RAVE - Dinner debate

A fabulous dinner chez Gareth last night turned ugly when he mentioned that one day he was likely to have kids. Well, it was Halloween.

I sat up in my Grumpy Old Git costume and we started to discuss "what films would you want your child to see, in order to learn the important lessons in life?"

After calling time on the Saturday Night Fever versus Grease debate by proclaiming that "no child of mine needs to learn about disco", I started to write on the back of Gareth's monthly statement from SF Escorts, organizing the list under the easier-to-determine headings of History, Pop Culture, British Classics, Morals / Coming of Age, and the essential Great Movies.

The list is laughably uneven. Did I mention we had 3 bottles of wine with our dinner?

HISTORY
All Quiet On The Western Front
Battle of Britain
Apocalypse Now
Ghandi
Saving Private Ryan
JFK
All The Presidents Men
Apollo 13
The Motorcycle Diaries
Bloody Sunday
Braveheart
Troy
Schindler's List
Gladiator
Ben Hur
Alexander
Life is Beautiful
... clearly, the kid is going to know a LOT about war and political intrigue

POP CULTURE
Easy Rider
Woodstock
The French Connection
24 Hour Party People (hotly disputed: "who cares about Indie music?")
Saturday Night Fever (hated it, but the kid's gotta make up his own mind)

BRITISH HERITAGE
Zulu (the HISTORY list was already too long)
Lawrence of Arabia
The Bridge on the River Kwai
The Great Escape
Lock, Stock and 2 Smoking Barrels

MORALS / COMING OF AGE
Gregory's Girl
Fatal Attraction
Philadelphia
Milk

GREAT MOVIES
Godfather I and II
Jaws
Wall Street (could've gone under MORALS)
Chariots of Fire (could've gone under BRITISH HERITAGE)
Silence of the Lambs
Pulp Fiction

Feel free to post your "how could you leave off .....?" opinions.

RAVE - Splice

I could've gone either way on this movie, veering from "schlocky and silly modern Frankenstein flick" to "stylish and relevant look at the dangers of gene manipulation".

I'm settling for the latter, because whether it was schlocky or not, it was entertaining.

The fact that it was actually a story about parenthood doesn't detract from the entertainment.

Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley play a pair of renegade scientists, who share lab and bed. They respond to the order to cease experimentation on gene splicing that has so far only resulted in violent, man-made creatures by continuing to work in secret, splicing her genes into another man-made thingamabob.

This new "thing" develops at breakneck speed, such that within a few months it's a fully-grown, not at all unattractive, female lab experiment. 

Your basic hot monster. But that would be giving the game away.

RAVE - Carlos

The kind of film I love - rooted in current affairs or history (whether it's ancient, or as in this case, 1970s and 80s).

This is a new, riveting review of the rise and fall of Carlos The Jackal, the (in)famous terrorist, covering the mid 70s and his exploits in Paris, Beirut, London, Aden (now Yemen), Vienna, Algeria, Libya, East Berlin, Baghdad, Syria, and Sudan. Not much of a cruise itinerary, is it?

Released as a 5-hour mini-series (I don't know where the full version is available), I saw the 2.5 hour "cut down for US theater release" version, and it was plenty detailed, providing a gripping insight into this "celebrity" terrorist.

Edgar Ramirez does an outstanding job as Carlos, developing from the under-funded People's Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), who gave him an old handgun and 5 bullets to assassinate a Jewish businessman and vice president of the British Zionist Foundation in London (the attempt failed because the gun jammed), to international notoriety as the leader of the gang that killed 2 at the OPEC meeting in Vienna in 1975, escaping with hostages to Algeria.

Ramirez, a Spanish speaker born in Venezuela, shows his skills with acting in English, Arabic, French, Italian, and to my linguistically-challenged ear, does an excellent job. He also added weight - what looks like 20+ pounds - to portray Carlos during a lazy, inactive period.

One annoying detail, present in virtually every film involving suspects under surveillance ... while Carlos and an associate leave a building they're photographed from a car parked opposite, where anyone but Stevie Wonder would be able to spot the photographer.

The film has all the classic 70s markers ...

