THE GRATUITOUS CRITIC, vol. 1

Lord, will this guy ever put a sock in it?

Nope.

If you read Metacritic or any similar compilation of critical commentary, it’s pretty obvious that the opinions on any particular work range all over the map.  Who’s right?  Well, no one.  It’s opinion, rooted in each reviewer’s personal history, phobias, fetishes, prejudices, etc.  The best you can do if you’re using someone else to help you make a choice is to generally follow those who, historically, seem to match your own predilections.  Not foolproof, but you gotta start somewhere.  For instance, in movies, I tend to agree often with Joe Morgenstern of the Wall Street Journal, which I used to get for a special rate; now I read it at the local library or peruse his reviews online.  He usually found small, quirky movies (often foreign) that appealed.  Lately, not so much.

Books are not much different.  You’d think that getting nominated for, or winning, a Pulitzer or a Man Booker award would ensure a worthy read.  Only maybe.  Again, it’s the prejudices, etc. at work, this time of a small committee rather than an individual reviewer.  Take for example, “Wolf Hall,” winner of the 2009 Booker prize.  Great reviews.  Absolutely hated it.  I couldn’t stand the arrogance of the author virtually NEVER identifying who it is that was speaking during her dialogues.  It drove me crazy. And, sorry, I just didn’t find her recreation of Cromwell’s life all that compelling.

So, in revenge or arrogance, I now inflict upon you my own world view of what I have liked recently.  You can take these opinions to the bank!

MOVIES

Well, this one was easy.  We saw it well before the Oscars, in Indy with Mom, and we all loved it.  Excellent overall, with great acting.  I think Geoffrey Rush got jobbed for Best Supporting Actor.

This was a surprise.  While we have a thing for English costume dramas like King’s Speech, we didn’t know what to expect from this.  It was a wonderful film about a not always likeable character.  Sorry, Colin, but it’s hard not to say that Paul Geamatti got jobbed for Best Actor!  Dustin Hoffman finally gets a decent role and makes the most of it.

Saw The Social Network on Netflix the other night.  The acting is great, but the editing is superb.  Lots of jumping around in time and place, but all logical and easy to follow.  A weird subject for a film, but it worked.  I loved the thrashing that Harvard gets throughout the film.  Smirk.

BOOKS

 

Sometimes best sellers deserve the popular acclaim.  This is one of them.  A great story (how do authors dream these things up?) with fleshed-out characters.  It’s being made into a movie that comes out April 22.  I think it will be a tough translation as it’s really a character-driven novel that could be painted too broadly on the screen.  I’ll keep my fingers crossed.

Now here’s one I never would have stumbled upon but for a recommendation (and loan!) by our daughter-in-law, Alia.  Very neat structure, fictionalizing as a centuries-long mystery the history of one (real codex) of the earliest Jewish religious volumes to be illustrated with pictures.  Sound dry?  How about romance, death, a harem, Nazis, forgery, and mysterious clues to unravel?  Brooks won the Pulitzer for an earlier work, which I’ll have to check out.

Loni’s become a history buff, so I scour the press for reviews of that ilk.  This is one I found for her last birthday.  When she was done (and loved it), I read it on our last RV trip.  Absolutely fascinating.  This is an amazing piece of history and it boggles the mind to see how it came about, starting with the French effort under de Lesseps.  It’s funny/tragic how the politics of that era look so much like our own.  La plus ca change . . .

SERIES ON THE TELLY

Appropriate to use the British slang as it seems what we like the most comes from the BBC (via, of course, Netflix).

I wholeheartedly second the blurb you see on the cover above. 

“Doc” Martin is General Practitioner, Martin Ellingham, formerly a brilliant and highly successful vascular surgeon at Imperial College London until he develops haemophobia (extreme fear of blood) that prevents him from performing operations. After retraining as a GP, he applies for a post in the sleepy Cornish village of Portwenn, where he spent childhood holidays with his aunt. Despite his surgical brilliance, Ellingham lacks vital social skills and any semblance of a bedside manner.  With this set of rurals, that leads to much mischief.

