Cutting it close

Im a lucky bastard. I had to catch a plane in San Jose on Friday morning and decided to take CalTrain from SF. Naturally the ticket machine wouldn't take my card and with the train coming I had no choice but to board and take my chances. I rode all the way down sans ticket next to a sign telling me the fine for doing that would cost me $250 all while a group of CalTrain employees were sitting a few seats behind me on what seemed to be a perpetual break. Needless to say I made it through clean along with the $75 it would have cost me to take the shuttle in the first place.


Wherever you go, there you are

Like whoa!

I love this site! It's my new favorite site since the 10th Dimension site. I am nerd.

WooT!

I haven't been chronicling my adventures lately due to sheer laziness. Actually, I've been swamped trying to get t-shirts ordered, shipped, received, printed and delivered all while making different groups of peeps happy and feeling like princesses. Anyway, Stephanie wrote herself a sweet little how to book that shows peeps how to make some of her most sought after creations. The book just dropped last week and I wanted to give it a shout out. Grab a copy!

One of the most exciting parts of the process was that her publisher asked her to make a promo video for the book. She wanted to do a video that was a complete juxtaposition between her real self and the newly minted hyphy image she's cultivated. That's where I came in. I am at least seven times more thug than she is so I did my best to help her execute a sweet video. We gathered a motley crew of friends and went absolutely batshit.

Here's that video. Enjoy!

 

Food Reviews - I do it my way!

The following is how I review restaurants. I don't waste my time with passive-aggressive ramblings on Yelp. I go straight to the source of my misery:

To: Management (front and back of house.)

My family and I were in for brunch yesterday afternoon. We brought a guest from the U.K. and based on the affiliation with the _________, which has always been outstanding, we felt this would be an excellent choice to showcase some of the Bay Area's great cooking. We could not have been more wrong. I must say this was one of the worst brunch experiences I have ever had. Although I may be the only one writing to you, I was not alone in my dissatisfaction.

Firstly, the service. Where was it? I saw many able bodies that seemed to have fit the description of those who could be considered to be employed by the establishment. Or it's entirely possible that a host of of people in white shirts with menus, notepads and some of them even pens,  were on hand to distract the cooks because they certainly weren't interested in helping us. If we were lawyers, we would have made very funny quips about our server being "in absentia" as he was not to be found most of the meal. That joke would have killed in our respective offices this morning, were we barristers. When he did feel like dropping in on us. He seemed distracted. Maybe he had something much more fun to do and we were rudely keeping him from it? I think our favorite part was when he decided to let us know towards the end of our meal that he was in fact taking a break and introduced us to someone else, his stunt double if you will. We had actually assumed he was on a break the whole time anyway so why not make it official right? All toll we had about two other employees come by to clear the table and one bus-person to go flag down our check. By my estimation it took around four people to accomplish what should have taken, oh one, maybe?

Now let's get to the proverbial meat and potatoes if you'll pardon the awful pun. Again, I've eaten at _______ a few times and each time I was delighted. The drop off in the quality of the food was near ridiculous. I was waiting for either Aston Kutcher or Alan Funt, depending on how current or how far back  your sense of pop culture is skewed, to leap out and let us in on the elaborate prank and replace the punchline oriented food with the real thing. Obviously that never happened and what was placed in front of us was indeed intended to serve as a meal. Let's discuss the "cured meat hash" for a moment. That was about as descriptive as the menu got. I realize that "hash" is subjective term. However, there is a traditional staple and when you say "cured meat" then it sort of conjures up an image very close to that ideal. That ideal being, potatoes and corned beef. I'm not saying that's not open to interpretation or playfulness but you should for damn sure make note of it on the menu. As for your interpretation since when is cinnamon a curing agent? It's not and it overpowered the taste of the meat. That's bush league. Secondly, what was that, barley? Who's great idea was that? It had the consistency of oatmeal. So far we have cinnamon flavored-meat oatmeal, not looking good. I'm just asking but were the mushy, useless carrot slivers meant to distract us with their lustrous orange glow? If so, that ruse failed miserably. Now we have meat oatmeal with carrots. Then there seemed to be some tasteless off white emulsion lurking on the bottom of the dish. And when I say lurking, I mean it lurked. It just kind of hung out there offering no clue as to it's purpose. I can only surmise it was intended to be some kind of glue to hold the cinnabon flavored meat jerky (did I mention it was dry?) bonded to the oatmeal. I take no issue with the eggs or arugula. Put those on plate by themselves and you've got a solid base to work from. I ordered the brioche french toast and I am compelled to ask, do you hate France or something? This dish was a bust. First of all Brioche is a moist bread and it seemed like you were using freshly baked brioche. If not, let it dry out another day please. It was almost silly how mushy it was. It had the consistency of a piece of bread that had fallen into the sink and began to turn to goo. French toast should be nicely grilled with a firm texture on the outside and a bit of a bite inside. You call those caramelized apples? Seriously, I call them canned brown mush. Maybe they could have used some of the cinnamon you used for the cinnamon meat? Of course that means the cinnamon meat wouldn't taste quite like a cinnamon Jolly Rancher anymore. But seriously, those apples were just silly. You might as well have just used apple sauce or at least reached for the lofty and almighty "compote." The coffee you say? Do truly believe that was good coffee? Serving a latte in a bowl means that you have taken on a huge challenge because coffee served in a bowl is always synonymous with delicious coffee, or so William Sonoma would have you believe, and yours came to the table luke-warm. How does that happen? Did you use a latte mix? I've had that happen in a restaurant once and it was silly. The cappuccino I ordered was neither frothy, creamy nor rich and indulgent. It tasted like folgers or Maxwell house, take your pick. It did keep the taste of the cinnabon flavored meat oatmeal from lingering to much though. I'll grant it that. It is sad when the best part of the meal is the bacon.

