New Words

Did everyone enjoy their "Black Friday?" You know, the day after Thanksgiving , big shopping day, THAT Black Friday?
Didn't it seem like every article described this day as "Black Friday?" I had never heard this term before...or at least it was never like this year.

So, I finally got over my "Black Friday" obsession and what comes along?
"Cyber Monday"
Is this real? Will every day have a modifier? Malaise Tuesday, Chewy Wednesday, Unreliable Thursday...

Weekly Restaurant Review

Today's installment of "Weekly Restaurant Review" won't have the same biting commentary, tasty morsels of gossip, or sweet smell of failure that previous reviews have exhibited...nope, none of that this time.
The reason? Well, it's simple, really...I didn't pay attention to what I was doing!

You see, we (the wife and I) met our friend (let's call her Paulo) for brunch at Sydney's Home, located in the SF JCC, and I was so busy catching up with our friend, that I didn't really pay attention to what I was eating.
Some restaurant reviewer I am, right?

Ok, so in a nutshell: I had the corned beef hash and eggs. Good tender corned beef, but it was mostly potatoes, and some finely diced peppers. Good flavor, but I could've used more corned beef in my corned beef hash.
Service was fine, nothing special, nothing bad, just fine, which was good considering we were talking during the entire meal.

It's a nice restaurant for the JCC. The brunch menu had a decent selection of about 15 items (eggs, sandwiches, salads,), not too heavy on the Jewish items...it's not a deli nor a traditional Jewish-style restaurant, but they had only one (1) pancake/french toast entree, and I was craving some good doughy breakfast foods.

So, out of a total of 5 pancakes (my newest creation: the 5 level scale of restaurant quality...this will probably change for the next review)

3 pancakes
I know that's a cop-out rating, but it's an honest one. For our needs, at that time, it was a 3.
Anyway, we walked home, 2.1 miles.

Friday's Itunes Party, TODAY!

So, I'm thinkin' 'bout Itunes, getting ready to fire up the ol party shuffle and let the chips fall where they may, when I realize that I'm missing a few songs from my Itunes library. Like Neil Diamond, Abba, B-52s, Echo+Bunnymen etc... I've got the CDs, but I guess I didn't copy them into Itunes. Some of it is the wife's music (Neil, Abba...nothing wrong with them. I'm not a judger), some CDs must've been in the car when I did most of the transferring to Itunes, so I decided to get those "lost" CDs into the computer before I gave you another incomplete representation of my music.

I haven't finished this project yet, but I feel it's my duty to plug away and give you (the people) a taste, a tease, an amuse bouche (if you will) of what's available in my playlist. Most of you won't even be able to tell the difference...but I can, and isn't that really all that matters?

OK...let's see if any of that new music made it to this weeks list:

Say Goodbye--Dave Matthews Band
To Cut a Long Story Short--Spandau Ballet
Here and Now--Del Amitri (a newly added song)
Caribbean Blue--Enya (another new song!)
Guns of Navarone--Special AKA
Clubland--Elvis Costello
The New Pollution--Beck (new!)
The Pretender--Jackson Browne
Join Together--The Who
The Ledge--The Replacements


and there you have it.

Restaurant Reviews II

I promised a second review, and here it is...

La Santaneca de la Mission, Salvadorean and Mexican food.

The wife and I had a free Saturday and we walked (WALKED!!!) from our house to the bart station...from the Marina, Chestnut to Polk, down Polk to Market for a walk of 3+ miles.

Anyway, we got to the Mission and walked around for an hour before we got really hungry. We passed some nice looking taquerias, some Peruvian places, some other Central American and South American places and finally settled on this little Salvadorean place that was busy with families and had some pleasant latin (is that the right way to say that?) music that you could hear from the sidewalk.

