Dined at the Slanted Door on Saturday. Had the "Niman Ranch flank steak with early girl tomatoes, jalepanos and thick cut russet potatoes ($16.50)". Awesome. Truly special dish. Also, I like the green papaya salad better each time I have it.

double duty at the farmers market. yesterday got some handmade corn tortillas, hot peppers and cantaloupe on my block. today in union square picked up some slender green beans, red swiss chard and the biggest scallions ive ever seen - 24". lots of peppers, plums, nectarines, peachs, cukes, tomatoes and greens. tis the season......

loved the cantaloupe especially because its hide is relatively smooth and uniformily tan unlike the normal reptilian skinned variety. looking forward to comparing the taste.

dont know if this is sensationalist tripe but the ads look intriguing. think its on natl geographic channel tonight or tomorrow.

watched part of cool hand luke this morning on the history channel. now they may be reaching in calling this history but i did like that during an intermission they had a conversation with a history professor to deconstruct elements of the movie sort of like tcm does with their saturday night movie but markedly less frivilous.

couple of notes on turner classic movies. rob zombie will host a new series, tcm underground, presumably a cult movie night. and they will also air classic dick cavett interviews with hollywood stars on thursdays for the next two months.

Saw the "Monet in Normandy" show at the Legion of Honor Museum in SF yesterday. The collection was good, but the event was a horror show. Packed like sardines. They should have a) had a bigger space and b) metered the flow of people into the the galleries.

Armitage, a well-known gossip who loves to dish and receive juicy tidbits about Washington characters, apparently hadn't thought through the possible implications of telling Novak about Plame's identity. "I'm afraid I may be the guy that caused this whole thing," he later told Carl Ford Jr., State's intelligence chief. Ford says Armitage admitted to him that he had "slipped up" and told Novak more than he should have. "He was basically beside himself that he was the guy that f---ed up. My sense from Rich is that it was just chitchat," Ford recalls in "Hubris," to be published next week by Crown and co-written by the author of this article and David Corn, Washington editor of The Nation magazine.

kirsten powers handles ann coulter as she should be handled -- with distain. and its on hannitys show, no less. guess chivalry along with civility is dead.

kirsten brings da blog along with da funk.

wanker du jour: former oklahoma tailback jc watts. stunting powers of illogica and propaganda.

i havent followed the whole snakes on a plane odyssey but well before the movie came out it had already become a catchphrase. personally ive never heard it used but...........somebodies are. in fact, it was probably so well known that they went back in later and reshot a scene with samuel l jackson uttering those exact words along with a few well placed expletives so as not to disappoint the schlock-loving popcorn gobblers.

atom ant

New side link -- Converge! Network Digest

Village Voice writer Wayne Barrett wrote a scathing biography of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani a few months before the 9/11 attacks. Giuliani became a hero after the attacks and has maintained that image ever since. But Barrett has just co-written a new book that questions his handling of the situation. In Grand Illusion: The Untold Story of Rudy Giuliani, Wayne Barrett and Dan Collins argue that Giuliani's leadership may have exacerbated the crisis. Plus, the Fringe Festival turns 10.

There was a very odd moment in today's press conference. It was so odd that I checked two different video captures to make sure it wasn't an edit. About 1:55 into this clip, he stops mid-sentence, softly mumbles something with his eyes closed, and then resumes. Maybe he's whispering to someone off frame, but it looks like glossilalia or a fugue to me. Just strange.

Lance: Angelina' s a goddess.

Intelligent and discerning reader: Are you out of your mind! She looks like a Barbie doll with a face designed by a cross-eyed Cubist who's terrified of real women!

huffmoney

I'm sure everyone has heard the crap about tomorrow (8/22) being a possible "doomsday" date for the shiites. Here's an ABC news piece on this. Obviously this is a bullshit story, but what caught my eye was this passage:

August 22 was rumored by intelligence experts to be a possible date that the London plotters would blow-up passenger planes headed towards the United States, though it is not known if the suspects were Shiite extremists.

Could it really be the case that ABC doesn't know if they are Shiite or not? I know I saw interviews with friends of the alleged plotters. Didn't anybody ask about their religion? I find it hard to believe that this fact is not known. How can it be clear they are Islamic, but not be clear what kind? Doesn't seem right.

whats this about?

duh, every one is. why now?

bay ridge not just pizza

WOOOOOLLLLLLLFFFFFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Court blocks TiVo injunction
The injunction would have required EchoStar DVRs to be shut off in users' homes because of patent infringement. -- EchoStar sells satellite receivers and services under the name DISH Network.

rip rudi stern / the let there be neon dude

Some background reading from Intel on WiMax:

(large pdf files)
Mobile WiMAX – Part I: A Technical Overview and Performance Evaluation
Mobile WiMAX – Part II: A Comparative Analysis

spence vineyards


this small howell mountain vineyard is owned by my brother johns friend allen spence. they are starting to get some attention for the $65.00 cabernet sauvignon . johns working on some of the product and web design. they should have a new sight up in the fall. so i guess hes getting paid in grape. and hes been warned about flash.

Cable Industry May Need to Spend
Heavily on Broadband Upgrades

Cable-television operators may require another round of multibillion-dollar network upgrades to keep up with rivals in the fast-growing high-speed Internet hookup business, a report from the industry's research arm suggests.