Categories
food reviews san francisco

Check, Please / Behind the music (and wine)

I always meant to write about my close encounter with pub­lic tele­vi­sion fame — the only kind that's worth pur­su­ing, if you ask me — but some­how I got way­laid by sum­mer­time, its var­i­ous par­ties and good ol times. But I've got a sec, so I should just spill it before the good times take hold again.

Check Please - Sitting at the tableTime spent comb­ing hair: zero min­utes. Time spent iron­ing shirt: zero min­utes. Num­ber of heart attacks my mom would have if she saw this: count­less.


Check, Please! Bay Area is a restau­rant review show on our local pub­lic tele­vi­sion sta­tion, KQED Chan­nel 9 (what!). On each show, three Bay Area res­i­dents sit around a table and dis­cuss their thoughts and feel­ings about three local restau­rants. At the begin­ning of the process, each per­son gets to choose a favorite1 restau­rant; then, each par­tic­i­pant goes to all three restau­rants; THEN, every­one assem­bles at KQED stu­dios to dis­cuss them in front real TV cameras.

So, yeah, it all started back in June.

Mara and I were at Pauline's Piz­za, eat­ing din­ner with some friends when we saw Leslie Sbroc­co, the host of Check Please. We're Check Please super­fans, so we couldn't resist the urge to approach Leslie and creep her out with our exten­sive knowl­edge of the show. Lat­er, Leslie and her din­ing com­pan­ion (who turned out the be the pro­duc­er) stopped by our table and asked us to apply to be on the show. Some­how, I was the one who applied, even though Mara would have been 10 times bet­ter. Some­how, I was accept­ed, for rea­sons that are still unclear to me.As I men­tioned in the foot­note, I chose a taco truck as my favorite restau­rant, and this was a slight — SLIGHT — depar­ture from those cho­sen by my cohorts — a fan­cy Noe Val­ley bistro, and a clas­sic Finan­cial Dis­trict steak­house. There­fore, my entire prepa­ra­tion for the show involve craft­ing argu­ments about why they need­ed to give the taco truck anoth­er try. "The ecol­o­gy of taque­rias is rich and diverse," I would instruct them; "each one has its own spe­cial­ty, a thing it does bet­ter than all oth­ers, and it takes time to ful­ly explore this rich­ness." (Any­way, you can read more of this BS in my review on KQED's website).Turns out, my cohorts loved the taco truck. I was speech­less, real­ly. I had noth­ing pro­duc­tive to say to peo­ple who agreed with me. It could have been the wine. (IT'S REAL, by the way). And I drank too much of it, too much for a non-wine drinker, too much for 11am on a week­day (when we taped it), too much to gen­er­ate extem­po­ra­ne­ous bon mots wor­thy of PUBLIC TV. If you're curi­ous about what the blo­gos­phere had to say about my taco truck rec­om­men­da­tion, you need only get a load of this review from a guy named Ely, also from KQED's site: 

Dont eat from El Tonayense, I had a beef bur­ri­to that made me sick! The meat was too oily and mix in with fat­ty fat peices. The bur­ri­to was tiny and the ingri­di­ents had lit­tle favor.

My bad.1 Check Please kin­da repeat­ed­ly implies that each restau­rant reviewed is the "favorite" restau­rant of the per­son who sug­gest­ed it. I chose a taco truck.

Categories
ixd tech

Cooper Journal / My new blog friend

Oh gosh, hel­lo again. I stepped away for a sec­ond, and the next thing I knew a month had passed. Any­way, I'd like to take this oppor­tu­ni­ty to intro­duce the Inter­netz to the Coop­er Jour­nal, a blog that we're pub­lish­ing at work. Launch­ing it was part of the rea­son why there's been some radio silence, shall we say, but I'm plan­ning on get­ting back in the swing soonsville. Any­way, check it out:

Welcome to the Cooper JournalYep, that's me on the couch.


Categories
basketball

This guy must be someone.

