Chewing My Ponytail

It's Tuesday. How the hell did it get to be Tuesday already? Sunday was just here, with it's warm SF breeze, sunburned shoulders and soccer tourneys. Ugh. One more day before a hellish storm of final exams is upon me. Coping? Yes, but I forget these rules about studying that say you have to take a break every 50 minutes or so. Hence this silly entry.

The Adaptive Diversity of Australopithecus Robustus. Doesn't that sound fascinating? Wouldn't that keep you riveted for hours of unending reading fun? God. I think I need to take a nap. Just a short one mind you, I wouldn't want to waste any of the precious moments I have left not learning all I can about how bipedalism is the most critical determining factor in our evolutionary development into the most advanced species on the planet.

Sometimes I wonder why our ancestors ever came out of the forests... hell, right now even moving into the forest seems like it was too rash a move, fish have the right idea...

Local Eatery Makes Good

Coming as it does, so close on the heels of the culinary experience I had at Daniel Boulod's magnificent restaurant in Manhattan, the meal I had tonight at Fork in San Anselmo deserves at least as much recognition.

I had heard excellent things about this joint from more than one source and have for a long time wanted to try it. Tonight proved to be the perfect opportunity. It wasn't very busy when we showed up around quarter to nine. The menu and wine list are both modest in offerings, but each available selection leaves little to be desired. We started with a seared Ahi appetizer served over cold Saba noodles and topped with a light sesame dressing of sorts. Delicate, flavorful and superb. At the same time we shared a Mezclun salad with a lovely warm goat cheese and topped with a pear dressing that was, again, light and delectable. The entree was a tender cut of lamb, herb crusted and served on a bed of steamed spinach and a cherry gastrique.

All the food was worthy of at least a star, which, if the critics of any caliber would ever deign to travel this far into Marin, would certainly make haste to award. The wine list is complementary to the fare to say the least, with both excellent local and French choices.

The prices are incredible as well, all starters except for the oysters are under ten dollars and all entrees were the same price: 16.50. They have a lovely tasting menu at 50-something per person with wine that gives an excellent overview of their offerings.

Absolutely not to be missed!

Fork
415.453.9898
198 Sir Francis Drake
San Anselmo

Out of Wine? Oh...

After a completely idiotic day I’m finally sitting down to write and rant a little. I just reread what I wrote about NY. I don’t get much traffic here, and frankly I’m not surprised. Effusive might not be a strong enough word.

I had two exams today and while both were in the classroom they both still felt like a bad Proctology department visit. Plus this damn wisdom tooth is fucking with me. I’m on antibiotics, which I hate. And I have a pain I didn’t earn through exercise, which I also hate.

I just have to make it through one more week. Seven little days. I’ve been so good this semester at staying up on things and that will be my saving grace. No catch up, just have to hold it together through exams. I still have these gems that pop into my awareness. Little memories of moments, big, time-consuming reflections that distract me from what I am supposed to be doing.

I can still smell that city on the clothes that sit un- unpacked in my room. Damn, what a little flavor of The Road does to me. I can’t wait for the next plane ride, the next air-chariot to climes yet unexplored.

I really did run out of wine, how did that happen?

Coast to Coast, or, What To Do With 4 Days You Don't Have

In the end I couldn’t wait any longer. With the end of classes looming and more studying to be done than I cared to consider, I called the airline and changed my flight. Instead of an early morning flight, I hopped the red-eye to JFK last Tuesday.

But first I went to the ballgame. At 7:30 on Tuesday night I met Scott and Louis outside Pacbell Park with tickets in hand. Tickets to seats that were amazing, I might add. We were on the Field Club level, row E. That means we were sixth row back from the field, seated directly between the Giants dugout and home plate. Good seats. We had a couple of beers together, and some very soupy nachos. The Giants played the Pirates and lost, but I got to see a home team homerun before I had to dash off to OAK.

I made the flight and was all settled in with my journal and some Dewar’s. Six hours later I was making my way through the new Airtrain-to-NY Subway interchange. It is a virtually seamless transfer that makes getting from JFK to Midtown easy for someone with a backpack on.

I will always love the Subway/Metro/Tube. I love the clacking of the train and whooshing of air as it rushes into the station. I love having to grab a service map and navigate the route to where I want to be. I love learning about a city’s street system from underneath it. And I love the feeling of walking up out of the destination station onto a busy street that couldn’t care less that I’m there, but welcomes me with it’s noise and bustle just the same. Arriving in London, Paris or Berlin gives me the same feeling, but with different flavors, each unique, each familiar and warm.

New York. Oh my. My last visit was hurried and incomplete and I found myself SO glad to be back. I walked out onto 53rd and Lex and into the heart of Manhattan’s morning commute. You know, here in the Bay Area we are lucky enough to have the stunning physical surroundings that we do. The price we pay is to sit in traffic, squandering these oh so precious minutes of our lives waiting to get from one place to another.

