastião Salgado, a Brazilian photographer of world reknown. The book retails for $4,000. A signed copy, including a hand-made print of one of the photos, is $10,000. My birthday is in February.
Not everything here is expensive:
Snap-together lights.
These are cheap light fixtures–they snap together in many different configurations so you can decorate on the cheap.
There are also many kiosks along the walk, some selling $59 jars of Dead Sea Salt to exfoliate you skin, others selling hundreds of variations of blinged out iPhone cases.
Speaking of the iPhone, there is an Apple store. And since the new iPhone 5S was released this week, there was a line to get in:
Apple kindly set up the tent for shade, and has an urn full of umbrellas in the unlikely event of rain.
This was a very slow line. Every 10 or 15 minutes a Apple clerk would come out and let a few of these people into the store. There is a woman on the far left in a head scarf–it was more than 45 minutes before she got to the head of the line, and I don’t know how long she had been there or how long she would have to wait in the store before she could dance on out of there with her shiny new phone. I’m waiting for next year, and then I’ll do it all online and wait 3 days.
The decor of The Grove is delightful. There is music playing, of the Sinatra variety, and art installations as well:
Kids just naturally relate to art.
They have a pond in the center of facility, with an incredible fountain system. It’s even better than the one at the Bellagio in Vegas, albeit much smaller.
You could watch this for hours, mesmerized.
The sunset from the 5th floor of the parking garage (which is far from cheap), was spectacular.
As sun sets slowly in the West, we bid a fond farewell………….
Hi There
It’s me!! I haven’t died.
I’ve just been working in Los Angeles trying to get this silly store successful, and not doing anything much interesting worth writing about.
Except last weekend I went home, then promptly decamped for Lake Tahoe for the annual closing of the cabin ceremony at Jack and Carol Scott’s bide-a-wee in the trees of South Lake Tahoe.
They only use the place in the summer, and each fall we have a weekend of bridge and dining and then Jack buttons the joint up for the winter, draining pipes, bringing in garden furniture, etc.
First he had to get the heater working–it’s a big fireplace insert. When we first started going there, this was a huge fireplace that filled the house with smoke. Then one year a bear got under the cabin, ripping out all the heating ductwork. It was wiser to get the fireplace insert than replace the heater.
Trying to find the pilot light
The best way to warm the cabin
We play a lot of Doop, duplicate bridge for 4 people. We also like to explore. This trip, we went to the Hellman Mansion, at Sugar Pine State Park.
Isaias Hellman emigrated to Los Angeles from Germany, started in his uncle’s mercantile business, started his own dry good store, moved into banking and ended up president of Wells Fargo. Around the turn of the century he purchased a considerable amount of land on the west shore of the Lake, and built himself an 11,000 square foot stone mansion. This in a day when you could only get there on horseback or by boat.
The house is now part of the state park, and they have hourly tours. The guard at the gate to the park said we were too late, but we zoomed in and made the last tour anyhow.
The house is beautifully preserved and maintained. You can rent the grounds for a wedding, but not the inside.
Dining room–but not the original table.
Living room
Chandelier. I don’t know how they get those vintage light bulbs.
The original stationery guests used.
There was no telephone at the house in the early 1900’s, of course. There was a telegraph office in Truckee, which could be reached by boat in a few hours. Eventually, one telephone was installed in a downstairs closet for the use of the hosts and guests.
An elevator was installed in the 30’s as the owners aged.
Notables and high society found their way to the mansion every summer for long weekends of cards and billiards, tennis, walks in the fresh mountain air and the inevitable networking.
One of the 7 guest bedrooms
Guest bedroom
This was a master suite, re-done as the bridal suite when a daughter married. Note the twin beds.
A modern kitchen stove was installed in the 30’s.
State of the art refrigeration. The big black thing on the top is the condenser
I’d love a bottle of 1875 port. These are empty, sadly.
Gail had a table like this one when she was first married–but it was an antique then. The two large bins on the below the drawers are for flour and salt.
Pantry work table.
