No Silver Lining
Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper star in a very noisy movie
My ears are tired.
Gail and I just got home from watching Silver Linings Playbook, which was nominated for Best Picture last year, and for which Jennifer Lawrence won Best Actress. There was too much shouting, too much everyone-talking-at-once, too damned much noise to be enjoyable.
As we walked back to the car, Gail said “that sure didn’t do it for me”, and I could only agree.
One of the reviews called this a “romantic dramady”, which would seem to be like a romantic comedy that wasn’t funny, and that’s pretty much correct. The standard formula of a couple of people who don’t know that they are supposed to fall in love, then overcome obstacles before they finally realize how perfect they are for each other. In this case they had added the other formula, when two very broken, dysfunctional people magically combine to make a perfectly healthy couple. Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt did that one much better in As Good As it Gets.
All this would be fine, if only they could do it without the incessant screaming. David Russell, the director, seems to think that having all the characters screaming at each other at once makes it emotional and significant. I think it’s just unpleasant cacaphony.
Robert DeNiro co-stars as Cooper’s father, in a bizarre role as an obsessive-compulsive sports fanatic. Why is he crazy? What does that have to do with the plot? I don’t know.
Jacki Weaver plays Cooper’s mother, a supportive island of sanity apparently oblivious to the chaos surrounding her.
Jennifer Lawrence provides an excellent portrayal of yet another crazy person. Of course, she is also wise and kind and loving and wicked smart, the better to advance the plot whenever the screenwriter couldn’t think of a way forward.
The plot, as you might guess, has more holes than the back wall at a rifle range. Too many convenient coincidences, too many obvious happenstances. Every single one of the plot twists was completely predictable. How is it that Philadelphia seems to have only one cop, and he works 24 hours a day?
Yes, I know that Silver Linings Playbook got a 92 on the Tomatometer. That only says to me that 8% of the critics got it right this time.
Lark Creek discounts
Still available at Costco.
I said I wanted more winter
Kind of windy last night. We woke up this morning to find our umbrellas all over the yard. Fortunately, nothing was broken.
More rain is expected today and tomorrow. I’ll tie the umbrellas down.
Dandy Yankee
Shopping in Costco a while ago, I saw one of those discount deals where you could buy $100 in gift cards for any of the Lark Creek restaurants for only $80. I picked one up, came home and promptly forgot about it.
Today, Gail found the gift cards, so tonight we decided to go to Yankee Pier in Lafayette, and I’m glad we did. Good food, good service and we saved big with the gift cards. Kind of a triple play for dinner.
I really like the decor at Yankee Pier
The decor at Yankee Pier is just right–some magic mix of highbrow and casual that makes you feel welcome and upscale at the same time. I really like the table tops which are made from nautical charts.
Gail started with the mushroom soup. There aren’t any ‘shrooms in MY kitchen, so she never passes up a chance to order it when we’re out. The soup they serve here is apparently very good–Gail loved it.
That big square biscuit you see in front of her is a house specialty. It comes with a very odd sweet/sour dip I don’t understand at all, but slather it with butter and you’ll be in biscuit heaven.
I had the crab louis:
The modern California version of Crab Louis
I always think of a Crab or shrimp Louis as coming covered in a thick, sweet, thousand island type of dressing, but this had a much lighter, lower calorie version with all the flavor you’d expect. It came on butter lettuce with a large portion of fresh, hand picked crab. The hand picked part is a double-edged sword, since you get better, larger pieces of crab but are also likely to find small pieces of shell. Win some, lose some.
Gail originally ordered a bay shrimp cocktail, but they were out of bay shrimp. So she ordered the fish tacos, and they were spectacular–I know because there were two, and I ate one of them. Blackened rockfish, avocado, cilantro all come together to make a great meal–the rice and beans on the side weren’t really necessary, but we appreciated them, too.
Service was excellent. They were concerned about making Gail happy after not having her bay shrimp cocktail, and did everything they could to make sure they succeeded.
I can’t promise that Costco will still have the discount cards, but even at full price Yankee Pier is a good place to get a casual dinner.