- smoking everywhere, anywhere (even in the shower)

- no security, at the airport, even at an international gathering of government ministers, for heaven's sake

- the ready accession to terrorist demands

- the underwhelming response by the authorities - limp-wristed military presence (no rooftops lined with snipers, no unmarked cars trailing terrorists and their hostages to the airport)

Carlos is on a par with Syriana, Baader Meinhof Complex, and Mesrine, and better than Che.

Being a sucker for music, I can't avoid mentioning the curiously hip soundtrack (as if the film needed one), comprising Robert Fripp and Brian Eno, Joy Division, Wire, Lightning Seeds and Los Lobos.

I wonder if that musical thug Shaun Ryder feels left out, when his band Black Grape used a stylized picture of Carlos on its 1995 album, It's Great When You're Straight, Yeah?

RANT - Day 1 in Lost Wages

I don't much like Las Vegas.

I'm not at all interested in gambling, don't like "Vegas" performances, and therefore have very little in common with the hordes of people who come here for one or the other.

I'm here for 5 days at IBM's annual conference, to see 7,000 people with whom I do have something in common. But as the nursery rhyme implies, you have to kiss a lot of toads before you meet your prince.

I'm staying at The Mandalay Bay, which while getting a bit long in the tooth, is still one of the better places to stay in town.

However, no matter where you stay, you still have to rub shoulders with a less than cerebral cross-section of American life. No sooner had I checked in and picked up a rotten coffee at Starbucks, than I found myself next to a typical Vegas visitor, an overweight girl in a ridiculous outfit: tee-shirt, stretch pants and cap, all emblazoned with Suicidal Tendencies. "What music are you into?" I asked rhetorically. She either couldn't understand my accent, or didn't understand the concept of irony. Either way I just got a blank stare.

It's going to be a long 5 days.

REVIEW - Zero Zero

This is not a review for French Laundry (I've not eaten there yet, and it's almost impossible to get a reservation for a $500+ per person meal there), but as the San Francisco Chronicle's food critic Joel Bauer recently wrote that Zero Zero serves the "French Laundry of pizzas", it's important that you know French Laundry is regularly voted one of the top restaurants in the World!

So, does Zero Zero deserve that comparison?

In a word (or two), not really.

First, I don't know what other reviewers were smoking, but the decor is nothing to write (home) about. It's basically saloon style, on two floors, with the same infrastructure but less glitz than Azie's, the previous occupant of the space.

Last night's appetizers were very good, but that's not what Bauer was comparing to French Laundry. For the record, I had the Braised Pork appetizer, with chanterelle mushrooms, fried polenta, slow cooked organic egg, and pickled peppers (8/10), while Pavey had the Crudo (raw) Fish appetizer, with the aforementioned raw fish, and other bits and pieces (8/10).

Pizza-wise, I had the Townsend - roasted garlic, young organic potato, prosciutto, mozzarella, parmesan and rosemary oil (7/10) and Pavey had the Margherita - tomato sauce, basil, mozzarella, parmesan, and extra virgin olive oil (9/10).

The first couple of slices of each pizza were wonderful, the pizza dough managing to be thin and crisp, yet fluffy. The Margherita toppings tasted fresh and alive. However, after they cooled a little, the Townsend just tasted heavy and stodgy, while the Margherita lost its sparkle.

9/10 for a pizza sounds like glowing praise, but at the end of the day it was still a pizza, and a somewhat pricey one, at $110 including appetizers, tip and a glass of wine each.

All in all, much better than Pizza Nostra's greasy equivalents, but no match for my still favorite Pizza Express (the Venezenia, with an egg) in and around London.

RAVE - Mumford & Sons, Warfield

Having dragged Gareth's butt to Treasure Island on Sunday, and Interpol Monday night, it was only fair that I got my not inconsiderable butt dragged to Mumford & Sons at The Warfield Wednesday night.

Depending on who you read, M&S are either a Folk band, or an Indie Folk band. Now, you can write what I know about Folk music on a Morris Dancer's cod-piece (provided he's not doing one of his silly dances at the same time). The last time I saw an actual F.O.L.K singer was (as Arthur Askey used to say), back in "nineteen hundred and frozen to death", in some converted barn near Bridgwater.

