REVIEW - Midi Restaurant, San Francisco

This place has been on our list for a few weeks now, along with Contigo, RN74, Starbelly, Wexler's and Ironside. More on those as we get around to eating our list, so to speak.

Went there last Saturday night for what turned out to be a very quiet meal. The upscale-ish sports bar downstairs was completely empty (a couple of bored staff watching game 18 of 47 in the World Series*), while upstairs we were one of only 2 or 3 occupied tables for the "hot" 8.30pm Saturday night slot.

* Don't get me started on how they can hold a World Series of games featuring only American teams. I know half the players are Latino, but still ....

The food was very good. Decor was quietly hip. Service was impeccable (well, there was at least one server per occupied table), and with just each others' eyes to gaze into, we had a quiet gaze for an hour or so.

Maybe the downtown location says 'after work' rather than 'weekend romantic'.

RANT - Milk Substitutes

Despite living a huff 'n a puff 5-minute walk uphill from the nearest grocery store, being out of fresh milk and bread makes it feel like I'm stranded in the Kalahari. Which predicament brings me to today's puzzle: how to make a decent mid-morning capuccino when the only "milk" in the house is the dreadful rice milk her ladyship splashes on her Cheerios every morning.

I can't go any further without linking to Lewis Black's rabid rant about milk.

Strangely, Lewis Black failed to mention rice milk, which looks and tastes like dirty water. Needless to say, minus the stuff that makes real milk so good, rice milk sits like a nasty film on top of the espresso, daring you to sip it. With each swirl of the cup, the layer of non-foam disappears until it's just the nasty non-milk taste that's left to tarnish an otherwise excellent cup made with freshly-ground Blue Bottle coffee.

RAVE - Walking the Amazon

Somewhere near the top of my list of things I should've done when I was younger and fitter, along with "Learn to play like my namesake Jimmy Page, form a band and live the life of a rock star", is "explore the Amazon".

Former British Army Captain Ed Stafford is 574 664 days into his attempt to walk the length of the Amazon, from its source to its mouth, a superhuman feat that he expects to complete August 2010.

The trip began April 2, 2008, but Stafford and his initial traveling companion, Luke Collyer argued over an iPod some way into the expedition, and Collyer buggered off back to England.

Stories like this, and watching The Amazing Race, make me wonder if Pavey and I would make it out of the parking lot to the riverside without arguing about whether our cats had been left enough food, and one of us packing it in.

Witty captions are invited for the picture above, and before Roger quips "is that an Anaconda in your backpack, or are you just pleased to see me?", I've got that one.

RANT - Belichick's Overdue Geography Lesson

The New England Patriots played The Tampa Bay Buccaneers last Sunday at Wembley Stadium in London, for this year's "foreign" NFL game.

I read The Times from the UK each day, thanks to my Kindle subscription, and from which I'm quoting this gem:

Bill Belichick, head coach of the Patriots, said he was excited about the chance to play at Wembley, but he said it in the way that Madonna says she's excited about getting the chance to play Vladivostock. Then he went on to say that his team has "never played an overseas game, other than in Toronto" - prompting this geography question, worth five points: name the sea that separates New England from Canada.

The rest of the article was equally readable, but I think I'll skip Belichick's autobiography when it comes out.

RAVE - Gossip at The Regency

It's been said before - mostly in the UK press, because she's less known in her native USA - Beth Ditto is a superstar.

Am I the only person who thinks she's as important as Janis Joplin? Comparing her to Tina Turner is fitting, but likely to send you off on an R&B tangent. At their peak last night, Gossip sounded like the Sex Pistols would've sounded in their heyday, if they'd had a female vocalist and enjoyed themselves a bit more. Got the picture?

With her shock of orange hair and expanse of white flesh, Ditto looked like a plus-sized match.

She apologized at the start for being hoarse, but the way she powered through their hour-long set belied that. They performed most of their latest CD, Music for Men (buy it now!), and encored with Standing in the Way of Control, with Beth thundering away from the top of a speaker-sized box on one corner of the stage.

The Regency was heaving, boasting an assortment of girls dressed like guys, guys dressed like girls, and three guys dressed like Dexy's Midnight Runners!

RAVE - Accidental treasures on the Web

I used to work for a software company in Denver. I won't mention the name, because the a-hole who ran the company doesn't deserve the mention, but one of the sales guys used to describe our software as having a "serendipity factor", meaning that users would find hidden gems in there. Now, spare the silk-purse-out-of-a-sow's-ear gasps, he was only trying to make a living. What is serendipitous however, is bumbling around on the web and finding wonderful facts or stories you weren't looking for in the first place.

