tkw

los angeles, ca - michael jackson, 50, died today in los angeles, while undergoing a white heart transplant. friends close to the king of pop say he had recently expressed a desire to experience more condescension and disgust towards himself.

related stories:
* intermittent blogger writes fake news story, finds himself amusing, tells andrewhime to suck it

berkeley, ca. - a 37-year-old man was found dead in his backyard by his wife, who had returned from a walk with their infant son. cause of death is suspected to be fractured skull, multiple lacerations, or punctured lung.

at the time of death the man was wearing flip-flops, one of which was broken, and clutching four meyer lemons.

"he appeared to have taken the lemons from a neighbor's tree," reported BPD sgt. hanhauser, "and upon re-entry into his backyard, failed to properly negotiate the dividing wall and rose bushes. had he dropped the lemons he might have broken his fall with his hands or arms, instead of his face."

a friend of the family, who was the last to communicate with the man, reported that the deceased had given no indication of depression or anxiety, only that his final words were simply "brb am gonna run out to the backyard TO POOP"



related stories:
* alcohol-related farming accidents on the rise
* berkeley parents outraged over use of gender-specific pronoun
* arriba! meyer lemons the secret to a muy picante ceviche

i seem to cycle between blog-catharsis and email-catharsis. i'm definitely in the latter phrase right now. for you HARDCORE FANS of the undersupervised, check out my cocktail blog which, unlike this blog, expounds very specifically about things you don't care about.

anyway, i don't know if its like terrible internet etiquette to recycle material from email, but i recently wrote a couple of word-colonics that i thought might be as or more appropriate for this retarded blog than email. so i say let's do this motherfucker!

story: an early vegas incident

so this is about 1991, im in vegas for the first time [note: i was 19 with my brother's id], the summer after freshman year [note: i would not return to school for about seven years and still am about a year from any kind of degree], to try to make money playing blackjack and betting horses. the horse-betting system i used back then was, in retrospect, +ev but i didnt know it at the game. i didnt really know how to calculate ev or anything like that.

anyway, i was at the racebook at either flamingo or harrah's. waitress who is super cute (in the mold of...lets say alicia silverstone) takes my order. a little while later comes back, i tip her a dollar. she says, superfakey, 'thank youuu!' then through gritted-teeth-fake-grin '...cheap motherfucker' (note, the racebook was mostly empty, the only other people in there were these old fuckers, no way they were tipping more than that)

if that happened now i would ignore, possibly laugh, maybe even be glad cuz i had a story for email later. but back then i was partly in a huff like 'I AM A CUSTOMER AND DESERVE ADEQUATE TREATMENT' but also my feelings were hurt and ego bruised because a cute girl hated me for no reason. i was still young enough to have the attitude that people would/should like me if they got to know me, and if they didn't, it was because they were either envious or were too stupid to see what an awesome person i was. i hadn't yet figured out that people sometimes are dicks and/or there can be a million reasons why someone doesnt like someone else, who can explain these things. plus, it turns out, i was mostly wrong about how awesome of a person i am.

anyway i dont see her for 30 mins or so, and its not even that i wanted another drink or whatever, but i chase her down at some point and ask why she hasn't been giving me service. she says 'drinks are for betting customers'. i show her the fistful of tickets i have. she says 'ok, just be patient ill get to you'. a few minutes later she comes back with a glass of water and some stuff floating in it. (i think my drink at that time was tequila sunrise, what she served me was perhaps orange-tinted)

when im done betting, i go to the bartender where she had been getting her drinks, this hulking guido motherfucker, and i say 'id like to lodge a complaint about that waitress.' dude belly-laughs in my face for a good 5-7 seconds, then walks away, still laughing.

essay: the significance of helmet

[backstory, dm asked about our favorite/most-listened-to albums, and i cited helmet's 'meantime', even though prior to helmet i disliked metal]

re metal...jp also asked me what is the difference between helmet and other metal bands...

there are a lot of bands now that are more similar to helmet than the metal bands pre-helmet, so maybe there isn't anything that special about them now.

but in terms of what helmet did vs what, say, metallica did...it's hard to describe, but i guess i would call it 'sensibilities'. metallica has the emotional maturity and intellect of petulant white teenagers obsessed with violence, death, mythology, power, the apocalypse, etc., and that's also who they pander to.

this isn't to take away from their musicianship, both from a technical standpoint and the complexity of the music...but the effect that they are trying to create is thrill-kill, mass-murder fantasy.