Zut alors!
That’s an interjection in French, like saying Damn! Zut on Fourth is also the name of a restaurant on 4th street in Berkeley, and Damn! it was good tonight.
Zut is in the space that used to be Ginger Island, which we loved, then Ecolo, which we hated. It’s also just around the corner from where our friends Kevin and Dave live, so that’s where we walked for dinner.
Just like being in Paris
The decor of Zut is very French, just like being in a good neighborhood in Paris, all dark wood and bright lights, crystal and leather.
You can almost smell the Gaulloise
That skylight rolls out of the way in the summer.
We had a reservation through Opentable and got right to our table–the reservation is strongly recommended, this place is busy. It ended up completely full, and that’s on a Monday, which is the slowest night of the week. Not only are people tired out from the weekend, but Monday is the traditional chef’s night off, so serious gourmets avoid eating out when the second team is working.
Still, it might have been Monday but we had to eat, so off we went.
I started with the radicchio salad:
raddichio, blue cheese, apples, walnuts, other good things.
Lots of salad, not just lettuce. Kevin, not a real big guy, though that it was all he should have ordered. Which didn’t stop him from eating his rotisserie chicken:
Very good, moist, possibly salty, chicken.
Our friends eat very healthy, no white bread, no red meat, little salt. So they thought this dish was over-salted, but I thought their lives are under salted.
Scallops on a bed of lentils
The scallops Dave had as an appetizer were cooked perfectly, which is no small art. The chef might have had the night off, but the scallop cook is a star.
Trenne with house made sausage.
I had the trenne, which is a triangular tube pasta, sort of like penne. The dough in the three angles is thicker than the dough in the sides, so it doesn’t all cook evenly, and seems to be underdone, but I decided that was just he edges being more dense. The house-made sausage was very good. A bit spicy for me, yet still excellent. The sauce was just right, both in taste and in quantity–I hate it when I end up with a small amount of pasta in a bowl of sauce; I don’t want spaghetti soup.
Lamb Meatballs
Gail had two appetizers for dinner–the lamb meatballs, which come with quite a bit of tomato sauce, and the fingerling potatoes. Gail says “I thought the meatballs were divine.” She started with an excellent Caesar salad and didn’t really need the potatoes, but we liked them in any case.
Roast fingerling potatoes
Coating the potatoes in the extra sauce from the meatballs worked out spectacularly.
Notice how both Gail and Kevin thought they ended up with too much food? You’d think that meant no dessert, but you’d be wrong. We ordered two desserts for the table–an Olive Oil cake with blood orange and whipped creme fraiche, and a dish of vanilla ice cream with brandied cherries.
Dessert. Smart people order it first in case there’s an earthquake.
Olive Oil cake is like a pound cake (so named because the recipe was a pound of butter, a pound of flour, a pound of eggs) with olive oil instead of flour. It doesn’t rise as high and isn’t as sweet, it’s much more dense. The whipped cheme fraiche was quite different–it’s like whipped sour cream and just the thing to complement the cake.
So the building has come full circle–from a place we loved to a place we hated back to a place we, if not love, really, really like. Service was quick and professional, as it must be to keep up with the crowds in a very busy establishment. Prices are quite reasonable. There are outdoor tables with overhead heaters to enjoy the passing parade and make yourself feel even more French. Give Zut on Fourth a try.
A Salute to Richmond
Played bridge at the sectional in El Cerrito Sunday. Turnout was abysmal: only 7 teams in the A/X flight. We managed to win one of our six matches, and headed out to dinner at The Boilerhouse.
Which is closed on Sunday.
Quickly regrouping, we headed to Salute e Vita in Marina Bay, the upscale, waterfront part of Richmond. We’ve been there before, and always enjoyed it. Last night was no exception.
The restaurant was not very busy at 7:30 on a Sunday night. We were all chilled from the day–not enough heat in the community center where we were playing. Nicely, the hostess seated us in a semi-private room off the bar, which had two 4-tops (restaurantese for tables seating 4 people) and a fireplace. We were soon toasty warm, and ready to enjoy a very nice meal.
