googlicious

August 29, 2006

youtubing

Filed under: crazed artists, geeki, once upon a time — matthew @ 12:22 am

so late at night, having tucked in a guest just arrived from the west coast via scooter- somehow i stumble, through the auguries of the bowels of the new york times, onto this (note: The creators identified themselves as Miles Beckett, 28, of Woodland Hills, Calif.; Mesh Flinders, 26, of Petaluma, Calif., and Greg Goodfried, 27, of Los Angeles) and this – certainly two of the most wonderful bits of cultural density i’ve seen lately… so tell me, did you foresee this happening? 7 million views of a vanishingly humble korean playing bach, and a thousand video responses to “i really shouldn’t post this, but….”

yikes… this is going to be a wild ride…

August 28, 2006

i want dinner…. waaaaaaaaaa….

Filed under: food, neighborhood, travel — matthew @ 10:20 pm
Downstairs Dinner Menus:
August 28–September 2, 2006

Monday, August 28 $85 Chez Panisse Thirty-Fifth Birthday Menu
An apéritif
Hors d’oeuvre à la provençale
Fig salad with mint and crème fraîche
La grande bouillabaisse
Garden lettuces and goat cheeses
Summer fruit basket and bonbons Chez Panisse

Tuesday, August 29 $65
Chopped salad with heirloom tomatoes, bacon, and farm egg
Pan-fried local petrale sole with almonds and parsley
Grilled Wolfe Ranch quail with succotash and white corn polenta
Flavor King pluot tart with mascarpone cream
Wednesday, August 30 $65
Green bean, shell bean, and cherry tomato salad with basil and aïoli
Fideus pasta with roasted peppers and local squid
Grilled James Ranch lamb rack, loin, and leg with eggplant tian and olive sauce
Summer berry sherbet coupe with Champagne granita

Thursday, August 31 $65
Tuna carpaccio with capers and anchovy
Chanterelle mushroom ravioli in brodo
Spit-roasted Laughing Stock Farm pork loin with shell beans and fried rosemary
Black Mission fig and raspberry crostata with Marsala-fig ice cream

Friday, September 1 $85
An apéritif
Local halibut tartare with green beans, cucumbers, and avocado
Squash blossom risotto with summer truffles
Grilled Paine Farm squab with roasted figs, squab liver toast, and garden lettuces
Middleton Gardens raspberry soufflé

Saturday, September 2 $85
An apéritif
Heirloom tomato salad with torpedo onion rings
Roasted red pepper soup with lobster soufflé
Grilled Sonoma County Liberty duck breast with flat beans, star anise, and braised bacon
Blackberry ice cream crêpes with O’Henry peaches

Service charge: 17 percent Sales tax: 8 3/4 percent
Corkage: $20 per bottle, limit two (750 ml.) per table.
1517 Shattuck Avenue, Berkeley, California 94709
Reservations: (510) 548-5525
Other fish varieties may have to be substituted.

August 26, 2006

the gilded cage

Filed under: experimental — matthew @ 7:09 pm

sometimes the internet is *so* boring. for instance, as i was pouring myself a cachacha and orange juice and contemplating the lovely raindrenched vista outside, a cool and spacious airconditioned house furnished with art and a few oddlies, and the hour approaching where i shall hie myself out to a birthday party, but to retrench, this luxurious sensation brought to mind the phrase “gilded cage” and being nearly close enough to touch a keyboard whilst this ran through my brainpan, i quickly arrived at http://gildedcage.com. if that isn’t one of the most boring use of a fine domain name….

of course, i shouldn’t be one to talk, seeing as i have taken googlicious.com and turned it into this….

August 25, 2006

choosing carefully

Filed under: travel — matthew @ 1:48 am

at this moment i am in the middle of buying a plane ticket for a good friend who is travelling from denver to help with a show next month, and i come the meal preference part of the ticket form, and i pull down the menu, and lo and behold, in this day and age of $7 sandwiches and $2 water on airplanes, i get to choose from an array of cuisines! diabetic, vegetarian, vegan, low-sodium, kosher, and muslim. hmmmm… shouldn’t that be halal? which reminds me that today, while sitting at the counter of our classiest local coffee shop, the metro, and being served by a deliciously ambisexual barrista, i picked up part of a stack of some kind of trivial pursuit cards for foodies, and about the fourth one down referred to the halal and kosher (same part of the world, same cuisine) requirement that animals be slaughtered by having their throats cut while conscious… that kind of made an impression. but anyways, i digress; there was the pull down menu, and it was all i could do to resist the temptation to sign my polish friend up for a muslim meal. at that point, all he has to do is pull out a cell phone, and it’s all over. but after some deliberation, i chose no preference, as that would be his choice i think. myself, i’ve chosen hindu when i’m offered, in the faint hope that someday i’ll be served a passable curry while riding in a 757.

August 24, 2006

a good meal – for free!

