Little Frakkin' Toasters
This is so frakkin' cute...
http://blog.quantummechanix.com/videos/WeWereCenturions.mp4
Random ramblings, circus animals, some filler...
Engineer, photographer, theater aficionado, gym goer, yoga practitioner, origamist, gay, single, friend, human being...
Animal Cruelty
Found this on SyFy.com. I'm a Trek fan and all that, but some pet owners just deserve to have their engine rooms peed in! The dog's face says it all, "You do know you have a problem?!"
Comments [0]
Theater: August Osage County
Tonight I took my friend Cyndee to dinner and the theater as a birthday present. Cyndee is Vegan, and even in the enlightened San Francisco Bay area, many restaurants will only have one vegetarian option and that will frequently not be Vegan. Cyndee always adapts and doesn't complain. But she shouldn't always have to and certainly not for a birthday dinner. Fortunately, there is a great Vegan restaurant near tonight's destination, the Curran Theatre -- Millennium inside the Hotel California. This is a vegan restaurant that this unrepentant omnivore will happily go out of his way to dine at:
http://www.millenniumrestaurant.com/
Sorry for the crappy photos of the food, but it was very romantically dark (and we forgot to photograph the soup). We got the "August Market" tasting menu, which you can read in the photos. Everything was very yummy. The cold soup was a fine start. The sweet potato tempura appetizer with syrup thick balsamic could actually be served as dessert. We got both the entrees and shared. The potato roulade was absolutely amazing. And as it turns out, you haven't lived until you've had sundried tomato shortcake. We were both stuffed at that point, but after a single bite, neither of us was going to let any of that get away.
From there it was a quick two block walk to the Curran Theatre and the evenings entertainment, August: Osage County, winner of the 2008 Tony award for best play and the Pulitzer Prize for drama as well:
http://www.shnsf.com/shows/augustosagecounty
This play is unbelievably Funny, Brutal and FUNNY! It has been compared by some critics to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and by others to Long Day's Journey Into Night. Both comparisons are apt. The first is a black comedy as is this play, the second is emotionally brutal. All lay bare seriously dysfunctional family relationships. AOC is far, far funnier than the first and with modern in-sensitivities to propriety, even more brutal than the second. The staging owes much to the typical approach to Our Town. I'm convinced that's not accidental. But this isn't the kind, gentle, American spirit at it's best, nobly persevering through trials, of Our Town. This is Our Town as written by Clive Barker and directed by Quentin Tarrantino but with grinding of emotional raw nerves replacing his usual visual gore.
The play opens with an essential soliloquy, given by the patriarch of the family, who's absence drives the rest of the play. As the family gathers together with the crisis of the missing father, we are plunged into a very dysfunctional and all too real family, who sometimes hit uncomfortably close to home. The dialog at times is frighteningly real. We've heard all too familiar variations in our own families. The jaw-dropping shocks that would be the climax of many a lesser play come one after another the whole evening long. The final revelation leaves one nearly speechless.
The lead character is based on the playwright's grandmother. The playwright first presented the play to his mother with great trepidation; her response was that "I think you've been very kind to my mother." That sums up the matriarch of the family very well. She is all too human, but also the surviving queen of the worst combinations of a pit of vipers and nest of scorpions.
Total props to lead Estelle Parsons, who at the age of 82 is carrying this show. After 3 and a half hours of this gut wrenching material, she finishes with a run (yes, I said run) up two flights of stairs, in near darkness, to an open set attic bedroom that reaches the top of the proscenium arch (see the last photo), with a thin piece of rope as the only safety catch. I hope I can climb those stairs at 82, let alone run them in the dark when there's an open plunge of 30 feet next to me, not to mention having done 3 and half hours of gut wrenching theater.
The performance ended with a well deserved standing ovation. I think this play has entered the canon of classics of the American Theater. It is a credit to the playwright that heavy as the material is, one leaves the theatre with a light step and a smile on ones face. I contrast this with a play I saw last season by Tom Stoppard at ACT -- we left the play in a funk, commenting that the lucky characters had all died.
The photos were posted live through the course of the evening, using the new PicPosterous application for the iPhone, by my friend and former co-worker Sachin Agarwal, principal of Posterous.
Posted from San Francisco, CA
Comments [0]
In Memory: Senator Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy
Senator Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy
February 22, 1932 - August 25, 2009
Many fine words will be written in the following days by those far more knowledgeable and eloquent than I. For my part, I will say the only meaningful thing I can, "Thank you Sir, for your many years of service."
Comments [0]
Movie: Inglourious Basterds
I went to see Quentin Tarantino's new film Inglourious Basterds last evening with my friend Mark. The tag line on the poster reads "Once upon a time in Nazi occupied France..." and that gives a clue about what you are about to see. This isn't merely a fictional account of World War II in Europe, it is a fantasy of a war that might have been.
The movie is quintessential Tarantino, and consequently is not for the squeamish. While not a bloodbath, the gore when it does occur is quite graphic. But if you can get past that, the movie has some amazingly plotted and written scenes. Two of the greatest scenes in the movie are largely static, occurring primarily around tables. Yet they are riveting. At 153 minutes, the movie is a bit long, but with the pacing and high level of dramatic tension the time goes by quickly. But the drama is offset by nicely placed comedic asides. Tarantino, with perfect timing, satisfies the viewer's curiosity. Just as you are thinking "I wonder what story he'll tell when he gets home.", we see it in all it's comedic splendor.
The movie overall follows two converging stories and consequently follows two converging companies of actors. Brad Pitt, the ostensible star, leads one acting company as Lt. Aldo Raines, a cartoon stereotype of every hard nosed junior field officer we've ever seen. The second company is lead by Mélanie Laurent as Shosanna Dreyfus, (aka Emmanuelle Mimieux), the young lady (and Jew in hiding) who owns the Paris cinema the second story line centers around.
Two unexpected cameo performances deserve special mention. Comic Mike Myers in heavy make-up plays the classic British staff general to the T, as veteran actor Rod Taylor of The Time Machine, looks on as Winston Churchill. Another performance of note is Michael Fassbender as Lt. Archie Hicox, who is clearly intended to be channeling Errol Flynn, down to his introduction with Flynn's trademark mustache.
But the breakout peformance of the piece is largely German language actor Christopher Waltz as the villainous SS Colonel and Jew hunter Hans Landa. The character is all placid sweetness as he goes about his brutal business. You find yourself wanting to share a glass of wine with this vile man, and end up feeling vaguely like you ought to shower.
In typical Tarantino cineaste style, subtle and not so subtle references to other films and filmmakers abound, aided this time by placement of a good deal of the action in a Paris cinema. The ending owes a bit to both the original 1984 and Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Leni Riefenstahl is talked about without the revisionist history reverential tones so typically applied to her today.
Bottom line: while I'm not a big fan of "rub your nose in it" gore, I really enjoyed this film.
Comments [1]
Mad Men Louis
My friend Helena did the Mad Men generator (http://helju.posterous.com/mad-men-yourself-everyone-is-doing-it), so I did to:
Comments [1]
Comments [0]