I need to digress here - the mention of Bridgwater has got me all misty-eyed and recollect-full.

I might even digress from the digression and highlight what a wonderful thing the hyphen is, allowing one to go wild with the English language.

Anyhow, Bridgwater, Somerset is the home of cider-drinkers extraordinaire, my oldest living friend (John Boyland) and possibly the best album title of all time: Half Man Half Biscuit's fabulously-named Trouble Over Bridgwater. For younger viewers, that's a play on Simon & Garfunkel's classic Bridge Over Troubled Water. HMHB are responsible for several other chuckleful plays, including Back In The DHSS, Voyage to the Bottom of the Road, Four Lads Who Shook the Wirral, Saucy Haulage Ballads, Achtung Bono, and CSI: Ambleside. Clearly, a knowledge of UK geography is essential to appreciating most of those fun titles.

Where was I? The Warfield, enjoying Mumford & Sons. They're renowned for their multi-instrumentalization (that's another non-word, whether you use a Z or an S), and sure enough they swapped instruments several times, curiously leaving the drums untouched for all but 2 of their songs.

Rarely before have I been so mystified by the intensity, the passion displayed by an audience. The Warfield was sold out, and the fans were screaming, yes - screaming for the band. And when they weren't screaming, they were shushing anyone who dared speak while the band was playing.

I say "rarely", but I guess I've seen television footage of how fans threw themselves at Elvis Presley and The Beatles, and how besotted ladies threw their underwear at Tom Jones. And I was amazed at the level of "commitment" by female fans at an R.Kelly show a few years ago. I'm not saying last night's crowd was screaming in quite the same way, but their excitement was nonetheless shocking to me.

That didn't mean I really liked it. I'm not sure whether it's old school or new school of me, but whatever it is I can't get used to the idea of a lead banjo supported by an upright bass, especially when they're trying to perform folk as though it was rock.

It's now the day after, and I still can't believe a San Francisco audience is so heavily into something like Mumford & Sons.

REVIEW - Interpol at the Fox Theater

Interpol remain one of my favorite bands, although after last night's performance that position is at risk. I doubt the lads will lose much sleep over that bombshell, but I offer it nonetheless.

I don't know why losing their bassist earlier this year (replacing him, and adding another newbie on keyboards) would dramatically change their sound, but they seemed much less angular, less sharp than the previous times I've seen them.

Maybe it was the venue. While The Fox is arguably the best looking venue on the west coast, having benefited from a gazillion dollar refurbishment a couple of years ago, there are some funny acoustic and visual characteristics to the place. First, it's huge, seemingly much bigger than The Fillmore or Warfield. I don't know if that in itself makes the place echo, but having seen Psychedelic Furs, Keane, and now Interpol at the place, each of them sounded indistinct, and echo-y. Last night we needed to move around, from front, to middle, to back, in order to get the best listening and viewing experience. Even then, I was only able to sing (shout) along because I already knew a lot of the words. First-time Interpol-ers like Gareth couldn't make out much of the vocals.

Visuals are a problem too, at least for the audience. All lighting at The Fox comes from behind or above the band - no spotlights from the auditorium itself. While this protects performers from having to wear Bono-like specs, it means the band is always in semi-darkness or silhouette.

Support from The White Rabbits was dreadful.

As my math (um, and Physics, Chemistry and Latin teachers often commented on my performance), Interpol "must do better".

RAVE - Treasure Island Festival

The picture does little more than prove someone with a camera was at the Belle and Sebastian show last night.

Global warming my a**! Each year the Treasure Island Festival gets colder, and yesterday it was positively Arctic.

Thanks to Jonny L's generosity and poor social calendar management skills I got his VIP tickets to yesterday's event, which included Surfer Blood (4/10), Rogue Wave (5/10), Broken Social Scene (7/10), The National (8/10), and Belle and Sebastian (8/10).