(i'm picking on metallica, but pretty much every metal band up to helmet and for many years after, fits either this archetype, or the hair-metal-band archetype. maybe [ab] can correct me on this point.)

from metallica's wikipedia page:

The band initially planned to title the album Metal Up Your Ass, and it would feature a cover featuring a toilet bowl with a hand clutching a dagger emerging from it. However, Megaforce urged them to change this,[7] and they agreed, switching to Kill 'Em All. This time the cover featured the shadow of a hand letting go of a bloodied hammer.

here's a sample of their lyrics from their first album:

No life till leather
We are gonna kick some ass tonight
We got the metal madness
When our fans start screaming
It's right well alright
When we start to rock
We never want to stop again

[...]

The horsemen are drawing nearer
On the leather steeds they ride
They have came to take your life
On through the dead of night
With the four horsemen ride
Or choose your fate and die

[..]

With hell in my eyes and with death in my veins
The end is closing in
Feeding on the minds of man
And from their souls within
My disciples all shout to search out
And they always shall obey
Follow me now my child not the meek or the mild
But do just as I say

contrast this with helmet's lyrics:

I cant move her
Obsessed with protection
This is a bad idea
She needs affection
What, me?

Drive around town
Forced to talk
Pass that church again
Wheres a parking spot
Its sinatras world
She just lives here
I hate everything
As much as I hate me

maybe nonsensical (and i may have cherry picked a little) but the philosophy is obviously more mature and less pandering than metallica, and that comes across in the music as well.

i think of helmet as: if factory machines were programmed to play (loud, distorted) instruments. where metallica is hysterical and histrionic, helmet is cold and mechanical. james hetfield screams because he wants to project (phony, contrived) rage. page hamilton (who btw has a masters degree in jazz guitar from manhattan u) screams because he uses his voice as a percussion instrument.

pictures from meatpaper's pig party at camino restaurant.

photography is the purest, most intimate form of personal expression; the camera is an extension of my eyes, heart and soul.

( pig party trip report )

screenshot of the los kitties prototype:





send a msg if you'd like to play with it.

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misc music on you tube that i've fwded to people for one reason or another:

dude named rob kovacs plays some sufjan stevens
steve reich, who recently won a pulitzer: drumming, one-man piano phase, more drumming
vox balaenae, possibly my favorite classical piece of all time: part I, part II, part III
the bad plus plays physical cities. if you must, skip to 3:45, 'fun' begins at 4:45.
cuz of rockband and lolcats: march of the pigs. dunno about now, but back in the day this video was unique for its live-but-not-concert performance. not to mention the 7+7+7+8 meter.
from the dept of horrible yet awesome: bar band cover of you be illin

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cross-posted to/from my cocktail blog...


this is tangential but i'm compelled to post an excerpt from this review of eccolo written in the prevailing yelp style and thus is a perfect example of why yelp so often makes me want to claw my eyes out:

Ouch.

I had some reservation about Eccolo only because...well, it's in Berkeley, haha. I have this love/hate relationship with Berkeley - there are strips of this town that are pretty damn awesome. The rest of it...um...not-uh.

Anyway, apparently the street that Eccolo is located on, is the trendy spot of Berkeley...after a short walk along the street, I can see what they were talking about. Pretty cool actually.

So, here's the 4 stars (borderline 3) - ya'll gonna love this....

First of all, the menu changes CONSTANTLY - this ain't no Chilli's (Yes, I know that was double negative). It's not the same all the time; the menu is printed daily on a slightly thick stock of paper - you can see the smears sometimes.

