No white knights

People with iPhones in the U.S. universally loathe AT&T for its terrible network capacity (count yours truly among them). IIf I could have my iPhone on the Verizon network, I'd switch in a heartbeat.

Or would I?

As this David Pogue column notes, Verizon has its despicable and shady practices for gouging customers also. They make it almost impossible to avoid incurring inadvertent $1.99 data download charges, and they charge exorbitant early termination fees for smartphones.

The net of it is that cell phone companies, like cable companies, are just universally despised by consumers, and for good reason. The brands stand for profit and unresponsive customer service, and changing that mentality through a massive company is so difficult once it has contaminated the company culture.

Miscellany

Mira and I saw Dudamel conducting the LA Philharmonic in Verdi's Requiem last Thursday night. After the show, as we were walking out, two women approached and one of them asked if she could interview us. She was from the Christian Science Monitor.

I suspect we were picked out for being the only two people in the crowd who didn't appear old enough to collect social security checks. Apparently Verdi's Requiem just doesn't bring out the kids like it used to.

We ended up quoted at the end of this short online piece. Well, "quoted" should be qualified. Those weren't exactly our words, despite her use of a tape recorder. It's more like she took some of our thoughts and summarized them, then bracketed them with quotation marks.

A few bars into the opening of Verdi's Requiem, one of the more haunting openings in the canon, someone's cell phone went off. After it rang twice, Dudamel dropped his arms and brought the piece to a halt, and the crowd of septuagenarians let out a bile-filled hiss. I tried to see who it was but never identified the person.

Having my cell phone go off in the midst of a quiet performance--a play, a classical music performance, a book reading, to name a few--is one of my greatest fears. Even after I've turned off my phone I check it at least three or four times during a show. Someone just lived out my greatest fear that night.

***

To those who wonder if the Madden Football video game teaches one anything about real life coaching, exhibit A is the New England Patriots. Their offense resembles the way I play offense in Madden. Spread the field with a lot of wideouts, put my QB in the shotgun, and put the defense under constant attack all over the field, perhaps tossing in a no-huddle for added duress. Look for Moss deep in single coverage, then check down to Watson on a deep in or hit Welker dragging shallow across the middle. The Colts and Cardinals are well-suited to that style of offense in Madden, also.

***

Eric and I planned to meet Bill Simmons last night at his LA book signing. We were up in Burbank beforehand for work and had to fight the usual horrific LA traffic to get to ESPN Zone across from Staples Center. The signing started at 5pm, and we got on the 101 at about 6:30. The same way a great quarterback has an internal clock that lets him know when he has to either commit to a pass or dump the ball or risk taking a sack, I had a sense we were pushing it, that he might be gone before we arrived.

As we approached Staples Center, we ran into another microclusterf*** of automobiles. It turns out there was a Clippers game at Staples Center and a So You Think You Can Dance concert that night at Nokia Live next door (in fairness to the Clippers, they probably didn't account for most of that traffic; I blame SYTYCD). As cheap about parking as Eric and I were, we weren't about to mess around with nearby lots to save a few dollars. We paid the $25 king's ransom to park under Nokia Live, then sprinted through the crowds of SYTYCD fans lined up outside Nokia Live to reach ESPN Zone.

Our hustle paid off. We walked in as Simmons was packing up his stuff. We introduced ourselves and he graciously signed our books. We told him we worked at Hulu and he said he was a big fan, that he had used the site to watch Miami Vice and White Shadow (which, being huge fans of his ESPN column, we knew).

We presented him with a Hulu hoodie and thanked him for mentioning Hulu in his column from time to time. He said it would've been the coolest gift he received that night if not for the fact that a porn actress had come in earlier, bought a few copies of his books, and dropped off some DVDs from her, uh, oeuvre. Yep, that's a tough comp.

If you're an NBA fan, Simmons' new book The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to the Sports Guy is a must read (it made it to the top of the NYTimes Non-Fiction bestseller list, reflecting his massive fan base). His knowledge of NBA history is impressive (when he says he's one of the last few true NBA fans, he's not kidding), and his ranking of the top 96 players in NBA history is very fair despite his Celtics' loyalties.

In many ways, Simmons is one of the original bloggers, a guy who wrote about what he knew for AOL long before millions of bloggers were doing the same. He's not afraid to write about pop culture and television and sports and all the things he cares about, the same way Chuck Klosterman writes about music and sports and topics he cares about or the way economists like Tyler Cowen and Steven Levitt write columns and books about all sorts of topics that economics touch on.

I was so flustered and out-of-breath when I arrived that I forgot to pre-sign my book for him. He'd made a policy of just signing his name after some of his other book signings ran long, but I'm sure he would have signed his name below any made-up salutation.

"To Eugene, my reader with the greatest length and upside."

"May this 736 page behemoth of a book last you over 300 post-Mexican meal seatings on the toilet."

football, LA, music, laphil, madden

Art forms America produced

Quote from this interview with Neal Adams on Hulu:

If you scratch a French fellow who is interested in this sort of thing, he will tell you that America is responsible for three forms of art: jazz, musical comedy and, guess what, comic books.

What about obesity?! Is that not an art form?

The interview occurred in conjunction with the launch of the Astonishing X-Men motion comic on Hulu, the first miniseries being Gifted, scripted by Joss Whedon. The problem with earlier motion comics was that they were just a series of Ken Burns-esque pans against stills that seemed to have neither the benefits of holding a comic book (e.g. the ability to control one's pacing through the material, the fun of seeing how the artist uses the page layout to control the flow of one's eye) nor the joys of actual motion pictures (those should be apparent to all who love movies).