Upon leaving we thought we'd give the bakery a go next door. The line for baked goods was as silly as the meat oatmeal. When the first customer out the door tells you the staff are slow and idiotic and the wait isn't worth it, I'll bank on that advice based on what we'd just experienced.

All of the above attributed to a lousy Sunday brunch that made us eager to return the the horizontal rain outside. I think the best part of the meal was going to Kara's afterward.  Have you tried their Meyer Lemon cupcakes? To die for!


Sincerely,

Matthew N.
Dissatisfied customer and boyfriend of the girl whose brother is married to a lawyer named Jaci who would have thought my bit about the  server would have killed.

P.S. the U.K. guy ordered the burger. He said it was good. But, Brits are notoriously proper and never like to make a fuss. I know this because I watch a lot of Monty Python.

A few things

 It's been a busy weekend filled with packing and moving. But somehow I found a few minutes to get into some pretty sweet adventures. First, there's a new screen print supply shop here in S.F. called Anthem and I have to say, it make my life a lot easier when I have to make a quick supply run. Then in between errands we managed to stop by the SF Street Food Fest which was over in the Mission. It was amazing to see this completely underground trend in dining come full circle as an organized and sponsored event. Of course with notoriety comes - lines, long winding lines for food. That's totally understandable though as there are some very good carts out there executing some great food. One of my favs was there, Kung Fu Tacos, and I really wanted to have Steph try it out but their line was uber long and we were pressed for time. We settled for a falafel, It was good enough, but I had some complaints. The Meyer lemon mayo would have been good on almost anything else, just not this. It tasted a bit too much like custard. Also, I have a thing about sandwiches, if they fall apart I automatically hate it. There was so much mayo that it started to drip onto my pants. That's a huge sandwich FAIL and a no-no in my book. As we were going home we happened upon an amazing foodie find in the form of an Irish Bakery and I have to say it was epic. Honestly I don't know much about Irish banked goods beyond soda bread, but this place had so much to offer. I bought this crazy cinnamon thing, that was uber doughy and chewy just the way I like things like that to be. Next we bought some shepherds pie, a sausage roll and a Cornish pastie.  The Sausage roll was my favorite. Then for breakfast the next day I bought possible the most epic baked goods ever - Breakfast in Bread! It consisted of a large chunk of soda bread and was infused with bangers, white and black pudding, cheese and eggs. It was so filling it took me two days to finish. It had a decidedly sage-y taste and I do enjoy sage quite a bit. On the way back from the bakery we happened upon the Chairman Bao truck and I insisted we stop. I ordered a pork belly and pickled daikon bao and Steph got a fried tofu and miso greens bao. I didn't try Stephs, but it looked super good. She commented that the tofu might not have been fried long enough. My bao was ok and I really liked the flavor profile but it was a very large piece of belly and I tend to like pro belly with a big of texture to it as this was a bit too soft for me. It could have used a nice re-firing on a hot griddle to crisp it up a bit. As for the pickles, they were good, but I make better. Sadly in our rush to get things done neither of us bothered to take any pictures as we're normally wont to do. Just think of it as a vintage blog post. In the Victorian era, blog posts were never accompanied by photos. It just wasn't done in polite society.

The Big Debut

For Steph's B-day we had ourselves a wee bit of BBQ. I can say with the utmost modesty that I worked that fuck out of that grill! There was not an empty plate to be seen. With such a BBQ feeding frenzy going down I thought it might be the perfect time to give peeps a sneak peek of what's to come when my boys and I drop our sweet food cart like a bomb all over San Francisco. We plan on launching a food cart called Belly-full and our claim to fame is going to be the pork belly slider. How can you not love this idea? Anyway, our initial public offering will be three different varieties of slider but I just wanted to focus on one for the BBQ. I call this one the "Dear Leader" and it's sort of a bastardized Banh Mi using Korean ingredients. I marinated the pork in salt, sugar, kochujang, fish sauce, salt, Szechuan pepper, sugar, vinegar, and some other stuff, then I made some delicious quick pickles.......... Ah, I don't want to give it all away but I've created a little diagram that may better explain my process. Needless to say we proved we can pull this off and produce a delicious slider. Shiiiiiitttt son!!!!

The new phonebook's here! The new Phonebook is here!

Navin R. Johnson. Sounds like a typical bastard!

Ok, that has nothing to do with the post at all. I just felt like quoting from one of my favorite movies, The Jerk. But seriously, you need to peep the new promo trailer for breakthruradio.com It's the radio station that hosts my Japanese music show. I'm DJ Hanabi BTW! Peep away!

Relaunch of Breakthruradio.com

As I've stated before I have a show on breakthruradio.com with my buddy John. We do a bi-weekly Japanese radio show. It's fun times and we get to act like self righteous elitist bastards. Seriously, it's good fun. We're known as DJ Hanabi and you should check us out. Anyway, the site is relaunching soon and ditching it's current Flash heavy layout with a more smooth and sleek look. Here's a trailer for the relaunch. Peep it!