It was nice, loud (the children and the music) and it smelled like fried corn.
They had a Mexican Favorites page, a Salvadorean Specialties page and a page of appetizers and whole section on Papusas.
Papusas are like a stuffed, chewy corn tortilla. At La Santaneca you can get them stuffed with cheese, beans, pork or any combination of those. They're fried on the griddle and served with a pickled cabbage slaw that you're supposed to wrap with the papusa. They're really good and cheap. Most of the tables had a large plate in the center, full of papusas.

For our main entrees, the wife chose from the Mexican side and got a tostada. Sounds plain, but it was small corn tortilla, piled high with chicken, lettuce, avocado, a "Ranchero"-style sauce, served with rice and beans.
I had the Relleno con Carne, a (mild) poblano chile pepper, filled with diced pork, rice and spices, covered in an egg batter, and deep fried...it had a nice red sauce on top and came with the same rice and beans as the wife's Mexican dish did.

Both entrees were great, but the real draw here is the papusas. We were happy about our newfound discovery and planned on keeping our find to our small circle of friends.
Apparently, we're not the only ones...

Restaurant Reviews I

We've got a couple of new restaurants to talk about, one in the Mission, the other in Larkspur.

Let's turn our attention to the Larkspur place first...

Yankee Pier
I was there with the wife for a friend's birthday recently and had high hopes for this place. It's a member of Bradley Ogden's mini-empire of restaurants (Lark Creek Inn, One Market, etc...) and I've had great times at some of these establishments, but this disappointed me a little. This is supposed to be modeled after one of those east coast fish/clam/crab/lobster houses that dot the northeastern shore. The menu featured all of those things. Nothing too fancy, nothing over $25, most entrees in the $12-$19 range.

The service was good, solid, timely, so nothing there took away from our experience, and I should give a compliment to the host (manager?) who was running the front stand and keeping us posted on the status of our table...he kept us well informed. Our server was pleasant, nothing special, nothing above and beyond, but just good.
It was the food that let us down, or let ME down especially.

We started off with their Clam Chowder and the "wedge" of iceberg lettuce. Again, this was fine, but nothing special. The wedge was served with blue cheese dressing, and not much else. Good but plain. The wife had the clam chowder. It wasn't too potato-ey, with small pieces of bacon to give it a nice smokey flavor, but it wasn't hot enough and the clam to soup ratio was lacking.

For our entrees, I had the Fish and Chips, while the wife had the Lobster Roll.
The Lobster Roll was really good. Possibly the best I've had on the west coast. It was served with fresh-cut crispy fries and coleslaw. The fries were great, the slaw was ok, good but not great.
There was a lot of lobster with a light tasting mayo sauce, with only a little filler for texture (celery, onion) on a buttery, crispy sliced roll. I'd get this again.
The Fish and Chips looked great, the fries were great, the slaw seemed better on my plate, but the fish was bland. I fixed it up with vinegar and tartar sauce, but there wasn't any flavor coming from the fish.
All food items were fresh and the server and manager both emphasized the freshness and seasonality of all the products on the menu, so it wasn't poor quality ingredients that let me down.

The desserts were really good. We all shared 3, the butterscotch pudding, a black and tan sundae, and lemon meringue pie. The butterscotch pudding had the consistency of creme brulee, smooth, silky, rich, with a nice butterscotch flavor. The black and tan sundae was neither black, nor tan...just some vanilla ice cream, caramel, chocolate sauce, etc...small and simple. It tasted fine, but one Ghirardelli hot fudge sundae is 4 times the size, for the same price. The Lemon meringue Pie was really good too, quite tart, with a nice meringue.

I think some of my disappointment stems from my expectations from a Bradley Ogden restaurant, and my comparisons to a similar seafood restaurant in my neighborhood...Cafe Maritime
It's a small seafood restaurant, limited menu, nice raw bar selection, but amazing clam chowder and some really creative entrees. It's not a "east-coast-clam/crab/lobster house" style restaurant, but it's close.