This new Astonishing X-Men motion comic adds an axis or two of motion (heads bob, lips move, eyes blink, etc). It is an improvement, reminiscent of some 80's cartoons (Voltron comes to mind) which weren't truly full motion but which contained just enough to qualify to be called cartoons.

animation, Hulu, hulu, nealadams, xmen

Mammoth

Trailer for Lukas Moodysson's new movie Mammoth. I loved Lilja 4-ever and Show Me Love, two of his earlier works. But I hear this latest compared to an Inarritu movie and suddenly I see unhappy people...not a good sign.

Hulu, hulu, movies, trailers

Please help support the fight against cancer

This Sunday I'll be running the NY Marathon for Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center as part of Fred's Team. I would be so thankful and touched if any of you would be willing to make a contribution to support this cause on my behalf. I also encourage you to note, on the contribution form, the names of anyone you've lost to cancer or anyone who is fighting or has fought cancer. I plan to write these names on my jersey Sunday; thinking of them will inspire me through the tougher parts of the race and remind me of what I'm running for. I'm not sure my old joints and legs will survive Sunday on their own, but they will if accompanied by a full heart.

Know that I will be able to run this Sunday whether or not you contribute. I actually got an entry into the race through the lottery, and then through the unbelievable generosity of brother James and his wife Angela, I reached the Fred's Team contribution milestone overnight. I write this in hopes that you'll join them in contributing to the fight against cancer. My brother Alan works at Sloan-Kettering, and if his colleagues are half as dedicated and conscientious as he is then they've more than earned their reputation as one of the leading institutions of cancer research in the world.

The fight against cancer is a cause that means a lot to me. In 1998, I lost first my mother and then her mother, my grandmother who raised me for many years, to cancer. I used to think that the phrase "there isn't a day goes by I don't think of her" was a metaphor, a figure of speech, but then I lost them both and learned that it is neither an over or understatement, only a gentler expression of a genuine state of lifelong mourning. Some days I wonder what my mother and grandmother would think of what I've made of my life, but every day I miss them.

I struggle to make sense of the random nature of the onset of their cancers. Both were healthy and active. They never smoked or drank. They ate plenty of vegetables and stayed engaged with family and friends. I don't imagine for a minute that if research could lay bare the exact causes and mechanisms of cancer that it would be comfort enough, but neither do I find it fair that cancer continues to claim so many lives in such an agonizing way. It is a cruel and merciless killer.

Earlier this year I read a brilliant memoir of one daughter's loss of her mother to cancer: The Mercy Papers by Robin Romm.

There is one passage I'll never forget; the first time I read it I was laying in bed on a Sunday morning, and tears started streaming down my face and onto the pages of the book.

"I know it's selfish," I say. "But I can't tell you it's okay to die. I won't be okay." My words are coming too fast. "I'll try to go on, I'll try to live a life you'd be proud of, but I can't imagine life without you and I can't tell you to die."

My mom stares at me with her wide brown eyes. She looks at people these days in the same way she looks at the clock by her bed or the television on the dresser or the large wall-length crack in her wall.

It's hard to hear her through the whirring of the BiPaP mask.

"Thank you sweetie," she says. "I dun want to die. But at thiz point, iss what should happen." Tears stream down my cheeks. I'm getting the pillows damp. "And, sweetheart, I dun need your permission."

cancer, nymarathon, research

The Elephant Man

Hulu, hulu, movies, davidlynch

Dudamel's Inaugural Concert

Thursday night I attended 28 year old Gustavo Dudamel's inaugural concert as music director of the LA Philharmonic. I saw him conduct the orchestra many times last season, so the novelty this night wasn't seeing him in action as much as it was experiencing the city's reaction to his coronation.

That's what it felt like: a coronation. The block of Grand Ave. in front of Walt Disney Concert Hall was closed off for a post-concert gala. Magenta spotlights lit up the brushed metal skin of the concert hall, and a carpet of matching hue ran from the sidewalk up to the entrance. Shouts from the photographer's den rang out each time a movie star strolled past, Hollywood having gained, for this night at least, a newfound appreciation for classical music. In my brief stroll up to the entrance, I saw Rachel Griffiths, Andy Garcia, and Jason Schwartzman. Even those people I didn't recognize were dressed to the nines this night; I felt almost bourgeois in my suit.

My seats this night were in the orchestra viewing area, behind the orchestra, directly below the organ, facing the conductor's podium. It felt like sitting behind home plate at a baseball game. I was concerned the music would sound odd given my seat location, but the acoustic qualities of that hall are so magnificent that the music sounded fine, if spatially reversed.

The first piece was the world premiere of Charles Adams' "City Noir." It is a jazz-infused symphony which the program noted would be the first in a triptych of pieces inspired by the California experience. I never played many jazzy classical pieces growing up, so these types of pieces are more opaque to me. As with many Adams' pieces, I found moments to be evocative and mysterious, with echoes of familiar sounds, but the overall emotional construction was challenging to grasp.

At intermission, complimentary flutes of champagne were set out on tables on each floor. If the interior of the space were more ornate, the gowns on the women a bit puffier, the men's tuxedo shirts a bit more ruffled, we could have been in 18th century Vienna, so excited the crowd seemed to be for classical music.

If Simon Cowell were to offer Dudamel any advice this night, I suspect he would have lauded the song selection. After intermission Dudamel selected Mahler's First Symphony. It's one of my favorites, a piece that showcases so many sections of an orchestra and builds to a rousing finale that is standing ovation ready.