Comic Con Nerds

This weekend Steph and I are taking an inter-California stay- cation. We're mixing up a little Comic-con in San Diego with a bit of Disneyland in L.A. On Thursday night we intended to leave S.F. at around 7 and that slowly morphed into 10:30. That was very depressing for me because it meant that I missed an opportunity for a late night Ruben at Canter's Deli in L.A. On Friday we made a rather large error in leaving for San Diego at 5 during rush hour. It took is about 3 hours to make it to Long Beach from Hollywood. It fucking sucked! Meh, that was just a drop in the bucket compared with the room we had waiting for us in S.D. But, let me preface that by saying I am in no way a cheap person. I will throw money at quality items without a second thought but I do love searching out a deal and love it even more if that deal flies in the face of convention. Before we even got on board with this little adventure we were advised that all the hotels basically double their prices. I really just couldn't accept that I wouldn't be able to find a deal on a room. Fuck you I said. I will totally find a cheap room and not only will it be cheap it will be close to the convention center. That's when I found the Travel lodge. At least that's what it was called by Google. At least you know what to expect with a travel lodge. This was anything but expected. The name had changed and is now known as the Downtown Lodge. Not a good portent of things to come. If I were the head of the ministry of naming names I would probably give the downtown lodge a working title of "just a block or two from downtown ass lodge" it's probably the grimiest place I've ever stayed. There were random hairs in one of the beds an the shower. Cigarette burns on the sheets. Now I did get a deal on the place. I paid $70 a night which is pretty awesome. But the deal of the century was pretty much lost on Steph upon first inspection of the towels which can only be described as being "a little bit moist." as to Comic Con itself it lived up to it's billing and ended up being super nerdy and crowded and full of half naked girls dressed as princess leia (the return of the Jedi outfit). I bought some prints from Tara McPherson which will look epic in my new room in the house. My overall impression of Comic Con is positive. I'm not really into much of what Comic Con is about but the people watching is amazing and I think I was a bit too preoccupied with that to take any seriously good pics. I took some black and white of the tron booth (can't wait for that) and I'll see what happens when I get that roll developed. I really want to do a live printing booth at Cimic Con. I'll see what can be done to make that happen. Today is Sunday and we're back in L.A. For some D-Land and hopefully some Canter's deli later as


I am craving a Ruben.
Wherever you go, there you are

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Steph doesn't take shit from old paint. No way, never.


Wherever you go, there you are

Spice Odyssey: Exploring the Burning Tongues of Saturn.: Killing you with spice!

Spice Odyssey: Exploring the Burning Tongues of Saturn.: Killing you with spice!

Spice Odyssey: Exploring the Burning Tongues of Saturn.: Brick Lane Curry House in NYC can suck it!

Spice Odyssey: Exploring the Burning Tongues of Saturn.: Brick Lane Curry House in NYC can suck it!

Food Cartier

It was simply an epic day in the dogpatch. A vast majority of the S.F. food carts were on hand in our fair neighborhood. It's awesome being able to leave your house and be inundated with such a vast array of high grade eats. We started off going to the Hapa Ramen cart. We've heard tell of these guys and they mos def are living up to the hype. They're a bit on the pricy side of things at $11.50 but I can understand why considering the high end ingredients they're using. I can tell they take pride in their broth as it's really rich. There were plenty of fresh veggies on top as well as a nicely braised piece of pork. The best part ended up being the sous vide egg. Nice touch. Next we headed over to one of my favorite dogpatch eateries, well actually it's a loading dock but what they lack in conventional location they make up for in flavor. Today they were serving sliders on homemade English muffins. The burgers were perfectly seasoned and tipped with confit onions, cheese and mustard seeds. It was epic. We sampled sime other tasty eats but those were my favs.