The National were somewhat of a revelation. I had heard them criticized as "just another Joy Division wannabe band". It's true that whenever a singer sings deep and a bassist plays loud, critics sprout up like mushrooms and compare them favorably or unfavorably to Joy Division. The Strokes, Killers, Editors, She Wants Revenge, White Lies, Interpol, The National and many more sound like Joy Division. In fact, "sounds like Joy Division" is a well-trodden search path on Google.

While Matt Berninger is not exactly Ian Curtis re-incarnate, he does a passable job in the gloom and doom department, and proved last night he can do other, screamy snarly stuff too. All in all an excellent performance, and one that kept the cold out a bit.

Which is more than can be said for Belle and Sebastian.

I've been aching for years to see B&S live. The band has this magic combination of low-fi, low-down material and up-beat, happy delivery. In the studio they come across as sullen and introspective. Live, as we found out last night, they're almost trippy hippies, perfectly at home in San Francisco in the 60s.

But. Or maybe that should be b-b-but, it was so freaking cold last night. Stuart Murdoch bounced and gyrated to keep warm, and the band tore into many of their best-known (if anything from a band the majority of people have never heard of can be described as "best-known") pieces. B-b-but, the over-riding feeling was not one of warmth and fulfillment at having heard them. 

The best sensation of the night was getting back into the car and turning the heated seats on.

RANT - Wall Street. Money Never Sleeps

I can't remember if the first Wall Street was any good. I just remember that everyone talked about it before, during and since. Hell, Gordon Gecko became a household name, books were written about Gecko economics, and everyone at the office kept repeating the "lunch is for wimps" line. The film even spawned a look: The City Slicker.

For all those reasons I went into this with open eyes and lower expectations.

And those low expectations were met.

This film was shallow, unremarkable, and predictable. All through it Pavey and I were whispering to one another things like: "he's going to double-cross him", or "she's going to walk out on him", and sure enough, everything we whispered came true.

There was no-one to like, no-one to side with. It was one city slimeball trying to get one over on another city slimeball. Michael Douglas was a sleazy piece of work in the first Wall Street, and he out-sleazed himself in this one. Even the Winnie Gecko character, the pure-as-driven-snow daughter, was a whiner, and therefore hard to like.

And finally, the soundtrack stunk!

It was David Byrne at his wimpy, country worst. The music just didn't work in a throbbing city context, even one that's been chastened by the financial crimes committed over the past few years.

All in all, this movie will make you hate money-fiddling brokers as much as did Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story.



P.S. The missus wants me to say she liked the movie, so there.

REVIEW - Remember That Night

All of my face-to-face friends (rather than the hundreds of pretty young things I've never met but nevertheless hang on my every blog-word) know that whenever I refer to "my friend Bill", I mean "my friend Bill who I met nearly 20 years ago when I first moved to Denver, and still know and love even though he now lives in Houston and I live in San Francisco. Bill who I used to work with, ski with, play hoops with, play raquet-ball with, and trade car wish-lists with. Bill with whom I still fritter away hours wondering how we can become millionaires just by being ourselves".

Anyhow, that Bill just sent me the DVD "Remember That Night. David Gilmour Live At The Royal Albert Hall", instructing me to watch the whole thing with an open mind. Usually, that kind of request ends up with me buying a subscription to an existential periodical. 

What I'd like to do is open a bottle of 1982 La Mission Haut Brion and discuss the concert footage with him. Until then (and Bill, I promise that one day I will spring for that $850 bottle) these words will have to do.

For a start, in my view you can't go wrong if you have a lot of guitarists. I remember nudging another good friend, David, when we were at Slims watching Ash (with 4 guitarists at the time), and saying "You can't go wrong with 4 guitarists. I'll have another vodka and tonic if you're buying."

Great guitar gives me goose-bumps. There's some exquisite guitar here, even if it's a bit painful to see one old fart do a solo, then nod to an even older fart that it's his turn to do a solo.

It's proof positive that you don't need to be young, hip, sexy and good-looking to fill a stadium full of adoring fans. Or in this case, a very special, classic auditorium full of adoring fans. David Crosby has never looked hip, sexy and good-looking, but in this company his old grandpa act doesn't even look that out of place. And I'm not even going to comment (much) on the fact that good old Robert Wyatt was in a wheelchair for his contribution.