I’m the kind of person who will take the back road, the end run, even if it ultimately takes longer to get where I’m going, just so I can keep moving. The streets of NY are just as crowded and filled and traffic ridden, but the people keep moving, striding and bumping and dodging their way through each other. We’re warmer here in Cali, more friendly perhaps, but there is some sense of unity in navigating the crowded sidewalks of Midtown, beset on all sides by strangers and yet still able to enjoy moments of solitude.

Wednesday was a free day. After all, I wasn’t even supposed to be there yet. I had some idea of what the ensuing 96 hours would bring, but no concept of the tenor those four days would take. So I called Tom to let him know I was in early and then I went and met up with Jane. We walked up the east side, skirting the park and checked out the Guggenheim. Why waste time after all? This is what I came for. To satisfy the thirst and entire semester of the History of Modern Art had given me.

They have a lovely collection, and the facility is quite magnificent. Each floor had something unique to offer, and walking from each exhibit to the next, winding our way up, up, up into the skylit column was an experience in itself. They have a fine collection of Manet, Cezanne, Klee, Miro… Picasso. My goodness, Picasso. Later on we visited the Conservatory gardens in the park. Tulips of countless colors were blooming and the impeccably manicured botany basked in the sunlight of a perfect spring New York morning.

That evening I hooked up with Tom and Lisa outside her place at 71st and CPW. They took me over to Amsterdam to The Dead Poet, this great little bar in split level with the most expensive pay pool table I’ve ever played on. The walls were plastered in black and white reproductions of poet legends throughout history and the world. Jane met up with us later after her dinner, and Lisa knew the bartender so our little foursome was stoked.

Thursday morning I had an appointment with Jane at Christie’s. She had a painting by Wayne Thiebaud in that morning's auction, Post-War and Contemporary art. There were several hundred lots up and hers was about in the middle of the pack. Expectations were high but nervous. We sat right in front. I came to see the art.

Hoffman, Stella, Kline, Guston… Warhol and de Kooning for God’s sake! I couldn’t get enough. Seeing works by these artists in slides and in books is one thing; sitting six feet from a rotating display of their works for two hours is quite another. Couple that with getting to watch the bidding process and seeing how much each went for was frankly, just interesting as hell. We didn’t stay for the whole thing, but we did remain in our seats for a respectable number of lots beyond No. 271.

Jane’s little Thiebaud Cupcake performed quite well. Better than expected actually. In fact it blew it’s top estimate and wound up taking top bid for the morning session of the auction. Incroyable. We met Jane’s friend, Ellen, and had a lovely celebratory lunch in a nearby wine bar called Morrell. Excellent wine list and the food was great.

I did some wandering around for the middle part of the day and then met up with my cultural compatriot and the two of us crossed town and made our way to Pier 54 for a photography exhibit Katrina had strongly recommended. Whew.

Gregory Colbert is something else. I won’t even try to explain the exhibit, it would take too long. The thing took up the whole pier and was designed by this Japanese guy to be completely transportable. The entire exhibit packs itself into the recycled industrial shipping containers that it’s built from and then shipped to ports around the world. Inside was like a cathedral. Ethereal music and lighting, huge silk-screened prints floating midair, suspended from nearly invisible wire and flanking a long, straight walkway. That’s all I can say; I wouldn’t presume to be able to put words to Colbert’s art. His vision has to be experienced to be understood and appreciated.

Coming soon to an abandoned waterfront pier near you.

We were late for dinner. Jane knew I was coming out to NY and promised to make my stay as gastronomic as possible. We had reservations at Nobu, that slick Sushi joint that slings plates as artistic as they are delicious. We gorged ourselves.

Later on, wandering our through the Village, I finally made contact with Kathy. She had graduated with an MA from Tisch School of the Arts at NYU that morning and her voice on the other end of the phone implored us to come meet her and her friends just a few blocks away. We cabbed over, crashed a big formal prom-type dance on the way, and arrived at the bar with our stolen silver and gold balloons. Full effect. I don’t remember much after that….

Friday was dedicated to the MOMA. I had seen Deborah’s photos (my illustrious art history prof.), heard what she had to say about her visit back in February (Christo’s Gates….), and was quite taken aback – but in a good way, by the redesign. Granted I didn’t get a chance to really explore the MOMA in its last incarnation during my previous visit, but the differences were marked. A little cold in the hallways, they’ll fix that; and the exhibit galleries have some arrangement and flow issues, but altogether it works. The sculpture courtyard is awesome. In this perfect weather there we folk in swank black wire chairs lounging in the sun and chatting beneath the unmoving sculpture.

I gave it a good four hours and covered the rest of the semester’s material that the Guggenheim just didn’t have. ‘Nuff said about that really. It was completely fulfilling. Go see it.

