Go Fish
Amr Waked and Ewan McGregor discuss an improbable scheme in Salmon Fishing in the Yemen
Theater and movie going hasn’t been real successful around here lately; I feel like I’ve been whining about everything I’ve seen.
That stops today. Gail and I went to the Orinda Theater and saw Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. It wasn’t heavy, there isn’t any action to speak of, no good sex scenes, just 2 hours of old fashioned love story and entertainment.
After making love, if the man says “I love you Mary” and the woman says “That should hold you for a while”, you know their relationship isn’t going to last, and so it is for Dr. Alfred Jones. His wife goes to work in Geneva; he goes to work in Yemen, creating a water system that will support spawning salmon while providing irrigation to the desert. He has been forced into attempting what is presumably an impossible task because a very rich sheik wants the project and it is politically expedient for the British Government.
Of course, he has to fall in love with Harriet, the Sheik’s investment advisor. And of course, she is already in love with Robert, who is off on a secret special mission, then dies, then doesn’t die, then nearly dies again.
There are good guys. There are Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. There is beautiful scenery and silly plot implausibilities and outright ridiculous plot devices.
And I don’t care. I liked it. I wanted the good guy to get the girl and make the fish swim upstream and it all worked out.
In many ways, it’s a formula movie. Strange man gets an inspiration to do something probably impossible. He recruits a shy nerdy type to make it happen, and against all odds they succeed. Along the way, shy nerdy guy falls in love with beautiful woman, who somehow falls in love with him.
Disasters befall. Moral dilemmas are resolved. Hilarious subplots abound. To the swelling of violins and horns, the project succeeds, love succeeds, everyone rides off into the sunset bathed in golden light and glory. The End.
I felt like I had seen this formula many times before, frequently from Disney. Still, it was excellently crafted albeit relatively predictable.
Kristin Scott Thomas is brilliant as Patricia Maxwell, the Prime Minister's press secretary.
In particular, I was entranced by the performance of Kristin Scott Thomas, the hard bitten, cynical, foul mouthed press secretary who is also the kindly mom to her family. Providing comic relief and moving the story forward simultaneously, Scott Thomas keeps the pace of the movie on track.
Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt fall in love in spite of themselves.
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen won’t be winning any Academy Awards, but if you go see it you’ll come home happy. What more can you expect for your $10?
Too Much Choice
In her new home on the corner of Maple and Vine, Katha (Emily Donahoe) welcomes the day as a new member of the Society of Dynamic Obsolescence (SDO) in the West Coast premiere of Jordan Harrison's Maple and Vine, playing at the American Conservatory Theater through Sunday, April 22, 2012. Photo by Kevin Berne.
There are people, I am told, who wouldn’t want to sit front row center at a play. I am not one of those people. We got lucky, as far as I am concerned, and were dead center first row, and I loved the seats. The play, I’m not entirely sure about.
We went to the city to see Maple and Vine at ACT. It’s a fine play,written by Jordan Harrison and ably directed by Mark Rucker, thoroughly entertaining with splendid sets, fine costumes, first-rate acting and top-notch writing. I’m just not sure what message I’m supposed to take away from it.
Maple and Vine tells the story of Katha (Emily Donahoe) and Ryu (Nelson Lee) a pair of New York yuppies living the high pressure city life. He’s a plastic surgeon, she’s a Random House editor still not emotionally recovered from a miscarriage 6 months previously. One day, Katha meets Dean (Jamison Jones, who completely rocks the best haircut in San Francisco). Dean introduces her to the idea of the Society of Dynamic Obsolescence, a group of people living in an enclave in the mid-West where it is perpetually 1955.
Intrigued by the idea, and looking for a way to slow down the pace of their lives and the constant inter-connectedness of the internet age, the agree to give it a 6 month try.
Here’s where I get a bit lost–each person moving to the enclave creates a new “dossier” or back-story of their life, something that will fit in with 1955 USA. Ryu, who is Japanese-American, born in Long Beach, becomes an immigrant karate master and ikebana practitioner, who gets a job folding and taping cardboard boxes. This is an absurd waste of talent that any small community would need–why didn’t he become kindly Dr. Nakamura, making house calls, delivering babies and patching up skinned knees?
Nonetheless, they move in and start to become part of the community. They learn old fashioned slang, talk about the politicians and issues of the times, live as they imagine people did 57 years ago. Ryu goes to work with his lunch pail, and notices the prejudice against his Japanese heritage. Katha, now Kathleen, stays at home, has dinner on the table at 6, and gets involved in the Authenticity Committee, working to make the experience all the more real.