More importantly, Dudamel clearly loves it, conducting from memory. Many times throughout the piece, he broke out in smiles of pure joy. The piece plays to one of his strengths, his ability to draw from his players a torrent of intensity and power. Were there rough patches to give ammunition to the inevitable naysayers? Sure. A bass solo was hit one note flat, the first violin section may not be as precise as one would like, and perhaps the horn section from Chicago which I listened to in my youth is stronger.

But I have yet to attend a Dudamel concert that wasn't exciting. Part of it is his style on the podium, the sheer variety of his broad gestures, as if willing the desired emotion from each phrase of the piece. I could hear his sharp intakes of breath whenever he launched the orchestra into a crescendo.

So moved was the audience that they broke out in applause between the first and second movements. As Dudamel led the orchestra towards the finale of the piece, I got goosebumps, and when he hit the final note, the crowd leapt to its feet in an outpouring of ecstasy I've never seen at a classical performance. About the third time he emerged to acknowledge the cheers, magenta and silver confetti rained down from the ceiling.

Will Dudamel save classical music? It's a silly question but often asked of him. Soccer has a better chance of becoming a major part of the U.S. sports landscape. I didn't see any significant shift in the demographics of the audience this night, nor would I expect to see any such shift in the years to come. It will take more than a conductor to restore classical music to a central role in the cultural landscape for the youth of tomorrow.

But perhaps classical music can continue to survive and thrive at the periphery, sustained by a core base of passionate fans. So much of culture has fractured that all that may be needed is enough of a fan base to fill the hall to 75% some 4 nights a week for seven or eight months a year. If TV shows like Friday Night Lights and Mad Men and The Wire could survive with their somewhat scant (by TV industry standards) but dedicated audiences, why not classical music?

Energizing the base may not be a sufficient strategy if you're the Republican Party, say, and require a majority to return to position of relevance among the next generation, but for this classical music fan, converting the heathen is orthogonal to my enjoyment (and given that just about every Dudamel show this season has sold out already, might be counter to it!). Dudamel is an electric new presence in the classical world, and that's plenty fine for me.

gustavodudamel, LA, laphil, music

If had $70,000 lying around...

...I'd put a bid in on this Sotheby's lot.

I started shooting some pictures with the long lens. All of a sudden she came up to the edge of the pool and she didn't have the bra on. What immediately went through my mind was, when are we going to see it all?

photography, photos

Food Rules

Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food was a great read in part because it offered succinct, easy-to-remember rules to improve one's eating habits (its core rule "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." has been burned into my brain ever since I read it).

Pollan asked his readers to submit their own rules, and he posted his twenty favorite here.

dining, food

New apps for the iPhone

Two great apps for the iPhone dropped today. One is Tweetie 2, the second version of my favorite iPhone Twitter client. The original Tweetie cost $2.99 and was well worth it. When it was announced that Tweetie 2 would also cost $2.99 for all users, regardless of whether or not they had purchased the previous version, there were plenty of complaints.

I covered this in a Facebook discussion, but the $2.99 price for Tweetie 2 is well worth it for me. A few points for the grumblers:

• The iPhone app store does not support upgrade pricing, so the developer can't charge one price to owners of the original Tweetie and another price for everyone else. That's Apple's fault, not the developer's.


• One thing there is no shortage of is Twitter clients for the iPhone (or in general). If you don't feel $2.99 is worth it after reading the feature set, you have plenty of alternatives.


• I'm not sure you can buy a single drink for $2.99 at Starbucks.

Interact with customers of any product these days, especially a web-based product, and one realizes that among the industries the internet revolutionized was whining. You can build a product for free with your own sweat and tears, donate blood to raise money to help children with cancer, rescue some elderly people and puppies from a burning building, and someone will still write in complaining that you haven't cured world hunger and oh, why can't they choose f!@$face as a username because damn it, this is America and how dare you censor me!

Tweetie 2 is great. Full persistence and offline mode alone would've been worth the $2.99 for me. If you're a power Twitter user, it's the best client for the iPhone and one of the best iPhone apps period.

Also arriving today in the iPhone app store was Adobe's Photoshop.com app. Cheapskates can't complain about the price of free.

Anyone who has shot any photos with the iPhone knows they don't usually come out of the camera show ready. To date Apple hasn't added in basic photo touchup tools but plenty of apps have filled the void.* The Photoshop.com app with its basic transform and color/exposure adjustment tools is a very worthy addition.

Remember, friends don't subject friends to long pages of unedited crappy photos.

* Some other photo apps for the iPhone that are worthwhile, if not free, are Chase Jarvis' Best Camera and CameraBag.

apple, iphone, software

Hot rookies for your Oscar nomination fantasy draft

I would have titled this "a star is born" but it's fantasy football season and that terminology is on the brain. From the Toronto Film Festival two young actresses to look for come Oscar season when best actress nominees are announced...

Abbie Cornish from Bright Star. I'd never seen any of her work until I saw the new Jane Campion movie at TIFF. Cornish plays Fanny Brawne, a fashionista who falls into a feverish romance with poet John Keats, played by Ben Whishaw, whom I last saw playing Hamlet at the Old Vic in London in 2004. Campion is underrated as a visual stylist, and the beauty of the shots in this movie convince us that they could have inspired Keats' poetry.

Campion does not blow the romance out of proportion. We do not see the moments on screen literally inspiring specific words in his poems, and though we know Keats is to become one of the world's great Romantic poets, he seems no different than many a fervent young lover. Cornish's portrayal of Brawne feels both controlled and yet completely free and uninhibited, a quality I see in so many of my favorite performances. She has a very good chance at a best actress nomination.