For example, while waiting for the Liverpool versus Manchester Scum game to start this morning, I caught the end of Burn After Reading, where during the credits it featured CIA Man, by The Fugs. Now, I'd never heard of The Fugs before (I'm sure Roger Espley still has one of their 8-track cartridges in his car), so I strolled on over to YouTube and found the song.

In the right-hand frame - at least when I dallied there - were links to some treasures by The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. These included rarities like Terry Keeps His Clips On, about an uber conservative gardener who doesn't want bugs to get up his trouser legs.

Incidentally, young music combo (as Private Eye magazine would introduce them) Death Cab For Cutie got its name from the title of a song written by Neil Innes and Vivian Stanshall (pictured above), founders of the Bonzos.

Wondering whether Stanshall was still alive led me to Wikipedia, which informed that he isn't - sadly he died in a fire in his flat in 1995. Our Viv was a true eccentric, and a funny one. In one of his Rawlinson End tales, he wrote about enjoying a new Jewish musical, Oklahymie. This story however, was the real accidental treasure I found:

"In particular, his exploits with close friend Keith Moon are legendary, perhaps the most notorious involving Stanshall going into an unsuspecting tailor's shop and admiring a pair of trousers; Moon then came in, posing as another customer, admired the same trousers and demanded to buy them. When Stanshall protested the two men fought over them, splitting them in two so they ended up with one leg each. The tailor was by now beside himself but right then a one-legged actor, who had been hired by Stanshall and Moon, came in, saw the trousers and proclaimed "Ah! Just what I was looking for."

Sans prix.

One postscript to this story is that Roger (the 8-track cartridge sporter) tells me he and I luxuriated in front row seats at Vivian Stanshall's Stinkfoot comic opera in London many years ago. Now, I don't remember luxuriating in much of anything with Roger, except maybe a pint of Bols at an Austrian ski resort, but that's for another blog post.

RAVE - The Damned United

A riveting character study of someone I never liked.

In fact, I hated Brian Clough, whether he was managing Derby County, Leeds United or Nottingham Forest. I hated his whiny voice, his superior attitude, his success.

This film focuses on the 44 days Clough spent as manager of Leeds, and amply demonstrates what there was to hate about him. His selfishness. His pig-headedness. His treatment of his assistant, Peter Taylor.

Aside from the stunning acting by Michael Sheen and Timothy Spall, the big big takeaway from this movie is the shocking difference between the way the game was managed and played in the 70s, and the way it is now. Players smoking in the dressing room before the game, shabby stadiums, pitches and stars' homes. And those haircuts!

Best quotes:

In a TV interview after Derby County won the First Division championship: "I wouldn't say I'm the best manager in the business, but I am in the Top One".

When Clough and Taylor traveled to the south coast, to talk to the directors at Brighton: "Bloody Southerners. What are we doing here, we're almost in France!"

We were intrigued to see how a mostly American audience would take to this gritty as grit English film, but they seemed really into it, even without sub-titles for the Yorkshire, Scottish and Irish accents.

Awesome, dudes.

RAVE - Echo and The Bunnymen at Fox Theater, Oakland

There were no decent dancers in the 80s - the music didn't lend itself to the sashay. And that deficit was much in evidence* last night, at the gorgeous Fox Theater in Oakland.

* I'm not sure if a "deficit" can be "much in evidence", in the same way a "secret" cannot logically be "obvious", so sue me for assault with a deadly phrase.

As Echo & The Bunnymen delivered two sets, the first a performance of their 1984 album Ocean Rain, followed by another 45 minutes of classics, the assorted post-punks and pre-baggies barely kept in time.

Thanks to our hosts, Mikki and Jonny Larner (owner of The Independent venue in SF), we were in the friends and family section, which afforded plenty of "dancing" space for keen fans like the thirty-something woman writhing and swirling next to us, clearly channeling Siouxsie Sioux while auditioning for second witch in the next Harry Potter movie.

But what about the music? At his and their best, Ian McCulloch and the band sound like Richard Ashcroft and The Verve. At their worst, there are comparisons with plenty lacklustre 80s outfits. It also depends who you listen to, as to whether the first, orchestra-backed half was better than the second, band-alone set. I preferred the latter, which freed the band from the tempo and sound-system issues of balance between guitars and a string section.