Wherever you go, there you are

Belated

It's been a couple of weeks since we went to New York and Boston. In fact we've gone to Minneapolis since then. I guess I took so long to post because I wanted to get my Holga pics ready. So I did. Anyway, moving on. We ended up with free airline tickets because United fucked up our flight to Hong Kong last year. We decided to go to New York and Boston. We ended up landing in Newark NJ. which is awesome, because although I've been to New York before I have never been to New Jersey. After 35 years I can finally cross New Jersey of my things to do list. Sadly, I did not get to explore the Dubai-esque Newark. Instead we ended up in a semi-comped suite in the fine burg of Weehawken NJ. It was actually pretty cool because we were right on the river and just a ferry ride away from Midtown Manhattan. My entire agenda in NYC was pretty much dominated by food. As everyone knows that town is silly with places to eat. Of top priority was Momofuku. At one point in my life I may have said it was "off the hook." Seriously though it was ridiculous. We arrived at the Momofuku noodle bar at like 7 on a Tuesday and the line was already about an hour deep, but I would not be denied. After a leisurely wait we got seated and ordered some awesome food. I got some of their house made pickles which came in a little Mason jar. Next we ordered some pickled ramps which were flavoriscious. Next up came the most epic pork belly buns ever. Seriously, WTF those bastards can sure slow cook a pork belly! To aid in the onset of a food coma we each ordered a bowl of ramen. It was basically the best ramen ever. Better than any ramen I had in Japan, and better than my favorite ramen shop here in the city. Since I was well full by that point I decided what could it hurt by finishing off my meal with a cup of the sour cherry soft serve? It only hurt a little bit so visited the Momofuku Milk Bar for some desserts including an epic "Cereal Milk"-milkshake which was fucking awesome! The next day we visited an epic foodie paradise the Chelsea Market. That place made the Ferry Building look like a food court in some backwoods mall in rural Indiana. We ended up wasting precious stomach room on a vegan restaurant, which ended up being supremely so-so. All I can say is how the fuck can you call a sandwich a vegan Ruben? Perhaps I have less imagination than I thought? Moving on. We ended up meeting a friend at bar in Greenwich Village called 124 Old Rabbit club which ended up being Belgian beer heaven. When I think of a bar, this is basically exactly what comes to mind. It's small, very dark, uber local, has excellent music and just plain cool. The digestive train didn't end there by any means. We kept seeing this little Australian meat pie place called the Tuck Shop. Like everything in New York it was open late and our snack-y craving was sated by a little meat pie smothered in peas and gravy. Still going. I have watched the Food Network play up an Indian restaurant called Brick Lane Curry House which claims to have the hottest curry on the planet. As a spicy foods maven I have been champing at the proverbial bit to try this dish. Brick lane calls the dish Phaal and they claim the chef has to wear a mask and eye protection to prepare it. Furthermore, they make a contest out of it. If you can finish it in a half hour you get a free beer and your picture on the wall. As soon as I told the waiter what I wanted I basically hated the place. Upon uttering the words Phaal curry he basically lost it. "Why do you want that?" Umm, because I want it? Seriously, that's just the most simplistic way of putting it. Since I stuck to my guns and refused to change my order the lack of enthusiasm on the waiter's part was palpable. There would be no contest for me. The curry was actually delicious, but it wasn't the hottest thing I've ever tasted. I couldn't finish because the volume of food was beyond me. In my opinion it was all hype. Fuck Brick Lane Curry House! The roll call continues. The highlight to our foodie adventures came in the form of a WD50 reservation. I'd heard a lot about this place and I've always wanted to try it. We opted for the totally gangster tasting menu. With all the dishes to talk about I ended up quite possibly favoring the hazelnut tart. I'm not usually a dessert guy, but fuck it, I'm taking a stand because it was a great tart. Not to be out done was the fact that we were seated by the kitchen and I was being a total nerd watching epic eats being created. The subtlety of my nerdiness was not lost on the waiter as he astutely surmised that I would probably enjoy getting a tour of the kitchen and meeting Chef Wylie Dufrense. Give that waiter a cigar! I was all about that shit. His kitchen was spotless and well organized. What a weird comment that was. Whatevs, let's talk about the stuff I didn't get to eat. I didn't get to eat at The Pickle Guys. That's sad. I didn't get to eat a Papaya King hot dog which sucks. I'm fairly certain I didn't get to eat pizza anywhere that pizza is sold. This sucks because NYC tap water has the right alkali content which makes for the perfect crust. I didn't get to eat at about 50,000 other places either. We spent  our last NYC night in Williamsburg in Brooklyn. It was a cool little neighborhood and I wish we had a couple of extra days to spend there. After an all too quick NYC adventure we picked up our car and headed up to Boston. Our route took us through Connecticut, which Steph slept all the way through, Rhode Island and then into Boston by way of Cape Cod. When you plug NYC to Boston into any standard GPS device it will tell you, quite smugly I might add, that's a three hour and some change bit of journeying you're about to undertake. Let me just tell you that Google maps doesn't take into account the giant tear in space time that exists in the northeast because NYC to Rhode Island took us seven fucking hours! Ok, maybe it was the several trips to Best Buy outside of New Have in search of a car charger for my iPhone. Of course the busted car we were riding in didn't even have working 12 volt plugs. I digress. Once we made it to Providence I was halfway considering hanging up the keys for the night. Over coffee we kind of decided to just throw caution to the wind and just push on through to Cape Cod, that and the fact that we were in Providence during graduation week and all the hotels were booked. On the way out of town I remembered a little hot dog place Steph had mentioned called Olnyville NY System. Late or not we were had to go, and it was probably the best diversion ever! The restaurant was an old-timey diner and at the counter were several salt of the Earth type men with sweet New England accents talking the talk of the working man. We ordered a couple of "hot wieners" as they call them,  and we were treated to some awesomeness. You get the dogs one way and one way only. $1.80 buys you a steamed bun, a delicious dog with mustard, celery salt, onions and wiener sauce which is basically a seasoned hamburger based sauce spread on top. Nice! We made it up to Province Town at the tip of Cape Cod at around midnight and opted to stay in a little seaside motel, as if there are other kinds. As we were driving around the little streets I managed to decide that it was perfectly acceptable to drive down a one way street and of course I got pulled over for it. The next day we headed on to Boston. We ended up getting a hotel in a pretty awesome location, Back bay. The best was getting Steph up to Salem to visit the Witch Museum. I had been there when I was a kid and I thought it was awesome. Sadly, as a jaded grown up it was just ridiculously silly, but I still loved it. Boston is a great city, where people talk with funny accents.

Speaking of funny accents. We also just went to Minneapolis for my cousin's wedding. Minneapolis is where my family is from and a city where I spent a lot of time as a kid. It made me super happy to show Steph around the city. The wedding took place at my grandparents lakeshore house an hour south of Minneapolis. I spent so much time there as a kid and it holds some of my fondest memories. Anyway, it was an awesome feeling being able to share all that with her. Roll film!

Day 2 NYC

It's raining. I'm hungry. So much to eat.


Wherever you go, there you are

NYC day 1

Dinner at Momofuku noodle bar (it was epic) and random east village wanderings.


Wherever you go, there you are

And we're off

In just about nine hours from now Steph and I will be embarking on an adventure to New York, Boston and several points in between. We ended up getting free tickets from United Airlines because they're one of the most horrible airlines on the planet. What a bunch of horrible fuck ups they are. But, due to their lack of professionalism and near bankruptcy we're going to NYC on their dime. We've basically planned about fifty restaurants to try and the rest we'll leave up to chance. Anyway, more to come.

New Look Coming soon.

I've been living with defaults for too long. So I'm working on a new version of "ye olde blog." It will be up as soon as I figure out what I want to do with it.

Spice Odyssey: Exploring the Burning Tongues of Saturn.: Lack of Spice in mah life.

Spice Odyssey: Exploring the Burning Tongues of Saturn.: Lack of Spice in mah life.

Kung Fu tacos!!!!!

Alex and I are at the gallery printing up some crazy tshirts. I quickly realized I am indeed a tad peckish. What's a boy to do? Kung Fu tacos that's what! Candy Bar, which is an entirely other story I may want to tell, hosts a parking spot for the amazingly well branded Kung Fu taco truck. I've been dying to try these guys food since I first found out about it. Not but a block away from where we print sits an awesome looking yellow food truck with the words Kung Fu tacos emblazoned in red across the side in an uber vintage 70s Kung Fu movie font. For $5 I landed an Asian Asada taco and Wu Shu pork taco. I was holding out for duck but it was not to be this night as it must be uber popular. The steak was well marinated and tender And served with a house made salsa. The pork ruled! It was glazed and accompanied by mango salsa. Holy shit those are epic fusion tacos! Now im back at the studio washing them down with my favorite French beer, Kronenbourg and listening to Dosh on Lastfm.com. Anyway


Check them out at kungfutacos.com

Wherever you go, there you are

Location:Divisadero St,San Francisco,United States

Belly full

I just roasted off a ridiculously delicious pork belly. I've been marinating if for about two days now. It's absolute perfection. Could the skin be anyorr crackly?I don't think so. To my veg-tastic friends, ok this post can be easily skipped but just know it's basically akin to perfectly roasted root veggies. They're uber delicious when done properly. It's kind of like that.