Crazy NBA Finals guy


The guy on the left, in the black hat; the one who looks like he just stepped out of a Coen Broth­ers movie. He was on the floor dur­ing every game of the NBA Finals. Who the heck is he? Any­way, you got­ta give him cred­it for break­ing the mold with regard to Finals attire: The braid­ed-leather-cow­boy-hat-and-ban­dan­na-around-the-neck com­bo was unex­pect­ed­ly effec­tive at get­ting him noticed, by every­one in my liv­ing room at least. (I hope all you stars in your brand-new Lak­ers hats were tak­ing notes.)

Categories
basketball ideas

Ideas / NBA Season Ticket, the trash-talk edition

I've got the killer app for the NBA tele­vi­sion-view­ing expe­ri­ence, some­thing that will melt faces around the world and pro­vide the league with yet anoth­er license to print mon­ey. (Props to Justin and Zidane who sparked this idea last night as we watched Game 3.)You could call it: NBA 360, or the Court­side Pack­age, or the Real NBA Court­side 360 Pack­age or what­ev­er, but the con­cept is sim­ple … Arrange some micro­phones around/above the court, and cre­ate a pay TV ser­vice that allows fans to hear the trash talk that accom­pa­nies every game. Even bet­ter: You could elim­i­nate the announc­ers, and go au naturel: Game trash talk sound­track, noth­ing more.

Kobe Bryant & Kevin Garnett exchange pleasantries
"I feel so mis­un­der­stood, KG. Some­times I just wish the fans could know the real Kobe." [Pho­to: Stephen Dunn]

David Stern will nev­er go for it, you say? You may be right — today — but Stern is a prod­uct man­ag­er at heart. His recent crack­downs may seem moral in nature, but they're real­ly efforts to main­tain the integri­ty of the cur­rent NBA brand. Of course, cer­tain brands con­tin­u­al­ly change, and some brands are forced to change. (Gen­er­al Motors can't con­tin­ue to be known pri­mar­i­ly the mak­ers of Sub­ur­bans and Hum­mers for­ev­er, for instance). Some­time soon, I expect that Stern will do what all good PMs do: Evolve his prod­uct and brand to respond to the market. 

Why a trash-talk channel, then?

Well, my guess is that peo­ple har­bor few­er and few­er illu­sions about what's hap­pen­ing on the court. It obvi­ous­ly ain't Sun­day School, as much as the NBA wants you to believe it is. Also, even the slight­est peek at the trash talk is fas­ci­nat­ing. The one and only time I sat close to court­side — in Toron­to, 2003, end of the sea­son, against the Hor­nets — I heard Baron Davis and Rafer Alston go at it for a few sec­onds near the side­line and I was stunned: It was deeply per­son­al, and pro­found­ly enter­tain­ing. (It's also unre­peat­able on a fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed blog like this). Curt Schilling sat court­side dur­ing Game 2 of the Finals, and he also was strange­ly com­pelled by the trash talk:

… About 43 times last night I heard things being said that would have made me swing at some­one. These guys talk MAJOR trash on the floor, and the great part is that most of the times I've seen it the guy on the receiv­ing end usu­al­ly doesn't respond much, if at all, and just plays the game, school­ing the guy who feels like he needs to talk to make his game better.

For exam­ple:

Last night KG goes to the line, Lamar Odom (who I became a fan of last night) is say­ing "Hey KG why don't you help on the ball down here?†Point­ing to the paint, and I am guess­ing he's ref­er­enc­ing the fact that KG wasn't down in the paint mix­ing it up. He says it again, loud­ly, KG doesn't even acknowl­edge him, and sinks both. Impres­sive, total focus.

For the record, I was ask­ing KG the same ques­tion from the pri­va­cy of my liv­ing room.