Last night, McCulloch's voice showed what being raised in possibly the wettest part of England (Liverpool), and smoking 2 packs of Marlboro a day can do to a man. At times he sounded less Ian Curtis and more aging Neil Diamond. He also demonstrated a grumpiness akin to Mark Smith and the Gallaghers, which makes me wonder how hard it must be to stay pissed off for 25 years!

Curiously, the lighting carefully kept McCulloch in near total darkness. On one of those rare occasions when he WAS visible, he shouted "turn the effing lights off!!!".

So there it is then, Ian McCulloch's a vampire.

RANT or RAVE (I can't make up my mind): The Lost Symbol, by Dan Brown

My first Kindle book completed, and I don't know if I can take another of Dan Brown's formulaic series of denouements.

The book is fine, but Brown suffers from a Tolkien-esque need to label everything as ancient and belonging to someone: The Holy House of Heredom, The Winding Staircase of Freemasonry, The Code of Kryptos, the Ad of Nauseum (tee hee). See also The Mirror of Galadriel, The Riders of Theoden, The Dagger of The Witch King, The Fighting Knives of Legolas ... but I go on. (or at least Tolkien did).

And while good suspense writing demands some, er, suspense, every freaking chapter ends with stuff like "Wide-eyed, Mal'akh lay gasping for breath .. all alone on the great altar".

After a while, the persistent cliff-hangers got to me. I guess I'm suffering from something like my brother Lawrence, who maintains that he hates any book or film that starts with the result, and then tells the story of how things got to that result. My complaint is that I don't like writers or directors that can only maintain suspense using the same old devices. I'm tempted to write a spoof porn script using those devices, but someone might print it and show it to my mum! So you'll never get to read:

Chapter 2: .......... Ricky gasped as Rebekka tore violently at her stiffly-starched blouse, while fumbling frantically at his belt.
Chapter 3: Meanwhile, over at the grocery store, Joe deliberated over his choice of ice cream. "What flavor should we have tonight?", he wondered. This was always a problem for him. He knew he should have thought about this before trudging around every aisle at Safeway.

On a positive note, The Lost Symbol made it even more likely we'll spend a weekend in DC, armed with a list of alleged pyramids, obelisks and hidden-in-plain-sight evidence of the Freemasons' fabulous-ness.

RAVE - The Professor and The Madman, by Simon Winchester

The riveting tale of how the original Oxford English Dictionary was compiled. Believe me, it's a gripper! (–noun 1. a person or thing that grips. 2. grabbing you by the tender bits and keeping you focused).

When I was at school, I remember my English tutor banging on about how the only newspaper worth reading was the Manchester Guardian. Simon Winchester, a journalist for that paper, writes this account of the process behind the first edition of the world-famous OED.

James Murray - the "professor" in the book's title - and his team started by advertising for contributions to what would become the OED. He placed newspaper ads, and more inventively put slips of paper inside certain library books that he thought would be read by the educated contributors he was seeking.

The ads asked for people to submit words with definitions supported by examples of those words in contemporary and classical writings.

Professor Murray noticed that a disproportionately high number of contributions came from a post box address in Reading. Intrigued as to the source of those contributions, he tracked the sender down to someone in Reading Jail. The Jail was the kind of place where the authorities placed all manner of people, some genuinely disturbed, and others (like Oscar Wilde) whom they found hard to categorize.

The Professor eventually identified his prodigious contributor as linguistics expert Dr. William Minor ("The Madman"), who was incarcerated for life for having committed murder in 1872, alledgely driven by the atrocities he'd witnessed in the American Civil War.

Who knew that the detailed account of how the first OED was compiled would be such a fantastic story.

RAVE - John Peel, by Mick Wall

I, like many music fans, revere John Peel.

For many years he was the only meaningful figure on British radio. He eschewed the pop blah that other DJs paraded nonstop.

His reputation for discovering musical talent far outweighs anything that dipsticks like Simon Cowell or Piers Morgan can muster.

When I was doing my school homework, I used to record every minute of Peel's early evening radio show, and amassed a collection of hundreds of cassettes that I wore out in my Walkman.

This book tells how we got where he got, and tells many inside stories of the music biz, how bands we now know well first broke, and how much time Peel would spend sifting through the thousands of demo tapes sent him every week of his life.

The thinking man's music legend, RIP.

REVIEW - Capitalism: A Love Story

Boy, did we argue about this afterward. I thought it was unbalanced and gimmicky; Pavey thought that it accurately slammed the iniquities of capitalism.

We all know Michael Moore can resort to massive overstatement in order to make his point, but his use of a criminal case where owners of a privately owned juvenile detention center bribed a local judge to sentence kids to time behind bars as "a typical example of what's wrong with capitalism" was just too much of a stretch for me. Claiming that crime -  when the illegal pursuit of money harms the innocent - is capitalism, is just plain stupid in my view.