An operation this large required a live-in staff. Maids, cooks, butlers and footmen all lived on the third floor of the mansion, which is not open to the public.
Staff dining room.
Last look at the living room
It would not be possible to accumulate 2000 acres of beachfront on Lake Tahoe today, this mansion is a lovely relic of time gone by.
Still, today we have air conditioning, cell phones and good roads. In many ways we live better than even the very rich of the last century.
===============
Then we went to dinner. Carol had found a restaurant on the North Shore, very near the state line, and said it was great. Gail got to telling us about a wonderful place she had had dinner over 20 years ago, and, just like in a cheesy movie, it was the same place.
Same ownership for 29 years.
The Soule Domain is a small place, in an old wooden cabin. The decor is mountain rustic.
You could need these snowshoes in the winter around this place.
The food is hardly rustic, but modern and every bit as good as Carol promised. I started with the scallops appetizer:
Scallops, leeks, more good stuff than I can remember.
Getting a good sear on the outside of the scallop without overcooking the middle is an art, This chef has mastered that art.
Carol’s filet
Carol enjoyed a lovely slab of filet. I opted for the duck:
Duck breast with strawberries, an intriguing combination
I’ve never had strawberries with duck before, it’s an interesting and different choice. The house was very accommodating in providing me with the linguine instead of potatoes. The grilled vegetables were so good I even ate the squash.
Desserts disappeared too fast to photo. My bread pudding was decent, but the house made ice cream that came with it was spectacular. Vanilla, with a touch of almond extract, just about perfect.
After dinner, we drove around the Nevada side of the lake. As we neared the casinos, it occurred to me that I might be able to see the Mayweather-Alvarez fight. A few quick phone calls, and it happened that Harrah’s was showing the fight for free in a casino lounge. Jack slowed the car down and I jumped out, raced across the busy boulevard and into the teeming casino.
I have heard much about how the Indian casinos in California are killing the business in Lake Tahoe, but you couldn’t prove it by last Saturday night. Every table was full of gamblers, and there was a huge crowd watching the big screen TV to see the fight.
A panorama shot of the crowd watching the fight.
Watching a fight in a big crowd is exciting–there was cheering, booing, chanting and one insane obnoxious moron who would’t stop shouting the entire fight–who naturally was standing next to me. The crowd was so intense I even had a Corona and lime.
The bad new was that I had $100 on Alvarez, and he lost decisively, to the great glee of the shouting cretin beside me.
Getting back to the cabin, I had to take one of the relatively rare taxis in South Shore, and got the most interesting and talkative cab driver ever. He made the $30 trip pretty worthwhile.
Then we drove home, I drove down to LA for another 9 day stint of making cookies and trying to get customers into the store. It isn’t an easy job, but I can see definite improvement in both the product and the sales figures. Life goes on.
Art night in the big City
One of my photo blogs mentioned that a favorite photographer of mine was having an opening around here tonight, so I went to see his work. Happily, I stumbled into an enormous art scene with hundreds of people wandering from gallery to gallery.
First, the star of the evening, Mitch Dobrowner at the Kopeiking Gallery . He works with a large format film camera, chasing storms throughout the southwest to make incredibly dramatic landscapes.
Mitch Dobrowner: Vapor Cloud
His photos are fabulous, but I don’t have a spare $5-10,000 this month, so it was off to see what else there was.
Performance art. It means whatever you like. This piece means I don’t like it.
The people watching is always as good as the art. Sometimes better……..
Art galleries are fun, but that doesn’t mean you have to like, or understand, everything you see.
If you have a big wall that just needs “something” this might be the answer.
Wandering around was pretty interesting in itself. The crowd was all young and hip, and I moved through them like a wraith, unseen, unnoticed, irrelevant. The old white guy with no tattoos in boring clothes just blends into the walls at these events.
Except, sometimes, to the gallery owners (now knows as “gallerists” to the hip, slick and cool). They have learned that art collectors don’t always fit the picture, and us older guys are slightly more probable to have the money to actually buy something instead of just looking.