I think next time I'll just get a lobster roll and the butterscotch pudding. That should make me happy.

I'll talk about the place in the Mission in my next post...

Welcome to Washington DC Jr High School

Can you believe this?
I thought the vote to deny Maudell Shirek, the former Berkeley councilwoman, from having a Berkeley post office named after her was silly, sophomoric and shortsighted (nobody had really heard of her outside of NorCal, so it was an easy one to sweep under the rug, I guess).

Now we have this one...refusing to honor Bruce Springsteen because he campaigned for John Kerry.

I think I'm finally speechless...

Good Cop-Bad Cop, or just Two Bad Cops?

The President and VP are confusing me. Is it OK to criticize the war or not? I'm getting mixed messages. One day it's all "criticizing the war only emboldens the terrorists" and the next day it's all "a good debate is necessary for a democracy to thrive."

Football Follow-up

Let me follow up just a tad on the football post from last week. Maybe try to explain myself a little bit better. The SD info is all well and good, but my "jump" to 49er fan seemed a little hasty, at least it seemed to me.

Like I said, I didn't like the Niner's at all in SD. "At least they weren't the Raiders" was the only saving grace for them. (my Raider hatred runs deep, as well as that for the Dodgers, too...this will not change, ever!)
But I moved up here, followed the team, saw them on TV every week, saw the players on TV pitching cars, loans, steak places, etc...so they lost that "enemy" look about them.
Plus hearing them interviewed on radio and tv all the time made them less hate-worthy and more human (again, Raiders and Dodgers are excluded from this type of humanity).
And they were winning too. It was Steve Young's last days, and the team was still really good, and when Jeff Garcia took over after that, it was like I was starting all over with my very own new QB.
So, where am I now? The team is really bad, not much to root for, but things are (may be) looking up. I watched the game yesterday with more intensity, actually paid attention to the announcers, the plays, the missed plays and found myself really caught up in the action. Instead of waiting for a team to catch my fancy, I'll follow the local boys and hope that they can continue to get better and make the playoffs soon. And in the off-season, I'll pay attention to the draft.

I can do this...I just hope the team doesn't let me down.

Friday Itunes-apallooza!

Grab your mouse, crank up those speakers, and get ready for an Itunes explosion!!!
Or, if you'd prefer, just read what songs are on my Itunes random party shuffle:

Shake It Up: The Cars
Walking On The Moon: The Police
Everywhere I Go: The Call
Reap The Wild Wind: Ultravox
Nightclub Jitters: The Replacements
When Tomorrow Comes: Eurythmics
I Ran: Flock of Seagulls
Just You and Me: Chicago
Your Sweet Voice: Matthew Sweet
Bush Doctor: Peter Tosh

There ya go!

Missing Football

I miss Football.
Not in the "back in my day, I could run circles around these pros with their long hair and loud music...I miss getting on the field and hitting people" way.
I never played organized football (baseball was my sport), so that's not what I'm talking about.
I don't miss it in the "it's March, the pro-bowl is just a memory and I've got to wait HOW LONG for training camp to open???" sense either.

So how, and more importantly, why, in the middle of an interesting season, with plenty of controversies (T.O. anyone), surprises (the Bears?? are you kidding me?) and great teams playing greatly (the Colts, for those not paying attention) would I cry and wail about missing football?

Well, it's simple really.

I don't have a "team" anymore.

Growing up in San Diego, I was one of the biggest Chargers fan you could find. It took a while, the early-mid 70's were a big wasteland, for the most part, and I was too young to appreciate the John Hadl, Lance Allworth (and Johnny Unitas) teams, but in 1973, the team drafted a young QB out of Oregon by the name of Dan Fouts, and all of San Diego Charger's history took a brave new step. Of course, the coach, Don Coryell was the main architect of this new team, but Fouts was the bearded face and new stud that would re-write the record books.