Wherever you go, there you are

Spice Odyssey: Exploring the Burning Tongues of Saturn.: Curry for Sure-y? OMG that's a bad pun.

Spice Odyssey: Exploring the Burning Tongues of Saturn.: Curry for Sure-y? OMG that's a bad pun.

Big Tuts!

Yesterday Steph and I finally went to the King Tutankhamun exhibit at the De Young museum in Golden Gate Park. Next weekend is the last weekend but it's been here since Sept. and we're usually kind of busy on weekends so whatevs it took us awhile get there. But it was almost not to be. On Saturday we went to the museum and realized we needed to buy tickets in advance. I've been to enough museums to know that this is how it goes, but I thought that maybe, just maybe everyone who was going to see it had already been to see it and we'd somehow get in easily. Nope! I bought tickets for yesterday for the tour that was to start between 2:30 and 3 and we left pretty much on time and should have made it. That is until we discovered the parking garage was closed! WTF! Parking in G.G. Park is nearly impossible on a weekend and we drove around for about a half an hour. I was becoming mildly dejected as our scheduled tour time was well in the past. I hated the thought of wasting 65 non-refundable dollars like that not to mention getting to see some pretty badass Egyptian artifacts. Magically we found a parking spot. Even though the situation wasn't 100% our fault I was kind of worried they wouldn't honor the tickets. Steph had sense of optimism and she did all the talking. Not only did they let us in, they moved us ahead of the tour group that was waiting to go through the exhibit. We ended up getting VIP treatment for being late. Go figure. Anyway I thought it was a pretty awesome exhibit. It was a little crowded and tough to read about each item as I am wont to do. I find it uber amazing that by the time this guy came to power the Pyramids were already 1000 years old. I also find it interesting that he was such a relatively minor king as far as Egyptian kings go and yet we are so fascinated by him. It makes me wonder what things that we consider mundane or ordinary in our lifetime will be revered and studied thousands of years from now. I like to think about the possibility of my belongings ending up in a museum in some country that as yet does not exist where the people speak a dialect or language that hasn't been developed yet a few thousand years from now. I hope they find my sweet mix tape collection intact along with the rubber pastries on canvas that I did.

Shameless

I recently got turned on to a British Drama-dy called Shameless and I have to say it's pretty good. It's about a poor Manchester family of six kids (they call the boys lads), a town drunk for a father and an absentee mother. The kids are all of various ages and all have quite different personalities. Each episode I've seen invloves some kind of trouble that daily life seems to bring for each of the characters. The reasons I like this show only highlight the difference between U.S. and British Network TV. I must say the Brits do way better with less. The BBC doesn't have anywhere near the budget that American TV networks have and yet they seem to be able to produce a better quaitly show. Using Shameless as an example, the Brits keep it fairly real. There are really no beautiful people on this show. These are regular looking peeps playing characters who have a rough life. In the U.S. there's be no way they'd allow such a thing to occur. The leads would always be uber attractive people and therefore less believable. Even the supporting actors would be good looking. Secondly the amount of shit they allow on British TV is amazing. This show in the US would only be able to be seen on HBO. They get to say "fuck" if they want to, get drunk, show some boobs, have sex , smoke weed, deal with being gay etc. Basically everything that would make a show about "people" and the things that real people do seem believeable. I guess that's really only two points, but to me they're significant points. I really don't watch much U.S. network TV outside of Lost so I have no idea of what's even on these days, but I do know that until the execs at the Networks quit trying to apply chastity belts to our eyes and ears here in the states and try investing in some quality shows more and more people will turn to HBo etc. for their TV fix. Anyway, Shameless is a good show and a total departure for me because I normally crave the pure British comedies. I reccomend you put it in your Netflix queue.

Spice Odyssey: Exploring the Burning Tongues of Saturn.: Oh, Repost!!!!

Spice Odyssey: Exploring the Burning Tongues of Saturn.: Oh, Repost!!!!

The new phone book's here! The new phone book's here!

I have lot's of T shirts. They rarely fit me in a way I find pleasing. They will either be too big, small, or the worst of all too long! Does this mean I am missing part of my torso? WTF? But, I do love good design and branding as it helps me to know what I really want to do with my own line. Anyway, I found this bad ass shirt on Rumplo which is basically my favorite Tshirt blog/ resource in the whole world. "One day that will be my shirt up there!" But I digress. I bought it, and it is even more badass in realife. The print is uber clean and super detailed. It's grey, which to me makes a good base for other colors to lay on. It's got a picture of France on it which is a very cool thing to do because I like France a great deal. Also, it has a picture of a riot and a quote about some tyranical shit which totally jives with my love for Dystopian stories. The branding was subtle and well done, just a hang tag with a pinback button. And the company is located in the UK which makes me feel extra international. Oh yeah, the company is called Origin 68.

Soup er

I love it when a plan comes together. So says Col. Hannibal Smith (U.S. Army Retired). He meant it in the context of escaping from the ever encircling snare of the single-minded and proud Col. Decker. Talk about out foxing the fox. This catch-phrase was also used to note a successful "mission" which usually involved building some crazy shit in a barn, and also applying armor plating to that "shit" as well as installing peep holes through that armor plating so that they could shoot at other shit that was trying to shoot at them. Also, shooting at shit and the people involved with that shit and being able to stop them from further wrongdoing yet not killing or even seriously injuring those people is actually pretty amazing.