The one thing I never liked about Pink Floyd, and this sounds so shallow when I say it out loud, is that they always took so long to get to the point. And even once they did get to the point, or the hook, in a tune, they would then retreat from it, when what I really wanted was for them to, er, crank it up to 11.

What happens is that a lot of their work comes across sounding like it should be a film score rather than a mosh-pit-worthy live gig. 

I realize this is sounding like I didn't really enjoy the show. But I did. I have every single Pink Floyd CD in my collection, and have had Dark Side of The Moon, plus oddities like Interstellar Overdrive semi-permanently on my iPod. When I'm on a long flight, I often choose to listen to these tunes in order to sink right back into them, and forget that I'm cooped up in coach. But then I remember where I am, and put some attitude-adjusting Fall or Joy Division on instead.

Anyway, back to Kensington, London SW7. This is a fabulous show featuring 11 artists at the top of their game, if not necessarily in their prime. And when David Bowie sang the first words to "Arnold Layne", shivers shot up my spine (and stayed with me for the rest of the song).

I think Bill wants an epiphany from me, a road to Damascus conversion - for me to throw up my arms and say "I've been wrong to have frolicked with The Fall, noodled with New Order and mucked around with MGMT. Pink Floyd are the beginning, the middle and the end of everything that matters in music." Well, they're not half bad, and on this showing they might sell a couple of CDs.

RANT - Repo Men

If you can't pay for your car, the Bank takes it back.

If you can't pay for your house, the Bank takes it back.

If you can't pay for your liver, that's where Repo Men come in.

Why this has to be done by breaking in to people's homes, shooting them with a stun gun, then repossessing the appropriate organ(s) on their living room floor is never really explained. Why not arrest them, take them back to the facility where they got their life-saving transplant, and take it back out under the same hospital conditions?

All in all, too silly, like a (Repo) Men in Black.

The film isn't serious enough to be a thriller, nor funny enough to be a comedy. And Jude Law's British accent doesn't fit with the American-born-and-raised character he's playing.

RAVE - Judge disses Liverpool FC owner Hicks Jr

Amid the exciting news (for Liverpool Football Club fans at least) that the disastrous ownership by Americans Gillett and Hicks is nearing a close, comes some news that made me laugh out loud.

From a BBC journalist's blog comes this hilarious quote, which may whizz over the heads of any non-English public school pupil or Harry Potter enthusiast:

"In the end it was Lord Grabiner QC, one of the most eminent barristers on the commercial circuit, who stole the show with his mispronounciation of Gillett's name (Jillett) - a mistake he dismissively corrected later on - and his withering reference to Tom Hicks Jr as "Hicks minor".

Priceless.

Of course, the "Thanks But No Yanks" banner may be saved for another day, seeing as the forced sale by Gillett and Hicks paves the way for another American owner for Liverpool Football Club, namely New England Sports Ventures (NESV), owners of the Boston Red Sox.

RAVE - Why I love popurls.com

OK, so you have to wade through a bunch of techie claptrap, and oft-repeated big-ups for the same thing, but night after night popurls.com delivers one or two gems.

F'rinstance, these posts from last night show that humor is alive and well in America.

Will everyone in Chile please just dress up like this before the miners come back up?

Plus this observation, from another Mark Zuckerberg fan.

And this story about a New York City artist who's been photographing the same Happy Meal for the past six months, revealing the disturbing news that it's so full of chemicals that it's not decomposing!

RAVE - The Town

Ben Affleck again shows he's no softy, as an actor and director.

The Town is a bit Departed, a bit Heat, and yet not quite as good as either of those classics of the cops 'n robbers genre.

But it's plenty gritty, and full of great action in and around the back streets of Boston.

Go see it.

'nuff said.

RAVE - Monsters

Hmm, I wonder what that's about, I hear you ask.

Part Cloverdale, part District 9, Monsters is based in a swathe of Mexico dubbed The Infected Zone. Six years after a returning space probe crashes in Mexico, the area is still infected with alien life. An American photographer escorts a countrywoman from southern Mexico, through the zone.

