for those of you who still don't get it

i know they'll probably unveil an all-new model in june, but i don't care--i had to have me one of these while they still exist.

why would i buy a product so late in its life cycle when there are faster, cheaper competitors available, you might ask?

simple:  because, to my mind--i.e., that of an overly-picky depressive who finds fault with everything--the iphone 4/4s comes as close to perfection as any mass-produced object ever made, at any price.

the conventional wisdom among american manufacturers has always been that, in order to achieve mass acceptance, it's necessary to dumb brilliance down--because either the idea itself or the attendant cost to bring it to fruition is more than the masses can bear [you want proof, just look at the difference between any concept car by any company and the lame-ass model that ends up in production].

this, to me, is the true genius of steve jobs:  he made brilliance not only acceptable to the masses, but something they'd be willing to trample each other to pay double for.

so screw all you naysayers who dismiss apple products as nothing more than the darlings of the trendy, vapid and pretentious--because if that weren't so, they wouldn't be accessible to

me.

day 3: comida reconfortante

.

if you're down, feeling empty, and happen to find yourself in van nuys, may i suggest...

 
alberto's asada nachos--cheap heaven in a styrofoam clamshell.

and yes i did eat the whole thing--what's your goddam point?

day 1: zen and the art of the chopped salad

.
enough with the current events--let's kick off the month with something truly important.



it seemed like a lot of money--$50 for a few crappy pieces o' plastic with metal teeth--but what can i say, i was desperate.

having tried everything else, including this monstrosity,

great if you need to make coleslaw for the russian army--but otherwise, fahgettaboudit

i'd pretty much given up on my quest to produce the perfect restaurant-quality chopped salad for my quotidian consumption, until somebody turned me onto the borner v.

a mandoline--seriously?  another one of those cheap plastic pieces o' crap?

"seriously," she said. "this one's different.  but make sure you also order the kevlar gloves, because the holder that comes with the thing is useless--otherwise you're gonna shred your fingers."

and damned if the bitch wasn't right on both counts--you gotta get you one of these things.

[btw:  the true zen of the chopped salad is that there is no art to it--this is truly the sausage of vegetarian dishes.  trust me, push whatever you've got left over in the vegetable bin through the borner v, and it's instant magic.


today's masterpiece:

a base of equal parts shredded iceberg and romaine lettuce
half a cucumber
one roma tomato
a quarter medium red onion
two stalks celery
one medium carrot
four radishes
half a jonathan apple
a few crumbles of bleu cheese
some chopped-up salami
half a can of garbanzo beans

i'd give you the recipe for the dressing i whipped up to go along with it, but i'm holding that back in case i run short of posts before the month runs out.  you understand, right?]

postcards from the edge (part 2)

.

the 382 miles between los angeles and san francisco can be driven any number of ways, but what it basically boils down to is either getting there quick, or taking the scenic route.

that latter road less traveled by--the narrow, meandering pacific coast highway--is the one i've wanted to take for 20 years, and since i finally had the chance, i decided to go for it.

the plan, such as it was

       mkf doesn't really plan things, as will soon become clear

was to take the 5 up, spend a few days partying, reminiscing and sightseeing, and then make my leisurely way home down the coast, stopping at notable points along the way.

the trip up was a breeze--i waited until saturday so as to avoid the holiday herd and averaged eighty-five the whole way, with hardly a trooper in sight [thanks, california budget crisis].

trip home goes different--i get off to a late start, cross the san rafael bridge from the east bay into marin, and then south across the golden gate into the city [two bridges, eleven dollars in tolls--thanks again, california budget crisis], fuck around there a little too long, and then finally head south.

in a way, it works out--by the time i stop somewhere south of santa cruz for my first photo op of the day [all of these photos embiggen gorgeously, btw], the light is perfect:

water looks so inviting, doesn't it?  shame it's, like, 50 degrees

as i travel further south, the hills begin to rise

hell, even the slums are picturesque

oh, and in case your overloaded senses need a visual break from the ridiculously-beautiful coastline?  no problem--big sur's right across the street:

it's at some point south of monterey--as the afternoon is waning and about the time i stopped and took the following picture--that something i had only been peripherally aware of for the last hour or so crystallizes in my mind; namely, that for some reason i've got the whole pacific coast highway pretty much to myself.