So it was that the owner of the Bruce Lurie Gallery found me gazing at this piece by Nelson de la Nuez:
This sure looks like the work of Roy Lichtenstein to me.
Mr. de la Nuez has other pieces that look remarkably like the work of Andy Warhol. He has so successfully appropriated the style and manner of these famous artists that I’d love to talk with an intellectual property lawyer to understand why this isn’t arrant plagiarism.
But I’m more of a sculpture guy anyway, so we went off to look at a piece I really liked. It is a set of 7 tiny busts in bronze, mounted individually on long stalks. The artist is from Argentina, his name is Ari Hirschman, and he doesn’t show up on the gallery website.
Then the gallery owner did something strange. He quoted me a price, then immediately dropped it my almost a third. He also said this was the last set of 12 cast–and usually the last item in a series carries a higher price, not a discount. This makes me very suspicious and leery of the whole affair, although I still really like the work. Something is not right here–which may explain Hirschman’s absence from the list of artists on the website.
Gail probably won’t like my little congress of bronze busts, so it doesn’t really matter. Just another reminder that there is absolutely no intrinsic value in a work of art, it is only worth what you can get someone to pay for it. The supply is almost infinite, so there is always another great work just around the corner. There is also a guy in a mermaid suit in a hammock, but that’s where you have to develop your own taste.
And that’s what I did on Saturday night in the big city, 400 miles away from Gail.
How to stay unemployed
I’m running an ad on Craigslist for a baker for the store in Los Angeles. When we opened the store, our current guy was hired with the promise that he would be paid in cash, off the books. He’s on SSI or something and can’t have declared income.
I don’t want to run the business that way; if we want to grow this place and have other stores we need to be on the square. From now on everybody is going to be on the payroll properly. This means that our baker will quit, and I have to replace him.
Craigslist is incredibly efficient–place an ad and you will be getting resumés with 15 minutes. Some of them are astounding in their quality, some are hilarious. I got this response this afternoon:
Writing in response to the Freelance Cookie Bakerposition. I strongly believe that my expertise will show that your company is the perfect match for me, as I am the perfect solution for you.
As a Business Innovative Formative, and a love for Food. All is a key factor in aiming to Maintain, not only a Creative Baking technique, but understanding taste and a love for the Art of Baking!
With 11+years of my Erudite Background in Food, and B.A in Design; I am extremely Motivated,Work Hard, extremely Zany as well as Fun.
With that, I have posted below my resume for your review, and Welcome the chance to speak with you further. I look forward to hearing from you soon.
I like ‘extremely Zany as well as Fun’ as much as the next man, but this mass of randomly capitalized gibberish is not what I had in mind. I think that Zen monks have a new koan to meditate upon: “As a Business Innovative Formative, and a love for Food”. Surely pondering that is at least as deep as the sound of one hand clapping. Perhaps it is the sound of one brain cell firing.
Risking my life for my readers
Just last week, I said to Gail that I have never understood why, if you see a car heavily festooned with bumper stickers, it will almost always be a member of the loony left.
The wingnut right, for some reason, just doesn’t cover their cars with partisan stickers. In general.
So there I was, driving down I5 a few days ago, when I saw a car that refuted my position. Naturally, I had to get a photo to capture this rarity–sort of like seeing a white tiger:
Tea Party stickers and all.
A woman was driving, moving smartly through the traffic as we neared the San Fernando Valley. Nothing exceptional to mention about this this, I just thought it was strange that I finally saw it in the wild.
Hovel sweet hovel
Home away from home in West Hollywood
I’ve been a stranger around these parts lately, and it’s time we talked about why.
Gail’s business partner, Stan, decided to open an ice cream and cookie store, because there is one in Berkeley right next to our office that is doing a land office business–we have to fight through the lines just to get into our office.
For reasons known only to Stan, he located this store in Los Angeles, across from the Beverly Center mall in lower Beverly Hills.
