You should have brunch at La Urbana

When La Urbana, the sleek and expensive-looking fancy Mexican restaurant was going in on Divisadero, I have to confess I was predisposed not to like it.  A, I'm kind of an asshole and not above judging places without knowing anything about them and B, it seemed like the most conspicuous symbol of the Divis Corridor's transformation from a regular SF neighborhood with a 5-and-10 store, a pretty good Thai restaurant, an agreeable neighborhood bar, an auto repair shop, and so on, into Valencia II: Son of Fleece Vest, and that kinda bummed me out. But then it was Mother's Day and that's the hardest day of the year to score a brunch res for and they had availability and one thing led to another and we brunched at La Urbana yesterday.

I am so sorry I thought those mean things about you, La Urbana.  That brunch was fucking great.

FIRST OF ALL it was Mother's Day and they were handing out free champagne.  Maybe just to Moms?  I had a Mom with me - not mine, God forbid, but the mom of my child - and she didn't want hers and they seemed cool with just giving it to me instead.  I'm not 100% sure if they'll be giving out free champagne next weekend but I guess you can ask.

One of the things on the brunch menu is tortillas and avocado.  It's an appetizer I guess and it costs $4.  ORDER THIS.  These tortillas are dreamy and tasty and soft and melt in your mouth and why have I been eating those corn-flavored discs all these years.

L-R: Kid's plate, mid-avocado destruction, Strawberry Drink, aforementioned avocado, the Ur-tortillas, few strands of Wife's hair.

Also in this picture: a shot glass with some kind of strawberry liquid that you get as an amuse bouche.  My kid held it up to me and said "THIS IS STRAWBERRY DRINK!"  She then ate an entire half of an avocado.  (She pronounces it "abogado" which means "lawyer" in Spanish and will no doubt lead to a hilarious Three's Company-style misunderstanding if she's in Mexico in the next year or so and asks for an attorney.)

I got the Frijoles Puercos - pork & beans, essentially - with a big house-made chorizo link that was fantastic and some volcanically spicy refried beans and excellent scrambled eggs sprinkled with cotija,  Also some chipotle salsa that mostly avoided because I was burning up from the beans.  Delicious.  Wife got chilaquiles but she wasn't feeling 100% and so wasn't totally into them.  They looked great, though.

One of the problems brunch enthusiasts such as myself face is that most places have the same things.  There's a benedict, that's an omelet, here's a scramble.  That's wonderful and I love all that stuff but just finding something that feels DIFFERENT is nice.

I want to go back and get the carne asada hash next time.  Jesus that sounds good.

Total bill before tip was like $46 which is pretty good for 3 people for brunch in this town.  Of course, the booze was free and so if you're normal let's say $100.

One small complaint: I know you're a sleekly modern and grown-up City Restaurant, but you could throw together a kid's menu of some kind for brunch.  We ended up ordering kid an order of scrambled eggs and it was fine but there were a LOT of kids there and it's always nice to see 3 or 4 things that are kid-sized.  Just a thought.

Who the fuck is Emirates' target demo?

If you live anywhere or have a TV or exist in the world you've seen Emirates Airlines' ubiquitous advertising, which usually features deeply contented youngish people casually enjoying a glass of probably scotch and a plate of probably lobster while seated in a plush beige airplane seat.  The ads are plastered all over the Powell BART station even as we speak.

Photo courtesy: Me. For once, I didn't steal someone else's picture.

Many, if not most, of these ads feature some kind of unimaginable Ultimate Premium First Class.  Like check out that chick on the right.  She's just getting OUT OF THE FUCKING SHOWER on the airplane.  I can't even stand up straight in an airplane bathroom and this lady's at a fucking air spa.

That's not all you get in First Class!  You get to "savor gourmet meals whenever you please" and "join the conversation in our A380 Onboard Lounge," which looks like the douchiest bar this side of Eastside West.

"You ladies come here often? WANT TO?"

LOOKS GREAT.  Who doesn't want to savor some gourmet meals and then shower off the scent of Axe body spray you'll get from standing in the same room as Chas up there?  Let's go to, say, Singapore!

Yikes!  That's a lot of money.  Singapore's a long way away, though, and you can take lots of showers.

Point is, I've never seen another airline use as their primary marketing focus a class of service that 99% of its customers will ever see.  Isn't it just setting up all us Coach Cattle for disappointment?  "Wait, where's my shower?  Can I go to the Onboard Lounge?"  "SILENCE, DONKEY PERSON.  RETAKE YOUR SEAT AND EAT YOUR FOOD PELLET QUIETLY!!!"  Seems weird.

Anyway, we're off to the less exotic destination of San Diego via a United Flying Person Crate, so see ya later.

Lyric Deconstruction: "Animal Crackers in my Soup"

Shirley Temple, 1935



Oh, look at the cute little girl singing about animal crackers in her soup!  How sweet!

WRONG.  This shit is fucking DARK.  I didn't really know any of the lyrics until I played it for my kid one day and listened.  It was like a Southern Baptist listening to her kid's Faster Pussycat album for the first time.

Animal crackers in my soup
Monkies and rabbits loop the loop,
Gosh, oh gee, but I have fun,
Swallowin' animals one by one.
In every bowl of soup I see,
Lions and tigers watching me,
I make 'em jump right thru a hoop,
Those animal crackers in my soup

Not too bad so far.  But wait, here comes the second verse:

When I get hold of the big bad wolf
I just push him under to drown
Then I bite him in a million bits
And I gobble him right down!

Holy shit, Shirley.  I'm prettty sure holding an animal underwater to drown it is felony animal cruelty.  Can't you just picture the wolf thrashing violently in the water under Shirley Temple's tiny hands, gasping for breath as the curly-haired monster forces the life from him?

When they're inside me where it's dark

I walk around like Noah's Ark

I stuff my tummy like a goop

With animal crackers in my soup!