But the 50’s weren’t all poodle skirts and salisbury steak frozen dinners. It turns out that Dean is gay, and has had a long term affair with Roger (Danny Bernardy), who is Ryu’s immediate supervisor in the box factory. This being 1955, they have to keep it quiet, and they are both married.
Things explode, Dean leaves the community, and Katha and Ryu are faced with a choice of staying or leaving. Katha gets pregnant, much to everyone’s joy, and they decide to stay, taking over Dean’s position as trainers and hosts of the newest arrivals.
Are the tradeoffs worth it? Can/should people put up with the limited social mobility, the insularity, the parochialism, the lack of choices in general (things you will have to forget, they are told: chipotle, ciabatta, foccacia, gruyere, sushi, parmagianno regianno) all for the purported, dubious benefit of a simpler, more personally connected life? I sure wouldn’t choose to stay, but I guess it’s an option some would exercise. What would you choose?
From Hunger
My mother would say of something that wasn’t up to her exacting standards, that it was “from hunger”. I couldn’t possibly trace the etymology of her obscure and idiosyncratic idioms, so I have no idea where this strange phrase might have arisen, but whatever its genesis, “from hunger” was a bad thing.
You see where this is heading–the biggest movie in the country three weeks running, over $300 million in the US in less than a month, and we thought it sucked the big one.
Here’s the truth: Hunger Games is brilliantly designed to appeal to hyper-hormonal, angst ridden14 year old girls. Oddly, that isn’t the demographic Gail or I fit into. You probably don’t, either.
This is a movie about a future dystopia which annually takes one boy and one girl, aged 12 to 18, from each of its 12 geographic districts and puts them into a winner take all, last man standing battle to the death. The heroine is, of course, a young girl. One who doesn’t quite fit in, yet manages to excel at almost everything she touches.
There is a boy she moons over, but he doesn’t requite her affection, or so she thinks. By amazing coincidence, he is the boy chosen to represent their district, and he admits that he has been secretly in love with her from afar. This seems to irritate her. Nonetheless, they kill all the other contestants, outwit the leaders, and win the prize.
It gets worse from there. This movie is like 1984 meets Romeo and Juliet meets Lord of the Flies. There are a couple of excellent performances by Donald Sutherland and Woody Harrelson. The young woman playing the lead is attractive and endearing without being so beautiful she would be off-putting to the prime demographic. There is tender true love, but no sex to endanger the PG-13 rating or make the young ones nervous. The violence is not particularly graphic, for the same reasons.
The sets and costumes are splendid, with whole computer generated cities that will amaze you. I want to grow a beard like the bad guy has, and have tons of blue hair like the announcer sports. Girls all over America will be taking up archery.
Hunger Games is mildly diverting, although it is at least 45 minutes too long. The pacing of the first hour is so slow it was like watching Swedish existentialist film from 1954. In Swedish. With Russian subtitles.
What it boils down to, I think, is that this movie is completely perfect–if you are the hormone addled, confused, alienated, lovesick teenager it is designed for. For the rest of us, stay home and watch Smash on Monday nights.
Color me confused
Jonathan Pryce (left) as Davies and Alan Cox as Aston in Harold Pinter's 1960 breakthrough play, "The Caretaker," at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco.
Photo: Carlos Avila Gonzalez / The Chronicle
Okay, so I think I’m a pretty smart guy. Sunday, though, I went to the theater with Gail and Winnie and Jerry, to see The Caretaker at the Curran theater, and I didn’t have the faintest idea of what what was going on.
The good news, for me at least, is that Gail didn’t get it either. Nor did Winnie, nor did Jerry. We can’t all be blockheads, can we?
This is a famous play, which has gotten decent, not great but decent, reviews here in the local papers. It stars the renowned Jonathan Pryce, he of the fame from Miss Saigon and innumerable Infiniti commercials.
Pryce plays Davies, a homeless man taken in by Ashton, played by Alan Cox. Ashton lives in a run down house which his brother, Mick (played by Alex Hassel) owns and sometimes shares.
Things happen. There is lots of talk, and lots of yelling. I don’t like yelling.
Some of it is funny. There is a slapstick scene with a bag which I thought was right out of the Marx Brothers–but the scholarly articles I read trying to figure this play out say it references Waiting for Godot.
And that’s a clue–I wasn’t aware that Pinter wrote absurdist plays in the mode of Samuel Beckett or Eugene Ionesco, but that seems to be what is happening here, absurdism rearing its ugly and confusing head.