When confronted by a crooked ferry master, trying to charge an exorbitant $5,000 to ferry people around the infected zone, I'm not sure why they didn't phone her rich dad and ask for money, but I guess if they'd had that brainwave there'd be no movie.

Just as District 9 was in part an allegory for apartheid, Monsters could be described as an allegory for illegal immigration. The movie even uses the anti-immigration fences along the US-Mexico border as though they were built to keep "real" aliens out.

Don't see this is you're hoping for lots of monster action - the production budget was rumored to be around $15,000.  Nevertheless, it's rewarding and a grower.

REVIEW - Bushi Tei

I think it's pronounced bushy tay, but there's not much point getting it spot on, as we'll not be going back there.

It's right outside The Sundance Kabuki movie theater. Every time we've spilled out of the theater into the parking lot, we've thought ... we should eat there sometime.

Well, we did last night right after seeing The Social Network. At least it allowed us to dissect the film, but other than that it was unmemorable.

One thing they do at Bushi Tei is make you regret you'd slipped in there for dinner at 9.30pm, by rushing you at breakneck speed through your food. Hence we got our first dish - a too-fishy Rainbow roll that was clunky and not-at-all-subtle like at Blowfish or Tsunami - before our appetizers. 

They were Gyozo - pork pot stickers, and one would have thought un-screw-uppable. I won't get melodramatic and say they WERE screwed up, but they didn't stand out from a run-of-the-mill take out.

My Tempura and Chicken would have tasted much better if it was hot, but it wasn't. It made me feel like I'd been served teriyaki chicken that had been kept warm through the evening while waiting for the vegetables to be flash-fried in the tempura.

Pavey's second roll - spicy tuna - was waaaayyy over-spiced. So much so that she returned it and asked for a less spicy version, something that must've pissed off the kitchen staff who probably had their coats on and were halfway out the back door by then.

Finally, the place suffered from the same condition encountered at so many other Japanese restaurants, fusion or otherwise ... less atmosphere than the moon.

RAVE - The Social Network

There have been a number of movies dealing with the breakneck development of tech start-ups ... they're usually interesting because living here in Northern California, downwind of the phenomenon, you've been part of one, used their beta software, or seen them boil, implode and fry, or all of the above.

In many respects Facebook is no different than the rest ... so what if it's bigger than earlier communities? In a couple years it'll be just like MySpace, full of hangers-on, geriatric adopters and decaying pages.

Facebook itself long ago ceased to be a useful tool for networking, crossing over instead to a downright annoying pain in the ass - a place full of mostly worthless, often inane, usually stupid rubbish. 

What's that? Why beat around the bush Philip?

The film though, was definitely not worthless, inane or stupid, It was sharply written, well-paced and finely acted.

The film makes a good case for Zuckerberg having stolen the original idea for Facebook; paints him (or more aptly, gives him the aerosol cans for him to paint himself) as an asshole, shows the laughably-named Winkelvoss twins to be 6 foot five inch, 240 pound dispsticks, and reveals Napster founder and Facebook bandwagoneer Sean Parker to be an all around sleazebag. There, has that insulted enough billionaires for you?

Twice in the movie the annoying little genius is cut further down to size by women. In the opening scenes, his newly-ex-girlfriend says "Mark, all through your life you'll wrongly think women don't like you because you're a nerd. But it'll be because you're an asshole".

And then, in the final scene, one of his female lawyers says "Mark, you're not an asshole, but you're trying so hard to be one".

A great film that leaves me thinking of that old schoolboy taunt "See you. Wouldn't wanna be you".

RANT - Advertising (part 2)

I knew there'd be more stuff to gripe about advertising-wise ....

My earlier Ad Rant.

8. Why are advertisers allowed to get away with saying something's "all new", when it patently is not. How can the 2010 Toyota Prius be "all new"? Would they have us believe that not one of the 27,000 parts in the 2009 version of the Prius made it into the 2010 version?

9. Eggland's Best - "and now with more Vitamin D". I checked their web site, and while they claim there's more Vitamin D in an Eggland's Best egg than there is in a regular egg, there's no basis whatsoever for them to say "and NOW with more ....". Whatever's in their eggs has been in there for some time, and doesn't warrant the "now" or "new" hype.

