2046

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Someday, I will attend Cannes. This year would have been a good year since 2046, Wong Kar-Wai's next film, long-anticipated but always out of reach, finally opens to the world.
I love so many movies, but it's difficult to imagine myself jotting up a top twenty favorite movies list without Wong Kar-Wai's Chungking Express on it.
Old Boy and Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence also walk the Cannes red carpet this year. Fortunately, Old Boy will arrive on DVD next week for those of us without a handhold on the cinematic upper crust.








Lark

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Steve and I don't eat out often, but he's a foodie, so when we do eat out, it's an event. Most of the meal is spent discussing cooking, great meals past, dining experiences memorable for both the good and bad, and mysterious combinationf of flavors that have burrowed their way into our memories. Within me lies the soul of a reluctant foodie. Reluctant not because of the pleasure of fine dining, but the cost. But every so often, the monster emerges from its cage, usually because Christina or Steve has lured it out.
Steve and I converged on Lark tonight. It's the latest venture of former Earth and Ocean chef Johnathan Sundstrom.
We had both hear similar stories about Lark. A treat for the taste buds, but not a great value. I had tried to dine here twice previously but been turned off by the long wait: they don't accept reservations for groups of six or fewer, a policy I think they should change. It's one policy that often turns me off of the next new hot restaurant, and Lark fit the bill. It had permeated the Pacific Northwest food zeitgeist. I was in for a half hour wait tonight, but when Steve arrived a table opened sooner than expected.
The menu is arranged in the following order: cheeses ($4 for one, $11 for three), vegetables/grains, charcuterie, seafood, and meat. We'd both heard the cheese proportions were so small as to be non-existent, so we passed, despite being cheese fanatics. From the vegetable menu we chose four dishes: (1) the sugar peas and pea vines, (2) artichoke heart soup, (3) morel mushrooms with garlic, olive oil, and sea salt, and (4) pommes de terre robuchon Robuchon (Jo

Like toppling dominoes or Mouse Trap, but not: The Cog

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Karen forwarded this to me, and it's just one of those things you pass along (Flash required). The original is here.
Supposedly it took 606 takes, six million dollars, 3 months, and, most importantly, just one second of computer generation to link the two halves when an exhaust pipe rolls across the floor, to complete this short. Who knows whether or not it's true, but it does make all the difference in this day and age in how much it impresses you.
For a station wagon!?

Pacific Northwest James Beard award winners

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In the 2004 James Beard awards, two Seattle chefs were nominated in the category Best Chef: Northwest/Hawaii: Scott Carsberg of Lampreia and Eric Tanaka of Dahlia Lounge.
Eric Tanaka won the, uhh, Beardie. It's been a while since I've eaten at Dahlia Lounge. I guess Tom Douglas is just a figurehead. I ate once at Lampreia. Spectacular meal, but PRICEY.
Leslie Mackie of Macrina Bakery & Cafe was nominated for All-Clad Bakeware Outstanding Pastry Chef Award. Her work I haven't tried, and that must be corrected soon.
I've been trying to hit all the restaurants I haven't tried in Seattle in an effort to complete the list before I head out of town. Last Friday I dined at La Carta de Oaxaca (tasty and cheap, but very crowded and slow on weekends when no reservations are accepted; go during the week), yesterday Kate treated me to Kaspar's (thumbs up, but how do they stay in business as everyone I've spoken to who has eaten there has sat alone, and we were no exception), and tonight I'm headed to Lark (Johnathan Sundstrom's latest venture).