the fact of this makes me uneasy in a way i can't put my finger on.  maybe i shoulda paid more attention to all those road signs back there indicating some sort of closure up ahead.  but what the hell--there's always a detour, right?

whatever--i'd figure it out later. meantime, there's insanely magnificent shit like this to stop and gawk at [and if you're still wondering which pic you should click on, this would be it]:

as the afternoon fades to twilight and the fog rolls in, the setting sun casts a maxfield parrish glow across the landscape

and i come across my final warning:  this really harsh road sign informing me and all the other clueless idiots like me who ignored all the prior warnings that, thanks to some buzzkill mudslide last year, there's only 22 more miles of PCH before the party ends, and i'd better quickly get ready to make other arrangements--no mention of a detour anywhere.

fuck--no wonder there's nobody else on the road.  my heart sinks at the thought of having to turn around and drive my dumb ass all the way back to fuckin' monterey.

to my relief, i see immediately beyond the above harsh road sign another sign informing me of the town of lucia up ahead--first town i'd come across in many miles.  surely someone there could point me to a detour, right?

the town of lucia turns out to be a combination restaurant/general store on the side of the road whose employees have seen more than their share of people like me.  i walk in the door and before i can even get the words out, the girl behind the counter rolls her eyes, whips out a xerox'd map and a highlighter and says, "look--you can either do it the easy way and turn around and go back the way you came; or if you're brave, you can drive four miles south and take the nacimiento over the mountains to the 101."

"the nacimiento" of which she speaks turns out, i'd find out later, to be the nacimiento-fergusson road, a legendarily steep, narrow, twisting, one-lane mountain pass featuring numerous treacherous hairpin switchbacks and noted not only for its sheer drop-offs at every turn but also its complete absence of guardrails of any kind. 

here's a picture i found of the nacimiento on a good day:

"and should you survive the nacimiento," she continues, "it dumps you into this army base you have to cross to get to the 101, and those bastards'll ticket you if they catch you doing 26 in a 25--and since it's federal, you'll pay $100 for every mile over the speed limit.  whole thing'll take you at least two hours if you're lucky.  you game?"

here's the nacimiento on a bad day:

 

as i turn off the PCH in the gathering gloom with the fog rolling in, i pause before beginning my climb to snap this final picture, and reflect on the fact that if i go over the edge up there somewhere, there's no cell phone coverage in this mountain wilderness, and nobody to even know to look for me there.  would i make it?  should i turn back?

i'll spare you the suspense--bitch back in hooterville didn't realize she was throwing down the gauntlet to the greatest risk-taking scofflaw of all time.  federal, my ass--i was over that motherfucker, through the army base and cruising down the 101 in less than an hour.

problem was, by the time the whole thing was over, it had been a long day and i was exhausted.  fuck san simeon and all the rest of that scenic shit i had planned for the next day--i needed a drink.

so i got myself an in-n-out burger and went home.

*     *     *     *     *

a word about the transportation:

it wasn't a car i was buying, it was a soulless, economical appliance--that's what i, the car guy, told myself a year ago.

that was before i knew this "appliance" could (a) smoothly fly me up the interstate in great comfort at autobahn speeds with power to spare, (b) transport four full-size men and their gear all over san francisco with plenty of elbow room and nobody bitching; (c) stick like glue at insane speeds not only down lombard street and through the serpentine curves of the pacific coast highway but up the nacimiento-fergusson road as well; and (d) do it all averaging 43 mpg.

i feel fairly safe in saying there is no other car in the world that could make all those claims.  it took me a year, but i'm finally happy to say

i love you, baby.

because it's lonely in the modern world

.
i have no reverence for most shelter rags--architectural digest, metropolitan home, elle decor, better homes, whatever--i flip through 'em quickly, tear out the one or two pages of interest and toss the rest.

dwell, of course, is different--each pristine, archival-quality edition of that purist paean to the harsh goddess of modern architecture is given the white-glove treatment from the moment it hits my mailbox in its protective plastic sheath until, once carefully perused, it's reverently slipped into the bookcase alongside its predecessors.

and never mind that the goddam things are multiplying like tribbles and taking over--they're just too pretty and perfect to rip to shreds, right?

apparently, not everyone sees it that way:







all the grim pomposity of the modernist ethos turned on its head--fuckin' priceless.