The image of a menagerie of animals sloshing around and slowly dissolving in Shirley Temple's stomach acid is too much to bear.  I hope they all died a merciful death before she could sentence to the misery of her portable miniature ark.  Also, "goop" as a term for a kind of person must have gone out of fashion at some point in the last 80 or 90 years.  Maybe it should be "I stuff my tummy like a GOOP," but only if by "stuff my tummy" you mean "browse over a carefully curated selection of hand-grown tropical fruits and high-mountain imported quinoa."

It goes on, but more boringly.  Let's focus on the horror.  No wonder it says "Advisory - the following lyrics contain explicit language" on MetroLyrics.

I would say have a good weekend but I don't think that's possible now.

I need a ruling on this restaurant issue

SCENE: A bustling, fairly trendy restaurant in San Francisco.  The kind of place with artisanal cocktails that all have one ingredient you have no idea what it is and waitresses with full sleeves.  The Wife and I are out on one of our very very very very very very rare nights out together.  Baby Beyonce - who is now Toddler Beyonce I guess or even Kid Beyonce, because she's almost 3 and speaks in full sentences and has opinions about things - is being babysat by her great-aunt and great-uncle.

HERE'S WHAT HAPPENS: Having drinks, perusing the menu.  I pick the following option:

OK!  I definitely know what beef is.  I know what braised means.  I kinda know what kohlrabi is - some kind of cabbage thing? Hey, the Times is ON IT.  I know what lollipops and kale are, never had them together, but what the hell, I like them both so it couldn't be that bad.  I even sort of know what bagna cauda is!  It's like a vegetable sauce you dip shit in, like a less-fun fondue.  OK, let's do it.

After the obligatory deviled eggs (seriously, if you have a restaurant and you don't have a deviled egg appetizer you might as well just fucking send your address in to Eater's "Restaurants That Closed" because you are FUCKED), entrees arrive.  It looks fine!  It's a little bit of beef with some green stuff sprinkled around it.

Now, of course, like all restaurants in San Francisco of the aught-teens, it is PITCH BLACK inside and so I'm basically eating blind but I take a couple of bites and it's fine, and then suddenly I take a bite and BOOM my mouth is full of fish taste.  ACK ACK WHY IS THERE FISH ON THIS.  I didn't ask for fish and don't want fish.  And this is like really sharp fishy fish.  Ugh.  My life is ruined.

The Wife sees me convulsing and examines the dish with her superior eyesight.  "It's an anchovy," she says.  WHY GOD WHY.  Why have you cursed my otherwise satisfactory dish with the loathsome presence of anchovies, the broccoli of the sea?

THE DISPUTE: Do I say something to the waitress or not?  Something like, "Excuse me, but I think some mental deficient in the kitchen accidentally sprayed stale fish all over my otherwise edible beef" or "Excuse me, I think someone's pizza from 1975 is missing something" or "Excuse me, please get this the fuck out of my sight."  The Wife says no, so I accede to her wisdom and say nothing.

(Further research conducted IMMEDIATELY after leaving reveals that bagna cauda "is made with garlic, anchovies, olive oil, butter, and in some parts of the region cream." Which, fine, mix them in the BC if you must, but that doesn't mean drape them all over my meat like a fish blanket.)

I guess I should have said something but I'm always like who does that?  I don't want to be that guy.

Anyway, have a good weekend.

How to Make a Grilled Cheese Sandwich

Last night on Twitter a fierce battle broke out. It concerned what duty we owe to our fellow man and the nature of empathy. No, I'm shitting you, of course. What it actually had to do with was how to make a grilled cheese sandwich. If you thought ISIS was bad get a load of some of these psychopaths. We had people buttering the bread first, there was some kind of talk about cheese curds, and one freakshow kindly, albeit misinformed, citizen said to put olive oil in the pan.  I had no idea people were so fucked up.

It's cool, I can help.

Liv Tyler eating a grilled cheese.  From Mario Batali's Instagram, apparently.  I just Googled "Liv Tyler eating a grilled cheese" to find it.  

A GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICH, despite its name, is not prepared on a grill, but in a 10-12" saute pan.  There are three ingredients: bread, cheese, and butter.  Olive oil is not an ingredient.  Mayonnaise is not an ingredient. Chipotle aioli is not an ingredient.  Maybe those are ingredients in some kind of grilled sandwich, but not a grilled cheese.

BREAD.  You can use a wide variety of breads to make a grilled cheese.  The Classic GC is on white bread, and if that's your steeze, Orowheat Buttermilk White does a fine job.  Sourdough also makes an excellent GC.  Try Beckmann's California Sourdough, which is fantastic.

You can use other kinds of bread, too.  Dill rye makes a nice GC with aged swiss (as discussed below), although that is certainly a nontraditional GC.  Wheat is usually fine.  Sliced brioche is heavenly, since each slice of brioche is made with about a stick of butter anyway.

Type of bread you can't make a GC with: hot dog or hamburger buns, sandwich rolls, biscuits, croissants, those weird hard little dinner rolls, banana bread or any other fruit bread (which really aren't bread anyway but cakes but I'm wildly digressing now).

CHEESE.  God has given us many cheeses; use them.  The classics, of course, are cheddar and American, but like I said, swiss on rye is a great GC.  I think the Classic GC is American on white bread, but smoky sharp cheddar on sourdough is a [insert 100 emoji] sandwich.  Smoked gouda on almost any bread.  Don't use mozzarella.  It's too stringy and doesn't belong in a GC anyway.

BUTTER.  Use butter.  Not oil, butter.

METHOD.

Here's where shit went south online.  It appears, to my horror, that some people believe you should butter the bread, then put it in the pan.  This is an absurd waste of time that will just end up shredding the bread like wiping dog feces on onionskin.  Do people who do this just enjoy doing everything in the most difficult fashion possible?  Do you boil one penne at a time?  I guess you toast a bagel and then SMASH IT facedown into a pile of cream cheese and hope some cream cheese sticks.  Lunacy.