It took a few years, but I was in 7th grade and had plenty of time to nurture my fan-dom.
I would watch every Sunday and although my mood depended on how the game would turn out, I wasn't quite a "live, die and bleed" fan at this time, and "we" didn't have any recent history and heartbreak (yet) that scarred me. I was an innocent fan, enjoying the game and players, getting bummed when they lost, and looking forward to the next game...

Then they started to get better.

In '75 they were 2-12 (ugh!), but each year after, they showed marked progress:
76: 6-8
77: 7-7
78: 9-7 (Coryell's first year)
79: 12-4 (Now we're talking!)
80: 11-5 (still going strong)
81: 10-6 (1 game away from the Super Bowl...AGAIN!)

That 79-81 run is still etched into my memory. Fouts, JJ Jefferson, Chuck Muncie, Wes Chandler, Louie Kelcher, Gary "Big Hands" Johnson, Ed White, Kellen Winslow, Charlie Joyner, Rolf Binerschke. All names from my childhood.

That damn "Super Chargers" song. I loved that song.

This is when they broke my heart. I cried in '79 when they lost that playoff game against the Oilers...the OILERS!!! Cried like a baby. That was OUR year. We had beaten both Super Bowl teams, Rams and Steelers, and nobody was going to stand in our way. Well, the Oilers did, I guess. I would never be the same. This was my first sports heartache.

Anyway...what I'm getting at here is that I no longer feel that connection to the Chargers...or any team. A couple of reasons why:

I moved away from SD. That's not the whole reason because when I was living in Arizona, I was still a huge Charger's fan. They went to the Super Bowl because of me (I moved out of SD, thus reducing the pressure on the team to perform well.)

I moved to SF, where I got caught up in 49'er fever!!!!! Not the full reason either.
I never liked the Niners, mostly because of their obnoxious fans and the fact that they won all the time, but I got accustomed to their faces, I guess. And as Steve Young got older, I started to respect the team a bit more, and I finally fully jumped ship when Jeff Garcia took over as QB. But still, I'm a fan, but not a die-hard fan, and now that they are especially bad, I've found plenty of other things to do on Sundays. Maybe I'm one of those (gasp!) bandwagon fans, only there when the team is doing well.

Or maybe I've grown up, found other priorities, and moved on to a happier place.
Or maybe, it's because of fantasy football. I think that's it. I like players, not teams, root for individuals, not teams, pay attention to stats, not won-loss records...

I guess that, like life, it's a combination of those things. I'll keep you posted.

Random Musings

Ok, should I talk about the Bill O'Reilly thing? I mean seriously, blow up Coit Tower because of a political difference? Either ignore it or laugh at the silliness of his "logic."
I could go on and deconstruct his thought process, but we're all intelligent people here, so there's no need for me to state what we already know. But just for old times sake: Bill's Sex Scandal.

On another note, it's unseasonably warm in the City, been that way for a couple of days, and I'm not liking it...(stop me from becoming a Larry King column...)

You want more Federal government corruption? Here's a two-fer:

#1) Kenneth Y Tomlinson, former chairman for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, "broke federal law and repeatedly violated the organization's rules and code of ethics in his efforts to promote conservatives in the system, an endeavor that included consultation with White House officials, according to the findings of an internal investigation made public Tuesday."

Basically, he tried to make PBS more conservative, (by breaking rules) and then lied about it. As a Bush appointee, he sounds like he's doing a heckuva job.

#2) " Top federal health officials may have rejected easier access to the morning-after pill before reviewing all the scientific evidence, according to an independent audit Monday that renewed charges that politics trumped science."
So, the conservatives in congress decided that their own personal beliefs are more important than scientific fact (hmmm...a common problem with these guys?)

The article goes on: "Monday's report is the latest blow to the credibility of an agency that by law is supposed to base decisions on science, not politics or industry pressure. Top-ranking FDA officials have acknowledged they overruled their own scientists' decision that nonprescription sales of emergency birth control would be safe — and the agency's women's health chief resigned in protest."