Anyway, on a philosophical note

For the last 10 or so years, the NBA has been in a sort of con­flict­ed ado­les­cence. Stern makes extreme efforts to man­age an out­ward appear­ance of nor­mal­i­ty, but this bare­ly masks the tur­bu­lence beneath the sur­face. He cre­at­ed a dress code, and he enforces strict poli­cies on com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the media. Mean­while, every­one asso­ci­at­ed with the league — fans, play­ers, coach­es, etc — knows that this is all win­dow-dress­ing, and dat­ed win­dow-dress­ing at that. There is a deeply com­pelling game with­in a game going on; why not pro­duc­tize it? There are per­son­al­i­ties, feuds, vil­lains, heroes, and so on — why not bring them out, and cre­ate a ser­vice that peo­ple will pay for in the process?

Categories
inside art photo visual

RFK funeral train / A breaking up

Paul Fusco - So-long Bobby

The New York Times recent­ly ran some pho­tos that were tak­en from the train car­ry­ing Bob­by Kennedy's body between Wash­ing­ton to New York. The pho­tos them­selves are amaz­ing doc­u­ments of a nation in mourn­ing, peo­ple from all walks of life lin­ing the tracks, hold­ing signs, salut­ing or just watch­ing, but they're also beau­ti­ful — sat­u­rat­ed and blurred, cre­at­ing the sen­sa­tion that things are mov­ing too fast, that some­thing is irre­sistibly bar­rel­ing on. The pho­tog­ra­ph­er, Paul Fus­co, nar­rates a slideshow on the New York Times site, and it's well worth a view­ing. He's nice­ly describes the expe­ri­ence around the pho­tos, and pro­vides some insight into the mechan­ics (Kodachrome film, of course). He also men­tions that he hadn't planned on tak­ing pic­tures while on the train; he was sim­ply trav­el­ing along with the cof­fin to take pho­tos at the funeral. 

The first thing I saw were hun­dreds of peo­ple on the plat­form … For­tu­nate­ly, I just react­ed. My instinct was: There's some­thing going on, pho­to­graph it … [The train] was a mov­ing plat­form. I couldn't change my view. I couldn't change my per­spec­tive. I had to just … grab it, when I could.

Paul Fusco - Family salutes"Every­one was there. Amer­i­ca came out to mourn." Pho­tos: Paul Fusco/Magnum Photos

Fus­co has a show that's cur­rent­ly at Danziger Project in New York, and a book com­ing out in the fall, too. Looks nice.

Categories
photo visual

Dismissed as chance / Chip Kidd's New York Times

Chip Kidd - NYT - God

Chica­go. A man is about to get on a rou­tine flight. Sud­den­ly he paus­es and decides to walk away. He doesn't know why. An hour lat­er the plane goes down in flames. It's dis­missed as chance … Britain. A woman has an image of a black moun­tain that's mov­ing, with chil­dren under­neath it. Two hours lat­er, a Welsh school­house is buried in an avalanche of coal slag. It's dis­missed as coin­ci­dence.1 New York. A book design­er named Chip Kidd begins to read his New York Times. On the cov­er is a pho­to of new Russ­ian Pres­i­dent Dmit­ry Medvedev, a sus­pect­ed pup­pet of for­mer pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin. The pho­to has been torn across Medvedev's mid­sec­tion to reveal a word: Trick­ery. It's dis­missed as some­thing that could only hap­pen to a famous book design­er who has been known to use this sort of graph­ic ele­ment. But real­ly, was it all in his mind, or was it much more than that? You decide.
1 If you were a TV-watch­er in the 80's, you prob­a­bly saw a com­mer­cial for the Time-Life books com­mer­cial for a series called Mys­ter­ies of the Unknown. This was my favorite: "The Mid­west. A moth­er feels a sharp pain in her right hand. Far away at that exact same moment, her daugh­ter screams as she touch­es a hot pan. Just chance?" Check it out, for old times sake [YouTube].

Categories
ixd music web

Muxtape / Non-interface interface excellence

Mux­tape has blown up — just a mat­ter of time, I guess — but I hope this doesn't mean that they'll add a bunch of "fea­tures" to it. It's basi­cal­ly two things — the home­page where you pick a mix, and the play­er where you lis­ten — and it doesn't need much more. Real­ly! Please! 