Let me make it easy for you.  Put a pan on a burner.  Adjust to medium-low heat.  Let it warm.  Place a pat of butter (about 1/2 tbsp) in the pan.  Enjoy it sizzling and melting.  Place your previously-assembled sandwich in the butter.  Slide it around a little for maximum coverage.  Cook for about a minute and hald, two minutes.  Lift up a corner with a spatula and look.  Is it golden brown, with a slight hint of darker crust forming around the edges?  If so, remove it from the pan.  Drop another 1/2 tbsp butter in.  When it melts (and it will be fast), put the sandwich back in, uncooked side down. Turn the heat down slightly.  Another 90 seconds to 2 minutes.  Voila.

There, was that so hard? 

The See's Candy Demystifier

Oh hey it's just post-holiday-season which means every work kitchen has an open box of See's candy leftover from some gift or sent back from some client that didn't leave a forwarding address.  What the fuck is in those, anyway?

1 - Oh good, just normal chocolate OH SHIT SOME KIND OF RASPBERRY GOO JUST SHOT OUT FUCK

2 - Literally a bar of peanuts

3 - Some kind of nougat/uinidentifiable nut thing

4 - Why is the center of this rock hard? Wait, it's pulling apart now but it's lodged in my teeth shit it's gonna pull a tooth out

5 - Dopey Clusters

6 - Just a couple of almonds with a thunk of chocolate loosely holding them together

7 - The only good one.  They move it around and put it in a different place in every box so you'll never find it again.

8 - Looks like the good one but actually has anchovy paste under a thin layer of chocolate.  GOTHA MOTHERFUCKER

9 - Hazelnut paste and broken promises

10 - What, just more chocolate inside chocolate? OK, this one is ok.

11 - They call this one El Diablo.  No one knows why.

12 - Actual maple tree sap, like with bits of bark and ants still in it and shit.

13 - You think it's another peanut bar but hidden inside is deadly fugu fish. You have 8 minutes to live, run don't walk to the nearest Japanese ER.

14 - Swirls of Hate

15 - Some kind of mint thing. It's OK.

16 - Walnuts 'N Roofing Tar

17 - Monkey foot

18 - Just some shit swept up off the factory floor and dropped into a paper sleeve

19 - Macadmia nuts on top, who the fuck knows underneath

20 - The Admiral Akbar

21 - It's a Snickers Fun Size, don't tell anyone

22 - This one's called Chocolate Suicide because Crystal killed herself the first day we made these oh God Crystal I miss you so much

23 - Chocolate so dark it makes Requiem for a Dream look like My Little Pony

24 - Now we're just fucking with you and seeing how many of these cheap-ass Payday knockoff peanut bars we can drop in here without you noticing

25 - I think this is the one made w/ hemp butter but I'm not 100% sure hang out for a while and see if Sheila in Accounting starts talking about the faces of the Buddha

The world according to kid

WARNING: Content may be construed as daddy-blogging.  Enjoy or avoid as your preference may be.

This is our kid.  She's about 2 1/2 years old now.  She's like a little person now.  I mean, she was a little person the whole time, but when they're like 6 months old they're basically just a blob you put food into and remove waste from the outside of, and now she is starting to get independent and talks in roughly complete sentences and has LOTS OF OPINIONS ABOUT THINGS.  Maybe they will interest you.  Maybe they won't.  The Wife is out of town for a while here and I'm putting these here for her benefit just as much as yours.

On Food

"This tastes like orange" (eating an orange)

"This tastes like a pouch" (eating a pouch)

(After hearing what we're having for dinner) "Oh, that sounds really delicious"

"I want juice and milk in the same cup."  (Ew, no.)

On Familial Relationships

(Apropos of nothing, to me) "I'm your daughter."

"Mama's a big daughter"

(To every other guy boarding the N Judah) "That's not my dada."

(One guy said "No it is not," with a sense of relief? Or something?)

Misc.

(After I tickled her) "You need to calm down." (Pause) "We both need to calm down."

Her: "Shit. Shit. Shit."

Me: "What are you saying?"

Her: "Shit. Shit. Shit the odor."

Me: (lightbulb going off) "Shrek?  Shrek the ogre?"

Her: "Yes. Shit the odor."

While driving the car

"I'm looking for a parking spot."

Obviously a San Franciscan.

As I alluded to on Twitter, the experience of solo parenting (day 5 of 10 today, yay) has imbued in me a newfound respect for single parents.  We're very lucky because she's a pretty easygoing kid and is usually great to be around, but still, sometimes you just want to hand them off and be like "Here, you deal with this for a while" and having someone else around makes that possible most of the time.  So hats off, single parents. 

Million Dickhead Listing SF: Tonight, on a Very Special Million Dickhead Listing

Sorry I missed last week.  It was boring.  I mean, they're all boring, but it was even more boring than usual.  You didn't miss anything.

Not like this week is The Wire or anything, but it had its moments.  Andrew, who apparently does not actually sell any houses in San Francisco itself, is off in Tiburon with some 10,000 square foot pile that is ugly as fuck on the outside but I guess someone's idea of nice inside.  The current owners are some British lady and her dead-eyed son who seems like a slightly more malevolent Tom Cruise in Risky Business.

The lad, "Louis," has agreed to be this episode's villain because I guess it looks good on an application to Dartmouth.  In a continuous quest to become more disturbing, the next time we see Louis his jaw is wired shut because he "got jumped by a couple of guys" and now he talks like a super preppy Marlon Brando in The Godfather.  Louis appears to be the Point Jerk in making this sale and is not impressed with Andrew's meager efforts.  ARE YOU A CAN-DREW OR A CAN'T-DREW.  Oh fuck I'm sorry.  To appease Yung Tyrant, Andrew has a big open house that's like Project X for old rich white people.  Caligula orders him boiled alive in a vat of cheap pinot and Axe body spray.

Tonight we will go on a Very Special Journey with Roh as he learns to respect other cultures, even if he does not agree with them.  Speaking of, through circumstances too convoluted to explain, I found myself at the Battery last night, that private club we all made fun of a couple of years ago when it opened.  It's nice enough inside and is populated entirely by people who look like Justin from this show and his clients.  Also, beers are $9 WHAT WHAT.