Swallowtail Butterfly

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My 50+ mile bike ride today left me tuckered out. I wasn't expecting to finish Swallowtail Butterfly when I popped it into the DVD player about three hours ago, but I had to at least make a dent in it since it was already long overdue back to Scarecrow.
What unfolded was like one of those scenes in the movies, where someone has been auditioning candidates for lead singer for his band all day and hasn't found anyone remotely suitable. As he's about to pack up, bored, discouraged, one last candidate bursts in the door looking disheveled, harried. He says auditions are closed, but she begs.
Just one song, mister, please.
Alright, fine, he says. You can sing while I pack up. He doesn't expect much.
He begins packing, not even looking her way. She composes herself, closes her eyes, takes a few deep breaths, and then opens her mouth to sing.
And suddenly he stops and looks up, in awe of the talent he's witnessing. He realizes he's found her.
That's how I felt watching Shunji Iwai's Swallowtail Butterfly. With every passing minute, more awed and delighted. A few times I burst out laughing, sitting there by myself in the basement. It woke me up and kept me riveted for over two hours, and the next thing I knew it was three in the morning.
Iwai's movies are difficult to describe. I recently watched All About Lily Chou-Chou, also brilliant, and haven't quite found the words to put it in perspective. Of the two, Swallowtail Butterfly has a more coherent narrative. Still, you can summarize the plot of Pulp Fiction, or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, or City of God, but it only goes so far in capturing the dazzle.
Swallowtail Butterfly follows the fates of several Yentowners, or immigrants who have come to Japan to try and make their fortunes. I'm not sure if the period in question is based on history, but it doesn't matter much. Most of these immigrants live in shantytowns around the edge of some Japanese city. One of these immigrants, a young girl, is left on her own after her mother dies. Her mother's fellow hookers grab her mother's money and dump the young girl off in another part of town where she's passed around from one prostitute to another until one, named Glico, takes pity on her and adopts her, dubbing her Ageha.
Glico is nicknamed the madonna of Yentown, beloved by many for her beauty, generous heart, and singing voice. She has a group of ragged friends who run a dilapidated auto repair shack outside town in the countryside.
One day, one of Glico's customers gets frisky with her and Ageha. Her friend and bodyguard, a former boxer, rushes in and rescues her, but in the process knocks the customer out the second story window onto the street below. The whole gang carries the body into the woods to dispose of it, but as they do so, they discover a mysterious cassette tape inside the man, behind his liver. The song on the tape? Frank Sinatra's "My Way." But that's not all that's on the tape.
From there, the plot explodes outward in a spiral, gathering together disparate plot threads and winding them together in a Chihuly-shaped story. As with movies like Pulp Fiction and Magnolia, odd coincidences provide surprising moments of both serendipity and misfortune.
Iwai has the gift of some of the Tarantino-Scorsese set to merge all types of music with moving pictures in seamless, resonant mixes. Real-life pop singer Chara, of an actual band named the Yentown band, plays Glico, and she's a revelation as an actor, flaunting her coy sexuality and voice to seduce all around her. The camera can't stop seeking her out. Hiroshi Mikami (as Fei Hong), Yosuke Eguchi (as Ryou Ryanki), and Mickey Curtis (as a friendly back street doctor and tattoo artist) also impress.
Iwai favors handheld shots with either natural or extremely artificial lighting. Much of the footage resembles video, and Iwai allows bright lights in otherwise dark environments to bloom across the screen as in an impressionist painting. It isn't empty stylistic preening--Iwai wants a loose, kinetic energy to govern his movies, and the handheld footage and excessive lighting effects reinforce that. The violence that does occur in his movies is of the cartoonish type in Tarantino's movies, evoking unlikely humor.
How do you catch this movie? If you're in Seattle, you can rent it from Scarecrow. I have to return it tomorrow. If you're elsewhere and don't have a video store like Scarecrow near you (that's just about everyone), you can rent it online from Nicheflix or purchase it from YesAsia. Perhaps Tarantino will use his powers to convince Miramax to distribute it here in the U.S. just as directors like he and Scorsese and Coppola have done with undiscovered foreign gems in years past.