There are four seasons available on Netflix, but each consists of only 6 to 8 episodes.  A fifth season will start filming this year.  I can’t wait for it to hit Netflix.

If you’re a fan of Masterpiece Mystery, you’ll love this series, which the Netflix algorithm told me I’d like based on my previous rentals.  Hey, it worked!  Don’t know how it missed getting picked up by MM, but I’m glad we found out about it.  Done in the usual, reserved BBC fashion of don’t explain everything at every step, and with complex and troubled characters.

We started watching this years ago, again via Netflix, although I’ve noticed this past year that it’s appearing on some PBS stations.  Best to use Netflix, and start at the beginning, as the character relationships develop over time and some characters are replaced.  This is another “village ensemble” cast, and I got similar vibes to the old “All Creatures” series, only this time set in Ireland rather than the Dales.  This is one of those “comfy slippers” series where you settle in with your fictional old friends.  No broad strokes or slapstick, it’s character-driven comedy that we liked a lot.

Don’t touch that dial!  We’ll be right back.

WHAT’S COOKIN’, GOOD LOOKIN’?

This food blog went to Nirvana this week. 

That’s right, the glutton geeks were invited to a private tour of the L.A. Times’ Test Kitchen!  Only three newspapers in the country still maintain such a facility, and we readers of the Times are lucky that it is one of them.  The Food section is a must read for us, and is an unfailing source of great recipes (that actually work!) and interesting articles on all things food-related.  We have cut out hundreds of recipes over the years and, yes, actually have made dozens.  I particularly love their method-comparison tests, like the “best way to cook a turkey.”  Dry brining won hands-down, and we and the boyos have used it for the last few Thanksgivings to great results.

So, how did we, along with our old friend, Sara, and our new friend, Pebble (she had an older sister nicknamed “Rocky”), get this boon?  Connections, friend, connections.  It so happens that Loni’s oldest niece, Noelle, is the Test Kitchen Manager!  Boy, her “office” is a lot nicer than any I ever had.

They do all of their photo work here and in an adjacent studio.  This end of the kitchen is traditional-homey, while the other end is more high-tech modern, and they shoot at whichever end suits the mood of the article.  Doing food photography is not easy, and is harder here because the newspaper forbids any tricks in the pictures (e.g., no clear marbles at the bottom of the soup bowl to push the goodies to the top).  Noelle oversees a staff composed largely of interns from various cooking schools.  That helps keep the overhead down and the Food section alive.  They hadn’t yet arrived, so we first got a tour of the editorial and old executive areas.  That’s old as in the Times was purchased years ago by the Chicago Tribune organization, which shut down the exec offices here and consolidated in Chicago.  And promptly went into bankruptcy.  But that’s another story.  Anyway, we saw the “bullpen” pressrooms that looked like my sons’ college dorm rooms, endless corridors, the circular seats of boardroom power, and an old linotype machine.  It was clear that there was a lot of unused space due to the cutbacks that all print media are undergoing.  The long corridors are lined with copies of articles and exposes that won Pulitzers and other awards.  They’ve earned a ton, and it was a sharp reminder of how much we absolutely must have a robust Third Estate.  We won’t get that from online blog sources that steal from the wire services and newspapers.  So subscribe to your local paper now!

 

The main entrance to the Times has been closed for some time, probably for security reasons.  It’s a shame, because it is a beautiful lobby, anchored in the center by a large revolving globe.  Even though the entry is closed, the world still turns. 

We made our way back through the corridors and newsrooms to the Kitchen, where the interns had arrived and gotten down to work.  The Times sources its recipes from old and new cookbooks, restaurants, in-house concoctions, and wherever.  But nothing goes into the paper until it has been modified for home cooks (all the kitchen gear is what would be found in upscale homes) and tested, tested, tested.  I think Noelle said that the record was 17 consecutive tests on a dish before it was ready for print.  There were several things being tried out today and the interns were beetling away.