4-borderline-3 because the restaurant was out of some things he ordered, even though his backup choices were (a) "staggeringly fantastic" and "absolutely well made" and (b) comped.

my current dream is for yelp to allow custom filters, so i can eradicate Marvin J from my yelp experience, along with anyone who voted up any of his reviews, for good measure.

i didn't love this, Marvin J! in fact it made my heart wither into a shell so frigid and brittle that i may never feel love again.

past week i've been sick as fuck. but, here, some recent projects:

cat thousand (as described here) (u: donger p: needfoodlz)
cocktail notes

both are works in progress; either might be one of those things i do for awhile then eventually get bored of/run out of ideas/inspiration.

kinda like this blog, or my life.

i've also been working on a lost cities bot. thinking of maybe parlaying it into a facebook or iphone app. if i can figure out how.

as fatherhood is on the horizon, i've been cramming in as many social outings, cigarettes, and mixed drinks as possible before the big event. couple weeks ago, i attended the 'market cocktail night' at the ferry building. that was very cool. a couple lines of tables manned by some of the best bartenders in the city, pouring their warez. i sampled 14 different drinks, most of them very good, some awesome. (favorites: bourbon + honey + meyer lemon + kumquat. cachaca + falernum + lime + kumquat. tequlia + clementine + grapefruit + date syrup. gin + bergamot + earl grey syrup.) afterwards i went to hog island oysters for a quick snack where i accidentally paid the bill twice.

the following saturday, on my birthday, i went to a cocktail class by scott beattie which was somewhat educational (though the bulk of the "lecture" was a reading from his book, and a tipsy ramble from one of the owners of charbay). he also made us a couple of drinks (this was awesome) and did a demo. then he went off to hawk his book and let the inmates run the asylum for awhile.

after the crowd thinned out, i went to chat with scott. that (short) conversation ended with me asking a question, being interrupted by a woman toting a couple books for scott to sign, and him saying "thanks for coming out, tyler" and reaching for a pen. so i felt like a real dickhead. i consoled myself by buying a half-pound of fuck-ass expensive salami from boccalone.

that night we went to my brother's place to eat said salami, plus takeout from "freeway tacos". and i made cocktails, we played boardgames and rockband, all in all a great birthday.

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from an interview with the composer of the seinfeld theme song:

At the time, the pilot was called "The Seinfeld Chronicles" and the opening titles had Jerry doing stand up material—with every week being a different monologue. [...] You can't have melody while he's trying to do monologue—they butt heads. So the sound design problem I saw was that the opening title already had its melody—it's Jerry! So I built the music around him. And instead of using standard instruments like drums and clarinets, because of the human nature of the melody—his voice, I went with the organic sounds of the finger snaps, mouth pops, lip smacks, and tongue noises.

[...]

And for the pacing, I watched some of his HBO Special and noticed that he has a rhythmic, musical pacing to the way he delivers his monologue. I clocked a tempo for it—about 110, and built the music around him at that tempo. The bass mainly hangs out in a frequency range that doesn't interfere with his voice, below him—it supports him as a bass does with a melody.

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the facebook 25-things meme. not the first of its kind, of course, especially if we go back to the slambook days. but a friend recently compiled his 25-thing list so adeptly that it made me wonder why we are often terrible at such exercises. i don't believe we're boring. i think it's that we don't know what makes us interesting. how do we fix that?

(in a similar space:) one of my favorite youtube videos of late is the trader joe's ad. (the first few verses are weak, it gets better) i like that the soul of it is gentle and affectionate and remarkably specific. the complaints and frustration are genuine, but don't stoop to petty meanness, which would have been easy and cheap. it's like anything else you truly love; you know its flaws because you know its everything.