Here’s a design note–all the place settings were adorned with a small, flat rock which served as a knife rest. This doesn’t serve any real purpose, it just is a way to differentiate the business at almost no cost–rocks are cheap. A different little touch I appreciated.
Gail and I started with the broccoli soup. I asked Gail if she liked her soup, and she did, and I have come to the conclusion that I just don’t like broccoli soup. I like broccoli, but the soup always tastes grainy and bitter to me, and now I’m sure that’s me and not the chef. Go there, order and enjoy the soup, it just isn’t for me.
What is for me is the Risotto al Anatra, risotto with duck. Last year in Cambodia I had the tastiest duck of my life, (and I eat it often), and Salute is damn near as good. Definitely the best I’ve had in the Bay Area. If you are a duck lover, this is the place to go.
The second best duck in the world, I think.
The risotto is perfectly done, and loaded with artichoke and asparagus. You can’t ask for better, and the dish is only $18.
Carol had the filet:
Filet, asparagus, joy.
For a restaurant chosen on the fly, we felt we hit the jackpot with Salute. Service was fine–our waitress was just OK, but the busboy was excellent, and should be promoted to waiter. Being in our little cubby-hole of a room may have made it difficult for the waitress to see us, so I’ll cut her some slack.
Salute is right on the water, and in daylight the views are spectacular. Combined with the pleasant decor, the white tablecloths, good silver and those intriguing little rocks as knife rests, this is a very nice restaurant in an area you might not think of for fine dining–but you clearly should
Serious Whimsy
Sometime dramatic, sometimes whimsical, art can be either
As if I hadn’t spent enough time immersed in art on Thursday, after the tour I drove Gail home and headed right back into Oakland to enjoy the Thursday night open studios.
First stop was Mercury 20, where our friend Dave Meeker was opening his show, Lucky. He has a number of works on the theme of how lucky we all are to live in this time and place. Dave is not a very serious type of guy, so his work is light and funny. There is a piece in the front of the exhibition which consists of a leaf blower connected to a bowl of dice–you can push the button, the blower blows and you see how “lucky” you were with the dice coming up.
DON’T PUSH THE BUTTON!!! It’s godawful loud and will make you and everyone else crazy. Dave has an odd sense of humor.
Then he has 3 ladders set up, from which he has erased all traces of “ladderness” so you can walk under them with no trace of bad luck.
The art patrons are part of the show, too.
In the back half of Mercury 20, there is an exhibit by the artist Charlie Milgrim. Feeling particularly whimsical, her show is “Pet Peas”, for which she somehow amassed a number of green bowling balls and let her imagination roam free. Some times we thing of art as always heavy and meaningful, but I think having these in your house would just make you smile every time you saw them:
Pet peas on leashes, ready for their walk.
Now we get to the serious part of the evening. The gallery next door is PHOTO, and they have an excellent new show mounted.
Valeria Troubina and Yuri Boyko are Ukrainian, although they live in Oakland. Last year they went back to Ukraine to make this photo series, Immersive Identity. Yuri is the photographer, Valeria did the body makeup.
The artist statement seems like the typical artsy bollocks:
What is the relationship of each entity to itself? Immersive Identity addresses human self-conception in a sociological context. It explores radical change over time as well as ever present humanity. Human identity transcends national, cultural, physiological, sexual, or virtual signs—all the while immersed in them.
The series has two sections: “Figures” and “Portraits”. The former represents the evolving human socio type over history, and the latter reflects the personal presence and an affirmation of the omnipresent magic state of being.
The photos are strong.
From “Immersive Identity”
The model here is a Ukrainian woman who works with autistic children when not modeling. They gave her a mask and let her express herself, and the photos are wonderful, as she became more and more free in movement and gesture as her identity faded behind the mask and body paint.
I really loved this show, and strongly recommend it.
Mercury 20 and PHOTO are on 25th street in Oakland, between Telegraph and Broadway. Check them out.