Another young actress who will announce her presence in a memorable fashion this fall, is Carey Mulligan. She is the star of Lone Scherfig's An Education which opens in LA and NY today. My sister Karen and I caught a morning screening at TIFF.

Mulligan plays a 17 year old overachiever in her last year of high school, on the cusp of applying to Oxford where her father has always dreamed she'd go. But a chance encounter brings an older man (Peter Sarsgaard) into her life, bringing with him the fun and excitement of fine dining, jazz clubs, travel abroad, and access to the world beyond books and studies.

The movie is based on a memoir written as a look back on an affair at an earlier stage of life. One can imagine the voice of the older self dissecting transgressions of youth with a critical, chiding tone, but played by Mulligan, the movie has a sweetness at its heart. Mulligan is charming and cute as a button, and she doesn't just recall the look of a young Audrey Hepburn in scenes set in Paris but also the charisma. The role of the gamine, among others, is hers to own for years to come whether or not a best actress nomination comes at the next Oscars.

And even if An Education doesn't break big, she has plenty of movies shooting or in post which will introduce her to a global audience. Among others, she'll be seen in 2010 in Wall Street 2 playing Gordon Gekko's daughter and love interest of Shia Labeouf, whom she's dating in real life.

Some pics of Mulligan from Q&A after the screening...

movies, oscars, tiff, careymulligan, actress

A waking dream

I had a musician friend visiting me all weekend, and while researching music shows, I stumbled across a unique concert: Bon Iver was going to play a sunrise show at the Hollywood Cemetery Sunday morning at around 5:50am. The doors would open at midnight on Saturday, and various events were scheduled through the night.

As with any hot show, tickets were underpriced at $25 each and sold out quickly. I paid a pretty sum more than that for a pair of tickets from a scalper on Craiglist. We met up at a Chevron gas station near The Getty and exchanged cash for tickets like a drug deal.

I don't remember how I first heard of Bon Iver, probably through an MP3 blog, but his first single "Skinny Love" haunted me. Every story about the album's creation focused on the back story: Justin Vernon retreated alone to a remote hunting cabin in Wisconsin for several months to record most of the tracks. I've never heard what drove him to the woods and what feelings he wanted to put into song, but one listen of the album reveals multitudes.

Soon after the album's release, I saw Bon Iver perform live at a tiny bar in LA called The Echo. The bar held maybe a hundred people at most, all crowded around the stage. I could barely see through the crowd to Vernon, who was seated on stage. That my few glimpses seemed to reveal a bearded mountain man reinforced the back story of the album's genesis. Unlike the hipsters crowding the bar, all of whom had paid exorbitant prices to dress like homeless people, Vernon looked like the real thing.

Any other day, I'd arrive at a show like this Hollywood Cemetery gig filled with excitement. But this day, I walked several blocks to the entrance in a stupor. Saturday morning I ran 19 miles, my longest run yet in training for this year's NY Marathon. The run broke me, not physically but mentally. It's not that I can't do the distance, but it's the frustration of not being able to run much faster despite all the miles logged. On a bike, the more I ride, the faster I go. On foot, the more I run, the longer I can suffer at the same pace, until felled by injury, of which there have been many.

After one of my numerous surgeries for my leg, I don't recall which one (maybe to have part of my meniscus removed), a physician said to me, "Some people just aren't built to run." He said "some people" but it was clear he was being more specific than that. I plodded along for 19 miles Saturday morning, but even when I willed myself to accelerate, when I tried to increase my stride or cadence or some variation thereof, nothing happened.

After a late dinner and show at the Magic Castle in Hollywood, we didn't get changed and out to the Cemetery until after two in the morning. The drive over through a rare and dense Los Angeles fog seemed like a journey through an impending apocalyptic wasteland. On the I-10 headed East, I saw a car on the other side of the highway stalled on the median, it's hood popped open, the engine spewing out flames several feet high. Near the cemetery, angry drivers leaned on their horns and gunned their engines to pass each other, apparently in a hurry to run the next red light. We passed a Korean club in K-town where young males milled about outside looking like they were organizing for trouble. The world felt aggressive, angry.

My legs protested even just an 8 block walk to the entrance of the cemetery. The patch of lawn where the concert was taking place was already full of blankets and people when we arrived in the absolute dark. Bottle Rocket screened on the white wall of a building. I love that movie. The quiet conversations of groups of people throughout the grounds mixed with the occasional draft of pot from the guy laid out next to us who puffed on his pipe without shame. Through the fog I could see the shadowy outlines of a few palm trees leaning over in the sky.

As soon as I laid out my sleeping bag and pillow on a blanket, they were covered with a cool dew. I tried to sleep, but I couldn't find a comfortable position no matter which way I rolled. After Bottle Rocket, the first set of music picked by Bon Iver played at a moderate volume (The LA Times has all the setlists from the night). Then, at some point, a screening of highlights from Planet Earth started playing. I don't know when that began as I was fading in and out of consciousness. I'd sit up from time to time and see colorful birds performing elaborate mating dances, frogs hurtling through the air in slow motion, their arms and legs splayed out in all directions for balance, and then I'd pass out again.

After that screening, a shorter second list of songs selected by Bon Iver played over the speakers. The second to last song was Sade's "By Your Side". My sister used that song for her first dance at her wedding. That was a long time ago. The song made me feel old and sentimental.