ANYWAY GETTING BACK TO THE MATTER AT HAND, Roh goes to meet a gay couple at their pad on Potrero Hill that's all sleek and Architectural Digest and Japanese garden and then he has a problem with them because they want to adopt a kid and Roh's not sure he can live with that until his wife explains to him that he needs to be more accepting blah blah blah the whole thing is wildly obviously staged but I guess it's all for the best if it makes some other Muslim real estate agent watching TV reconsider his internal biases.  The real question is why a gay couple wouldn't fire on the spot some asshole who told them he wasn't sure he could accept them adopting a child.  There are only like seven million real estate agents in this town and people will basically drive up and hurl bags of money at them for their pad so why even listen to this oh it's for TV never mind.

Justin is going to try and sell one of the two units in that old firehouse you see every time you go to Twin Peaks.

It's got a lot of stairs.  A ;LOT OF STAIRS PEOPLE.  This is apparently very daunting even to the young, shallow, and presumably fit, and there's lots of talk about installing an elevator like JUST WALK UP THE STAIRS FATTY YOU CAN QUIT YOUR GYM MEMBERSHIP.  To sell Stair Nightmare, Justin decides to hold a "sexy fun event" like "Cole Valley has never seen" but I'm pretty sure Cole Valley has seen a salami and cheese plate before Justin.  Oh he also gets some Chippendales dressed up like firemen to make it super fucking awkward for everyone involved.  It appears that the buyers are all about Dat Horizontal Life and don't want this Escher painting turned $3M condo.

Later, Justin shows up at Roh's open house with some guy with a Strokes haircut and they get in a big fight.  Justin and Roh, not the guy with the Strokes haircut.  His only beef is with his stylist.  I mean, I hope so.  I'm not sure what they were fighting about but it seemed real serious.  We'll find out next week.

TK's Recipe of the Week: Gnocchi with Bacon and Escarole

Pasta used to be just dump a sauce over some noodles and call it a day.  Well, fuck that.  Here's how you do pasta: some kind of pasta + some kind of meat + some kind of green + something red.  I like gemelli and Italian sausage and spinach and chopped tomatoes.  This recipe is another version of that.  It's super easy to make but looks hella fancy like from a restaurant.  

I know what you're saying.  "Is gnocchi pasta?"  I don't know, ask Quora.  Who gives a fuck.  This tastes good.

I think I originally got this recipe from Food Network or something.  I definitely stole this picture from Food Network.

Ingredients

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

2 slices thick-cut bacon, cut into 1/4-inch pieces.

1/2 onion, chopped

1 small head escarole, roughly chopped

Kosher salt and freshly ground pepper

1 17 .5-ounce package potato gnocchi

1 1/2 cups cherry tomatoes, halved

1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese (about 1 ounce)

2 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley

Heat the olive oil in a large pot or Dutch oven or something over medium-high heat. Add the bacon and cook, stirring occasionally, until browned and crisp, about 7 minutes. Add the onion and continue cooking until softened, about 2 minutes. Stir in the escarole, 1/2 teaspoon salt and a few grinds of pepper. Cook until the escarole is completely wilted, about 3 minutes.  Then stir in the tomatoes.

WHILE ALL THAT IS GOING ON, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Add the gnocchi and cook as the label directs. It usually takes like 2 minutes and gnocchi comes with its own built-in timer that works like this: when it pops up to the surface of the water, it's ready!  How cool is that? Reserve 1/2 cup cooking water, then drain the gnocchi and add to the pot with the escarole mixture. Add the reserved cooking water and stir to coat, about 1 minute. (Or you can skip the reserved cooking water thing; I usually do, and nothing bad happens.  I guess it's good if the gnocchi starts to stick together but whatever.)  Sprinkle some parsley on top.  Bask in the warm glow of a job well done.

I have seen the future of fancified fast food, and it is the McDonalds on Sutter Street

While we weren't looking, the Food Engineers at McDonalds snuck into the Union Square area and installed a new restaurant.

Did I say "new restaurant"?  Yes I did.  But that's not right.  They installed THE FUTURE. (ominous organ music)

Outside it looks like it could be any McDonalds.  INSIDE it looks like Ikea and Virgin Airlines got together and decided to serve delicious meat.

Are you tired of pointing at the #2 on a grimy plate of pictographs and grunting incomprehensibly to a Pusher Drone?  NO MORE.  Now you order directly from a snooker table-sized iPad.

I was so blown away by THE FUTURE that I forgot to take a picture of the Hot Meat Order Entry Kiosk so thanks to Yelp user "John C." for grabbing this snap for me to steal and use on my blog to make $$$$ that John C. will share no part in.

Just like checking in at the airport, there are friendly Worker Bees buzzing around the kiosks to tell you how to push every single screen and basically render the kiosks a useless piece of technology because they're holding your hand through the whole thing.  DESPITE THIS I STILL somehow ended up accidentally ordering guacamole on my Fresh 100% Angus Burger and I don't even like guacamole on Mexican food much less on my burger,  IT'S NOT A HAMBURGESAS PEOPLE IF YOU'RE NOT IN CIUDAD JUAREZ.

But oh the choices!  Forget your usual QPC slapped together off an assembly line.  I picked the ciabatta roll and the sharp cheddar and the grilled onion and NOT GUACAMOLE as I indicated before although they tried to stick me with guacamole.

Then you go and sit down and THEY BRING YOU THE FOOD.

Check this shit out.  The fries come in a little fake fryer basket!  Je t'adore! And as you can see my burger is piled high with grilled onions and also tomato WHICH I DID NOT ORDER.  There are a few kinks to work out with the Calorie Delivery Kiosks still.

I set the tomato aside.  Later, a McDonalds employee approached and asked me if there was something wrong with the tomato and I said I DON'T REALLY KNOW BUT I JUST DIDN'T WANT IT and he said "I just want to make sure every order is perfect."  WHAT THE FUCK.

The Wife got a Filet O Fish which was not special in any way.  It was just pretty much your standard off the shelf Filet O Fish.  I recommend that McDonalds get their shit together in the fish department and start frying some individual fillets and dressing up the FOF a little.

The burger was actually really good.  It was like 73% better than a normal QPC.  I will definitely go back.  You should go there today.