there's something in unhappy hipsters' ruthless skewering of dwell and all it represents for everyone--if you despise modern architecture, every bitingly re-captioned photograph is validation; if on the other hand you're a disciple, you get to chuckle knowingly and imagine yourself inside the joke.

win-win, right?

i really should get out and walk more often

.
last-minute as always, head over to century city shopping center for the annual ordeal, see all the cars tryin to stuff themselves into every available entrance like ten pounds of shit into a two-pound bag, say to myself "hell, no," park on an off-street half a mile away and make my way back to the place on foot.

two hours later, heading empty-handed back down a cold, corporate stretch of santa monica boulevard toward my little truck--reminded once more why i hate malls and everything in 'em--i'm brought up short as i cross a side street and come across this modest white frame structure that in twenty years of driving up and down santa monica boulevard i'd never noticed and that by all rights shouldn't be there anymore.

scanning across the facade, my eye finds its entrance and it stops me in my tracks


i wasn't expecting zen perfection, especially here. and "barn" rings a bell, but i can't place it--all i can think is, god, i wanna get inside this place.

it's locked-up and dark--all i can do is whip out the iphone and snap it for posterity and later googling.

[tell you the truth, at first i figured some evil genius must've bonsai-ed that spindly tree to grow in just that way and then killed it at the apex of its development, until i came across the following picture from last summer online--guess it's still alive after all]


turns out 10300 santa monica boulevard was the live-work space of a. quincy jones, a modernist architect whose work i've long admired. he and his wife bought the barnlike building back in 1965, and he remade it as both his studio and their home. he died in 1979, and she's lovingly kept it just as he left it ever since.

until just last month, anyway, when she [or, more likely, her estate] finally sold it for a paltry $2 million.

for context, here's a macro-shot of the mostly-prosaic exterior


which almost completely manages to hide what's going on inside


i fully expect to drive by in a couple months and see this building torn down and replaced by something far more profitable-per-square-foot; the romantic in me hopes not.

[apologies for not bothering to link--it's an easy google if you're really interested]

guttermusicality

.
i may have been outta the business for awhile, but that doesn't mean i can't still recognize pure genius when i come across it.

consider for a moment a minor but vexing problem shared by all architects [because i just know that's why you come here]: namely, how to get rainwater off of and away from your building without fuglifying the design.

you've generally got three choices when it comes to gutters and downspouts: you can (a) hide them in the walls (expensive and problematic); (b) try to find some way to subtly blend them into the facade (usually not very successfully); or (c, and what usually happens) tack 'em on on after the fact and say fuck it.*

or you can do what this guy did (and click if you're really interested--it embiggens nicely):



and get this--when it rains, the whole system becomes a musical instrument. can you even imagine how cool that must be?

back in architecture school, if i heard "if you can't hide it, celebrate it," once, i heard it a thousand goddam times--and now, 25 years later, i finally know what they meant.

[sorry for the left turn into near-respectability this post took, but i'm sure it'll be back to business as usual around here in no time.]
____________
*then there's option (d): blow off gutters altogether (yeah, it was a disaster when it rained but i didn't care--it was beautiful, goddammit).

...starring colin farrell's eyebrows

.
[this is not a movie review (there's somebody in the family who's much better at that sorta thing than me, if he'd just do it--and he knows who i'm talkin about); it is merely a movie recommendation, with a couple observations thrown in.

and i wouldn't even be doing this if i had something better to cough up; but truthfully, collapsing on the couch with v and a bowl of popcorn to watch this movie was by far the most exciting thing i did this week--god knows there are lots of worse ways i coulda spent my time.]

i had to sleep on in bruges before i figured out how i felt about it; here's what i'd come up with by the next morning:

• the story goes down a lot easier if you can look at it as a greek tragedy (with all the contrived artificiality and inevitability that implies) rather than a this-could-actually-happen sequence of events--if you can make that leap, then it's actually a lot of fun
• the performances were universally good--ralph feinnes obviously had a field day being allowed to cut loose and be coarse for a change
• colin farrell's a damn fine actor, but it's those infinitely-expressive eyebrows that make him a star
• if you rent it, make sure to watch the (several of them inexplicably-) deleted scenes afterwards--they'll fill in a lot of the gaps that left you wondering
• bruges is gorgeous--i gotta go someday
• damn quentin tarantino for enabling other filmmakers to believe they can mix lighthearted banter and graphic violence as well as he can--because most of 'em (including these guys), sadly, can't

because sometimes it's what's on the outside of the envelope that matters

[text]
this came on a letter yesterday and since i can't take my eyes off of it, i decided to share it with you--enjoy.

and yeah, the postal worker who canceled this stamp should be shot*.