On the art trail
Off on another day trip with the Oakland Museum Art Guild. We met up with 40 or so of our friends at the Museum, piled on to the bus (piloted as usual by the redoubtable Pete), and headed to the City.
The first cool thing we saw was the new Bay Bridge–sitting up high on a bus, riding in the right lane, we had a spectacular view of the nearly finished construction. I wish I’d had my video camera ready, it was so great. The new bridge will be beautiful, as it certainly should be after the 24 years it is taking to build.
Our first stop was the high-rise apartment of Elizabeth Barlow, a painter. If you have ever wondered how the rich live, it is in huge apartments with 10 foot coffered ceilings, views of 3 bridges and a bedroom directly looking at Alcatraz. She paints good, too. Not really my style–still lifes of lipsticks and shoes and girly things, but the work is excellent and we enjoyed our visit. No photos were allowed, so I can’t show you anything.
Next up, the reason I signed up for this trip without a second thought, we visited Pier 24, the finest exhibition space devoted solely to photography in the US, if not the world. Pier 24 is a labor of love creation of internet zillionaire Andy Pillara, and we are lucky to have it here in the Bay Area.
There were almost 1000 photos on display in the 24000 square feet hall; I’ll show you the two that stuck with me from today.
Helmar Lerski, from the Metamorphoses series
Gail liked this one enough to wonder if there were more prints available. Since it is from the 1930’s, I suspect that the price is more than my car, so we won’t be getting one. It’s only about 12 x 12, but it has such a large presence it still stands out in a room full of great photography.
This next photo is one of the most enigmatic things I have ever seen. It is hanging in a room featuring various Chinese artists, but I don’t know anything else about it. Pier 24 believers that art, like food, should be enjoyed from the gut, so there are no labels on the photos. No artist, no title, no date, nothing. You can find a docent and track some information down if you really want to, but in general you just absorb everything visually, not cerebrally.
The more you look, the more questions you have.
What’s going on here? Why are everyone’s eyes closed? Why is the boy in back all in shade? Why is the girl naked? Is this photo even legal in puritan California? The man seems to be in an army uniform, is that important? What is the subtext here? I spent a long time looking at this, and have no answers and more questions keep bubbling up.
The space is so extensive you could spend hours here (and you can go online and make an appointment and do just that), but we had to hit the road for our next stop–lunch. We went to Delancy Street, and had a pretty decent lunch considering how hard it is to feed a group of 42. I had the salmon, Gail had the pasta, we liked it. We would have liked it more if the waiter could have brought Gail a glass of wine, but they insisted that we somehow squirm out our very cramped space and make our own way over to the bar. Such is life.
After lunch, we headed to the home of a collector/gallerist couple. I’ve sometimes said to Gail that there was not need to worry about our house getting too full of art, there is always room for more. This house proved to me that I was wrong–there was entirely too darned much art there, you couldn’t really appreciate any of it for the overwhelming mass of all of it.
Lastly, we went to the Contemporary Jewish Museum, on Mission between 3rd and 4th. Getting into the museum is like trying to get into the airport–two guards, metal detectors, they found it necessary to impound my little pocketknife. Then they came around to our group with stickers we had to wear to identify us as the tour group we most obviously were. Gail had an opinion about that:
The editor of this blog does not necessarily share these opinions. But I might.
The exhibit we saw was interesting, to say the least. A man named Kehinde Wiley has been touring the world, creating paintings to explore/show the influence of black American culture on the world culture. This being the Jewish museum, the paintings on display were the ones he made in Israel, of Ethiopian Jews and others, who are part of the hip-hop culture. His large oil paintings are very finely wrought, with very complex backgrounds, added in by assistants, which appear both behind and in front of the figures. Unlike most artists, Wiley also frames his work in custom frames which are specific to the nation in question and relate to the paintings. While I don’t covet ownership of this work, it is certainly worth going to see.
Finally, we trekked once more to the bus and let Pete bring us back to the Museum. By tradition, cookies (or in this case, biscotti) were handed out on the trip home. A very full day of art thoroughly enjoyed.