Modern Nursery Rhymes

Mary had an online troll
Online troll, online troll
Mary had an online troll
Who ruined her Internet

It followed her around online
Round online, round online
It followed her around online
Leaving disturbing threats

~~~~~ ** ~~~~~

Itsy bitsy spider signed up with Instacart

Down came her pay and broke the spider’s heart

Out came the lawyers who sued up and down the line

Now Itsy’s an employee, not a 1099

~~~~~ ** ~~~~~

The New Bay Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down

The New Bay Bridge is falling down

Lack of oversight!

~~~~~ ** ~~~~~

Baa baa No Vaxx Sheep, have you a disease?

Yes sir, yes sir, I have all of these:

Measles, rubella, whooping cough too 

Got a personal exemption; I don’t care about you

~~~~~ ** ~~~~~

Twinkle twinkle little bar

How I wonder where you are

Shelf of bourbon, shelf of rye

I need a drink or I’m gonna die

Twinkle twinkle little bar

Please be open, I’m not far

~~~~~ ** ~~~~~

Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man

Make me some edibles as fast as you can

Doctor said pot would cure tinnitus in my ear

But who gives a crap, it’ll be legal next year!

~~~~~ ** ~~~~~

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe

She had rent control so it was only a hundred and two

But the landlord is Ellising her so soon she’ll be out

And the landlord will charge 12 times that amount!

Anatomy of Date Night gone wrong

When you have a kid, Date Night is a big deal because you get to go out with your Life Partner and someone else is taking care of your deal and so you want everything to go right because it doesn't happen that often.

Last night, everything did not go right.

The first part of the plan was to meet up with some friends at a Restaurant That Shall Not Be Named at around 6:30.  This plan was immediately complicated by the existence of April 20, which used to just be the day in April between the 19th and 21st but somehow in the past few years became 420, a big party in Golden Gate Park near our house where a bunch of stoners stand outside and smoke pot inside of sitting in their living room and smoking pot like normal people.  As a result, thousands of brain-damaged youth get someone to cover their shift at Carl's Jr and drive their cars from Concord or Antioch or whatever into a tiny corner of the city where my house is.  A trip of about 10 blocks leaving my house and heading for the Mission took about 15 minutes.  We were going to be very late.

[Not sure why this GG Park thing started.  It didn't happen a few years ago.  I blame Facebook.]

We got to the RTSNBN a little before 7:00, so actually not that bad!  It was very crowded.  Very, very crowded, which seemed odd for a Monday.  But the waitress appeared relatively soon and we got our drink orders in by say 7:00 p.m.

The FIRST INSTANCE OF CREEPING DREAD came when the waitress disappeared for the next 30 minutes.  No drinks, no taking our orders, nothing.  HERE is where I should reveal the rest of Date Night: we were going to see Porchlight, a monthly storytelling series at Verdi Club.  As it happens, one of our friends would be performing.  To make it more interesting, he was going on first, at 8:00 p.m.!  There's no way we wouldn't be done with dinner by 8 if we arrived at a nearby restaurant at 7, right?

Right?

Drinks appeared around 7:20, brought by Someone Who Was Not Our Waitress and in fact did not seem to know the names of the drinks.  We still have not ordered food.

The SECOND INSTANCE OF CREEPING DREAD came when I managed to flag our waitress down like I was a Semaphore Flag Operator in the Navy in 1942 so we could order food.  Now, at this point, I'm thinking, "OK, 7:30, get the food by 7:45, choke it down violently like a wolf eating a dismembered rabbit, and we can still make it by 8:00."  I asked for the check as we ordered to make this impossible dream feasible.

The THIRD INSTANCE OF CREEPING DREAD came when we passed 7:40 with no sign of food, waitress, drinks, anything.  I pulled out my Flare Gun and shot a flare at the ceiling.  It bounced back onto floor and spun crazily, sparks shooting out in every direction.  The waitress somehow saw us.  "We're trying to make an 8:00 show," I said.  "Is there any chance we'll have our food soon?"  She said she would check.

Having already paid, we finally got up to leave at 7:55 p.m.  We never got any food.  There was a manager type at the door.  He explained he knew what was going on, presumably because the waitress who could have been using her time getting us food or drinks was talking to him.  There was some confusion about whether he could just box it up or whatever but I think we concluded he would just credit our cards back.  TO RTSNBN'S GREAT CREDIT, it looks like they completely refunded the whole meal, drinks and everything.

We made it into the Verdi Club right around 8:00.  Saw our friend perform.  He was great.  At 8:15 I walked/jogged in a dizzy low blood sugar daze to the McDonald's on 16th and Potrero and Jose set me up with a Quarter Pounder with Cheese (for me) and a Filet O Fish (for my Date).  We ate them huddled in the corner of the Verdi Club like animals.  It was delicious.  

Last Night a QPC Saved My Life

By then, all the seats were filled and neither one of us felt like hearing any stories.  We watched a little standing in the back of the room and split.

I want to reiterate that RTSNBN did the right thing, maybe even more than the right thing, by totally refunding us.  The 2 free drinks apiece were nice.  But still, man, you gotta get your shit together if you're serving the public.

There will be other Date Nights, but there will never be another QPC that tastes as sweet.

Can you eat at the Rainforest Cafe and live to tell about it? Possibly!

Last Wednesday was my daughter's second birthday.  Happy Birthday Beyonce!  We took the day off work and went to Fisherman's Wharf to see the sea lions and ride the carousel and that kind of shit.  A couple of observations: (1) if you have to go to Fisherman's Wharf, it is much, much better to go on a Wednesday in March than, say, a Saturday in August; and (2) Pier 39 is still as terrifying and touristy as ever.  A shop that just sells puppets!  A man wearing a Bikini Inspector t-shirt!  Italians!

Then we went to eat at the Rainforest Cafe, which is what would happen if the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland opened a restaurant.  Lots of animatronic animals that go off every few minutes and a very loud soundtrack of Reggae for White People.  You enter, of course, through the Gift Shop, where one might purchase such items as a "Bag of Rocks" for $6 I swear to God I am not making this up.  I was hoping it would just be a random bag of gravel and sand but it's those polished rocks but still.