One of the recipes under development was for butterscotch brownies.  They saw me coming.

To no avail.

I declare the recipe a success!  I also had my eye on some half-full bottles of wines that had been tasted earlier, but no glasses were handy and even I won’t drink straight from the bottle.  Not in public, anyway.

Thank you, Noelle, for the very neat tour, and thank you faceless management of the Times that recognizes the value of the Food section and Test Kitchen.

We had some time to kill in the afternoon, and I had yet to find the guayabera shirt I’ve been looking for to sport at son John’s wedding this summer in Puerto Vallarta.  If there’s one thing we have in L.A., it’s a garment district with plenty of Hispanic storefronts.  So, we hopped the Dash bus (all of 15 cents for we senior types)

and we beetled off to the Alley.

English is definitely the minority language here.  That’s what I get for having studied useless French in school.

We walked up, down, over and around.  At least 40 blocks worth of shops.  Do you think we could find one lousy classic Mexican shirt?  Noooooooo.  Everything but.  Only one store had anything close, and their quality was awful.  So where did I end up buying a very nice one?

J. C. Centavo, anyone?

THINGS THAT GO BUMP IN THE MORN’

A nice, easy trip up the coast to Morro Bay.  Simple.  No Drama.  Relaxing piece of cake.

Not.

Last Tuesday we brought Albatross home from storage and loaded it up with food, clothes, Sea Eagle kayak, and all the usual paraphernalia that we lug along on our trips.  We were off for two destinations.  First, to our old (college) friend Paul’s place in San Luis Obispo for a visit and fine wining and dining.  Faithful readers know that this blog should be subtitled “Eating Our Way Across America,” and Paul’s kitchen and wine cellar would rate three stars from Guide Michelin any day.  But, I’m getting ahead of myself.

We finished all the interior loading, ran out an extension cord to get the fridge going on electric to keep things cool, and buttoned her up for the night.  We planned to leave Wednesday morning, with the only significant thing remaining being to load the scoot.

CUE MUSIC (turn on your sound, then hit “control, click” on this link) 

We have loaded the scoot over a hundred times.  Yes, o.k., so I shot it off the end of the rack once.  That was early on.  We’re pros now, right?  Right?

When loaded, the scoot sits on a tray and leans slightly forward towards the rig, resting against a vertical post.  We then secure it with cinch straps for travel.  What could go wrong, you say?

Well, for starters, it helps to be parked on a level street.  We had to position the rig in front of our neighbors’ driveway as the street is too narrow in front of our house.  The street here has a very slight – nay, imperceptible, I say! – slope up.  We get the scoot up the ramp, lean it against the post, walk around to fasten the straps, and, well the arrow tells the tale.

  

This, of course, is an old photo.  We had not yet attached the straps.  I was fiddling with the strap down by the bumper when all of a sudden there was this tremendous BANG and I stood there stunned, staring at 344 lbs of Vespa now on its side in the road.  Apparently, because of the slight incline of the street, the angle of repose had not yet been accomplished.  We were right on the cusp of balance, and the cusp failed.  Damn those cusps!  I was so ticked off that didn’t think to get a picture of the carnage on the pavement.  Loni and I wanted to get it upright immediately to prevent a fuel leak, or something.  We got it up on the wheels, cringed at the mangled sidepod, scraped trim, bent brake handle, and busted fender reflector.

On the hoary theory that if you fall off, you get right on the horse again, I mounted up and drove it down the block, expecting it to crab sideways and throw me into the gutter.  But no.  All hail the mighty steel Vespa!  The darn thing actually ran straight and true.  So we loaded it up, with Loni this time pushing it against the post while I made fast with the straps.  Hmmm.  Think anyone can tell we dropped it?

Sniff.  I need to put a band-aid on it.  So much for looking fine while tooling around town.