The play is written in three acts, describing a time period of two or three weeks. It is performed in two acts, with no indication of the passing of time in the program. Curiously, the program has no notes whatsoever on the play. You’re on your own here, and the people I overheard in the lobby during intermission and after the play were as confused as I was.
I’m not recommending this play. The acting is very, very good–not just Pryce, but all three members of the cast are excellent. The set is attractive, and they have designed a soundscape that brings the entire theater into the action. The play, though, is more than passing incomprehensible. I read a number of articles online trying to figure it out, and they seem to contradict each other–nobody appears to really know except the author, and he isn’t talking, not that I can find at least.
===============
What I will recommend is a little Italian restaurant in Montclair, on Thornhill Road, called Viva Voce. We went there after the show because we had a coupon Winnie won at the bridge club, and were very happily surprised with the quality of the food and the delightful decor.
A delightful, Picasso-esque mural in Viva voce
The wall with its large windows, and the mural reflected. Winnie is waiting for the rest of us to get set and order some dinner.
Although it seems to be quite an old building, the addition of large circular windows and multiple skylights makes this a wonderfully open and airy establishment.
The food is excellent–starting with the house-baked bread brought to the table still steaming. Gail had a seafood paella, Winnie enjoyed a tequila chicken pizza that was unlike anything we’d ever seen (and we’ve seen some pizza), Jerry had the veal parmigiana and I stuck with the basic Linguine Aglio y Olio, linguini with olive oil and garlic. Jerry and I finished our plates, the girls took half their portions home (but I know for a fact that Gail finished hers today).
Excellent food, good service, reasonable prices. A little odd in that they tacked on the gratuity for a party of four, but I won’t hold that against them. Viva Voce, in Montclair. Give them a try, I think you’ll like the place.
The fascination of sub-cultures
Artwork that is just hanging around the store
The groups people choose to be part of become smaller and smaller subsets of the general populace. Generally, I think the smaller the group the more interesting, as people get more and more monomaniacal about their interests.
Saturday, we went to a book signing at Leslie Ceramic Supply, which is the place to go in the Bay Area if you need something to feed your pottery or ceramic habit. Ostensibly, we were going to see our friend Joe Bologna, but the truth is we can’t pass up a party.
Leslie Ceramics is on San Pablo, just north of Gilman. From the street it’s just a storefront, but then the building extends quite a ways to the rear, into more space and even another small building that seems to have become an art gallery known only to some obscure in-crowd.
If it’s a party, you have to have food, right? And if it’s artists, you have to have artistic food. Check out the creativity here:
That's a tortilla, screen printed with Hershey's chocolate syrup. No, I don't know what it means.
More edible art, advertising the sponsor. John Toki is the owner of Leslie Ceramics.
John Toki, in person rather than in chocolate sauce.
The caterer, and his screen printing press. Everything is done fresh and on-site.
The Great Tortilla Conspiracy, as the catering group calls itself, turns tortillas into art, and then into quesadillas with cheese and chicken. Creativity comes in many forms.
Back to the store. If you don’t work in clay, there is nothing here for you. If you do work in clay, this place is Disneyland. Everything from tiny pieces of copper cut into weird shapes to insert into your work, all the way up to industrial sized kilns. Clays of every type, and glazes in every possible color. Hundreds of obscure tools for working the mud into the shape of your dreams. I don’t need any of it, but it’s still fascinating to look at.
Then there are the artists. It was like old home week, because all these people seem to know each other from a lifetime of classes, expositions, group studios, group shows, group therapy (okay, I made that one up), and just hanging out at the store.
At least one of the people there was genuinely famous.
Clayton Bailey, big time artist.
Clayton was the star of an exhibit at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento earlier this year. Here’s how they described it:
A ceramist, sculptor, and self-proclaimed “mad scientist,” Bailey aims to surprise and delight with his art. This exhibition presents the full range of his inspired eccentricity in clay and metal, including his early ceramic critters, signature “exploding pots,” life-sized robot sculptures, and ray guns fashioned from discarded aluminum.
Anyone who wears a mustache like that is just a little off kilter, but when he told Gail that he saves every one of the whiskers that fall out, she knew she was in deep waters.
Not that Clayton had the only eccentric facial hair there.
Eccentricity runs rampant among artists, and their mustaches.
Ceramicists fall into two broad categories–those who work on bowls, plates, cups and platters, whose work has a practical utility, and those who create art for its own sake. The work we saw Saturday was all in the pure art category, and I really enjoyed it.