Surreal

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I went out for a ride around Lake Washington today. Somewhere around the southeast side of the Lake, the bike trail runs down along the west side of Highway 405. The highway is about twenty or thirty feet above the trail, and a grassy hill slopes down from the highway wall to the trail. To the other side of the trail is a chain link fence.
Both ends of the trail are blocked by short cement pillars that let walkers and cyclists through and keep cars out. So it was with some surprise that as I turned a corner, an old red sports car was sitting in the path, sideways, blocking the route. I stopped and stared like an idiot, my brain still on screen saver from the thirty odd miles it had ridden as a passenger.
Only after a few seconds did I realize that the car had crashed through the barrier to the side of the highway, rolled down the grassy hill, and crashed into the chain link fence. The car looked surprisingly good; the hood was just slightly ajar, as if the car was trying to whisper something in its stupor.
And a few seconds later, I heard a voice from the other side of the car (I was facing the passenger door of the car). I went around the trunk of the car through the grass and saw a man kneeling over a woman who was lying on the path, her face bloody. She had hit her face on the steering wheel and was bleeding from a cut in her upper lip. After the crash, she had crawled out of the car and collapsed on the ground.
Someone had already called 911 and was standing up above on the highway to mark the spot of the accident for the paramedics. Bikers riding the trail began accumulating at the site of the accident. The driver lay very still, in a bit of shock, and she kept asking how bad her face looked. Everyone reassured the woman that she was fine. Someone grabbed a fleece from her car and folded it to place under her head as a cushion. Her car, an old Nissan, didn't have airbags or she probably would have gotten off scratch-free. As it was, fortunately the grass slowed her car's descent, and the give in the chain link fence cushioned the blow.
I left after the paramedics arrived, so I have no idea what caused her to fly off the highway. I have no idea how they got the car off the path, either, if they have at all. If I had arrived at that point in the trail just a few minutes earlier, I might have seen a car come flying down from the sky to crash into the fence in front of me, or even worse, been driven into the fence by a three thousand pound car. It was one of the few times this season I've been glad to be so out of shape and slow on the bike.

KG

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Exciting if sloppy game between the T-Wolves and Kings today, and despite blowing a 14-point lead with only four minutes to play, the Wolves pulled out the win at Arco Arena for a 2-1 series lead.
Of all the teams remaining in the NBA playoffs, my sympathies lie with the T-Wolves, primarily because of KG. He's a Chicago boy, and I saw him play once when he was still at Farragut Academy H.S. It was an early round game in the state playoffs, and Garnett was a man among boys, despite only being a boy himself. I was home with a broken leg after graduating college, and here was this kid who was about my age, nearly 7 feet tall, running the court like a guard on skates. He had 32 points, 13 boards, 5 blocks: it was awe-inspiring. How Farragut lost in the quarterfinals in their next game I'll never know because Garnett had Mr. Hop Ronnie Fields as a teammate as well. I believe Fields once pulled a Vince Carter and leapt over an opposing player for a dunk in a high school game.
The Wolves also have Stanford alum Mark "Mad Dog" Madsen whom I've met once before a Stanford hoops game. One of the nicer athletes I've ever met, and like KG, a hustler, though KG has about ten times the skill level.
KG had never even won an NBA playoff series until last year, so I'm rooting for him to go all the way. The Wolves will be underdogs in every series in the West, but that should reduce the external pressures.


Review of AllofMP3.com

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I finally gave AllofMP3 a test run this past weekend while down in L.A. AllofMP3 is a new online music service based out of Russia but offering an option to view its site in English (albeit with a few humorous translations).
It took a few hours before I could get through--the site claimed to be down for technical upgrades. When I did, I was prompted to sign up for a V.I.P account before I could begin purchasing music. That simply means loading a payment account with funds to minimize AllofMP3's transaction costs. What you purchase is bandwidth for downloading the songs at the rate of $10 per 1 GB in increments of $10, $15, $25, or $50 for 1GB to 5GB.
A music service based out of Russia? A bit dodgy, but they offered PayPal as a payment option so I chose that in order to keep my credit card number out of their hands. After loading up $15 and 1.5 GB, I browsed the music catalog (they also offer a music video and Russian music catalog).
The selection is not great, but it includes just enough interesting titles to offer at least 1 GB of appealing music. Once you select a song you want, you need to select what format you want to download it in. You can also choose to have it encoded straight from the source CD which costs slightly more. The mind-boggling array of formats offered, including those that aren't locked by DRM restrictions, is one of the primary breakthroughs of the service. Formats offered include:

  • MP3 in both Lame and Blade codecs, constant and variable bit-rates (CBR and VBR), from 128 kbps to 320 kbps

  • Windows Media Audio (WMA) 7 or 8 or 9, 128 kbps to 320 kbps, CBR One-Pass or Two-Pass or Quality-Based or Bit-Rate-Based VBR

  • OGG Vorbis files in CBR from 128 kbps to 320 kbps or Quality-Cased CBR from Q3 through Q10