This was not an auspicious start to our trip.  And it was not the only thing to go bump in the morn.’  (I’ll spare you further music cues.)

The trip up the coast on Highway 1 through Malibu and up to Oxnard, and then on 101 to SLO, was very pretty, the air being very clear and the Channel Islands popping out like they were a stone’s throw away.  Many times you can’t even see them through the sea mist air or fog.  As we passed all the gas stations advertising $4+ gas, I was happy I had refilled three weeks ago at “only” $3.53.  This RV stuff is starting to look a bit doubtful at these prices, and we’ll probably see $5/gal. before much longer.  We’ll have to camp out in the storage yard.

Chez Paul, we forgot our scoot woes and settled in to oh-so-fine wines and delicious food.  We started with shrimps dipped in Paul’s excellent homemade cocktail sauce, some yummy cheese and crackers, and a bottle of Anglim Roussanne 2007, a very nice white with a great mouthfeel and plenty of fruit.  Anglim is a Paso Robles winery, just up the road from SLO.  Paul gets almost all of his wines directly from the many wineries in the Central Coast area.  Then it was off to the grill for marinated flank steak, grilled potato slices (with olive oil and seasonings), and grilled artichokes, a first for us. 

  The meal was paired with two outstanding old vine Zinfandels that we drank side-by-side to compare as the evening went on.  The first was from the 1880 label of Saucelito Canyon winery there in SLO.  The vines for this wine actually were planted in 1880, are dry farmed, and produce an intense wine.  The winery considers it to be its crown jewel.  I’m sure it was priced accordingly, and all but a small portion was available only to members of its wine club, like Paul.  The second wine was from the Zin Alley winery in Paso Robles, dry-farmed as well from grapes sourced exclusively from the Nerelli estate.  If you could find either of these in a restaurant, they would easily be $100 a bottle.  So, THANK YOU, PAUL!

The food was great, even if we all had a hard time finding any flesh on the artichoke leaves.  The grilled meat was a perfect accompaniment for the wines.  We all started out liking the 1880 best, then after 10 or 15 minutes, the preference shifted to the Zin Alley.  After that, each of them kept changing as they opened up more and more.  It was amazing how the flavors shifted around, but always utterly delicious.  We grinned like demented satyrs (and satyress!) throughout.  We finished the evening with a Late Harvest Zin dessert wine that was supposed to be paired with the flourless chocolate cake I had made before dinner.  The cake was not a success. I couldn’t find my favorite recipe, and had to settle for one from Joy of Cooking.  Came out grainy and bitter.  A sweeter chocolate, or more sugar, would have helped.  Whipped cream and a raspberry coulis helped some, but the Late Harvest Zin just about had to go it alone, which it did in fine fashion.  3 1/2 bottles for the three of us was just right, as we started about 5 o’clock and ended at 10.  Chez Paul did it again!

We took our leave the next morning and motored on over to Morro Bay State Park Campground, only 15 miles away.  This was to be a non-Caravan Club gathering of any Lazy Daze owners who cared to make the trip.  Ultimately, we had 34 rigs show up, with 60+ people attending.  Kudos to Larry W for organizing this for the past few years.  We get to meet not only old friends, but new faces as well.  Lots of folk from northern California, Oregon, and elsewhere that we seldom see or have never met.  We made a beeline shortly after we got there for lunch at the Bayside Cafe, which fronts the small boat harbor across from the entrance to the campground.  We’ve eaten there before, and it’s ridiculously good.  I had clam chowder in a sourdough bread bowl, and Loni had a combo of the chowder with a ladle of spicy pepper soup floated in it.  Both were delicious.  We went back for dinner.  Slipper lobster tail pasta for me (excellent), and sole for Loni (overcooked, not so good, a first at this place).  We finished with a huge slice of homemade carrot cake.  Urp.

We now interrupt this idyllic account with, well, read on!

