Lèse Majesté

Chinese food == Linux ?

The TED conference is always a fascinating mish-mash of stuff. I've stumbled across a rather interesting presentation by NYT reporter Jennifer 8. Lee on the TED site (apparently recorded at Mondavi's TASTE3 conference, which I must learn more about). She discusses the spread of Chinese food across the U.S. and across the world, noting how vastly it has mutated but also how successful recipes or concepts spread almost virally although she doesn't use that word. Instead, she proposes that Chinese food is analogous to Linux and open software versus McDonald's Microsoft:

Norm Coleman has Bell's palsy

I'm not usually one to make light of someone's medical condition, but in Norm's case I'm willing to make an exception. You realize what this means, don't you? He can only lie out of one side of his mouth for the time being!

Foodie adventures continued

Film, theater, and art were not my only pursuits on this trip to New York. I also went looking for a number of street food vendors I've been following online for quite a while. I found a couple of them...

The Schnitzel Truck has been making news lately as one of the more assertive new players in the growing vendor wars in the city. I was able to catch them on a day they were serving veal schnitzel, and oh my, this takes street food to a whole new level. Huge slab of freshly cooked schnitzel, Austrian potato salad, and braised sauerkraut. I took it a couple blocks to Madison Square Park where I sat out on a lovely day and ate my lunch in the park. Had to fight off some very aggressive squirrels who were determined to share it. This gentleman was sharing my bench. Note the furball who is about to jump on his shoulder to try to get to his food:

 

Another truck I've been trying to find and finally tracked down was Street Sweets. I found them a couple blocks from MoMA after I went to the museum's members' preview of the new Monet Water Lilies exhibit. They had just finished baking a most delicious treat. It was a sandwich cookie made with two flattened coconut macaroons, filled with Nutella. Oh. My. Gawd.

The one vendor I was still unable to meet up with was the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck. What a concept. Can you imagine the reaction it would get just about anywhere else in the country? ("Think of the children!") You gotta love a guy who offers free ice cream to anyone who will come perform a particular opera song at the cart. What was the specified tune? Glitter and Be Gay from Bernstein's Candide, of course. This entry was caught on video:

The gal can sing! Can you imagine walking down the sidewalk and stumbling upon that performance? Where else in the world would that happen? I love the reactions from the passersby.

BTW, just to wander off topic a bit, this reminded me of my favorite performance of that song by the amazing Kristin Chenoweth:

Complete with Patti LuPone chewing the scenery at the beginning!

Foodie adventures in NYC

A few days ago I hopped the R train out to Bay Ridge in Brooklyn to visit Robicelli's Gourmet Market. I've been reading about the place for months, as it is becoming a legend in the New York cupcake world. Their creations are unbelievable in their creativity. I was hoping to try an Iona, an olive oil and pear cake with blue cheese icing and candied walnuts. OMFG. Unfortunately, they were out of stock.

But I had a great time nonetheless. First I had a gourmet grilled cheese sandwich. Three kinds of cheese grilled in ciabatta, with a delicious addition of Berkshire bacon inside. Matt Robicelli, who owns the place with his wife Allison, sliced the bacon off a full slab and grilled it before constructing the sandwich. As I've said before, bacon is the new black, and Matt clearly adheres to that philosophy in his cooking and baking. In fact, he memorialized it on his forearm:

 

(That photo is from the excellent blog Porkchop Express which has a detailed profile of the Robicellis and their market - go read it.)

We chatted throughout my meal and I was surprised to learn he was a St. Paul boy (with family roots in Iowa farming). His dad had been a tenor with the Minnesota Opera before moving to New York to seek out fame and fortune. Matt had been an EMT until he was injured on 9/11 while evacuating people from Tower 7, and after rehab from that he studied pastry at the French Culinary Institute. After working in a bunch of New York kitchens he and his wife decided to open the store.

Getting back to bacon...since I struck out on the Iona, I had one their best-known creations for dessert. That is the Elvis cupcake, conceived from the King's well-known love of grilled peanut butter and banana sandwiches. The Elvis is made of banana cake, peanut buttercream frosting, and crowning touch: carmelized pieces of bacon on top. Yes, it sounds strange. But oh so good. I would be in trouble if I lived anywhere near this place.

