by Christina Waters | Oct 25, 2011 | Home |
If you think it’s not possible to ruin Mozart’s mighty trickster masterpiece Don Giovanni, think again. The new production currently underwhelming audiences at the San Francisco Opera is a directorial mess studded here and there with some tremendous singing and two juicy leading men.
Wait, let me unload further. Not only does guest director Gabriele Lavia utterly fail to comprehend what the story is about and how people create visual excitement on-stage, but his ineptitude is soundly matched by a set from hell (more…)
by Christina Waters | Oct 25, 2011 | Home |
Dial soap has been a staple in my shower since the pleistocene. Big yellow bar makes for squeaky clean epidermal surfaces, etc.
But wait! What’s this? No more big bar, now a highly compromised size and a fraudulent shape.
Okay. Let me back up a few steps. I’m reluctantly entering the new, underwhelming CVS on Mission and I reach for a value-pack of Dial deodorant soap. I take it home. I open it, and I unwrap the normal-sized packaging.
The bar inside was anything but normal-sized. The once-robust rectangle had been cunningly hollowed out so that there was much less soap. Same basic outline, but much less bulk.
How rude! And no it wasn’t any cheaper. It was simply a new, wimpy bar of soap masquerading as the same old reliable, full-bodied bar of soap.
Not good.
by Christina Waters | Oct 25, 2011 | Home |
Is that disgusting or what?
I mean look at how they did that. Oh I’m sure their spin doctors put out the word that the new shape was more ergonomic, easier to hold, etc.
But it’s just smaller, period.
by Christina Waters | Oct 24, 2011 | Home |
Along with many Monterey Bay listeners, we tuned into 103.9FM Monday evening to enjoy a bit of Mozart with our dinner, only to hear—gasp!—elevator muzak from somewhere in the 70s. What had happened?
This is what happened. The Central Coast’s only classical music station abruptly morphed into a soft rock, contemporary oldies station. No warning, nothing. “It is with great regret that we must tell you the station’s format has been changed,” was what we found on the station’s website yesterday.
We are not amused. Guess we are not the cultured community of arts lovers we always pretended to be. Another sign that we are being forced into collective homogeneity.
by Christina Waters | Oct 24, 2011 | Home |
Gabriella Cafe chef Adrian Cruz is cooking up gorgeous dishes of sexy, seasonal items – they taste as good as they look.
A case in point is this impeccable bowl of tagliatelle, sensuous thick pasta noodles tangled with Monterey Bay calamari, octopus and a dice of kobucha squash. Utterly sinfully perfect.