We crashed somewhat early as we planned to get up, do our morning walk, and get the kayak inflated and on the water before the winds came up.  “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men Gang aft agley.”

We did get up early, and were actually starting our walk when we saw Renee and Nancy scurrying furiously from coach to coach, banging on doors and saying something to the occupants.  They came to us and said, “Did you hear about the earthquake in Japan and the tsunami warning?”  Uh, no.  When they said it was an 8.9, and that a tsunami was expected to hit California in 30 minutes, we did a bit of gulping and ran back to the coach to watch the t.v. news. 

 It was all local.  We couldn’t get a national feed, so we were stuck with inane reporting bordering on hysteria or camp.  What was clear was that the embarcadero portion of Morro Bay had been evacuated, as were many other coastal communities.  Our campground is about 10 feet high, and is across the road from the bay.  On the theory better safe than sorry, we, along with four others, moved to higher ground.

That’s us, behind the car.  The rest of the rigs stayed put, perhaps having gotten better intel than we did.  Anyway, we waited the half hour, watched t.v., saw it was much ado about nothing, and returned to our site.  Most of those that stayed had hiked to the top of a hill that overlooks both Morro Bay and the small inlet that forms the boat harbor across from the camp. 

That’s the view towards Morro Bay, which is north of our campground.  The Bay is protected by a miles-long berm, with the only inlet being right in front of the Rock.  The water enters there, then fills the bay down to the south where we are.  From this view, all one could see of the multiple tsunami episodes was that the tide seemed to rise and fall every half hour or so.  From the other side, you could see the south bay and the inlet to the Cafe boat harbor.

At the time of this picture, the water had flowed out, leaving the mud flats you see in the distance, and a small current that flowed into and out of the boat harbor (to the left, out of the picture).  When the tsunami tide started rising, the mud flats got covered with water, and a strong current started to flow into the boat harbor.  The result was that the dock that held the rental kayaks broke off and pivoted around.

As you can see, this harbor is a “dead end,” closed at the far end on the left.  As a result, the water flowing in from the tsunami tide rising (only about 4 feet) has a magnified effect in this confined space as it rushes towards the back.  It sort of rebounds off the end of the boat harbor, and created problems for one older cabin cruiser that broke loose from its mooring.

The Coast Guard was milking the situation for all the training hours they could get in.

But that was pretty much the extent of the damage and the “excitement.”  We didn’t get to kayak, as the bay was closed to all boating because of the waters moving back and forth.  We didn’t find out the extent of the tragedy in Japan until we got home, days later.

We decided to walk into town to get the exercise we missed that morning.  The town’s main harbor seemed completely unaffected, with everything neat and orderly.  However, the place was a ghost town here at the embarcadero area, as most everyone either evacuated or stayed away.

The local wildlife was blase about the whole thing.

That’s an otter, in case it isn’t clear.  Considering the devastation across the Pacific, it seems almost embarrassing to be in such an idyllic spot.  This is part of the path back from Morro to the campground.

The rest of the stay was completely uneventful, and we had a good time visiting with everyone, attending rig maintenance sessions, having “open house” for viewing others’ modifications and gadgets, and, of course, chowing down enormous quantities at each of the two potluck dinners.  We also got a very nice gift from Barbara A.  She had treated us to a waffle breakfast at a previous getogether, using a nifty stove-top waffle iron.  We admired it, and she said she’d keep an eye out for one for us.  She found one and very generously gave it to us.  So, we invited her for breakfast on Sunday departure day, and feasted on blueberry waffles, bacon, and a fruit bowl.  It took Loni a waffle or two to master the technique, but they tasted great!

The later ones popped out just fine once the griddle got seasoned.  This will go with us on all our future trips.  Thanks, Barbara!

iPod Test

I thought I would test out posting via my iPod. Looks like it will work fine with text, but I'm not sure how to load pictures. And, it looks like the formatting might get screwed up. Just have to post this and see, I guess.