Matt spins off wild ideas for cupcakes as you talk with him. He has one in mind now for an upcoming event that I can't wait to see them accomplish. When we spoke it was just a concept, though: chicken and waffles. He isn't sure how to realize it yet. An eggy cake, since waffles are typically eggy, will probably be the start. But the rest remains to be realized.

Yet another Passing Strange post

I managed to see the Spike Lee film version on my recently ended trip to New York. See it on the big screen in a theater, that is - it's playing at the IFC Center in a run that appears to have been extended now into December.

Wow. If you have any opportunity to see it, run, don't walk. The experience is completely different from watching it on TV. The pay-per-view version currently available from Sundance is so heavily compressed, both visually and audibly, that it's like seeing an entirely different work on the big screen. Lee shot almost the entire thing in high-def video and it is crystal clear in the theater. The sound is pristine, too. I could hear and understand lyrics I was never able to make out previously in either the live stage performance on on the PPV version. Or the CD for that matter.

Even when PBS airs it, presumably in high-def, later this season I don't expect it to be as good as the cinema experience. For two reasons: first, your screen is bound to be smaller, and second, they're bound to censor a lot of the lyrics in order to be able to air it.

My previous reservations about the limiting effects of a director's perspective versus the full stage view were lessened greatly by the increased resolution and image size on the big screen as well. This is a marvelous piece of work. I really hope it gets a broader theatrical release than just this one theater so others can can enjoy the film (and the musical) in its full splendor.

Get in the Van!

Well, I experienced an extreme case of Canadian politeness tonight. I went to the movie I planned to see, an independent documentary about the farewell tour of a nerdcore band called 2 Skinnee J's. (The movie is called Get In the Van.) It's playing here and nowhere else, and only for this weekend.  Here's the trailer:

Just before the show started, the director, Karen Rebecca Black, walked up to my seat, introduced herself, shook my hand, and thanked me personally for attending. Of course that might be because I was the only paying audience member. She also introduced me to the other couple in the auditorium: the guy who wrote the animated short that would preceed her film and his companion. They left after the short, but another couple came in late who also paid for their tickets, so I wasn't alone for the whole thing. (The place had sold out the previous night for the premiere screening, incidentally.)

Black is from Vancouver, and when I talked with her for a while in the lobby afterwards, she kept emphasizing Canadian things. For instance she asked what else I was going to do while in town and when I told her the other two films I want to see she made a big deal out of one of them being Canadian. It was only when I got back to my room that I realized I was wearing a baseball cap from Victoria! Too bad I didn't know the secret Canadian handshake...

This may be the only time the film is ever seen. Being a concert film, it includes a fair number of the band's songs. They don't own the media rights to them - their former labels do. Black would have to purchase a license to the song rights to distribute the film, even if she did so on DVD herself. She estimated the cost at more than $80,000. Unless an angel shows up with the money, there's no way that's going to happen.

First thoughts on the Passing Strange film version

(I wrote this on Aug. 28th but forgot to post it. Better late than never...)

I've watched it three times in the past 24 hours since I captured it off cable video on demand. I really, really hope it's still running when I get to New York so I can see it on the big screen.

I utterly adored the show on Broadway, as you can tell from my obsessive posts about it on my blog, and I've listened to the cast recording dozens of times. So my experience of the film is undoubtedly different than the vast majority of people who will see the film in theaters or on PBS this fall. Tony Scott's review in the NYT says it vastly improved a show he only somewhat liked in the theater.

I kind of have an opposite take. Spike Lee's cinematic perspective narrows our view by looking at the performances much more closely. So you miss a good bit of stagecraft you get through a view of the entire stage and ensemble. I think that's what you said you disliked about TV or film versions of operas too. I definitely feel it here. The negative side of that is somewhat balanced by a thoughtful point of view imposed at certain points, like seeing Stew over the shoulder of Youth, observing him screw up one relationship or another. I think I'd still rather see it again on the stage. But that option isn't available, so the film is worthy record of masterful piece of musical theater.

Despite my misgivings, I found the last 20-30 minutes utterly engaging as we see Stew open up his heart to show how he failed in his adult relationship with his mother and how he regretted it. But he clearly found catharsis in writing this work, and it is demonstrated beyond all doubt in the final song during the curtain call. And the film totally captures the energy and joy I felt during that closing when I saw it. I walked out of the theater that feeling I'd been through an emotional roller coaster and could tackle anything life could throw at me. That's a heck of an accomplishment for a couple hours of rock musical.