  • MPEG-4 AAC in CBR from 128 to 320 kbps or VBR in 4 different quality levels

  • MusePack MPC files in five different quality levels

Select albums are also available for download in lossless formats, including the original wave files for those simply wishing to download an entire CD.
Once you've bought the songs, you can find links to download them in your download section. Here's where the music purchasing experience using a web browser pales in comparison to using client software like iTunes. You have to right click on each song and select Save As and select a folder to drop the file in. AllofMP3 offers some client software for purchasing music but I wasn't able to try it as it only works with Windows.
Another annoyance is that once you've downloaded the song, it disappears from your download area. Since you're paying for download bandwidth, why not just leave the songs you've purchased in that section but mark them as previously downloaded?
Most of the downloads were available immediately after I purchased the, though a few took a few days before they were ready. If their lawyers can withstand the inevitable legal siege, AllofMP3 needs to go out and buy one of every CD in existence and rip them in every possible format, starting from the most popular albums and formats and working back.
The music? Plays great. I typically have rock encoded at 160 kbps and classical music at 192 kbps, and at those rates, the cost per song is phenomenally low.
My primary question is how they get away with this legally. Not that I'm complaining, but I am curious. In their FAQ, one of the question is just that: is it legal to download music from AllofMP3? The reply:
All the materials in the MediaServices projects are available for distribution through Internet according to license # LS-3?-03-79 of the Russian Multimedia and Internet Society. Under the license terms, MediaServices pays license fees for all the materials subject to the Law of the Russian Federation "On Copyright and Related Rights". All the materials are available solely for personal use and must not be used for further distribution, resale or broadcasting.

Oh, of course. The Russian Multimedia and Internet Society. Russian translators are being hired left and right by the labels to try and decipher that license.
CONCLUSION: AllofMP3 won't cause me to throw away iTunes, but its two primary trump cards--ridiculously low prices and the ability to select any format you want to encrypt the song in--overshadow its warts, of which the largest is its meager selection. We're talking about prices 10X to 20X cheaper than Apple iTunes Music Store. Let's see if they can avoid being sued out of existence by the labels. If so, they should pour some kerosene on the fire.

What the surf brought in

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Curvy rap video babes gain a following - Melyssa, Gloria, and Ki Toy
Jessica Simpson's new line of erotic and edible beauty products, as reported in the NYTimes - but no tuna flavored body cream. Oh, the mock customer reviews are a'comin. Take some strawberries, top them with a bit of this whipped body cream, and finish with a few spritzes of this hair and body mist for a refreshing summer treat.
No one rouses the rabble like Michael Moore - he's even better at that nowadays than he is at making documentaries.
Another victim of the low-carb craze: Krispy Kreme lowers earnings expectations for the year and its stock gets hammered - the only thing Krispy Kreme is helping people to slim down these days is their stock portfolios.
Smart people vote Democrat - hmmm, is this good or bad news for the Democrats? UPDATE: Hold that thought.
BMW owners have the most sex, Porsche owners the least - maybe b/c there's no backseat in a Porsche? Wow, the BMW motto, "sheer driving pleasure," takes on a whole new meaning.

Review: Step Into Liquid

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Dana Brown's documentary Step Into Liquid is most riveting when the camera is below, on top of, inside, or behind the water following ridiculous surfgods like Laird Hamilton. It's not nearly as compelling when it turns the surfers into talking heads. Let's face it: Kelly Slater is a long way from Robert McNamara in The Fog of War. But then again, McNamara wouldn't look that good in a bikini.
When surfers speak of their sport, it always comes out as pseudo-mystical mumbo jumbo. But when a surfer disappears into the tube of a 60 foot wave and then emerges with just a second to spare as tons of water comes crashing down like the fingers of Neptune, and it's all captured on video by a camera at water level peering into the tube? Well, no talking is necessary to convey the stoke. And hell, they're already tan and good-looking and fit. If they were articulate as well, I'd probably kill myself. Thankfully, Dana Brown also depicts some surfers that don't look like Laird Hamilton, including a couple of yahoos from Wisconsin, the message being that surfing unites the world in a merry go round of love, connecting us to nature in the purest way.

The real eye-opener, to me, was the foil board. Laird and other surfing revolutionaries attached a foil to the bottom of a board, strapped themselves on as if snowboarding, and invented a board that elevates the boarder up above the water. I had never seen this before and it blew my mind. I can't even surf normally and already I want to try foilboarding or hydrofoilboarding or whatever they call it. It's so new it doesn't have an established name yet.