And that's how our government spends our tax dollars...

If you still have some leftover anger, how about sending it Target's way:
Target still will refuse to dispense the "Plan B" or morning after pill, if the individual pharmacist has a "moral objection" to the pill.

No word yet on the Jewish check-out girl refusing to sell you Spam because it isn't Kosher...


What A Country!

Friday Random Itunes

Ok, back to an old regularly scheduled feature, and not too original either!
Fire up the ol' Itunes, hit party shuffle, and let your private music be the window that people use to make snap judgements about you.

Ready? OK!

Straight In At 37: The Beautiful South
Don't Stop: Fleetwood Mac
Carolina on My Mind: James Taylor
Bigot Sunshine: Tonic
Top of the Pops: The Smithereens
Plush: Stone Temple Pilots
Into the Gap: Thompson Twins
Let's Go Crazy: Prince
Reelin' & Rockin': Chuck Berry
Criminal: Fiona Apple

There...now go judge me!

Todays mini-adventure: I'm off to Union Square. It's the weekend of the big Cal-USC game, and there is a giant pep rally downtown. My cousins from LA (attends USC) are in town and I get to show them around.

Greetings and (aaaah--choooooo!)

Allergies. Don't you hate them? And that word, All-er-gy. It almost sounds French.
I think that's what my problem is today. (and no, I don't have to come up with a problem every day)
It rained here over the past 2 nights and many times that kicks up my allergies. Stuffy head, itchy eyes, runny nose, sneezing and the ol' brain just feels like it's filled with too much cotton. Waaaaa for me.

Ok, enough of that, on to the meat (if I may) of this post.
There isn't any, meat, that is. I went to Real Foods (a local organic supermarket) and picked up some frozen foods for snacking. I got veggie chicken nuggets, veggie pizza rolls, veggie taquitos, veggie egg rolls...blah, blah, blah. Now, I'm no vegetarian, I loves my meat, but these items looked and sounded good. So yes, I fell for the marketing. No big whoop though, these weren't new products for me, I've tried most of this stuff over the years.

I think I'll lay low today...it's starting to get cloudy, I'm hopped up on allergy medication, and it's Thursday.

Wow, what a worthless blog post. I'll try to do better next time.

ArNOld

Well, well, well...we had a little "referendum on the governor" yesterday and how did it all turn out? Well let me just say that it appears that the bloom is off the rose, this ship has sailed, the honeymoon's over, the fat lady has sung, the horse has left the barn, the fruit has fallen from the tree, the milk has curdled and the actor who wanted to be governor has lost every single one of his pet initiatives.

I'm kinda proud of my home state again. One gets the feeling that we're finally waking up and saying "we elected WHO to be our governor?!?!"
(full disclosure...I did NOT vote for him)

Interesting breakdowns of the voting caught my eye. We always hear about the 2 Californias, Northern and Southern, but looking at the vote results maps, one could safely say that the split is between the coastal cities and the rural interior.
Or the educated populated areas versus the lonely hicks out in the sticks.
Ok...that's a cheap shot and not quite accurate so I take that back.
San Diego and Orange Counties provide the exception to this generalization, so it's not just where the colleges are located...just the good ones. (rim shot!)
(ok, another disclosure, the wife and I both graduated from San Diego State)

I'm not too sure what all these vote results mean, besides people not liking Arnold like they used to, so I'll wait and see how this all plays out in the spin wars. My take on it is that people weren't voting for the specific initiatives so much, but against the idea of this special election.
So far though, if you're a Democrat, you're happy with the results here and nationally. You can feel the tide turning and hopefully this electoral momentum (and the Republicans propensity to get indicted) can carry onto 2006 and we can get some real victories and make progress in the upcoming years.

My date with the Prince!

I'm the guy who took the picture!