The actual restaurant is upstairs.  The best way I can describe the odor is that it smells like a wet dog.  I guess after years and years of dampness (and it is really humid or something in there) you just can't get the smell out of the carpet any more.

GODDAMIT this picture turns sideways when I post. Fucking Blogger.  Seriously I should have broken up with you a long time ago. Is it impossible to edit pictures in WordPress?  Because in Blogger you have to fucking join Google+ or some shit just to edit pictures.  Fuck that.

That was the view from our table.  The tiger would go off with a loud recorded roar every five minutes or so.  The elephant in the background flaps its ears back and forth.  The kid, of course, found this all delightful.

The food was not as bad as I thought, somewhere between airport and hotel banquet.  It was expensive as fuck, though.  Lunch was $64 after tip for 3 of us and we didn't even have booze, although RC is not shy about pushing fruity tropical drinks on you like you're on spring break.

But fuck it, the kid had a blast and it wasn't anywhere close to as bad as I imagined it would be.  Plus our server, Oscar, was incredibly friendly and nice and he must get stiffed by Europeans all day and to stay that nice must really take it out of you so I tipped him like 25% and should have gone higher but by that point I was starting to feel dizzy and overwhelmed and that tiger kept yelling at me.

There's also a downstairs bar that wasn't in use when we went.  On the way out there was a guy using a selfie stick (ugh) to take a picture of himself in the empty bar.  Where are you in your life when you're using a phone on a stick to take a picture of yourself alone in an empty Rainforest Cafe bar.  Are you shooting an ad for Despair?

Anyway, if I had an extra $100 burning a hole in my pocket and was at Fisherman's Wharf around lunchtime, I might go back.  Not alone, though.

#almondshaming

Remember how everybody used to smoke?  (Does not apply if you're a millennial; watch Mad Men and you'll get the idea.)  Now hardly anybody smokes.  I even used to smoke and I quit.  One thing that happened is that everybody who smoked died.  Also, people started looking at smoking as gross and nobody wanted to be around it.

By now, you know that almonds take a gallon of water APIECE to grow.  Think about how much water we could save if people stopped eating almonds!  So here's my idea: a massive PR campaign making almond eating as shameful as smoking.

Here's a few I threw together just to get us started.

(Quick note, I haven't registered Noalmonds.com yet, somebody better get on that before Big Almond swipes it out from under us.)

We'll also need to lobby local governments to set up NO ALMOND ZONES in restaurants and bars.  "Almond consumption only in designated areas," like by the compost bin.

Might take 15-20 years, but we can make almond eating so repulsive and shameful only West Virginians will do it.

We are totally fucked

I used to have an existential dread of major, crippling earthquakes.  Like I would honestly just sit on my couch and worry about that.  But that got old and it never happened anyway so I have now focused all my existential dread on something real that really is happening:

The Drought.

We are so fucked by this drought that we can't even begin to comprehend how fucked we are.  The LA Times is here to scare the shit out of us:

Right now the state has only about one year of water supply left in its reservoirs, and our strategic backup supply, groundwater, is rapidly disappearing. California has no contingency plan for a persistent drought like this one (let alone a 20-plus-year mega-drought), except, apparently, staying in emergency mode and praying for rain.

The article goes on with some suggestions that are so stupid and painfully obvious it's insane we aren't doing them.  Like mandatory rationing.  NO FUCKING SHIT.

Picture from the same LA Times article. I have no idea what this is.  Perhaps this is our New God that we must worship to get delicious water.

Of course we should be fucking rationing.  My sister has been up in Tahoe since January and she reports that her neighbors wash their FIVE CARS regularly.  That's not cool!  You know what else?  One single almond takes a FUCKING GALLON of water to grow.  Almonds aren't even that great!  BAN ALMONDS.

EDIT/UPDATE: Almonds are bad, but you know what else?  Fucking WALNUTS take almost FIVE GALLONS of water apiece to grow.  For one stupid walnut!  Walnuts are fucking disgusting anyway.  We could lose walnuts today and be better as a society and a people.  If you think you like walnuts, you've been tricked.  Walnuts are a fucking scam.  If you really sat down and tasted one, you'd be like "Ugh, I can't believe I've been putting this garbage food into my mouth.  I feel like throwing up just thinking about the number of times I've eaten this tree jizz. Yuck. I would rather die than eat another walnut."  BAN WALNUTS.

UPDATE #2!!!!: Thanks to loyal reader Rusty Staples I have learned that "Trader Joe's is recalling walnut products due to the potential health risk from Salmonella"!!!!!  SEE I TOLD YOU!  Walnuts aren't just gross as fuck, they also give you salmonella.  FUCK WALNUTS.

Also, Palm Springs, this is your fucking fault.  From the same Mother Jones almond truther article linked above:

Holy shit, Palm Springs!  That's what you get when your economy is built on golf and swimming pools.  Both golf and swimming pools should be banned.  There should be one golf course, that's it.  If you want to play golf, get in line.  Or get a drier hobby, like sand painting.  Also, Tahoe City is apparently full of people washing their cars too much.  So here's the deal for you, Tahoe City: you can use whatever snow you can melt from your backyard to wash your cars.  THAT'S IT.

Everyone says we should just build desalination plants!  OH SURE NO BIG DEAL LET'S JUST BUILD SOME DESALINATION PLANTS.  We have to have a fucking ballot measure to build a 4-story building so, sure, I don't see any problems in building an industrial plant right on the ocean.  Maybe nuclear powered!

To sum up, we should all probably move.

(Incidentally, vis a vis earthquakes, yep, we're also fucked there too.)

The Bachelor: The Utterly Predictable and Boring Conclusion!!!

Yes, we have reached the end of what Chris Harrison calls the "wildest season in Bachelor history" which I guess is true if you think milk is wild.  Back in the frozen wasteland of Arlington, Farmer stares at the void to which he is trying to entice a mate.