Filed under: experimental — matthew @ 12:05 am

the first person to tell me where the picture in the header was taken will be taken out to dinner at a restaurant of their choice. the first person to tell me where the picture in the header of the about page was taken is really sharp, but gets the same thing… for that one, you could probably use a hint, but you’re not getting one…

August 22, 2006

events

Filed under: events — matthew @ 11:44 pm

Strange happenings: had a meeting with a client during which he almost hit me he was so out of control. guess i’m dropping him. the bayshore house is as beautiful as ever, the crickets are heavy, the drainage pump from the development across the street kept us company this evening of national night out

i interviewed for a job as stage manager for four shows at the newly renovated asolo theater up the street.

ms. k is on the street in mexico city – she sends this dispatch: “Meanwhile, the largest street in mexico city has become a giant campground with yoga everyday at 8 am and black beans cooked over fires and dancing at all hours. I fucking love this city….i’m never going home.”

thank the universe for all of our good luck.

August 19, 2006

stolen from boing boing of course…

Filed under: geeki — matthew @ 3:29 am

a quite fine animation … actually a meta-animation, which makes it quite cooler, at least to me. let’s hear it for abstraction!

August 18, 2006

the last time i went to new york

Filed under: travel — matthew @ 10:47 pm

a small bilateral account of a trip to nyc – october 1, 2004

left:

leaving sarasota 10am on 24 hours notice for new york on jet blue, which turned out to be a marvelous airline. driving up to tampa with steve and zan. steve having just come off of a 6pm to 7am shift inspecting truckfulls of hurricane debris. we got ourselves seated together and straggled onto the plane where we promptly fell asleep with our heads on each others shoulders. here’s how my schedule ended up:

thursday 3am decide to go- fall asleep -thursday 6am wake up, realize i fell asleep in the middle of buying tickets. buy tickets. friday 3am finish off everything essential, go to sleep – friday 8am wake up, pack, and breakfast by neal – friday 10am drive to tampa airport – friday 12 pm take off – 2:30 arrive at JFK get on train – 4:30 arrive at tam’s in west harlem – have a drink and lay about for an hour – 6pm taxi to alex grays gallery for dinner – 6am (!) leave gallery, home to sleep – 1pm up for coffee and meditation – 3:30pm breakfast (very slowly) at central american restaurant – 4-6 make our way to st marks in the east village – meetup – bar – gallery – aprils house – dinner – second gallery – funk band – sunday 2:30am sleep – sunday 6am up for the airport – home

right:

the trip to nyc was intense and incredible. forty hours, one maps benefit at alex greys place (6pm-6am), two art openings, three bands, four djs, five restaurants, six drinks, and seven hours of sleep. otherwise uneventful. meanwhile having a very intensely emotional inner life experience, and walking all over town, running into alisdair by chance on the street, and then two blocks later, dara. napping on a pillow in front of a huge alex grey dmt vision, preventing a drunk kate chapman from heading out the door into the streets of manhattan with a borrowed micro toy doberman (live) wearing a pink dress, and generally more stuff than i could take in all at once. my one good deed was spotting valerie, who did most all the organizing for an event that in rick’s inimitable style ballooned from 50 people for dinner and speeches to 250 for dinner, speeches, and dancing till dawn, in the two days prior, about 10pm sitting in a kind of fetal position against the hallway wall staring blankly at the heat death of the universe or something. i took her hand and said “don’t look to either side, don’t talk to anyone – follow me…”, grabbed zan, and got her onto a table, zan eased her body, i washed her feet with hot towels, and in fifteen minutes we transported her to her own party. 5 points for matthew and zan.

August 11, 2006

the news from sarasota… pre-hurricane

Filed under: neighborhood — matthew @ 2:39 am

everybody seems to be just fine here, at least they aren’t shooting anyone. i’m still looking for a girlfriend, but what else is new? my airconditioner works, and for that i am exceedingly grateful…

a large local homebuilder went belly up on tuesday with 71 houses in various states of completion. the company had sold 123 houses in 2005 and had sold 4 in 2006. i’d go belly up too. methinks the realestate boom is slackening hereabouts. i see an occasional terror in the eyes of people who have bought houses as investments in the last year. of course the median price of 335K is still a bargain compared to say, oakland ca, with a median price of $600K.

the development across the street, which has been the subject of much controversy, has yet to sell a lot in two years. i awake at 7am to the lovely tune of reverse horns on the earthmoving equipment, and i can tell you, they spend at least as much time in reverse as otherwise..

August 10, 2006

and *another* good meal

Filed under: food — matthew @ 1:28 am

tonight was the occasion of our fourth wednesday night dinner… the theme being vegetables and readings- i added a pair of lovely yellowtail snapper to the vegetables, and here’s what came of the readings…

1. ode to clouds – pablo neruda – english

2. bushs twentieth hundred days – shouts and murmurs, new yorker

3. stock traders handbook, real estate remix – 1923

4. veronika kills herself – pablo coelho -
5. ode to the night – pablo neruda – bilingual

6. two poems – chelsea yarrow gould – read by the author

7. ode to clouds – pablo neruda -espanol

all in all, an exquisitely eclectic selection to hear, with a pablo neruda refrain. just couldn’t help ourselves.

i shall post a picture, but not now….

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