Friends finale

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I haven't watched Friends in years, so I wasn't sure if I'd emotionally connect with the finale. Gavin and Sheila hosted a finale party, though, and even though I don't have an office job anymore I still feel the need to be armed for water cooler conversation.
Turns out I hadn't missed much. The characters are still exactly the same, ten years later. Oh sure, some have gotten married, some have kids, etc., but the only thing preventing the show from running along forever were the movie ambitions of a few of the actors and the unpleasant effects of aging.
The first two years of Friends came out just as I was finishing college and entering the real world and thus it appealed to me in a firsthand way (even though I had a job that should have paid me more than all of them yet they lived in a palatial apartment in New York). After those years, it was never must-see TV for me. Its humor never cut too deep, and thus I can barely remember any memorable episodes. Compare that to Seinfeld or The Simpsons, from which I could cite a dozen references or episodes off the top of my head.
Still, Friends was like comfort food. On an open Thursday night, it was pleasant to the taste and familiar and reassuring in the fairy-tale manner of all great sitcoms. Fortunately, for fans, in a year or two all the seasons will have come out on DVD (not to mention syndication) where the six of them will live on forever. It will be as if the show was never canceled.
Now if I can just figure out how to get into their rent control program in Manhattan...


Butter your butt

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According to LanceArmstrong.com, the brand of chamois butter Lance (newly proclaimed best male athlete in the world) was using but refused to name in episode one of The Lance Chronicles was Assos Chamois Creme.
At $17 to $18, it's pricey. However, for long rides, some type of chamois creme is indispensable. Not just for comfort, but to prevent saddles sores. I've never had a saddle sore, I think, but the name of the condition is frightening enough. Cold sore, canker sore, saddle sore...the only word more horrific in the medical lexicon might be boil. Saddle boil. Ooh.
Still, chamois creme, or butter, if you prefer, iss no substitute for conditioning one's derriere that's more effective than a lot of miles on the bike. Or perhaps one should just wet oneself?

Sorkin still working

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Aaron Sorkin lives. He's writing and producing The Farnsworth Invention, a movie about the battle between Philo Farnsworth and Vladimir Zworykin to claim credit for the invention of a little something called the television. Sorkin's pal Thomas Schlamme will co-produce and direct.
I'm not sure, but I'm guessing both Farnsworth and Zworykin will talk very quickly and argue while walking through long corridors.

Spider cents (and dollars)

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Seems that most of the media is up in arms over MLB's decision to strike a marketing deal with Columbia Pictures to promote Spider-Man 2 with logos on bases and on-deck circles. Even Ralph Nader is decrying this travesty against the sacred field of play of America's pastime (I guess his campaign isn't occupying too much of his time).
Very strange, this outcry. First of all, none of the fans will be able to see these logos on the bases unless the entire base is painted. The only fans with an angle to see the top of the bases will be in the upper deck, and they'll be too far away to make out the logo.
Second, baseball and all sports are already overrun with advertising. At Safeco Field the entire scoreboard is surrounded by ads. Every piece of scoreboard entertainment, even the scoreboard itself, is sponsored. Stadiums are named after corporations. Stadium giveaways are always sponsored. The manager signals to the bullpen for a reliever? That's sponsored. Bowl games are no longer referred to by their non-corporate nicknames alone (e.g. Nokia Sugar Bowl). On television, pre-game shows, graphics, and regular features such as trivia questions are all sponsored.
Frankly, I'm surprised they don't place ads above urinals so I have something to look at while I pee ("This pee brought to you by Budweiser, literally").

Air

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I saw Air in concert last Thursday. It was the first concert I've been to (other than classical music) where I looked around and thought: I can beat up every dude in this auditorium, including the two guys on stage (JB Dunckel and Nicolas Godin).
By chance, I scored the best tickets of my life in the pre-sale and ended up in the 2nd row, near the center of the main floor. It provided a mostly unobstructed view of Air except when some zealous fans rushed to the stage during the encores to bop awkwardly to the difficult-to-dance-to ethereal tunes. Air wasn't bad live, but their music isn't the type that's flattered by live performance. Electronic in nature, it plays better coming out of the CD player. Much of the concert was programmed and consisted of the two of them hitting a few keys or strumming a few chords while all sorts of computers played pre-programmed loops.
If the rumors about Quentin and Sofia are true, will Air score one of Quentin's upcoming movies? Now that would be artistic dissonance of a very high order.