10. I've officially had it up to here with political ads. Meg Whitman, Barbara Boxer, Carly Fiorina, and Jerry Brown mean nothing to you unless you live in California or track washed up Silicon Valley and Oakland business-people. But boy do they ram their repetitive, virtually identical messages down our throats. I've never believed that the job (whatever it is) should go to the richest candidate, but that's basically what the American political system has come down to. The more ads you can afford to run, the more likely it is you'll get elected. Shameful!

RANT - Keep your paws off our food!

This important culinary news comes from Lawrence.

Scanning The Times as he carefully does every morning (surely you mean "reading the sports pages with bacon toastie in hand"?), he spotted this outrage:

Americans claim to save soggy British dish.

I won't dwell on this, as:

a) It doesn't do my reputation as an immigrant much good if I'm always knocking the landlord

b) I don't want to lose my temper

c) It just makes me want a plate of fish and chips

Yes, there are one or two places here in San Francisco where one can partake of God's own food. Fish is one of those, in nearby Sausalito. But mostly, they're poor imitations of the real stuff. Either they fiddle around with other types of fish, rather than sticking with "proper" Cod. Or they fool with the batter. I like beer. Many Englishmen like beer. Does that mean we want "beer" batter on our fish? No, we don't. And whether it has beer in it or not, you're not supposed to have 3 times as much batter as you do fish, Mr. American Fish and Chip maker.

I'll let you follow the link and read the whole travesty of a mockery of an injustice, but here's a extract:

"A tangy vinegar-flavoured white powder called ‘Malt Salt’ sprinkled onto the traditional take-away food could be the solution to preventing the fish and chips from turning soggy, according to US food inventors Justin Esch and Dave Lefkow.

The last time I followed the advice of a US "food inventor" and tried his "tangy white powder" I tried to write my own rock opera and failed miserably.

And a much better way to prevent fish and chips from turning soggy is to eat the bloody stuff!

REVIEW - Prospect

We ate here last night, to celebrate our 7th Wedding Anniversary.

(I was going to post a loving message to Mrs. Page here, but she told me over dinner that I only did that last year because I was "in trouble for doing something wrong". She couldn't exactly remember what it was, but felt certain I had deserved whatever it was I was in trouble for, and that a repeat posting would not in any way absolve me of whatever I had done wrong last year, nor would it in insure me against repeating whatever it was I did last time. Phew, glad we cleared that up, because I wouldn't want to be in trouble for something I hadn't done).

Anyhow, back to Prospect.

Aside from the deep love emanating across our particular table, the restaurant was too reminiscent of a busy hotel dining room. Yes, it was elegantly decorated, but so are many hotel restaurants. The staff was good-ish, but had to work to overcome the negatives of not having our table ready until 15 minutes after our reservation, and then taking far too long to serve us at the bar while we waited.

It was ironic that Prospect advertises itself has having "serious food that doesn't take itself too seriously". Ironic because the food was overly complicated, in a way that better restaurants, like RN 74, achieve seemingly effortlessly.

It was also a meal of mixed success:

My potato dumplings were wonderful, with arugala pistoy, crushed hazelnut, maitakes (Japanese mushrooms), and garroxta (a goat's milk cheese from Spain).

My Pork Belly and Cheek entree was similarly excellent, accompanied by ancient grains, confit fennel, jonathan apple, preserved orange, and scarlet turnips. Probably the only time I've given the thumbs up to a turnip, scarlet or otherwise.

Pavey's meal disappointed, however.

Her Yellowtail Crudo, with seaweed rice cracker, pickled cucumber, and white miso has been better prepared at several other San Francisco restaurants, and her Lamb Loin, with purple artichokes, marcona almond romesco, green olive, mint and tongue relish was mostly tasteless. 

I was hoping to catch a wink, wink, nudge, nudge compliment of the order "your tongue relish is MUCH better darling", but it probably isn't, and I was already under a cloud (see intro).