Here comes Baby Voice.  Meeting the Farmily drives her pitch up to a level audible only by dogs.  Let's meet Mom, a sturdy type who looks like she could farm the shit out of something, and sit down for, what, sloppy joes?  Really?  That's the best we can do?  You know you're on TV, right?  BV goes around telling everyone how she can't wait to destroy her fulfilling career she's dreamed her whole life of having and move to this desolate abyss.  Farmer, meanwhile, informs the Sisters Three that he thinks Baby Voice will keep him "grounded" like what the fuck if you were any more grounded you'd be a fucking potato.

Next up is the Virg.  Playing to type, she brings cookies instead of wine like that whorebag from yesterday.  She gets the same sitdown with the sisters but blows it by telling them she's not sure she wants to move to Lunar Surface, IA.  Virg tells Mom she can't figure out why Farmer is single.  Fuck, I can even figure that out: because the only humans he ever comes into contact with are his own fucking family, duh.  Anyway, at this point it's so screamingly obvious how it's going to turn out that we all as a nation kinda lost interest.

Back in Dubuque, the Rio de Janeiro of Iowa, Farmer is going on family-free dates with our two finalists.  Farmer needs to have an important talk with Virg but it's hard because she's apparently staying in a Motel 6 by the freeway.  

Virg isn't 100% sure she wants to move to Arlington and says she doesn't know what she would do there.  I guess you don't know that my neighbor's sister makes $87 hourly on the computer . She has been without work for five months but last month her income was $21602 just working on the computer for a few hours. learn this here now..............

Dubuque proves too exciting and Baby Voice's final date is back on the farm.  They're going "harvesting" but it looks like they're working a big field of deadness so all BV will be harvesting is boredom and despair.  In a rare bit of insight, she says "This could be my future for a long, long, long, long time."  Then it's back to the Farmer pad, which looks like someone paid to stage a freeway rest area.

Let's get to the fucking finale of this borefest.  Usually the Big Proposal is in Fiji or St. Maarten or some other place where you can get a fucking drink, but this time it's BACK ON THE FUCKING FARM.  Here comes Jeweler to the Stars Neil Lane who looks a little stunned to be in Iowa like WHAT IS THIS PLACE WHERE IS MR. CHOW OH GOD ONE OF THESE PRE-LEATHER JACKET THINGS BRUSHED UP AGAINST ME.  Looks like the proposal will be at a creepy abandoned barn left over from filming True Detective.  WHO WANTS TO PROPOSE IN CARCOSA!

Virg arrives at the Death Chamber first.  He lets her down with the old "you're gonna make somebody incredibly lucky."  That person is actually you, Becca!  She actually doesn't even cry in the Crying Limo.  Meanwhile Farmer stares at his tractor for a long time.  WHY CAN'T YOU BE A PERSON I LOVE YOU TRACTOR.

Blah blah blah he gets engaged to Baby Voice.  You really can get married after 3 1/2 dates!  Love is so real.

I didn't watch the whole aftershow but The Wife informs that the Shocking Announcement is that instead of just Kaitlyn being the Bachelorette, she and Britt are going to have to compete and let the men choose which one.  Oh for fucking fuck's sake, ABC.  God forbid we do anything without men deciding.  Fuck everything.

Girl Scout cookies, ranked

10. (Tie) Cranberry Citrus Crisps/Rah Rah Raisins

"Cranberry Citrus Crisps" sounds suspiciously healthy.  Oh, it's "filled with 9 grams of whole grain!"  So it IS healthy.  NICE TRY GIRL SCOUTS.  You know what I'm not filled with?  Fucking Cranberry Citrus Crisps.

Rah Rah Raisins are just oatmeal raisin cookies but with yogurt chunks in them.  Why you gotta mess up a perfectly good oatmeal raisin cookie by putting yogurt chunks in it?

DISCLAIMER: I've never actually eaten either one of these, but I've never eaten compost before either and I can tell that wouldn't taste good.

9. Trefoils

Those hard little shortbread things.  There's nothing wrong with them, I guess, they're just boring.  They're the The Economist of cookies.

8. Lemonades

Trefoils, but tarted up with some lemon icing.  I see what you did there, Lemonades, and you're not fooling anyone.

7. Thanks-a-Lot

Trefoils, but with fudge on the bottom, and an "embossed 'Thank You' in English, French, Chinese, Swahili or Spanish." You can act like you're the Model U.N. of cookies, Thanks-a-Lots, but we know you're just Trefoils with a tan.

6. (Tie) Toffee-tastic/Trios

Of course there was going to be gluten free Girl Scout cookies.  I picked up a box of Toffee-tastics after my dealer chirpily told me "I tried them and I was surprised!  They're not bad!"  Girl was right, they're not bad, but you only get a single sleeve because only rich people have the time and money to be allergic to gluten.

I don't know anything about Trios.

5. Do-si-dos

Now we're getting into the money cookies.  Do-si-dos are peanut butter sandwich cookies not unlike Nutter Butters I guess.  They're good - certainly better than anything Trefoil-based, you can be sure - but maybe a little dry?

4. Samoas

The caramel and coconut ones.  They've been kicking ass and taking names since my little sister was a Girl Scout and she's in her 30's now.  Samoas are never not good.

3. Savannah Smiles

As far as we know, not named after either the Okkervil River song or delightful 1982 family comedy, these lemon-flavored sugar-dusted half-moons go down smoother than 12 year old scotch.  They should be called SAVANNAH FUCKING KICKS ASS instead of Savannah Smiles.

2. Tagalongs

Peanut butter coated in chocolate has been done - I see you there, Reese's - but Tagalongs benefit from a crunchy cookie base.  Get on our level, Reese's, or shut your damn mouth.

1. Thin Mints

BOW DOWN MOTHERFUCKERS.  You are in the presence of greatness.  Do  people take a nightmarish 12-hour flight to Paris and then put up with the French because the Mona Lisa is just a good painting?  No, they do it because it's the best.  Why does everyone buy Thin Mints?  Because Thin Mints makes every other cookie look like hot garbage.  Elegant in its simplicity, perfect in design, Thin Mints is as pure an expression of American exceptionalism as tractor rodeo.  Accept no substitutes.