After the last song of the list, there was a period of silence where all I could hear were the conversations nearby me. A group of people spoke with excitement about evading security guards around the cemetery, near misses punctuated by ducking behind tombstones and crypts while flashlight beams swept overhead.

And then the chanting began, Buddhist monks chanting in that hypnotic, repetitious pattern. This was the designated alarm clock for the day. I wondered how Bon Iver was able to enlist Buddhist monks. Did they listen to his music, too? Are monks allowed to have iPods? It was dark and I did not see where they were, though I saw a group of lanterns hanging in the distance.

And then lights came on towards the far corner of the lawn, revealing a stage set up for the show, and then the members of Bon Iver walked on stage to the cheers of those who'd stayed up all night and those still rubbing the sleep out of their eyes.

The first time I saw Bon Iver back at The Echo, Vernon said little. But at the Hollywood Forever show, he spoke early and often, exhibiting a humble humor that went down easy for a crowd half awake. Hearing Vernon's normal speaking voice, one would never imagine the falsetto he uses throughout For Emma, Forever Ago.

If Arcade Fire sounds anthemic, then Bon Iver sounds sacred. As the sky turned from black to slate to sickly orange to pale morning blue, Bon Iver filled the damp morning air with gorgeous versions of every song they knew while the crowd sat on their blankets in a hushed reverence. Vernon seemed just as amazed as any of us that this was happening.

"This is the weirdest thing we've done. Ever." At one point Vernon tried to tune a guitar. "It's covered with dew."

It's as close as I may ever come to feeling the presence of something holy on a Sunday morning. At one point, someone let out a crazy yell of joy.

Vernon paused. "Was that a dead person?"

A few songs from the end, Vernon said, "I know it's standard for bands to pretend to walk off the stage and then come back and play more songs, but we're a young band, we don't have that many songs. So if it's okay with you, we're just going to stay on stage and play every song we know."

He apologized once more before the last song. "This is the last song. It's the only song left that we know how to play. I'm feeling inadequate." Then they launched into "Wolves". During the second half, at Vernon's request, we joined in to sing, again and again, "What might have been lost."

When the final note cut out, we all stood and applauded. Bon Iver had won our hearts. Then we shuffled out of the cemetery carrying our sleeping bags, blankets, and pillows. The morning sun, diffused through a thick cloud cover, dropped a soft white light from overhead.

Over the past year, I've soured on a lot of the shortcomings of the concert-going experience, but a night like this redeems my hope for what a live music performance can be. With every event of the night curated by Bon Iver, from the location to the movies to the music, this was more of an experience than a performance. Simply gorgeous, one of the most memorable shows of my life.

concert, LA, music, boniver

Indie downturn

I had a wonderful time at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) this year; more on my first visit there soon.

With the high cost of attending a film festival like Sundance or Toronto (once you factor in plane tickets, lodging, transportation, and the cost of a film ticket there, assuming you can even secure the tickets you want, the $20 you pay for a movie ticket, popcorn, and drink at your local indie cineplex seems like a bargain), it's worth considering whether such a trip is worth it.

One reason these treks are still worthwhile to me is the contraction of the independent film market. Anne Thompson sees the dearth of purchases at this year's TIFF as continuation of this trend. I still enjoy a lot of what people refer to as "independent films" but fewer and fewer of them cross that bridge over troubled water between film festival and theatrical release.

Yes, I can still wait and see the movies on DVD at some point, but call me old-fashioned, I still love the experience of watching a movie on a huge screen in a darkened theater in the company of others. Drifting into the theater with other moviegoers giving off that palpable sense of anticipation, watching the movie trailers and making snap judgments about what will succeed, nibbling on popcorn or some candy, standing outside the theater afterwards and discussing our reactions to the movie we just saw, I love it all. Some people complain about the price of a movie ticket, but for my money, $10 or $11 for a movie ticket is still the best value for 2 hours of entertainment on a night out.

Back to independent film, most wouldn't make enough on DVD sales alone to continue to subsidize their production. Financiers back these movies assuming some revenue from theatrical release.

So yes, for independent film lovers, there is still value in the film festival pilgrimage (it's also a great way to diet; rushing from one screening to another at TIFF, I learned to subsist on water, popcorn, and body fat).

As to the fate of the independent film market, I am not as gloomy as most, though there will be blood in the near term. It should come as no surprise given what I've spent so much of my career working on that the reason I'm still bullish is that little thing called the Internet.

What do independent films need? Publicity and distribution. The internet is very good at the former, and getting better at the latter. The stigma against the internet as a distribution channel is understandable given how conservative the entertainment industry has always been (just tonight, on the Emmys, Neil Patrick Harris played Dr. Horrible in a skit poking fun at internet distribution of television). And internet distribution is still handcuffed by certain factors, including the shoddy internet infrastructure in the U.S. and the somewhat shaky and long chain of software and hardware involved in watching video streamed live through said the Internet. The reliability and quality of streamed video can't match that of a DVD disc played through your DVD player. Yet.

But that won't last forever. Take out the costs of film prints and old methods of marketing an indie film, trying to open it big in NYC and LA, and suddenly the height of the cost hurdle drops in a massive way. Forego the traditional windowing system and release a movie through multiple channels simultaneously and take advantage of concentrating your marketing efforts on a narrower window. Many independent movies that play the festival circuit won't generate revenue across multiple windows the way a Harry Potter movie will anyway, so why diffuse the spend across multiple windows?

I mentioned above how much I love seeing movies in theaters, but I'd absolutely pay to watch some of these movies at home on my TV, through PPV or streamed or downloaded off of the internet for $10 a pop, if that meant these movies would continue to get made.

