What’s wrong with a Clinton/Obama ticket, with Hillary on top?
The O man gets down with 8 years of solid, on-the-job training – and then slides on into the Oval Office right after that…..
Last night’s debate looked a lot like prom night courtship behavior to me. If these two join up then both of them win – and most of all, the nation wins against a Republican choice who would keep us in Iraq till kingdom come.
It was Capricorn Birthday night at the Ideal Restaurant, and I joined a small band of other January birthday boys and girls for the super dooper Prime Rib dinner — free to patrons with birthdays in that month. Do I need to tell you that the place was packed to the rafters with celebrants brandishing balloons and sparklers?
Amazing slabs of rare, rare, rare prime rib, served with mashed potatoes and sauteed veggies. I was impressed. But even MORE impressive was the flavor of a 1977 BV Private Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon, opened by one of my party just for this occasion. Yes, that’s a 30-year-old wine, and it was still full of smooth spice, mouth-filling tones of cherries and varietal fruit and tons of tannin. Just kidding about the tannin, since the ability to age was due to using up most of the mighty cab’s tannic properties.
It was a seriously fine old wine and a tribute to the BV legend. Thanks Gary!
Is it just me or is Berkeley really more there than most other places in the Bay Area?
Whatever it is, I shamelessly confess that I like having lunch all by myself at one of the outdoor tables of Cafe Rouge. This hopelessly hip place holds down one corner of the 4th Street mecca, between Gilman and University. Upscale boutiques twinkle along a two-block section of this neighborhood along the main route to the UCB campus. Between the illegally luxurious Pasta Shop (sea salt from Wales and Sicily!) and relatively downmarket Peet’s, Cafe Rouge has always been ahead of the curve in terms of out-and-out chic, killer menu and artisan charcuterie.
So here was obviously the place for me to test drive a Niman Ranch hot dog. At $7, it was a dollar cheaper than my gorgeous organic salad, and two dollars cheaper than the glass of minerally 
Grüner Veltliner that went with the frank like Prada on Kate Moss. Loaded with garlic, the hot dog was sheer bliss (maybe it was the outdoor setting, warm sun, plus I was famished). But the secret weapon here was a relish of spiced cabbage so good I could have inhaled the container even without any accompaniment. The potato chips weren’t bad either.
Oh, did I mention that the hot dog had been mesquite grilled? That’s the sort of touch that makes Cafe Rouge one of my favorite places to have lunch in Berkeley. Plus it’s across the street from Sur la Table where I bought a few little chartreuse, square salad plates. Chartreuse is my favorite color.
How much is Julian Schnabel paying the film critics? There’s no other reason why intelligent film-goers would succumb to the sophomoric exercise in cinematic vanity that is The Diving Bell & the Butterfly. Intrigued by raves from a wide range of reviewers, including local filmies, I wasted $7 and two hours on this pathetic excuse for a movie about a magazine editor confined to almost complete paralysis and the “life lessons” he learns thanks to attractive therapists, hand-held camerawork and of course, those crucial sub-titles.
Did Schnabel really think that making the film in French would elevate its mawkish, soporific effect? It doesn’t. It just means that you listen to lots of French speakers while you’re being bored to tears.
Wait, I know. Schnabel (a well-connected New York artist famous for painting on really big plates) decided to invoke the “Atonement effect.” You know, that’s where you shamelessly capitalize on a five-minute cameo by a major-but-aging star. (more…)
We joined art lovers this weekend at the opening of Linda Pope’s latest curatorial creation at the Eloise Pickard Smith Gallery at UCSC. Claire Lerner‘s eclectic combinations of photographic images and mixed media – “The Relaxation Project” (detail,r.) fills the Main Gallery, while Jimmy Chen‘s “Sleepwalking” series occupies the Annex Gallery.
Chen – a graduate of the university’s Art program and a former student of painter Frank Galuszka, makes small, moody nightscapes. Chen’s work explores the underbelly of suburbia’s comfort zone, in unsettling little studies that suggest Edward Hopper by way of David Lynch (below).
Claire Lerner’s pieces elicit a reflective mood of carefree summertimes, and their underlying quiet, idyllic nothingness.
Show continues through March 8, 2008. The Gallery is located at Cowell College – 831/459-2953.
A book of sensory adventure: The rituals, passions and discoveries of an engaged life.