Muxtape - home

Part one of two: The home page. It's where the "nav­i­ga­tion" is. There's no key­word search, no "cat­e­gories." Just you, the name of each mix like a stick­er on a cas­sette tape, and the sense of root­ing around in a cryp­tic vir­tu­al shoe­box, pop­ping a mix in, lis­ten­ing for a lit­tle while, strik­ing gold, or not, and mov­ing on. It's a real­ly love­ly and evoca­tive of the sim­pler, more mys­te­ri­ous times.

Muxtape - play

Part two of two: The "play­er." It's genius. No "friends" or "peo­ple who are also lis­ten­ing to this" or "mes­sag­ing" or "you may also like." Just the songs, links to buy them, and an indi­ca­tion of which track is playing.For the record, I don't think it needs much else. What­ev­er hap­pens, I real­ly hope this stuff is NOT added:

  • Search. Please, no search. Of course search would make it eas­i­er to find mix­es that "match" your key­words, but who wants that? Well, I did, at first, but after I poked around I real­ized that I was hav­ing way more fun explor­ing, let­ting go of the way that I nor­mal­ly explore. We need more non-key­word-ori­ent­ed ways of explor­ing! Seri­ous­ly! It's way more fun to roll the dice than to look for what you think that you want, and it's some­how more appro­pri­ate to music
  • Any kind of "pro­file-gen­er­at­ing." The mad­ness must be stopped some­where, some­time. A way to con­nect with mix-mak­ers would be nice, but no names, birth­days, pic­tures, blogs, or any of that.
  • Any kind of more "pre­dictable" home­page. Please. Just show the ran­dom stuff. Let peo­ple start here. It's scary and frus­trat­ing and annoy­ing at first, but it becomes fun, mag­i­cal. Per­fect! Done!
Categories
reviews tip

Essential information / Mixing drinks, tying knots, arguing

I like to tell myself that I don't read stuff like this, but Esquire's got a pret­ty excel­lent list of "75 skills every man should mas­ter".

Leif Parsons - Jump the cue ball
33. Hit a jump shot in pool. It's not some­thing you use a lot, but when you hit a jump shot, it marks you as a play­er and briefly impress­es women. Make the angle of your cue steep­er, aim for the bot­tom­most frac­tion of the ball, and dri­ve the cue smooth­ly six inch­es past the con­tact point, mak­ing steady, down­ward con­tact with the felt. Illus­tra­tion: Leif Par­sons.


There are some good, less pre­dictable skills: 5. Name a book that mat­ters; 21. Argue with a Euro­pean with­out get­ting xeno­pho­bic or insult­ing soc­cer; 52. Step into a job no one wants to do.And then there are the pre­dictable things:

Drink­ing-relat­ed stuff: 17. Make one drink, in large batch­es, very well; 24. Know his poi­son, with­out stand­ing there, pon­der­ing like a dope; 32. Describe a glass of wine in one sen­tence with­out using the terms nut­ty, fruity, oaky, fin­ish, or kick.Outdoors-related stuff: 14. Chop down a tree; 26. Cast a fish­ing rod with­out shriek­ing or sigh­ing or oth­er­wise admit­ting defeat; 51. Build a camp­fire; 55. Point to the north at any time; 68. Find his way out of the woods if lost; 69. Tie a knot; 74. Know some birds.Sports-related stuff: 4. Score a base­ball game; 11. Swim three dif­fer­ent strokes; 65–67. Throw a base­ball over-hand with some snap. Throw a foot­ball with a tight spi­ral. Shoot a 12-foot jump shot reliably.

Social context?