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the cat thousand project is--let's call it progressing. for awhile i was ready to give up, feeling really down on my feebleness and underachievement as a musician. and because i've had to confront the hardest song (tractor rape chain), which i'd been saving for last. the vocal range for that song, octave + sixth, is kicking my ass.

i would be, and have been, the most ardent champion/cheerleader for any artist with similar insecurities. just forge ahead. even when it's painful, especially when it's painful. work through it. the process is always invaluable, and the product is rarely void of merit and sometimes surprisingly good.

but it's so much harder to cheer for myself. i'm self-conscious of rationalizing, afraid that i'm too quick to justify exhibitionism/attention-whoring.

dunno if this is old age, or pragmatism, or maybe they are the same thing, but...i revel in the thrill of creating something from nothing, even if the something is amateurish (which most of my output is), and that thrill of that first cut is rarely matched by the thrill of refinement. maybe it's a marginal value kind of thing, where it's so much fun to go from 0% to 50%, that going from 50% to 75%, which requires as much or more effort, is a relative letdown.

but maybe real artists see the glass as half empty, that going from 100% suck to 50% suck is the same as 50% to 25%. and that the ultimate satisfaction is the infinite gain from going from some suck to no suck.

i'll never get there. i have a history with perfectionism, the same history some people have with tequila. there was that one time in high school we had too much of it, and so can never indulge again without wanting to puke our guts out.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/397690_fbiweb28.html

"We knew that the mortgage-brokerage industry was corrupt," the first of the retired FBI officials told the Seattle P-I. "Where we would have gotten a sense of what was really going on was the point where the mortgage was sold knowing that it was a piece of dung and it would be turned into a security. But the agents with the expertise had been diverted to counterterrorism."

AND non-believers?

who is this guy?!

awhile ago, my bro-in-law sent me some pretty cool photos he took at the museum of flight. then last month, when my sister put "framed art" on her xmas list, i thought maybe it would be a fun project for bro-in-law and i to make some silkscreened prints out of those photos.

we got a lot of help from the dude who runs the shop (where my brother used to work) and it still took us the better part of a week. i destroyed one of the final prints by accident and also got ink on the shop dude's dog. but it was worth it. the dog may disagree.

( finished product )

resolution 1: i'm already working on covering the entirety of bee thousand, as a gift to my son, with some lyrical substitutions to include in-jokes and references (eg, "hardcore ufc", "the goldheart mountaintop quinn directory"). tentative title is "cat thousand".

resolution 2: inspired by two xmas gifts, "artisan cocktails" and "charcuterie", i hope to found the Society of Cocktails and Pork Products (SOCAPP). basically using cooking projects to induce family congregation. who knew i would turn into that kind of guy.

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i read in a little entertainment news blurb that the latest season of The Real World is set to air soon. now, say what you will about TRW--and whatever you say will be accurate--the show gave exposure to minorities and subcultures and occasionally jostled stereotypes in ways not seen anywhere else on tv, even if those ways were simplisitic and sometimes exploitative. now, i'm not all AZN PRYDE but upon seeing the blurb i wondered if there'd even been an asian male cast member, given that there hadn't been since the last time i'd seen the show (about a decade ago).

the answer is no.

maybe asian dudes are just boring ass motherfuckers.

i guess harold and kumar will have to do for now.

i swear to god this is not gonna be a baby blog. i'm far too detached from my life for it to move me to introspective rhapsody.

it is like i am in season four of a half-baked network primetime show, after the characters' schtick has gotten tiresome, their escapades played out to the tautest bounds of incredulity, and all that is left is for them to pander to the basest of fans with a predictable progression of incestuous coupling, marriage, and domestication--i keep tuning in because i'm curious how it's going to end. also the remote is broken and im too lazy to get off the couch.

but our latest reconfiguration of furniture (because of the baby room, see, that's how that ties in) and, in parallel, taking of inventory, inspired what i like to call 'postmodern american haiku':

what did i think
one man could do
with all these cat cables

that five-seven-five nonsense is dated and weak. it's time to roll that shit up with mayonnaise and avocado.

question for the masses. all input welcome/treasured, but esp those with kids in the, say, 3-10 age range.