If anything good comes from this downturn in the independent film market, I hope it's that filmmakers of all sorts look past their prejudice against the internet as a means for sharing their work and apply the same creativity they use to make their movies to exploiting the internet.

movies, tiff

Jacobs vs. Moses

Re-evaluating history's verdict on Jane Jacobs vs. Robert Moses.

nyc, urbanplanning, janejacobs, robertmoses

Not all unemployment is created equal

One reason this recession will take longer to recover from: a much smaller percentage of the current unemployment rate is temporary. To put it another way, many of the jobs lost in this recession may be from industries that will not come back and may be difficult to replace in the near term.

economics, economy

Paper towels versus air dryers

Which method of drying your hand in a public bathroom is cleaner? Answer here.

I wonder if they air dryers evaluated were of the high-powered variety. In the Denver airport on my last business trip, I went to use an air dryer, and when I placed my hands beneath them, I was hit with a concussive jet of air so forceful it propelled me across the bathroom and through the opposite wall, leaving a person-shaped hole in the tiles.

health, science

Miscellany

Google Reader asked some notable folks what their top picks were for Google Reader. Good idea, but I find it a bit offputting that so many folks chose their own website as one of their short list? Their sites are already listed and linked under their names, are we to believe they really spend time reading their own writing in Google Reader?

***

This past weekend, I was driving home on the 405 and saw a massive, odd-looking cloud standing alone in a clear blue sky, like a single head of cauliflower poking its head up through a bed of smog. Then I realized it was smoke from the fires in the San Gabriel mountains. It looked like a scene from 24, as if someone had dropped a nuclear bomb on LA. Here's one tightly-cropped time-lapse video of the smoke from the fires.

To truly appreciate how terrifying it looks, watch this wider-framed time-lapse which will give you a sense of the magnitude of this latest SoCal conflagration.

***

Hitchcock is a storyboarding app for the iPhone that can use photos. You're limited to the fixed focal length lens of the iPhone, but I could see it being a handy tool on set. We were shooting our Alec Baldwin Super Bowl commercial earlier this year in NYC, and the director Peter Berg grabbed my iPhone at one point and used the camera to help us visualize a shot he envisioned. He mentioned offhand that he wouldn't mind having a simple tool on the iPhone for quick previz.

It's $19.99, but there are more specialty tools coming to the iPhone that aren't intended for mass audiences, and those can justify higher prices.

Incidentally, I wish the iPhone app store had a way to put apps on a wishlist, or save them for later view. I often see apps that I think I might want to buy later, and I never have a way to remember them. Like this one cool app I saw last week, what did it do again, it was something about...oh, forget it.

***

A BMW concept diesel-hybrid. As with all concept cars, it looks absurdly futuristic, but it's heartening to see higher end manufacturers committing to the sustainability movement. Design can lift up the mundane and make it desirable, and having manufacturers like BMW or Tesla pushing the high end of this market can only help.

***

On Japanese simplicity.

In just over 30 years Hello Kitty has become a multibillion-dollar model of resourceful minimalism within the global juggernaut of Japanese pop culture. From Tokyo to Tehran, her expressionless, barely sketched visage adorns key chains, backpacks, toiletries and even a Hello Kitty-themed airline jet. Late last year an entire maternity hospital with Hello Kitty imagery adorning bedspreads and birth certificates opened to great fanfare in Taiwan.

But why is she mouthless? Because when you look at Hello Kitty, or “Kitty-chan,

Urinal Protocol Vulnerability

On a day when so many of my friends are changing their Facebook status to some note to show solidarity behind universal health care reform in the U.S., I think it's important that I link to xkcd's essay on urinal protocol vulnerability.

humor

The Downfall of the Downfall parody

Just brilliant, though you should go on YouTube and watch a few of the earlier Downfall parodies first to get the full impact (e.g. Hitler gets banned from Xbox Live, Hitler finds out Michael Jackson has died, Downfall of Grammar).

Some memes grow tiresome quickly; I have yet to tire of this one. But once a meme becomes self-referential, perhaps it has swallowed its own tail.

humor, videos, downfall, parody

French Laundry

On the last night of a week and a half vacation I took earlier this summer, a trip that covered Hong Kong, Tokyo, and San Francisco, I ate at The French Laundry. Diners there self-select into a specific crowd. Given the restaurant's reputation as one of the, if not the best, restaurant in the U.S., the difficulty of securing a reservation, the average cost of a meal there (four or five dollar bill icons next to certain restaurant names should be put in quotation marks, this being one of them), and its rather out-of-the-way location, a meal there feels like a pilgrimage.

Years ago I had made about a month's effort to secure a reservation, with no success, and then I forgot about it for a while. Back in that day, French Laundry was not listed on OpenTable.com. Two months before the day you wanted to eat there, you had to submit yourself to 15 minutes of frenzied speed dialing each morning at 10am PT and hope for the best, like trying to get through to Ticketmaster to purchase tickets to a Radiohead concert. Eventually you'd get through, just in time to hear that all tables had been booked. It is perhaps fortunate that two months would elapse before anyone fortunate enough to secure a reservation could actually dine there; in that time, the unpleasant and barbaric reservation scrum would have faded from one's memory rather than taint one's overall experience with the restaurant.