That brings me to my very similar use of that same catch-phrase. Our cheese night on Sunday left me with some interesting leftover ingredients and last night on my way home I hatched a plan to use them all in one quick dish if possible. Chief among the leftovers were Portabella mushrooms. I also had stock and heavy cream. Soup!!!! Here's my recipe:

Ingredients:
Portabella Mushrooms
Porcini Mushrooms (dried)
Heavy Cream
Chicken Stock
Pancetta
Garlic
Onion
Thyme
Salt & Pepper
Hungarian Paprika
Olive Oil

Method:

Soak dried Porcini in warm water. (reserve the leftover water)

In a large pot, fry Pancetta and remove when finished and chop. Keep 1/4 fat in the pot.
reduce heat add garlic and onions and olive oil.
add chopped Portabellas, and remove Porcini from water and saute.
add salt & pepper and thyme.
When mushrooms are sauteed add chicken stock and the reserved water from the Porcini.
Add paprika, and chopped Pancetta and simmer.

Once you've had it on a nice simmer for about 10 minutes, it's time to add the cream. One note here, only use cream or maybe whole milk because dairy with a lower fat content will curdle and your soup will be yucky.
Also you need to temper the soup by adding the cream in small amounts at first. Once the cream has started to mix evenly you can add the rest.

You should then let this mixture simmer for another few minutes, and you should absolutely taste it, and season as needed, remembering of course that as it cooks down the taste will get more concentrated.

Once you have full seasoned and very hot soup you now have a few options. If you like mushroom soup on the rustic side, that is to say chunky, then by all means serve it right away. If you like it in a more refined manner then I'd use a hand blender if you have one or you can ladle it into a blender or food processor. What evs. Just blend until it's smooth in texture.

To serve I usually top with fresh parsley and if you so desire you could top with a bit of olive oil. I actually had some extra Gorgonzola sauce on hand that I'd made so I used that.

Anyway it was tasty.

Weekend of worry, wonderment, and Triple Cream

This past week involved a certain level of stress and concern for my fledgling foray in screen printing shirts for other peeps. Alex and I got a commission to print up some shirts for one of the local street food celebs, Brian of the Magic Curry Cart, and he needed them absolutely no later than Saturday. Of course I said we'd do it, regardless if we were actually ready to do it or not. Since relocating to our new shop we hadn't actually printed anything. All of our screens are basically fucked up and we're going to end up having them redone. This was not cool considering we only had a few days to get ready to print. Oh, and did I mention that we were going to be using a new exposure unit so we'd really be winging it as far as burn times? No? Cause we did. Basically all this boiled down to a possibly very awkward phone call to Brian having to admit that we suck. At some point during the week I had this genius idea to call up another screen printer to see if they had more efficient cleaning methods and if they could possibly rescue some of our screens. I called a shop that I think is pretty cool. They're called Free Gold Watch and they're pretty cool peeps. Unfortunately, they couldn't get the screens clean, which would substantiate my assertion that the screens are in fact fucked up. But, Free Gold Watch came to the rescue and agreed to sell me two pre-coated screens. Also Steph came to my rescue because she schlepped it all the way to the upper Haight to drop off my screens and pick up the new ones. Having pre-coated screens totally made our lives much simpler for the fact that we didn't have to coat screens. Sweet! Flash forward to Thursday night, twenty four hours to go time. My use of the word "flash" in the last sentence was a bit of unintentional foreshadowing as we now had to fire up the light table and expose the new screens. With fingers crossed, we forded a river of 300 souls attending a reception at the gallery in order to take a leap of faith. Faith in our completely arbitrary calculation of four minutes and fifteen seconds of burn time. Mind you, if we got this wrong our new screens would be useless and we'd have to re-coat them. We seriously didn't have the time to deal with that shit. Suffice it to say we were damn near money with our timing as the screens came out perfectly and we were ready to print the next day. On Friday night we bought a brand new tub of gooey yellow plastisol ink and got down to business. Oh yeah one last thing, Brian gave me an order for t shirts which I fulfilled to a T which meant there was no margin for error in printing. Just ask Steph about our margin for error when we printed her shirts. Anyway, we nailed it and dude was pretty fucking impressed if I do say so myself. It looks like we'll be getting some more orders from the food cart peeps. In a round about way my culinary studies are paying off.

On Sunday it was Oscar night. Normally I'm not into awards shows, but Steph loves them. She likes to keep up on her pop culture. However, this night we chose to coincide the Oscars with our oft-postponed Cheese night. As I said previously I am a member of the cheese of the month club. On hand we had  St. Andre, Port Salut, Gorgonzola, Blue, a nice Gouda, an English Cheddar, and the piece de resistance a triple cream raw milk cheese, which was said to taste of the pasture. I also whipped up a Gorgonzola sauce and a cherry and sweet onion chutney to make uber-grilled cheese sandwiches. We invited a few friends and proceeded to have an enjoyable Oscar night. I predicted Precious would dominate, but I was blind sided by Hurt Locker which I conceded made perfect sense. As a dude I prefer a movie about blowing shit up to a movie about a girl carrying her dads seed. But, that's just me. Oh yeah, curiously enough we completely forgot to document the party in a photographic sense. I think I'd attribute that to the fact that we were having a pretty good time.

I approve this message

I just came across this Brit-Tshirt company and it just so happens that I think they're pretty clever. The idea of printing up tshirts with movie titles, poster art, logos etc. is kind of tired to me. Of course I say this after having bought a totally sweet 16 Candles shirt which is essentially a print of the poster or as I learned the "one sheet" in industry speak. But I digress, these peeps are creating their own branded logo designs based on a movie. It's actually pretty cool and uber nerdy in most cases. I feel like these guys must be corporate graphic designers. The designs look very clean and also any of them could actually be used for corporate branding purposes.

Behold "Jack Burton. Me!":

I'll give whoever something if they can guess what movie without looking.