how much of a problem is it these days for kids to have an unusual/uncommon name? is it better or worse than 20-30 years ago? would you give your kid a weird name? DID you give your kid a weird name? if you didn't, was one of your reasons because you were concerned about him/her being teased for it? Have you witnessed anyone being teased for their name, and do you think that person would not have been teased if they'd been given a common name?

can you believe rounders is 10 years old?!

what a terrible yet totally awesome movie.

the terrible:
- "three racks of high society"
- "in the game of life women are the rake" (they are when you don't know how to write them except as vamps and shrews, koppelman, you fucking hack)
- "You were lookin' for that third three, but...[etc]"

the totally awesome:
- no royal flushes
- john malkovich
- the state of poker today

i like dude's regular comics, but his 'bad comics' are sublime.

he just posted more:

http://nedroidcomics.livejournal.com/172015.html
http://nedroidcomics.livejournal.com/172164.html
http://nedroidcomics.livejournal.com/172372.html

i brought up my potential name change at a family dinner the other day, thus dragging conversation and the previously jubilant air to an awkward, chilly standstill. yay me.

as expected, i got some negative feedback. not too. no one showed any naked rage or afrontedness (not a word). but neither did anyone support me, or my rationale. my sister got a little emotional, and my dad stated plainly, though not vehemently, that he was against it.

i'm not sure if they really don't agree with my reasons and reasoning, or if they're just justifying a visceral aversion. but in some ways--or maybe all ways--it doesn't matter. bottom line, they don't like the idea, i don't have their approval, and there isn't anything i can say that will get it. at best i could do or say things to help them feel better about it.

in the end i would probably have their support. they aren't petty people, and by now they are used to me doing goofy shit.

but i still don't know what to do. i'm fully prepared to put kid's well-being before everyone else, even if doing so were to somehow alienate all others close to me. and i'm fairly confident that kid having a honky name will improve his well-being.

but only fairly. i've been wrong before, "a few" times. and i think that jp's point about implicitly condoning white privilege gives me pause. where's the line between giving your children every advantage you can, and depriving them so as to send the right message, or to build character?

i don't know what to do. what do i do?

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bon mot from earlier:

tk: marlo stanfield is on heroes now
jp: what's his special power
tk: stupidest ever, can turn other people's fear into superhuman strength
jp: so, like george bush


OHHHHH SSSCHHHNAPPPPPPPPPPPP

here

i'm a little surprised at the overwhelming proportion of democrats to republicans within this sample; even here in california my econ professors tended to seem republican. if this report gets any media play at all, i expect that it will be dismissed by the right (and possibly by the public) because of that.

but which came first, party preference, or party affiliation? there is the implication (even in the study) that anyone registered either D or R is "biased" and is going to vote for their party's candidate because of that bias. but isn't it possible (or even likely) that economists are democrats because they rate democratic policies highly, and not the other way around? (and same for mccain/republicans)

recently i've been torn between obama and mccain...but finally, after mulling over what i know and understand about both candidates and both parties, i decided that i was going to vote for mccain.

then i awoke from the dream i was having in which i was FUCKING RETARDED.


one of the most important issues to me is accountability. (which i admit is based purely on gut.) not just for bushco, but for obama as well if he happens to win. for anyone in power. i don't mind (well, too much) the idea of a president being borderline dictatorial during his term as long as he is eventually vulnerable to scrutiny and consequence.

here's what obama said recently about accountability:

What I would want to do is to have my Justice Department and my Attorney General immediately review the information that's already there and to find out are there inquiries that need to be pursued. I can't prejudge that because we don't have access to all the material right now. I think that you are right, if crimes have been committed, they should be investigated. You're also right that I would not want my first term consumed by what was perceived on the part of Republicans as a partisan witch hunt because I think we've got too many problems we've got to solve.