That evening I hooked up with Azarel over at the new Lincoln Jazz Center, where she works. What a place. They were hosting the top 15 schools in the country who were there because they beat out 125 other schools in a national Jazz band competition. Az gave me the grand tour and then introduced me to Wynton Marsalis. ‘Nuff said about that. Then we had a drink across the street at The Coliseum and caught up.

Saturday morning seemed to come too quickly. I had an early evening flight so I stowed my bags and wandered up and down Madison and Fifth. The stores there are incredible. This one place, Shanghai Tang, has clothing for men and women that is just so unique; incorporating color, figure and form reminiscent of the stuff you see in Chinese opera. Barney’s is just great. Impractical and overpriced, yes; but great. The last dip was into the Neue Gallerie up on 90-something. A small gallery, the restaurant on the ground floor is perhaps more well known, but the two floors house a killer rotating special exhibit, and the house exhibit featuring works by Klimpt, Schiele and many other wonderful German artists. The Hoffman furniture is especially outstanding. The upstairs exhibit was devoted to Photo Portraiture. Many of the subjects were artists and writers. It is one thing to enjoy the wonder of a beautiful Klimpt woman; but it made it more enjoyable for me to see Klimpt himself, caught on film, dancing around his garden in a huge, stylized nightdress designed by his then-wife.

Alas the time came to get back to JFK. I know I’ll be back, and that, soon. They say you need to live in NY for at least eight years before you can call yourself a true New Yorker. If that’s the case I don’t think I’ll ever fit the bill. But I tell you, I’ve got her number now, and I know she’ll answer me every time I call or come to visit. She’s just that kind of City.

A Plague on Both You Ushers!

Sheesh... watch out all you ballet and symphony goers, there are some new sheriffs in town and they don't take none too kindly to us lowly Standing Room patrons getting in their way and interfering with their 'jobs.' They’re called ‘Ushers,’ although after our experience at the San Francisco ballet on Saturday, I think they should be called “shushers.” (Clever, that, innit?) We were alternately bustled out of aisles and rebuked for sitting on railings, all the while having to endure the verbal effrontery of these overly-officious buffoons.

Despite feeling like small children to whom it is being made evident that the wish is that we been seen and not heard, and that even the being seen part was really quite negotiable, Katrina and I managed to have a lovely time drinking in the eloquently adapted “Romeo and Juliet,” set to Prokofiev’s euphoric strains.

A tale nearly as old as dirt itself, having first appeared as far back as 2nd Century AD in the Greek romance Anthia and Abrocomas, by Ephesius, Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” is a story we should all be familiar with by now. Even in the playwright’s own time there was rampant adaptation of the tale.

Today is no different. What could be better than to do away with all that confusing verse, all that iambic pentameter and quarto form and instead deliver a performance in which the storyline is laid bare by the emotional content of each scene. Saturday’s performance did just that, and did it elegantly.

Highlights for me include the scene in which Romeo, burdened by his unrequited ‘love' for Rosaline, joins his friends in the street at night just before slipping into the Capulet’s party en Masques.

Romeo:
Give me a torch: I am not for this ambling;
Being but heavy, I will bear the light.

Mercutio:
Nay, gentle Romeo, we must have you dance.

And dance he does. For the next nearly three hours he and Juliet entwine and unwind themselves around each other in duets whose movements, fluidity and passion seem to flow from the same places that inspired Claudel to sculpt her “Waltz.” Perhaps similar inspiration was at work on the wardrobe designers responsible for the creation of simply stunning costumes. Period, impeccably accurate, but dance-ably so. Father Capulet’s robe in particular was remarkable.

In Act III R+J finally get to consummate their love and Romeo is so incensed by the experience that he spends a good four minutes leaping about the stage while Juliet looks on from the bed. She too has good run of her own Jeté, alternating between simply marvelous sections a pas de Bourrée. Her point work was some of the best I’ve ever seen, so delicate and precise it looked easy.

Mercutio of course has his wonderful sword fight with Tybalt, ending in his death and the light but ‘grave’ soliloquy that tolls his death.

‘tis no so deep as a well, nor so wide as a
church-door, but ‘tis enough, ‘twill serve: ask for
me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man.

The swordplay is excellent and the players themselves appear caught up in the momentum that builds from this scene to the end of the play.

Even more well done is the scene in which Juliet, confronted by both of her parents, is forced to endure her father’s presentation of her chosen husband-to-be, Paris. They make her do it in her nightgown and barefoot no less. The sense of her powerlessness was visceral.