I would think that Esquire has made lists like this in the past, and if so I think it would be inter­est­ing to com­pare lists across time. For instance, there's noth­ing explic­it­ly sports-knowl­edge-relat­ed or steak-knowl­edge-relat­ed — "Have a favorite team," "Know the dif­fer­ence between a New York Strip and a T‑Bone" or some­thing like that — all of which seem like they'd be require­ments in the past. It would also be inter­est­ing to know if lists like this are recent devel­op­ments. Would the Esquire mag­a­zine of Nor­man Mailer's era craft a list like this? Prob­a­bly not, actu­al­ly. Or, if they did craft lists, they'd be one-item lists: "1. F*** lists."Via Buz­zFeed.

Categories
basketball

The NBA / Where accountability happens

Mark Cuban is not afraid to talk about the block­buster trade that wasn't …

[Don­nie Nel­son, Avery John­son and I] went back and forth about whether or not we should trade Devin [Har­ris]. We knew he was a good point guard, with the poten­tial to be amaz­ing. What we didn't know was how long that would take. On one hand, we didn't have enough con­fi­dence in him to let him call his own plays, but on the oth­er, he is a one man fast break, his shoot­ing was improv­ing by the minute, he is a good defend­er and his poten­tial was unde­ni­able. In Jason Kidd, we felt we would get a play­er that would make it eas­i­er for Dirk, Josh, Jet to get open shots. That Avery would no longer have to scream to push the ball, that JK was the best in the busi­ness at push­ing the ball in the open court. Plus, our rebound­ing had suf­fered this year vs last, JKidd is a great rebound­er and the press­es that had caused us prob­lems, would no longer be a problem.

I buy that. For all of Devin Harris's virtues, he's still one of those guys who has very obvi­ous lim­i­ta­tions — nev­er going to be a good rebound­er, effec­tive at get­ting in pass­ing lanes but nev­er going to be a great defend­er, only going to get slow­er, didn't seem to be pro­gress­ing in a bas­ket­ball smarts sense (i.e., need­ing to con­stant­ly be remind­ed to push the ball upcourt). I didn't think it was a bad trade, real­ly, but I love that Cuban goes on to talk through his ratio­nale in what appears to be an open and hon­est way …

It wasn't an easy call. Between AJ, Don­nie and I, we would change our minds by the minute. I don't think there is any doubt that the pres­sure and close­ness of the West­ern Con­fer­ence race had some­thing to do with our deci­sion mak­ing process. In my mind, this sea­son was becom­ing anal­o­gous to the most ago­niz­ing sea­son I had been through, the 04–05 sea­son. We were hav­ing the same home vs road record delta, mul­ti­ple play­ers ask­ing to be trad­ed and even more inter­nal ten­sion about our lack of con­sis­tent per­for­mance than we had in 04–05.

Speak­ing of that "inter­nal ten­sion," Cuban goes on to dis­cuss anoth­er ele­phant in the Mavs' room …

I also know what I learned from Nash leav­ing. As great an offen­sive coach as Nel­lie is, Nash wasn't play­ing at MVP lev­els with us. A change of scenery and coach­es and sys­tem, some pay­back moti­va­tion and he became a very, very deserv­ing 2 time MVP.

Aside from the implied (or inad­ver­tent?) dig at Nellie's "fail­ure" to get the best out of Nash, this approach makes a lot of sense to me. There are obvi­ous pre­cur­sors to it, in addi­tion to Nash's renais­sance in Phoenix — Web­ber to Sacra­men­to (much younger than Kidd, of course), Shaq to Mia­mi (a lit­tle younger than Kidd), maybe Barkley to the Suns and Wal­ton to the Celtics (dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tions, but sim­i­lar­ly pos­i­tive effects). Any­way, whether any of this is accu­rate, true, or what­ev­er, I appre­ci­ate that Mark Cuban is say­ing it. He clear­ly feels account­able to the fans, and he's leav­ing it all on the court in a PR sense.

Categories
flickr photo visual web

Flickr / Okay, I take it all back.

Sorry I missed your party

See, I crit­i­cize Flickr, and then this thing comes along to demon­strate once and for all its inher­ent good­ness. No Flickr stylez or post-pro­cess­ing nec­es­sary. Via Sor­ry I Missed Your Par­ty and Buz­zFeed.