So this is an area where I would want to exercise judgment -- I would want to find out directly from my Attorney General -- having pursued, having looked at what's out there right now -- are there possibilities of genuine crimes as opposed to really bad policies. And I think it's important-- one of the things we've got to figure out in our political culture generally is distinguishing between really dumb policies and policies that rise to the level of criminal activity. You know, I often get questions about impeachment at town hall meetings and I've said that is not something I think would be fruitful to pursue because I think that impeachment is something that should be reserved for exceptional circumstances. Now, if I found out that there were high officials who knowingly, consciously broke existing laws, engaged in coverups of those crimes with knowledge forefront, then I think a basic principle of our Constitution is nobody above the law -- and I think that's roughly how I would look at it.

his answer is pretty much what you'd expect from a politician. i mean, with some minor substitutions, the same thing could have come out of john "maverick?" mccain's mouth (during a prepared speech). (has it? if so, i would like to know.)

but regardless of who says what, does anyone believe that "maverick?" is more likely than obama to hold bush accountable for his abuses of power? or to at least investigate?

or do we think that the chance of either of them doing anything at all is so low that it's a non-issue?

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we've started our lists...

jp is allowed to sleep with: steven soderbergh, julia stiles
tk is allowed to sleep with:

work in progress, ok?

my parents just got back from a three-week trip, and their absence provided my sibs and i the opportunity to a) buy my dad a car, b) develop a treasure hunt leading to it.

it was fun, and took my dad by complete surprise. we followed the format my dad uses for the xmas treasure hunts he constructs for us kids: first, clues in rhyming verse (in this case, supplied by my brother). next, a trivia quiz (administered by my sister). (correct answers yielded letters which were to be rearranged into words describing the next clue location.) lastly, a puzzle, in this case, a sudoku (which my dad enjoys), then a number search: find these clusters of numbers within the completed sudoku, and write an assigned letter or number at the location of each cluster.

the decoded message read "ECP BART SPOT 644". i'd thought that the answer to the final clue might give away the nature of the prize, so decided that instead of parking the real car in that location, i would park my POS ashtray-smelling car there instead. thus temporarily crushing whatever fancy-new-car fantasies had spiraled out of control in my dad's mind on the ride to the bart station. this is in fact what happened. i was so pleased with myself.

inside the decoy car was a note that directed him to another spot close by, where his new car sat (2006 acura rsx).

he loved the hunt, and the car!

not too into memes, but this one (seen at timprov), the omnivore's hundred, got me thinking. its obviously a subjective list, so criticizing it would be kind of a dick thing to do. that said, i'm going to criticize it. because i'm a dick.

the problem is that it doesn't seem very well thought out; it has no philosophy. some things are on the list presumably because they taste good (but then doesn't it depend where you get it...?). some things (eg, big mac) are on there for (pop) cultural reasons. some things fall into the category of "adventure dining". the list makes a half-hearted attempt to be global, and the choices are all wrong. (gazpacho? huevos rancheros? please.) many entries are vague. ("carp"? prepared how? and why? another completely non-essential entry.)

i would rather the list either be more comprehensive ("these are things you should eat if you want a good overview of global cuisine" or "these are the grossest things that people eat on a regular basis") or more subjective ("you HAVE to try these donuts"). have a point of view. stick with it.


i'm not worldly enough to come up with 100 things one "should" eat. but i did start thinking about what i would want my list to mean.

i especially like to recommend things that (in addition to being really good) deviate from the norm in some way, either in quality or flavor or novelty, and also things that inspire fanaticism (in myself and others).

more interesting than what's on my list (to the degree this shit is interesting at all) is what isn't on it. along with the countless things that i love-but-wouldn't-feel-comfortable-recommending-wholeheartedly, i exclude these things:

pizza. many folks are really into pizza and have strong opinions about what pizza should be. (i am one such person.) but i also feel that recommendations are nearly pointless exactly because of the variance in opinion, and because it is not hard to find pizza (in any style) that comes close to getting it right.

if i were to recommend anything pizza related, it would be to try to make your own someday, using my recipe.