From the sets to the costumes, the music to the lighting design, the show was superbly produced and performed. The show closed today, and I was tempted to run into the city to see the show one more time and find out if the ushers on the other side of the house were any friendlier…

Sin City

Thursday found me hastily packing for a weekend in Vegas. We left Oakland around midday, and after one of the bumpiest, most turbulence ridden plane rides I've experienced we arrived in time to check in to our hotel, have a quick nap and then dress for the evening. Thanks to the ever well connected Jane, Katrina and I had 6 row center tickets to the Cirque du Soleil show "O" comped and waiting for us. We had a pre-show drink and lively conversation at Caramel in the Bellagio and then went to our seats.

I had heard good things about this show but nothing prepared me for the experience we had that night. The show is amazing. Inside the theater that was specifically designed and built for this show the troupe put on an amazing spectacle. To begin with the stage is enormous, both wide and deep, and the entire thing is constructed in sections which can move vertically up and down independent of each other. For most of the show the stage is a very deep pool of water and the performers spend most of their time diving and jumping in and out of it. The acrobatics are inspired and incredible to watch. We were close, seated in the "wet section" where supposedly we were warned that we would get wet... we didn't but we could feel the spray as high divers plummeted in ones, twos and threes from heights that looked to be double of those regularly attempted by olympic high divers.

There was this sequence where three devices called Russian Swings were used to launch acrobats 40 feet into the air there to perform spins and flips, twists and poses that were visually stunning. As always with Cirque du Soleil the intense athleticism of the performers was broken up by scenes starring the clowns who were sweet and funny and endearing. Ai yai yai!

After the show the two of us just sat and took it in. Eventually, after everyone had filed out and we were in fact asked to leave so that they could clean the theater in preparation for the second show, it occurred to us that there was going to BE a second show that night. How anyone could deliver that kind of experience once let alone twice a night is beyond me.

Still floating on the cloud we had been placed one, we swept out of the Bellagio and hopped a cab across town to the Hard Rock there to have a delicious meal in a restaurant Katrina had selected. It is called Simon Kitchen, and it serves up beautifully crafted haute cuisine in a swank but elegant atmosphere. The wine list was good and the desserts were out of this world. The loungy DJ'ed set was followed by a live performance from an up and coming singer songwriter whose name escapes me, and was VERY loud; loud but entertaining.

Fat and happy, we cabbed it over to the Wynn where we joined Jane and her crew at La Bete for the clubs opening night. It was just fine, not outstanding in any way except for the company. I was left with the reinforced perspective that we definitely have some amazing clubs here in SF and certainly have a corner on the completely fucking incredible house music scene. Around 3a we wandered out and went back to our hotel down the strip there to crash and get the first 8 hour night of sleep either of us had had in days.

Morning found us moving slow and taking our time. We sought out a Starbucks, and fortified by our espresso drinks we met up with Carol and Jane at Neiman and just wandered around the mall for awhile. Carol had to split so the three of us went Caesar's and had lunch at Bertolini's, a decent Italian joint near the Forum shops. All three of us were still working out the toxins from the night before but by the end of the meal were ready to do some serious browsing. We ogled Coach and other boutiques and I found a great shirt which was just calling to me.

Later that evening Kat and I met up with her local buddy Scott and had drinks in Mandalay Bay and then dinner at the bar in Charlie Parker's steak house downstairs. This is the same guy who opened Aureole and we were not disappointed. The three of us shared two lovely salads, and two grilled fish dishes. Then we went for a ride in Scott's 911 out into the desert for dessert. Whoo... when you have to be anywhere and not be say, more than 5 minutes late... 911, accept no substitutes.

Around 12:30 we met up with Jane at La Bete again and the scene could not have been more different. People everywhere, great table service, excellent mix of music and good company. I stayed until the joint had quieted and found us chilling on comfy couches outside in front of the waterfall. Another fabulous night.

Saturday my flight wasn't until 8p and I was more than ready to go home. But the day was good, Kat had a spa treatment and I read my book, "The Kite Runner," a good recommendation if you're interested. Then Kat, Jane and i hooked up and had a lunch at the high rollers buffet consisting of surprisingly good dim sum and other sundry Chinese food. We sent Kat on her way to the airport for her 5p flight and then Jane and I had one last glass of wine before I had to go back and get ready to split for home.

Vegas is growing by the month it seems. Flying in on Thursday afternoon afforded me a view of Vegas I hadn't seen before. The patchwork growth like some urban lichen on the desert floor. The Nevada desert, as unlikely a place for one of the most decadent destinations in the world as there ever was. So many people live there already, with more arriving all the time. For me though, each of my two night visits reinforces the knowledge that two nights really is enough. I jumped my plane and two hours later I was sharing salad, pizza and beer with Scott and Jeff at Jupiter in Berkeley. On the drive home I ruminated on the weekend's events, grateful that at the other end of this drive was a little slice of peaceful heaven, far from the dings and whistles, lights and intensity of Las Vegas.

Then I went to bed.

Cheers!