New toy

Today at my job they gave me a little gift because I've been there for like, ever. Anyway i got to pick out my own gift which is a pretty sweet deal beacuse it means you don't end up getting something horrible, like a gold plated watch. What did I pick? Awwwww yeahhh! I got me a Holga twin lens reflex camera. It's pretty fucking sweet! I can't wait to get down to business. Also on an up note I received my second shipment from my cheese of the month club. I'll be going into depth about that later but just so you know this time around I got a nice looking port salut, an English chedder, and a St. Andre triple creme. God dammit!


Wherever you go, there you are

Started me up another blog. Yep

So I started another blog solely for the purpose of establishing a sounding board for ideas for stories and screenplays and perhaps some kind of grand collaborative project. I figured peeps could leave me comments with notes, edits, ideas and perhaps even add their own words etc. I called it the Sea Monkey Book Club, for no good reason other than I don't think Sea Monkeys are given enough literary credit. Anyway I don't really plan to send out announments when I post something becasue that would be silly. But if peeps happen to stop by, and perhaps if they want to be added so that they can post too it as part of the above mentioned collaborative effort then by all means that's awesome. I'd really love to get a screen play, besides my A-Team homage, rolling. I have this idea for one that I started working on and now I can't find it on my laptop which means I'll have to start again. But in the meantime, I told Steph I'd start working on the "novel in a month" thing back in November. Yeah, I'm still working on that. I mostly do it when I'm on the train to and from my job where I work. Anyway. Have at it. SEA MONKEY BOOK CLUB

The Chronicles Cheese

As I promised myself, once it arrived I'd set about posting about my super awesome B-day gift from Steph. The other day was that day. The first installment included a Camembert, a Blue and a Gorgonzola. Also the kit included a guide to each cheese that highlights the history of the cheese, a bio about the maker and a pairing chart. Needless to say I love it!

As to the cheese themselves, a solid starter kit with some well known and much loved varieties. I must tell you this is Artisan cheese and not that sub par shit they pass off as cheese at the grocery store. I do wish though that the USDA would quit persecuting raw unpasteurized milk products. That's cheese the way nature intended. If it's good enough for Euro peeps then it's good enough for me. Stay the fuck up out mah enzymes and beneficial bacteria!

Welcome to cheese country, where the flavor begins.

Mini project.

Steph's besty Manda is about 4 years younger than I am and she grew up very differently and she was into very different things when she was a teenager. A bit of back story. Sometime around 7th grade I accepted the reality that I was a goofy, nerdy, awkward kid who was never going to be one of the popular kids and I was never going to be tallest or strongest kid in school. There is only one thing for kid like that to do. Latch on to a counter culture that puts at odds with all those big, strong, athletic and popular kids. My poison at the time was a keen interest in Goth-i-ness. But we didn't call it that. We called it "progressive" instead. But the idea was similar, a bunch of kids wearing predominately black, crazy non athletic shoes like Doc Martins and listening to Depeche Mode. It was a fun time for me, very liberating. My parents had other ideas, they hated this look. They always wanted a son who cultivated the Brooks Brothers look. This encouraged me even more to want to be weird. Also, we lived in a very middle class suburb and that's a recipe for some disillusionment right there. I was lucky enough to pal around with some kids who had much older siblings, High School kids, or grown ups as far as we were concerned who were able to kind of let us know what the cool older kids were into as far as fashion and music. By 8th grade I was sneaking into clubs on the weekends with my friends. We'd rock eye liner etc. My parents knew none of this. I wasn't a trouble maker so it wasn't like they were always watching me. Plus cell phones and the internets etc didn't exist so there was no tracking my whereabouts. Needless to say they would not approve. I have to say as an older person, I'm, not 100% sure I'd be cool with my 14 year old kid running around with 16 and 17 years olds at some club either. But like I said I wasn't a trouble maker so it was really harmless fun.

My point is that music was so imporant to me then. Listening to bands like The Cure, The Smiths, The Clash, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, Love and Rockets, Depeche Mode, New Order, Joy Division, Echo and the Bunnymen etc. gave you an identity. I still love those classic bands to this day. In fact my first concert was The Cure in 1989. It was epic! Anyway, to paint a picture of the pop music scene of the time let's start by saying the obvious. There were no MP3s to download. You had to go very special record stores in order to look for "imports" as these bands were often filed under (To my knowledge the term Alternative wasn't used yet) if you wanted to find good music. Records you'd heard about were often sold out or they just didn't have them. Mix tpaes became very popular due to this. Also, as far as popular music was concerned. MTV still played videos, but they mostly were still playing hair metal bands at the time and Bell Biv DeVoe-ish things. We had 120 Minutes on MTV which played two hours of very cool videos late Saturday nights. I watched quite religiously. Anyway, radio was a dead medium if you liked what I considered good music. It was all "Top 40" as we called it. It wasn't until Nirvanna in 91-92 that good bands were brought into the mainstream.

Now, as I've said Manda is four years younger, so by the time she was a teenager things were a bit different but the music that she identifies with and loves from her era were the Bell Biv DeVoe's and Boyz 2 Men style bands. She knows all the songs and they mean a lot to her. Basically our experience as teenagers were very different. Recently she was asking me about that time in my life. So I've decided my mini project is to make her the ultimate Mix CD of all my favs from the time. Maybe she'll hate it, I don't know? I don't think I could ever listen to a Boyz 2 Men track in fairness. So if she likes it then cool.

Pee Wee Herman live!

This past weekend Steph and I headed down to L.A. for a little R and R and Pee Wee Herman. That's right we had tickets to see Pee Wee Herman live. We both used to really enjoy the movies as well as the show, especially the HBO version. I really didn't know what to expect considering Paul Rubens is like 50 years old now and the show could end up just being a very sad attempt to resurrect a very likable but dated character. Instead we were treated to a very nostalgic happenstance. The set looked amazing and all the original characters were on hand even the original Miss Yvonne. Best of all Pee Wee looked he did 25 years ago. I was amazed, and we both had oodles of big time fun. (SCREAMING AND RUCKUS!!!!) Oh yeah, fun was the secret word and I totally didn't plan that because it would have been pretty lame.