While I was planning my vacation, I saw San Francisco sitting at the end of my itinerary, and I may have been hungry at the time, but the thought of trying to tack on a trip to The French Laundry just popped into my head. I didn't think I'd have any luck securing a reservation given I'd only have one day to try to score a reservation, but lo and behold, I called the very next morning, and a table for 2 opened up for me, albeit at the late hour of 9pm PT. When, a few weeks later, I tried to switch my reservation to a party of 3 (it would be a meal to celebrate my friends Howie and Tram's upcoming wedding), they were able to accommodate me, even apologizing for having to move my reservation up to 7:45pm, a far more desirable time. Viva la recession!

Over the years, I've talked to many people who've eaten at The French Laundry, and I couldn't help factoring their reports into my expectations for the meal. Most had nothing but praise, but the few accounts of disappointment hung out in the back of my mind. I was three parts anticipation, one part anxiety.

Even on a weekday, with San Francisco traffic, it only took about 45 minutes to drive there, across the Golden Gate Bridge and out to the town of Yountville. The GPS told us when we were near, but not knowing what it looked like and given its somewhat understated signage, we drove right past the restaurant the first time.

The French Laundry

We arrived early, just before sunset, and the hostess welcomed us to take a tour of the garden across the street or to spend some time in the garden/patio outside the front door. We did both.

Walking through the garden across the street is a unique experience. I've been on many a kitchen tour, met many a chef, sat at many a table watching sous-chefs and line chefs mid-task, but this was the first time I'd seen the raw ingredients on the vine. While we were strolling and admiring the gorgeous produce, someone from the kitchen came out to pick some ingredients. I'm fairly certain he wasn't sent out just to impress us.

Leeks in the French Laundry garden

Howie loves snow pea vines

Greenhouse

Back at the patio, we snapped a few photos on various benches, in front of different plants, standing in archways...no matter how our meal turned out, it would be well-documented. Our hostess came out to grab us and ended up offering to snap some photos of the three of us together.

Inside, we were led to our table on the second level. The interior layout recalls an expensive home converted into a restaurant dining space. To one side of us was a group of three older diners. They had the look of foodies about them. It's hard to pinpoint exactly what that is, but it's a way one carries oneself, with the ease of a lifelong Red Sox fan strolling to his seat at Fenway, for example as opposed to the wide-eyed anxiety of a virgin on prom night fumbling with a bra strap, say.

To the other side of us was a table of about eight young male investment bankers in navy suits, a pack of wild dogs with a client's expense account to pillage, the hint of date rape hanging in the air over their table. They were, at that moment, still sober, but I tried my best to turn my chair away from them. More on them later.

We had the choice of two nine-course tasting menus, the chef's or the vegetarian. Both were $240 each, service fees included, with the option to have the foir gras en terrine for an extra $30 on the chef's tasting menu. No disrespect to the vegetarians of the world, but for that price, my meal was going to include some animal flesh. Tram and Howie concurred, and we split up our choices so that we'd have the chance to try both choices for those courses where two items were offered.

I had just begun collecting wine a short while before this meal, and even with my limited knowledge of some of the more famous wines in the U.S., it only took a minute or two for the French Laundry wine list (PDF) to stagger me. Just about every hot boutique winery and big name wine I'd heard of was represented. It's a world-class all-star wine list, the most storied wine list I've ever looked over. The lofty roster had prices to match. High end wines typically don't support more than a 100% markup given the high starting price, and that seemed to be the markup here, but 2X a high price is, well, a higher price. But if you're going to splurge on a meal at French Laundry, digging into their treasure chest of a cellar for a bottle you might not be able to find on the open market is one of the treats.

For those looking to sample a flight of wines, The French Laundry has a great selection of half bottles, of which I picked out two reds, both of which are no longer on the wine list, so quickly does their wine list rotate. The standout to me was a reasonably priced pinot noir from Skewis Winery, the 2006 Bush Vineyard, Russian River Valley. A few weeks after my meal, I ordered a lot of bottles of that gem from Skewis after finding out that it would be their last year of producing the Bush given the passing of the owner of that land. I usually don't enjoy California pinots as they aren't earthy enough for my taste, but this was a beautiful drinking wine, with a long and complex finish.

Here was our menu (many special characters were pillaged from France in its making). I won't linger on every dish, but will call out the standouts afterwards.

"Oyster and Pearls"

"Sabayon" of Pearl Tapioca with Island Creek Oysters

and White Sturgeon Caviar

_________________________

Salad of Hand-Rolled "Orecchiette"

Cauliflower Fleurettes, Sweet Peppers, Fava Beans,

Spanish Capers, Marjoram and "Piment d'Espelette"

Moulard Duck "Foie Gras en Terrine"

Gros Michel Banana "Génoise," Belgian Endive,

Hazelnuts and Madeira-Vanilla Reduction

($30 supplement)

_________________________

Wild Columbia River Sturgeon

Fennel Bulb, Niçoise Olives, Navel Orange, Pine Nuts,

Arugula and Orange-Saffron Gastrique

Tartare of Japanese Bluefin Tuna

Tokyo Turnips, Broccolini, Ginkgo Nuts,

Perilla and Salted Plum Coulis

_________________________

Sweet Butter-Poached Maine Lobster "Mitts"

Golden Corn, English Peas and Black Truffles from Provence

_________________________

Wolfe Ranch White Quail

Spring Onions, Pickled Blueberries,

Red Ribbon Sorrel and "Sauce Dijonnaise"

"Confit de Cœur de Veau"

Pumpernickel "Pain Perdu," Toybox Tomatoes Celery Branch,

Marinated Red Onion and Jidori Hen Egg Emulsion

_________________________

Snake River Farms "Calotte de Bœuf Grillée"