This tableau was inside the store, in a glass case.
For some reason, ceramic art is very often very political.
Political, but not subtle.
You don't often think of ceramics as two-dimensional works to be hung on your walls, but they can be.
And that’s the story of what I did on Saturday. The art was good, the people were at least as interesting. Since I’m not a potter, I’d never have a purpose for going to Leslie Ceramics, and I’m glad this opportunity popped up. We had a chance to talk to Clayton, and Gail got him to agree that we could auction off a tour of his home/studio for the Ruth Bancroft Garden gala next September. The day was a success all around.
Good airport food??
Playing in the Silver Ribbon pairs a couple of days ago, I got to talking about places to eat and someone told me there was a great restaurant inside DFW airport. Given how often we end up changing planes in Dallas, I was pretty interested.
We’re on our way home today, and once again in the Big D, and it’s lunchtime. Consequently, we’re trying out Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen, a genuine sit-down restaurant situated at gate A25.
Lo and behold, faith and beggorah, it’s true! There is good food here.
I had the crawfish étouffée, and loved it. Gail had gumbo and rice. It was wonderful. This place has genuine Louisiana food, right near the Skylink.
Flying isn’t the classy endeavor it used to be, but at least if you have to spend a couple of hours in DFW you can get a quality meal with good service.
Memphis trolleys, art that moves you
Memphis has a trolley system. Main street has been closed to auto traffic; the only things moving are the trolleys and the horse drawn carriages for tourists and lovers.
The trolley cars aren’t some modern new models, or electric buses. They are ancient models, some made nearly 90 years ago, still ferrying passengers up and down the length of the city. They have been collected from all over–I rode in one that was originally put into service in Melbourne, Australia in 1923.
They are well maintained, and still beautiful. It’s no secret that the workmanship of years ago is often considered artistry today, and there was no way I could resist taking my camera and capturing the details of the cars. Click on the first photo to see a better presentation of them all. I hope you enjoy this gallery as much as I enjoyed making it.
Memphis, Tuesday night
What Bob eats is, by definition, the breakfast of champions
This is Bob Hamman, who lives at the very top of the Bridge food chain, and has for 40 years or so. He has world and national championships too numerous to count, and won another national championship Sunday.
I saw him scarfing down a crummy convention center hot dog and asked him if it was the secret to his success. He pointed out that Babe Ruth said he trained on hot dogs and beer, and if was good enough for the Babe……………
Well, Bob is passing on the beer, at least right before game time. In the bar tonight, no so much.
Gail and I played today in the National Mixed Pairs. We had one horrendous disaster of a game, and withdrew. Plus 150 is rarely a good score–it means you missed a notrump game or a minor game. We did it 3 times today.
Instead of playing tonight, we went out to a very nice dinner at Felicia Suzanne’s, which is not only the closest restaurant to our hotel, but was the first place that popped up when Gail googled “Best Restaurant Memphis”.
We started with smoked salmon deviled eggs, topped with caviar. Then a BLFGT salad–bacon, lettuce, fried green tomatoes. Between the fried tomato and the strip of over cooked bacon it was hardly the healthy bite we think a salad should be, but it certainly tasted good.
Then I had salmon, sitting of a bed of fresh corn etoufee. Gail had small plates of both gumbo, and rock shrimp and dumplings. We ate it all, but most definitely had no room for dessert.
We’re heading home in the morning–no desire to see if we can play as badly tomorrow as we did today. Memphis has been fun, some good bridge some bad bridge but the food was much better than I had any reason to expect.
The next NABC is Philadelphia this summer, but I refuse to attend because they are playing all events on the 10 and 3 schedule. I’ll save up my bridge luck for San Francisco in the fall.
Memphis, Monday night
This was on the ACBL webpage!!! I'm famous!! Sort of.
There aren’t many photos of me on this blog, mostly because I’m the guy who takes the pictures. But somebody else took this shot, while I was dancing with Wendy Sullivan at the ACBL’s 75th Anniversary Party Friday night, and now it is in rotation on the front page of the ABCL Website. Maybe I should make it my new Facebook id photo, too.
Mike and I played Daylight Pairs today. That’s the event that used to be the Senior Pairs, until they realized that everyone is a senior and the idea was silly. So now they just have a game at 10 and 3 for anybody who wants to enter. Mike is getting up early tomorrow for his flight home, and Gail was getting in to Memphis at 5:00, so it was perfect for us–we could all go out to dinner after the game and enjoy a slow evening.
