is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Miscellany: Funk, Fluevog, Los Angeles, Bad Service, Hideous Men.
When I�m in the SF Bay Area, I always hear lots of great old funk on the radio. But that just does not happen in the PHL. But yesterday, driving home from Conshohocken, I happened upon a radio station here in Philly that played two George Clinton songs in a row, followed by Digital Underground. OMG. It made my day. In fact, I am having the kind of a week where I think perhaps the finding of this radio station counts as having made my week.
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Last night Gus and I watched that film that John Krasinksi made of David Foster Wallace�s book Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. I don�t think he succeeded in making a good film� which is not to say that it isn�t worth watching, or that it was a waste of time. If you�ve read the book then, like me, you probably have a hard time imagining how it could be a movie. So there�s that hurdle. He does make something of it, and some of the choices he makes are interesting. I also admire him for, of all the projects he could have chosen to take on, deciding he really really wanted to make a film that uncovers how much misogyny one might find everywhere if one just took a second to look. The film has some good moments. It also has a really interesting and widely varied cast, including Krasinski, Julianne Nicholson from Law and Order: Criminal Intent, Will Arnett from Arrested Development, Will Forte from SNL, Ben Gibbard from Death Cab for Cutie/The Postal Service, Christopher Meloni from Law and Order: SVU, Clarke Peters (Lester from The Wire!), an so on. And every single one of them gets to play a terrible terrible dude who has very little idea that he is terrible. (And apparently that�s everyone�s favorite acting challenge: playing some monstrous character. It�s funny how you don�t really find that desire in too many professions: today I want to pretend to be someone who turns my stomach!, etc.) It was also great to hear some of Wallace's phrases in movie form... I am going to miss his writing.
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Gus and I were in Los Angeles for a few days, because he had to attend the MLA conference to interview job candidates. I hung out in the glorious pool/sauna/Jacuzzi area of the Biltmore hotel, visited with lots of old friends (Camille! Alex! Matt! Todd! Lisa! Wendy! David!), and got some work done. While I was hanging out with Alex he told me a story about how he bought some Fluevogs for his wife for her birthday, and while he was at the Fluevog store on Melrose in LA, he mentioned that he had a friend who had been a Vogunteer, and that is when he learned what it means to be a Fluevog enthusiast. All the workers in the store were all: �OMG, you know NOVEMBER?! We have been obsessing over her collection, because it is so eccentric! We can�t tell if she is from the east coast or the west coast, because she has limited editions from EVERYWHERE. Awesome!� and etc. Ha. Yes, I have known how to shop for the rarer of the Fluevogs for awhile now, it is true. It is harder now that I do not live in a city that has a Fluevog store. But, well, you�ve seen my shoe collection. I�ll live. I explained to Alex: people who like Fluevogs REALLY LIKE FLUEVOGS in a way that is what you might call obsessive.
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The Biltmore is what I would call fading glory� beautiful art deco lobby and public areas, rooms in need of some upgrading. But that pool made it all worthwhile, even despite the constant failure of the internet in the hotel rooms. If you stay there, keep in mind that the rooms vary dramatically. We rejected the first two rooms they put us in and were really glad we did, because the third room was So Much Better. Larger, more windows, better layout, nice reading chair. So of course I had to sit down and email my friend Patrick right away because he had recently, at a dinner in New York (one of those New York City examples of what Kierkegaard called executive irony, where the people involved might not know they are involved in an irony but anyone watching from above would: I paid $78 for a meal at a restaurant called PEASANT), told me that when he goes to a nice hotel he often says to the clerk: �I�m really tired, and you probably are too, so why don�t you just put me in the third room you would show me.� Ha! Really. Of course, he is considerably more fancy than I am (here he is in the New York Times), in terms of what he does for a living, where and how often he travels, and how much money he makes. But I had to tell him that I had not realized that he is the sensei when it comes to hotels. Go for the third room. Speaking of service�.
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A couple of weeks ago in San Francisco Liz and I inadvertently proved that there IS such a thing as a free meal. We went to a new restaurant (Bar Agricole) that has a lot of buzz and something of an attitude, and neither is entirely earned at this point. The food was good. And the bartender was excellent. But from there it�s all downhill. At first we hadn�t considered going there because the hostess had told Leah that they were all booked through some time in January, and it was late December. But then I found a reservation on Open Table for the day Liz and I were deliberating where-to-go, so we went. They made us wait for 20 minutes for the table when we got there�fair enough, it happens. But the hostess was parked in front of a rack of coats and never asked us if she could take ours even though we were awkwardly standing there trying to hold coats and drink wine (which had been served to us by the only person I wish I could have tipped that night, the bartender. He let us taste wine without us even asking, poured us glasses, and then cheerfully moved the tab to our table when we got seated). Once we were at the table we waited for a Very Long Time to be given menus. Then it was another Very Long Time before our order was taken. Everyone around us had bread on the table. We never got any bread. It was a Very VERY Long Time before our food arrived. Mine was perfect, but Liz�s fish was cooked on top, raw on the bottom. It took a Very Long Time to get the attention of the waitress to address this issue. Once we had, she took the dish away without telling us what she would do. She didn�t say �I�ll bring you a new one� or �What can I do for you� or �I�ll give you this for free� or anything. I asked her to bring us bread and she said they were out of bread but didn�t offer to bring us something else instead even though we had been there for a Very Long Time and Liz still had no food. By the time Liz�s second dish arrived, she no longer wanted it because she had had two glasses of wine and part of my food. So she asked them to box it up. I asked for the manager, and told him the story. At first he was all, I�ll take the fish off the bill. That was fair enough, but it felt like he hadn�t really listened to me so I said again, �I just want you to understand that the food is good and mistakes in the kitchen happen but the service in every single aspect was unforgivably bad. Why couldn�t the waitress bring us an appetizer, or tell us what she would do for us, or ask Liz what she wanted her to do, or ANYTHING like that? Really?� At which point he gave us the whole dinner for free and brought us a yummy chocolate cake dessert. I felt slightly guilty, but really, only so very slightly. Because when you go to a place where you pay $13 for a glass of wine and over $20 for a small bowl of pasta, you�re paying for service. I don�t mind paying those prices. I like a nice meal out. But I am not going to pay those prices and then get treated like I�m at Applebee�s.
11:23 a.m. - January 15, 2011
Becky - 2011-01-15 22:04:23
Ugh. Bad bad-service story! This has been my annoyance, living in my small town that, over the past few years, has become a weekend destination as well as a haven for rich people to buy houses who can't afford them in Santa Barbara. Suddenly there were restaurants (run by hotshot chefs from SF and LA) with $30 entrees but not enough capable service people to create solid waitstaffs. It's a little better now, but I still experience the bad bad-service story far too often.
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js - 2011-01-16 01:52:48
yup. similar story in the rich suburbs outside of Philly. great restaurants, ponderous service.
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