Cèpe Mushrooms, Green Asparagus, Yukon Gold Potato "Rissolée,"

Garlic Pudding and "Sauce Bordelaise"

_________________________

"Timanoix"

Ibérico Ham, Toasted Walnuts,

Collard Greens and Blis Maple Syrup

_________________________

Nectarine Sorbet

Ginger "Gelée," Puffed Quinoa

and Boysenberry Purée

_________________________

"Gâteau Saiant Nizier Au Manjari"

Mango-Chili Relish, Mast Brothers Chocolate Cocoa Nibs,

Lime Foam and Coconut Milk Sorbet

Lemon Verbena "Vacherin"

Tellicherry Pepper Panna Cotta, Garden Lemon Verbena Sherbet

and Chilled Silverado Trail Strawberry Consommé

_________________________

Mignardises

This is California cuisine, yes, but not the type content to surround two fresh beet halves with five niblets of corn, two asparagus spear heads, and three peas in a miniature tableau and call it a dish. I love fresh ingredients as much as the next gourmand, but in this day and age, when I can visit the same farmer market the local high end restaurant visits for super-fresh produce, the premium I'm willing to pay for such food has shrunk.

Anyone who has perused chef Thomas Keller's French Laundry Cookbook knows that attempting to conquer any of the recipes therein is no task for the average home chef. It will end up more of a coffee table book for most of its owners: inspiring, yes, but a bit like a weekend warrior reading about Lance Armstrong's workout routines. Me, I'm happy to pay for this type of meal because I won't at any point in the meal wonder if I could prepare that dish myself, let alone at a reasonable cost in terms of time and equipment.

Take, for example, the first official course (the first amuse bouche was unlisted and was the same as the one I had at Per Se, Keller's New York sister to French Laundry: cornets of salmon tartare with red onion crème fraiche), one of Keller's signature dishes, "Pearl and Oysters." Served with a special mother-of-pearl spoon, it's a dish whose preparation is a delicate and complex chemistry experiment. If the end justifies the means, then it's worth it, because the dish is brilliant. I don't have the culinary vocabulary to describe it, but in its flavors and textures it's something wholly unique, a creation all Thomas Keller's.

[Note: It was really dark in the restaurant, I did not want to use flash and bother the other patrons, and so the photos are a bit grainy. I would have preferred to shoot with a bit smaller of an aperture to increase the depth of field, but these pics were the best I could manage.]

"Oysters and Pearls"

The butter-poached Maine lobster "mitts" tends more towards traditional Californian cuisine, but the butter poaching and black truffles added just enough dazzle without distracting from the simplicity of its mix of flavors.

Sweet Butter-Poached Maine Lobster "Mitts"

Perhaps the most memorable dish of the night was Confit de Cœur de Veau, literally the confit of a veal heart. Rather than serve the heart in one piece, Keller wisely chose to shave it thinly, and it came out arranged like a bouquet of pastrami for the gods. Rich, dense, and unforgettable. I'm not even sure where you could buy a veal heart to work with, so I took my time eating this one.

"Confit de Cœur de Veau"

One last dish to highlight, and that is the Snake River Farms Calotte de Bœuf Grillée. It is one of the best pieces of beef I've ever had in my life. If I were to become a vegetarian for the rest of my life, I'd want to stash the flavor of this beef in my memory to serve as the canonical flavor of beef for the rest of my days.

Snake River Farms also supplies Wolfgang Puck's fantastic LA steakhouse Cut with its American Wagyu, and if you fancy yourself an expert in the preparation of beef you can purchase direct from them. Best of luck if you go that route: 4 10 oz ribeyes will run you $199.

Snake River Farms "Calotte de Bœuf Grillée"

The only thing marring our meal was the company to my left. By this point in our meal, the investment bankers had a few bottles of wine in them. The volume of their voices had turned up, and snippets of conversation from their table drifted over.

"You could tell, just looking at her, she was a little sexpot."

"Oh yeah. If she was a year or two older, what was she, seventeen? My god."

"Hell, even if she wasn't."

[bawdy laughter]

To my relief, the American Psycho crew left by the time our desserts came.

The name of the restaurant comes from the fact that the building was once actually a French laundry. In keeping with that theme, the napkins are held in clothespins when you arrive, the bill comes on a laundry ticket, and the lampshades have ironing icons on them.

French Laundry lampshades

By the time we finished dessert and nibbled on the mignardises (the little candies and cookies that follow dessert at finer dining establishments, like a post-dessert dessert), I was suitably full. Not sickeningly gorged, but content.

If you drink wine, figure on $300 a person for dinner. After we settled our checks, I mentioned to the waiter that I'd seen the French Laundry kitchen once before, on a plasma TV in the kitchen of Per Se. The two sister restaurants stay connected via webcam. Without my asking, the waiter said once he'd run our credit cards he'd give us a kitchen tour.

The kitchen is not massive, it's smaller than the one at Per Se. By the time we walked in, the kitchen was almost spotless already.

The kitchen

Two things hanging in the kitchen impressed me. One was a sign over one doorway with the definition of the word "finesse." The other was a clock over a doorway, under which was a sign that read "Sense of Urgency." After having completed our meal, these didn't seem like empty decorations but a fitting summary of two of the qualities that make The French Laundry a world class restaurant.

Finesse

Sense of Urgency

And so ended our journey to one of the world's culinary meccas. I thoroughly enjoyed the meal and recommend the journey for those who can drop that much for a meal and not regret it. You know who you are.

dining, food, frenchlaundry, restaurants