New Bar Night: Patriot House, Hopwater

I love Bar Rescue, and I had heard that they were in town a while back trolling for a Bar to Rescue.  (Hilariously, they tried to hit up Shotwell's, which is doing just fine, TYVM.)  So when I learned courtesy of Inside Scoop that they had worked their magic on the Holding Company, you knew I would assemble a team to take a look.

If you worked anywhere around the Embarcadero Center from the 80's on, you probably had been to the Holding Company at some point, a featureless, fairly dark bar whose best days always seemed in the past and had such a ridiculous Gordon Gekko-type name that it just oozed Business Douche.

Anyway, Jon Taffer et al. presumably arrived and transformed the space into something much more current, much more San Francisco-centric, like....

Patriot House.  What the fuck.

That's right, the colonial Founding Fathers-themed bar you didn't know you wanted.  I can't figure out what the fuck motivated the Bar Rescue team to go all Paul Revere on Embarcadero 2, but I guess we'll find out in April when the episode airs.  Stephen has his theories:

@40goingon28 @periqueblend "We planned on using this menu in exurban Boston, but never got around to it."
— Stephen (@EamesEra) January 22, 2015

Makes as much sense as anything else, I guess.

We got there around 5:45 on a Friday and it was SLAMMED, although I would venture a guess that even bad old Holding Company would be slammed at 5:45 on a Friday.  It's still dark and hotel-bar-looking, but with more patriotic geegaws and portraits of Madison and crap.  It took forever to get a drink, but we finally did.

I had the "Taft's Crowd Pleaser" with gin, lemon juice, orgeat, orange flower water, and grated nutmeg.  I think the lemon and the orange flower water didn't like each other because it tasted like an undifferentiated glass of sweet.  Olu had the "Blue Whiskey Van" with Dickel white corn whiskey, lemon juice, and blue curacao.  It looked like it would be the perfect drink for a Continental Congress Sping Break Ba$h but Olu said he liked it.  It tasted like a Sweet Tart to me.  We switched to beer.

The menu's here; we got the sliders and the nachos, which both had calories.  Olu pointed out that they missed a big opportunity by not trying to tie ALL the food descriptions to historical figures.  Not sure what Franklin Pierce had to do with smashed potatoes, but they really missed the boat by not going with the "General Antonio López de Santa Anna Nachos."

The crowd was off-the-shelf Fleece N Checked Shirt.  At one point there was a group of 6 guys waiting  for a table all wearing black North Face and with the same haircut and how do you guys even tell each other apart?  We finally flagged someone down for the check and booked.

Then we took a cab up to Nob Hill and went to Hopwater Distribution, one of two beer bars in the Union Square area that recently opened and appear to be so close in concept and name there is no way not to get them confused.  (The other is apparently called Hogwash and is 2 blocks away and its Facebook page is full of grinning blondes and dudes holding up big beers WHOOOOO.)  Anyway, Hopwater was also jam-packed (again, Friday, duh) with another crowd of young thinkfluencers.  Seriously, the M-F ratio must have been like 10:1.  There was nowhere to stand and everyone was braying about apps.  "The one good thing about this bar is that it smells like french fries," Alissa said.  We had one beer and went across the the street to The Summer Place, which was ALSO unaccountably packed. Maybe I'm getting too old for this shit.  The end.

TV Roundup

I'm back!  I've been on hiatus.  This included air travel (surprisingly not that bad; travel on Monday and Friday of Thanksgiving week if you like avoiding crowds); family (great); and the incredible biscuits of the Loveless Cafe (incredible).

A girl and her breakfast (NB: bacon does not come pre-shredded).

ANYWAY, now we're back.  Sorry for the long layoff and whatever.  We are now in Peak TV Season what with some series finales and mid-season finales and basically all kinds of great shit going on so let's take a minute and reflect on the wondrous bounty the Lord has giveth upon us.  And by the Lord I mean Comcast Xfinity.

SONS OF ANARCHY - Blessedly in the final season, with the series finale December 9.  This season sort of mirrored the show as a whole; there were some good parts and some really, really bad parts.  Luckily, it seems like they're pulling it together towards the end.  The last few shows have been excellent, so I'm pretty optimistic they can pull off a satisfying end.  At first we thought everyone was going to die but maybe not.

90 DAY FIANCE - Everybody's on the train(wreck) now.  Just read Beth's outstanding recaps at Your Slow News Day. Watch it now, because this is the last season it's going to be good.  From here on out, the couples will all be totally self-conscious and playing it for the camera, just like Jersey Shore with Central Americans.

THE WALKING DEAD - Just got to its mid-season break with a SHOCKING DEATH of a formerly minor character who was given lots more screen time this season so we could get invested and then moved by her SHOCKING DEATH.  Hey, at least something is fucking happening this season.  Kill 'em all, if that's what it takes.  Why am I even watching this show.

PARENTHOOD - On a break until January 8 I think. My ideal series finale would be Zeek drowning Max in a bathtub and then sitting in his prized classic convertible in the garage with the engine running but instead it'll probably be more of Ray Romano's stupid family hogging all the scenes.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the indispensable TV on the Radio show on BFF.FM, everyone's favorite Internet radio station, every Sunday morning at 10 a.m., in which the ladies discuss TV shows and life itself.  Perfect to enjoy with your half cap and cruller or bong hit or whatever it is you do.

The time is now: #dadcore magazine

Big News! @40goingon28 and I just got hired by Buzzfeed to write daddyblog listicles! #notreally http://t.co/TwUCsiu8hq
— Burrito Justice (@burritojustice) November 18, 2014

Why stop at listicles? THINK BIG, MAN.

Dadcore is about knowing how to make a dinner consisting entirely of white foods and also how to make a Manhattan with one hand while holding a baby in the other.

Dadcore is knowing the people in those "Swagger wagon" ads are tools.

Dadcore is being able to discuss the relative musical merits of One Direction and 5 Seconds of Summer.

Dadcore is being able to change a diaper in under 90 seconds.  IN AN AIRPLANE LAVATORY.

Dadcore is real.