Similarly one-sided was Moore's focus on just one half of the sub-prime mortgage debacle. He banged on endlessly about those despicable Goldman Sachs types sneakily promoting variable rate mortgages to the unsuspecting, under-educated and poor, totally ignoring the fact that it takes two to tango.

Finally (for me anyway) were Moore's stunts - schlepping around Wall Street in an armored truck demanding that bail-out recipients return their ill-gotten gains to the taxpayer, and stretching "Crime Scene" tape around the headquarters of AIG and Morgan Stanley - were just time-wasting.

One interesting and potentially disgusting thing to check out is whether your company takes out life insurance on YOU, their employee. The film used this as more evidence of the evil nature of capitalism, and your view may depend on whether your company will make money when you die. See for yourself.

I could go on - and did last night, over dinner. Sorry Pav.

RANT - Rain = Power Cuts

What kind of 3rd World country is this anyway? Whenever we get heavy rain, San Francisco gets power outages!

My flight back from Austin, via Denver was delayed FIVE HOURS because of rain in San Francisco. And when I did get back, at 4am yesterday, the clocks were flashing, the fire doors on the elevator were closed, and the shrubs on our front deck were flattened.

Seriously, the only place I've been with a flakier power supply is the Caribbean. Oh good, the TV's back on :)

RAVE - Social Media Video

I spoke at the Texas CIO Academy earlier this week, a trip that allowed me to stop in for dinner and a glass or two with old and dear friends Bill and Margaret Eley in Houston (well, Bill's old and Margaret's dear).

Researching the material for my preso, I found (and used) this excellent video describing Social Media's meteoric rise.

RAVE - Corde Valle Resort, St Martin, CA

Spent our 6th Anniversary weekend at Corde Valle resort, about 70 miles south of San Francisco. And what a gorgeous place it is too. Boasting a top class golf course that we admired but didn't play, our Anniversary special suite flanked the 9th fairway, and we enjoyed breakfast each morning on our patio overlooking that fairway. In our private garden we had our own hot tub, which was hastily evacuated when we saw our own private Garter Snake slithering within reach! Verdict: otherwise blissful.

RAVE - Yank Sing

Something hit me 10 minutes into sitting at the counter for Sunday brunch at Yank Sing.

I got into one of those euphoric moods where I wanted to order everything on the menu. The M.O was perfect for that rush. Every few minutes, someone pushes a cart up to you with various steaming, spicy concoctions in little wicker baskets or on open dishes.

All bite sized. All irresistible.

The fact that the place was full of mostly Chinese families in a festive mood made for a great Sunday meal.

RAVE - Farmhouse Inn and Restaurant

I picked this place from various online recommendations when we rented a house near Healdsburg for our anniversary weekend.

The Farmhouse Inn is an un-spectacular building in the otherwise un-spectacular hamlet of Forestville.

Walking in from outside it's like entering Dr Who's Tardis - with the exterior giving no hint of the wonders inside. The decor, the furnishings, the ambience are all country house luxury.

The food was exceptional, and well worth the schlepp up to Sonoma.

I don't know if it was the euphoria surrounding our anniversary, or the super good mood I was in having found this place, but I believe the wine was one of the best I've ever had, a 2005 Vosnes Romanee.

RAVE - My new Kindle

Having a blast with my new Kindle (thank you Pav).

Reading books on the Kindle became second nature within a few minutes. It's not that it's the same as reading printed pages, it's that reading from a Kindle is easy on the eyes and easy on the hands. Controls are natural, the screen is crystal clear.

We'll see how the device lasts after being manhandled around the pool over Christmas, but until then, I'm sold.

UPDATE: After using the Kindle for a couple of weeks, I'm even more impressed. Interestingly, I've found I can read faster on the Kindle than I can with a regular book, mainly because with the text re-paginated to fit a screen that's narrower than a real paper page, there's less lateral distance for my eyes to scan the lines, and it's easier to deploy that speed-reading trick of looking at the start and end of a line or paragraph before reading the full text.

ROMANCE - Happy Anniversary Pavey

What with Global Warming, tsunamis and recession, I'm not sure if this is the compliment it once was, but you are the World to me.

While this weekend it's our 6th wedding anniversary, you've been on the receiving end of my wit, washing and wonderfulness for 12 years. (Would love, laundry and lasciviousness have worked better? I don't know).

Anyhow, this is to remind you that I love you.