Simple and solid
Dinner tonight at the Sardine Can, on the water in Vallejo. We started eating here years ago, when the Napa/Vallejo sectional was held every year on Memorial Day weekend at the Dan Foley Center in Vallejo. It was always hotter than Hades at the tournament, and at least a bit cooler at the Sardine Can, by the marina. The food is excellent and the price is right for cheapskate bridgeplayers.
Restaurants don’t come any less pretentious–picnic tables, formica tops, paper napkins and cheap flatware. The goodness here isn’t in the decor, it’s in the food.
Gail loves to start with a bay shrimp cocktail
The menu is heavy on seafood, and there is a distinct New Orleans/Cajun bias to the choices. This fits in well with their Sunday Jazz, afternoons and evenings with local jazz artists.
It isn’t all Cajun, this is California and you can’t get away from the Mexican influence. Gail opted for the nachos, then ordered a cup of chili to pour over the top. You can take the girl out of the Central Valley……
Nachos covered in melted cheese, topped with jalapeños and sour cream.
I started with their spectacular soup:
This is great soup.
And the particular dish that was on my mind tonight, the reason we came here:
Jambalaya, just like in Nawlins
This is some high quality jambalaya. Chicken, shrimp, scallops, sausage all in Cajun rice. Pretty spicy, about as hot as I can handle, it’s great.
Our friend Harry was with us; he ordered the rib eye steak, which was just average–come here, stick to the spicy stuff.
There is a crab sandwich on the menu I strongly recommend if you’re there for lunch.
Dinner for the 3 of us, including a couple of glasses of wine, was only $75. You don’t have to pay for the any fancy surroundings.
If you want a really good meal, heavy on the Cajun flavor, with no frills, fripperies or pretensions, the Sardine Can is a great place. You don’t need to dress up, either.
You don’t have to be good at it.
Drawing, in this case. I’m not very good, but I’d like to be better. So today, BJ and I attended a model marathon put on by the Bay Area Models Guild, for a chance to improve our skills.
A model marathon is a pretty interesting affair. There were 60 or 70 people attending, and 4 large platforms where the models posed. 10 models, 6 women and 4 men, rotated around. On one platform, they did 1 and 2 minutes poses. The second was 5 and 10 minute poses, the third was a 20 minute pose and the fourth featured two models who did not rotate around but held the same pose for the entire time (with frequent breaks).
The models were all unclothed–this was a live drawing class. No photography is permitted, so I have nothing to show you. I’m certainly not sharing my poor efforts at drawing–I have a lot to learn.
I wish I had been able to bring my camera–not for the models, but for the artists. The models aren’t interesting as people–they pose in positions designed to test your drawing skills, and have blank expressions–there is no engagement with the artists. The artists are involved and concentrating, and would have made wonderful portrait studies.
The marathon begins at 10 am, and goes on until 4, with a break for lunch. The posing sessions run about 20 minutes, with a 5 minute break for the models. BJ and I just went for the first half, and went out to lunch with Gail later. It was amazing to me how exhausted we were–trying to get you hand to transform the three dimensional figure into a two dimensional drawing is intense and stressful. Three hours was all either of us could take, we were completely spent by the time we left.
Notice I haven’t made any cute comments about all the naked bodies we were studying. Besides the fact that I’m serious about trying to be better at drawing, the bottom line is that there is nothing sexy, exciting or erotic about working with artist’s models. Breasts just become lines, curves and shadows I try to properly represent. Drawing genitalia, male or female, makes me uncomfortable, probably the result of too much Catholic school. As far as I’m concerned, the sexiest person there was BJ.
The experience was worthwhile, even if tiring. I’m a little better with a pencil than I was yesterday, and I learned something about what interests me (people, faces, emotional involvement with the art) and what doesn’t interest me (figure study, still life). I’ll go to the next marathon and keep trying to improve because I enjoy doing it. You don’t have to be good, you just have to want to be better.
Totally Unauthorized 