ice cream. here again, it's not hard to find a good product. ben and jerry's and haagen dazs put out really, really good ice cream. yes, there are smaller, artisanal ice cream makers that are better, and yes, their ice creams can be a revelation. but the marginal gain is so small that i can't in good conscience say "if you haven't tried jeni's in columbus you haven't lived." (almost, but not quite.)

bbq. it kind of hurts for me to say, because i do dearly love bbq, but passable bbq is pretty common. no disrespect to the texas cats who spend all day smoking -- your shit is the shit, no doubt.

thai curry (esp green). its likely that my favorite thai green curry was my first one, just because it was new, not because it was necessarily anything special. (probability says it was from some random place in a strip mall.) so, like pho, if you've never had it before, you should consider it. but unlike pho, it is actually hard to find decent green curry, and i think mediocre green curry is less accessible than mediocre pho. so i might 'proceed with caution'.

raw (cow's) milk cheese. loved by many, but probably hated by more. another 'proceed with caution'.


here are the things that make my list:

tacos. i'll concede there is a place in the universe for hard shells from a box, with grainy hamburger and wilted lettuce scraps. but you are really missing out if you haven't had a soft corn tortilla with nothing but meat, onions, cilantro, and a little salsa or lime.

decent tacos are not hard to find. if i found them in green bay, you can probably find them just about anywhere in the us.

a lot of people are crazy about real taqueria-style tacos, and for good reason.


pho. definitely not for everyone, but this is something else that people go absolutely insane about. you don't need to get all the weird shit. you can still enjoy the delicious beefy broth, rice noodles, braised meat, basil leaves, lime, with plum sauce and sriracha to taste.

usually not too hard to find a decent pho place.


sushi. i have a hard time taking anyone's sushi opinion seriously if they haven't eaten at sasabune or nozawa in los angeles. i'm not saying that i know more about sushi than someone from new york or japan, just that the term "great sushi" means something very specific to me, and unless you have been to one of the aforementioned sushi joints, we're not speaking the same language.


oysters. there is hog island oysters at sf's ferry building, then there is everyone else. i am not exaggerating the size and importance of their superiority.


cocktails. i feel pretty confident in saying that west restaurant in vancouver is the best. chambar in vancouver is a close second. my last visit to cyrus was a disappointment; i can't recommend it.

i haven't yet been to any bay area restaurant that's been anywhere as good as west (for drinks), nor seen many menus that looked like it had as much promise. i plan to research this more extensively, soon.


margaritas. this is a separate category from cocktails because you don't need to go to vancouver to get a good margarita. you can probably find one in any town, or maybe your kitchen. but unfortunately bad ones are much, much more common and accepted as the norm.

what are you looking for is equal parts fresh lime juice and booze. hardcore fanatics will insist on a high quality tequila. i won't argue, though i think that for most people the big step is getting past the toxic green syrup.


chocolate truffles. not the glorified cadbury eggs, the waxy chocolate shells whose pretty, drizzle-patterns on the outside belie the horrific pasty goop on the inside. i mean "french style" truffles: softened chocolate and butter gently whisked together with a liqueur or roasted spice, dusted with cocoa powder. such as: xox truffles, or your microwave.


bread. pain epi at acme is the best i've had, though the ciabatta rolls with chive blossom butter at the herbfarm was pretty incredible.


fresh dairy, fruits, and vegetables. i'm definitely not one of these people who knows all the local farms, shops exclusively at farmers' markets, etc. but i could become one. not all small farms put out good products, but many do. and fresh, high-quality produce and eggs and butter are always soul-soothing and mind-expanding, each and every time.

lately i have been kookoo for blue heron butter lettuce. so delicious, with a simple vinaigrette, a few toasted pine nuts, and a little grated hard cheese or goat gouda.


tasting menu from a reputable restaurant. this is the one item from the aforementioned list that i agree with. my first tasting menu was from charlie trotter and it was one of the best dinners i've ever had, if not the best.

you don't have to go to a michelin 3-star. just make sure it has at least seven courses and it doesn't look like some bullshit leftover rework.

[related: published recently, 1001 foods you must taste before you die]