Also on our trip, we ate as per usual. We had Canters deli because I insist upon their Reuben sandwich every time we visit. Some other fixtures that we end up at in L.A. are places like Swingers which is a pretty cool late night diner near Beverly Hills. We also make sure to go to Milk for dessert and coffee. I can't not have their blue velvet cake. It's fucking ridiculous yo! But the piece de la resistance was Parks BBQ in Korea town. Holy Fuck Parks hit it out of the proverbial park! Seriously, it was delicious! We had Kobe beef and all the trimmings. My favorite thing at Korean restaurants are usually the little dried anchovies but I didn't get any at Parks, but I'm not complaining because like I said it was epic. And lastly we met up with a couple of our regular L.A. homies, Trume(sic) and Michelle at a place called Father's Office where they serve some tasty eats and have a totally bananas beer selection.

Another reason we headed down was to see the He Man homage at Gallery 1988 on Melrose. It was awesome, and again totally nostalgic. It took me back to like second grade when He Man truly was the Master of the Universe. At least in my world he was. I'm sure Steph would think a a pound puppy and my little pony exhibit would be equally as epic.

As to the pics. They are a mish mash and I make no apologies. But There are a couple where Steph and I are totally gorging ourselves on junk food. Yeah that was when we went to see Youth in Revolt. We just didn't realize how gluttonous we looked until we saw it on film. You know your with a good person for you when you can let your hot dog self shine through. Also in the pics is the store front for Peoples Revolution which is on Melrose. We saw it by accident and it will only mean something to you if you're really into watching The Hills, which we are.

Spice Odyssey: Exploring the Burning Tongues of Saturn.: Planetary Soul Fud

Spice Odyssey: Exploring the Burning Tongues of Saturn.: Planetary Soul Fud

Bdays must cease!

Seriously, yesterday was my bday and for real, please, make them stop! This was the bday to end all bdays. Turning 35 is no joke. But getting older is made much easier with the help of a lovely lady. Steph totally surprised me with the most awesome gift tonight. She gave the gift that lasts, a 6 month ride on the cheese of the month club autobahn! Rad! I will toally be upping my cheese game over the next 6 months. Perhaps I'll have to keep a running post when each shippment arrives? She's a cool girl, that Steph.


Wherever you go, there you are

Location:Indiana St,San Francisco,United States

Sex From Success!

Awwwwww yeah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What is the type of metal used to denote sales of exactly two out of four albums? Because that's the sales milestone Anand and Romy and I have hit today by selling an EP to person who doesn't even know us in Hawaii. And I quote:



"Just a little note letting you know who bought your music on http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/2amm...acromantics today.

Break out the champagne!



1CD(s): Two A.M. with Macromantics / "Let it Out"

CURRENT INVENTORY ON OUR SHELVES FOR THESE SALES:
Let it Out: 2"



That's right there are exactly two copies left - before they ask me to send them some more. We're brilliant! Also just so you know I have trying to sell this EP on the bottom of this blog the whole time and who ends up buying it? SOme dude in Hawaii, go figure. (Also FYI I didn't make up the title of this post. It's from Sigue Sigue Sputnik. Come on you know these guys:

Stereotype me please.

I love it when cliche becomes truth. It's usually quite amusing when a situation or a person says or does something that evokes what would normally be fodder for an episode of Sienfeld or Arrested Development. On Saturday Steph and I dined with a small group of peeps at Greens in Ft. Mason. If you're not familiar with Greens, it's San Francisco's fancy "vegetarian" restaurant. It even has the Price Fixe menu to prove it. It's a restaurant that's always booked and has a great view of the Golden Gate Bridge as well. You can also bring all of your vegetarian friends out and make them feel pampered, if for a night. We ended up in a semi-private room which to me is always awkward because the overall lack of white noise just seems to make things a little too quiet at times. This also gives rise to my question as to why loud music is not pumped into public restrooms? I digress. The best part of the night wasn't the food rather it was the waiter. He was brilliant! It was like I was watching a dude skillfully working his best Groundlings performance. A tour de force if you will. Mind you this is all in the context and framework of working in a very high end (pretentious perhaps?) "VEGETARIAN" restaurant.

He starts off by informing us that he will in fact "Be caring for us this evening." which is a super granola way to say "I'll be your server tonight." Well played, we're totally engaged now. At one point he over heard loud talk form the table about being an Oakland resident. He immediately jumped at the opportunity to enlighten the table with his knowledge of all the wine bars et al that are popping up all over Piedmont St. Ah, namedropping. Wonderful! Of note Steph and I live in San Francisco and we rarely if ever cross the bridge so any goings on in Oakland are completely over our heads. He seemed very disappointed to find out that two fifths of his table had no idea what he was talking about. When talking in depth about one of the newest businesses opening on the block it allowed him to segue quickly into his metal working studio and how he had been commissioned to do the "metalwork." Wonderful! Did I mention that one of our party is Vegan? No? Well he found out and quickly let her know that he in fact has been Vegan for nearly ten years and would happily "guide" her through the menu. Lucky Girl. And I think my favorite quote of the night that almost caused me to rise from my chair in applause was his response to a mention of the uber haughty Raw restaurant called Millennium. "OH, yes that's Eric So and So a very good friend of mine. We've foraged for mushrooms together!" Seriously, that's genius! In my best creative moments I would have never thought of that line.

As to the food, it was okay I suppose, not $50 for four courses great, except the Butterscotch Pot de Creme which was delicious. But it wasn't the food it was the impromptu entertainment that made it all worth it.

Also included with this post are two pictures that have absolutely no relevance to the post in any way as they are snaps from Xmas featuring yours truly and Steph and our dog Bibi. The only thing I can say that could possibly make any sense in including it is that all of us are in fact NOT vegetarians. Isn't that interesting?