________________
*by another postal worker, of course

because even this blog needs an occasional happy post

[text]
yeah, i treated myself to the entire five-year run of the dick van dyke show--every original, uncut, digitally-remastered episode of (with the one obvious exception*) the best situation-comedy ever to appear on television, complete with all kinds of cool extras.

and tell you the truth, i dunno why i waited so long--god knows i can probably count on one hand the things in this world i love completely and without reservation, and this show is one of 'em.

so v came over tonight, we cracked it open, and my intention to watch a few a week in chronological order went out the window pretty much as soon as he told me he had never seen the show before (ah, to be that young).

to give him the proper flavor, i decided to hit him with a couple hand-picked episodes (starting out with my all time favorite--the one with laura and the raft), but then two turned into four and then seven, and they were all as fresh and smart and funny as i remembered--and it was great experiencing them through the eyes of someone for whom they were brand-new.
________________
* and, as an extra-added bonus (and because there is no more dangerous and volatile combination known to man than an impulsive drunk and amazon's helpful "buy with one click" feature), i somehow ended up with the complete i love lucy as well--they were out, but they tell me it'll be here next week.

a break in the action

i know we were talking about more weighty matters and i really hate to interrupt the flow but something's come up, and since i'm a little drunk and it is my goddam blog i'm hereby exercising my option to, if i so choose, inexplicably careen off into a completely different direction whenever i fucking feel like it. from my comment to the guy who posted the following youtube clip:

i heard this song once and only once--on a jukebox in some roadside diner in the summer of 1964 during a family vacation. i was a very little kid at the time, but for some reason it stuck in my head and comes back to haunt me from time to time. so tonight i decide to look for it, and wham! there it is on youtube.

 

[the only other thing i remember about this experience: i wanted to play the song again but none of the grownups would give me the goddam nickel or whatever it cost back then, so i had to wait 44 years] 

 and yeah it's sappy, but if this song (or at the very least, that hairdo) doesn't resonate with you even a little bit, then (a) your endorphin receptors are wired completely differently than mine; and/or (b) you need to come back and listen to it next time you're shitfaced.  

 sober update: turns out nobody--not even those of my friends upon whom i can usually rely to eat cheesy retro shit like this up--is moved by either this song or the hair.

enough doom & gloom--let's talk about something really important

texttext
so what was your reaction when you first looked at the above pic? if it was a combination of revulsion and intense curiosity, you are not alone.

these things hit the vending machines at work on wednesday and, as it's the first new snack to appear there in ages, the news swept through the cubicles like wildfire. at first we circled cautiously amid mutterings about what kind of idiot would dip a potato chip in ketchup, until one brave soul ventured forth and jabbed a dollar at the machine. the resulting bag was examined, opened, and--as the intoxicating aroma of ketchup-drenched french fries permeated the air-- passed around, and voila, just like that, everything changed, snack paradigms shifted, a whole new universe of flavor possibilities emerged and took hold. at least half the office is now obsessed with these damn things; we simply cannot stop eating them.

after doing a little research, i'm astonished to find that they've been on the market since the middle of last year--and i'm just hearing about them now?! all i can say is, somebody dropped the marketing ball on this product, because, if our little focus group is any indication (and trust me, we're about as middle-brow as it gets), these things would need very little exposure to capture the jaded tastebuds of america.

and yes, god only knows what unholy combination of petrochemicals it took to create this little taste sensation; as i sit here crunching away i'm trying not to think about it. all i'm sayin is, if you can find 'em, grab 'em--you will not be sorry.

and the thing is, he's not even my type

texttext
i dunno if you ever go to manhunt--because god knows i wouldn't be caught dead there. but from what i hear, their splash features an ever-changing panoply of models in various states of undress--all shapes, sizes, races and types--apparently, you never know what you're gonna get when you go there. and sometimes, from what i hear, you have to hit "refresh" up to fifteen or twenty times before the above-featured image even comes up.

not that i'd know first-hand, of course.