Prospect is the "casual concept from the team behind San Francisco's acclaimed Boulevard". Well, I don't "acclaim" Boulevard, having been deeply underwhelmed the couple of times I've eaten there, and Prospect isn't THAT casual.

We'll probably see if it's still open for an Anniversary in a few years' time. Until then, we'll stick with RN 74.

RANT - YouTube subscriptions

Here's an admission. Just because I rant about something, doesn't always mean I despise it with a passion. Sometimes I'm just in a ranty mood, and at those times it's easier to rant about something than it is to glow about something.

Today however, I'm spitting bullets. And today, I'm all hot under the collar (so hot, in fact, that I'm mixing my metaphors) about YouTube Subscriptions.

Just what we need. Another reason for people I don't know to spam me and ask me to subscribe to their YouTube channel.

Veiled in bogus language - "you may know this person" - this is another worthless pile of intrusive noise from a company that cares almost exclusively about itself and almost nothing about me.

This is an example of today's new wave of spam:

dirtwad has subscribed to you on YouTube!

(I HATE irrelevant exclamation marks. They're for brain-dead marketing people who can't think of anything relevant and exciting to write about, so spout worthless crap like "welcome to our newsletter!!")

dirtwad found you on YouTube via the "You may know these people" suggestions box. 

(Heaven knows how this should happen, seeing as I've never heard of this guy. His profile gives his name, photo and city, and sure enough, I don't know him from a hole in the ground)

Click here to learn more about friend suggestions, and how to manage your privacy settings.

Want to return the favor and subscribe to dirtwad? Just visit dirtwad's channel and click on the "Subscribe" button at the top.

(No I don't want to subscribe to some freaking list of mindless videos from a sad jerk in Buttplug, Iowa)

YouTube goes on to espouse the unique advantages of maintaining subscriptions. Like I want to add to the stream of mindless, pointless drivel from people I don't know, don't care about and never want to hook up with! (And that DOES deserve an exclamation mark!)

This development comes skidding in on the stinky brown trail of Twitter (where those "hotcheeks92 is following you on Twitter" messages turn out 99.99% of the time to be scams), Linkedin (where [person you've never heard of] wants you to join his/her network), and .... agggghhh I could go on and list the dozens of ways social media is anti-social and offensive, but I can't do it without swearing, and I try to keep that stuff to my other Tourettes-centric blog.

And talking of Tourettes, I couldn't believe it when, in the September issue of Bloomberg Businessweek (like Playboy, I only read it for the articles) Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg said "Knowing your friends really love drinking Coke is the best endorsement for Coke you can possibly get". Now, I may not be a multi-gazillionaire like the esteemed Mr. Z, but what a pile of poo! Surely, the best endorsement for Coke is to learn that you like the taste, and it won't shorten your life by too much. What am I supposed to do with the insight that my friends like drinking Coke? Does that mean I'll start drinking it? What if they switched to drinking dishwater? Give me a mother-zucking break!

REVIEW - wheretheladies.at

I don't know whether to be surprised that things have come to this, or that things have come to this in San Francisco.

Using foursquare.com, an app that itself is so indescribably dorky, people can report that they've just arrived at [insert dork hangout here]. 

I'm sure that Paul (Mr. Double Leather 2009, or was it 2008) who regularly lets me (and every other friend on Facebook) know that he's just checked in at such and such a bar in Rehoboth Beach, won't be at all perturbed to be described as a dork.

BTW, those are annoying reminders, especially when you're 1,000 miles away gagging for a martini with the wonderful man himself.

Anyhow, if you're another close friend of mine, and your name is Gareth, this wheretheladies.at could be God's gift to your sex life. It tracks foursquare.com looking for ladies checking in to various spots in San Francisco. If you're so inclined, you can drop everything and slide on over to, er, where the ladies are at.

Right now, at 7.31pm on Sunday evening, while I'm waiting at Portland Airport for our flight home, it says there are 7 people with ladies' names at Sundance Kabuki Cinema. Unless you want to grope in the dark to find them Gareth (and I think I've cornered that move), you might find it easier to cut along to Bar None or 21st Amendment, where there are 4 and 3, respectively.

Now, where do I collect my Wingman of The Year badge?