Prince Charles and Camilla were in town speaking at the SF Ferry Building so I hopped on the bus and made my way down there...it's one of the few perks of being unemployed.
There was a crowd of about 100 people hanging out, talking on their cell phones, waiting for the royal couple to exit the building and walk past us. It was a mix of office dwellers on extended lunch breaks, and tourists who wandered by. You either knew exactly what was going on, or started asking questions. Every conversation went like this:

"Hey, what's going on here?"
"Prince Charles and Camilla are inside and we're waiting for them to come out."
"What?! Prince Charles?!?!?!? You're kidding? Honeyyyy, Prince Charles is in there!!!!"

And they would join the crowd.
We waited about 2 hours, but there was always some kind of commotion going on to pass the time.
Secret service guys would move us around, various people would leave the reception and we'd all ask, "who's that???" and nobody would know. The press camera guys would start to get antsy and we'd all perk up thinking this was the moment.
Then the limos moved, the streets were blocked off, motorcylce cops were everywhere, the press were manning their cameras...and Gavin Newsome walked out. He waved, made a joke about being surprised at the crowd and shook some hands. His ex was with him.

Then the royal couple appeared. They walked down the steps of the building, waved at the crowd, posed for some pictures, and started to make their way past everyone to the waiting car. Then they split apart and moved toward the crowd and shook hands and chatted with us. It was a nice moment. I couldn't imagine our Bubble Boy president doing something like that, at least not without his hand-picked crowd, saying only government-approved fawning comments.

And then they got into the limo and sped off.

It was pretty cool.

Chapter 2 (or is it 3 by now?)

Good morning and welcome, I'm not Joey and this is my blog. Quite a few changes going on in these here parts, with the "being laid off" and the "going on vacation" things taking up most of my time lately. So, here's where we stand at this point.

Unemployed, looking, but not looking too hard yet. I'm leaving the exciting world of staring at a computer screen for 8 hours a day (this blogging part doesn't count as staring, because I'm actively creating something here...in theory) and hopefully finding a new career in either the Travel and/or Food Industries.

Quick point of pop-culture reference (and embarrassing "Friends" trivia)...remember when Chandler was unemployed and he took a job as an intern at the advertising agency?
(please say 'yes')
That's sort of where I am at this point.

So, every day, I'll be sitting here, writing about the job search, writing about my days in "the city" (that would be San Francisco, CA) writing about just whatever comes across my desk, mind, etc... that would be worth writing about. I've decided to get serious about this writing thing, keeping the blog updated DAILY (!!!), maybe not on weekends, though, and just forcing my opinions/thoughts/daily doings on the vast population that reads these blog thingys.

Again, that is the plan.

So, for today I've already done the following:
File unemployment insurance claim
Call 401k people regarding account
paid bills
fill out COBRA health insurance forms
climbed up the Fillmore Hill (whew!)
visited PEETs, in the Marina

It's only 11:30am, and my list of stuff to do is barely dented.
I'm busier now than when I was working!

Quick digression:
I mentioned earlier (thanks for paying attention) of a vacation. The wife, also not Joey, and I went on a little vacation. We spent a week in Oaxaca, for the Day of the Dead celebration...eating food, visiting ruins, seeing small craft villages and artisan workshops. We got a rug weaving and dying demonstration, saw how the famous Oaxacan Black Pottery is made, toured a small Mezcal producing plant and ate grasshoppers. I even got ill and stayed in the hotel room for 2 nights.

Small bit of trivia that only I cared about: Anderson Cooper (CNN) was staying at our hotel, and Pete Wilson (Local news guy, radio talk show host) was on our plane back from LA.

Ok, I can hear it now...PICTURES!!! Where are they???
Relax and go here:
Oaxaca Pictures
I'll be putting some more up there later today and all this week.

see ya tomorrow...I'm off to the Ferry Building to see Prince Charles and Camilla.
(I know, that sounds like a fake sentence, but it's true)