The game wasn’t exactly memorable, although not awful. We had a 58% in the first session and a 54% in the second, not enough to make the overalls but we still won a few points and have little to be embarrassed about. The field is not strong; I was pretty surprised to see virtually no one I knew, and not a single pro player. There were only 37 tables in the event.
I did meet one interesting person.
Diane "Perky Pants" Callahan
;
This is Diane, the happiest, cheeriest, perkiest person I ever met. I told her she must have eaten a bowl of Perky Flakes™ for breakfast. She’s from Germantown, PA, and can’t play in Gatlinburg because it conflicts with the Masters golf tournament, which I guess means she has to stay home and watch all week.
;
And that’s the story of the bridge game. Back to the hotel, say Hi to Gail and head out to dinner at McEwen’s on Monroe (that’s all part of the name). We walked in, and Gail looked across the room and saw her old friend, Velma.
Gail and Velma Rice Graham
Those two met at the partnership desk during a tournament in Monterey 14 years ago, and are still friends, although Velma has moved to Atlanta. The beauty of NABC’s ………………..
Memphis, Sunday night
I think that there is still supposed to be snow around here this time of year, but the trees don't seem to know it. I was amazed at the birds singing at midnight, too.
Some time chickens, sometimes only feathers, as Uncle Guido the chicken thief used to say.
Mike and I had a very nice first round in the Silver Ribbon Pairs today, ending up just under 52%. They score national events across many sections, in our case three sections, so our score was 511.88. By some statistical miracle I can’t quite imagine, that obscure score managed to tie for 7/8/9. There were THREE teams with 511.88? The mind reels.
Joined by our old friend Srikanth, we had a decent but not fantastic dinner in the Peabody Hotel, where every day the official Peabody Duckmaster marches his flock of ducks down the elevator from the roof, into the main atrium and ensconces them in the pool, only to march them back out again every evening. Been a Memphis tradition for 70 years or so. The do it in the Peabody Hotel in Orlando, too.
Then the evening session. We played pretty well. I misdefended one hand, Mike made one silly bid. Remember yesterday how lucky we were that the top seeded pro only got easy hands to play? Just the opposite tonight, when Barry Harper, a pro from Regina, Saskatchewan picked up two devilishly difficult hands and made short, professional work of stripping all the matchpoints. Somedays you get the bear, somedays the bear gets you.
So we didn’t qualify. Again. I’m getting tired of this, but at least we had a decent day in between.
After the game I went up to the President’s Suite for the Patron Member reception. Gail and I were patron members for quite a few years, but we finally dropped it because we weren’t really getting even the meager benefits promised. The Daily Bulletin that is supposed to be delivered the Patron’s room every morning never arrived. The patron member express entry signs were not posted at the selling stations. The patron member reception got worse and worse with cheaper and cheaper refreshments. Patrons were clearly unimportant to management, although they cashed the checks promptly. I think the league doesn’t really know what to do with or for the the patron member program, and is just letting it idle along without any particular care, except from the redoubtable Wendy Sullivan, the pride of Memphis and the ACBL.
When I expressed all this to new President Sharon Anderson, we had a nice talk about what the program is and what it might be, then she personally invited me to tonight’s reception. I have to say that the buffet was a distinct improvement from the past. There were perhaps 20 patron members present, along with the ACBL board and the usual hangers-on. (When Howard Piltch was president the suite was always open to the entire membership, but that was an attitude that seems to have gone by the boards. It’s just the in-crowd these days, but as long as Don Mamula is my friend, I’m one of the in-crowd. Life is who you know.) I wouldn’t mind re-joining the Patron Members, but I’d have to see some serious improvement in both the listed benefits and their actual delivery.
Gail arrives tomorrow night, so Mike and I will play the Daylight Pairs (what used to be called the seniors), then the 3 of us can go out to dinner and Mike can hit the hay early for his flight home Wednesday.
Since I’m here, I think I’ll sound off about one of my pet gripes. This is what the label on a board looks like to most of us:
Your basic bridge board. The side in red is vulnerable, the side in green isn't.
However, 3 to 4% of men are color blind. This is what the board looks like to them:
Now try to figure out the vulnerability.
Can’t they find a better way to label the boards? Even this is easier than the boards with just a thin label down the middle. I’m not color blind and I find them hard to figure out. Surely there is an industrial designer somewhere in the ACBL who can improve this.
Okay, I’ll put my high horse back in the stable and go to bed. Tomorrow is another day.
Totally Unauthorized 