It’s taking time and energy to get the store going, and I seem to have more time and more energy than anybody else around here, so I got elected. For the last 5 weeks I have been spending most of my time here, living on cookies and Subway sandwiches. For a while I was staying in decent hotels, but they are just too pricey, so this trip I decided to try the Alta Cienega Motel, a semi-famous establishment right on the corner of La Cienega and Santa Monica Blvd. Jim Morrison stayed there 40 years ago, which is their claim to fame. Room 32 is the “Jim Morrison Room”. I’m not in it.
I’m in room 25, and it’s a dump. A pit A swamp. A slum with a hotel license. You know you’re in trouble when there is a sign in the office that says no short term rentals (which means by the hour). I see other tenants who are getting around on their skateboards. At least that leaves me a parking spot.
Playing bridge, I’ve lived in hotels a good part of my life. You get used to the simple amenities. You don’t find them here. I had to go shopping today:
The things I expect in a hotel.
There is no shampoo here. On the other hand, Alberto VO5 is only $1.67 at CVS, which surprised me. I get one, thin, hard, gritty sliver of soap a day, which is insufficient for the amount of me I have to wash. The less said about the TP this joint provides, the better. I bought some of the good stuff.
I do admit that it is at least airconditioned:
The hotel HVAC system.
There is internet available, at no charge. As always, if you stay at the Four Seasons for $500 a night, they hit you $14 for wifi Stay at the Alta Cienega for $500 a week and it’s free. Not great, but free.
No refrigerator in the room, of course, so I bought an ice chest to have a cold Diet Coke in the morning. If I wanted coffee, I would have had to buy a coffee maker, they don’t have one of them, either.
If you are a lover of science experiments, there is one provided in the shower:
The ceiling is too far up for the maid to reach, I guess.
This is the worst place I’ve stayed in many a year, but I guess I’ll survive. I spend most of my time at the store anyway, trying to get some customers to stop and give it a try. Slowly, slowly, we’re growing. It will take a considerable infusion of time and energy and money to get noticed by enough of the locals to make this place a success, but I think it’s possible.
Then, of course, Stan will want to open another store. He already has a site picked out–again here in the Los Angeles area. If I have to get that one started, we’re renting an apartment. I’d like to think that this is the very bottom of my hotel experience for the rest of my life.
Security theater, local version
Not the one in Lafayette, but pretty much the same.
Coming home Friday night, Gail and I got off the freeway at Pleasant Hill road to find a sea of red lights and orange cones. Just past the next stop light was a sobriety checkpoint, the opener to a big holiday weekend where the cops pretend to be doing something useful while collecting scads of overtime.
Notice that I said the checkpoint was beyond the stoplight. Since there is no probable cause to stop everyone, the Supreme Court has ruled that these ridiculous intrusions on the citizens are legal only if there is an opportunity to avoid them. That’s right, you can turn left, you can turn right, you can hang a U-turn and get the hell out of there, and the cops can’t follow you or use that as probable cause to stop you. You can do this if you are drunk, if your drivers license has been suspended, if you are number 1 on the FBI most wanted list.
I don’t think they catch many drunk drivers this way, they were not going to catch me since I already had a good lesson thanks to the Seattle dui attorney.
Traffic is funnelled into one lane, and 5 or 6 cars at a time move forward to be greeted by a cop demanding to see your license. I gave him mine, and he just held it–didn’t run the numbers, didn’t check for outstanding warrants, just held it.
He inquired where we had been, and I mentioned that I don’t have to report my whereabouts to the police. He agreed that I was right. Asking rude and impertinent questions, trying to bully people into giving up their civil rights, is just the day in and day out of police work.
Having wasted enough of my time and not having any more questions that were none of his business to ask, he handed me back my license and said good night. We finished the drive home, feeling secure that the city of Lafayette had spent thousands of dollars in overtime for the 20 or so cops involved in this pretense of police work for no good purpose whatsoever.
I wonder if they arrest any drunks this way. I wonder how much more effective it would be if all of those cops had been on patrol, doing their jobs instead of creating a massive traffic jam and wasting the time of innocent citizens. I wonder why we put up with this crap.
Totally Unauthorized 