I’ll tell you once, at the end

I lied, I’ll tell you right now: I hate radio commercials for local car dealers that try to grab attention by starting off with that phrase in a very deep, serious voice. If that’s the one thing I want to know from the ad then you’ve written a poor ad and I’m not wasting 60 seconds of lifespan waiting to hear it.

Of course, that’s not really the only selling point that ad will try and make. But since I’ve already decided your ad sucks the next tuner button’s been pressed. Because I hate your ad.

Get your red hot real estate

Indeed, Casa de Lazar is available for viewing with an eye towards purchase by reasonably deep-pocketed individuals and small families. You’ll be living in a quiet part of Mountain View, about 25 minutes by foot to great downtown dining and drinking on Castro Street and access to light rail/CalTrain and all the major highways without being in noise range. A lot of nice people in the other homes in the small HOA, quite a few who’ve lived here for over a decade. Open house this Saturday and Sunday afternoons. Or call Betty Chen at (408) 394-3409. Bid high.

Later: the Virtual Tour is online.

Unlike the rest of the world I don’t have a huge opinion about the news of Apple switching to Intel, would be fine if the move changes pricing, but I’m surprised more folks aren’t having a laugh over the real twist in the announcement. After, all, isn’t Microsoft moving to the IBM architecture for Xbox 360? Numerous technopundits have cited the game console as Redmond’s less than covert attempt to cut out the middleman in a move to an Apple-like full system product.

Today’s movie: Hero

Dazzling. That’s the best word I can think of to sum up Hero (Ying xiong in the original Chinese, I suppose), the tale of a nameless assassin who confronts the man who is in the process of uniting warring kingdoms into the Chinese Empire.

Jet Li tells the King of Qin the tale of how he, some unknown chief from a tiny village out in nowheresville, defeated the three greatest fighters in all the land. So most of the movie is in flashback, not one of my favorite modes for sure, but in writer/director Yang Zhimou’s hands it works well. If you know what Rashmon style means, that’s sort of what we get here, the same event retold from different angles. Excellent acting/fighting efforts from Maggie Cheung, Zhang Ziyi, Daoming Chen and Tony Leung Chiu Wai.

The story is basic though robust enough to stand up to the repetition, with witty dialog between Li’s Nameless One and the king definitely a plus. The attraction, though, is Zhimou’s combination of gorgeous imagery, changing use of color and brilliantly-choreographed fantasy martial arts battles. I really loved the massive flights of arrows used in a couple of scenes, something I’ve never really seen before.

definitely recommended

What was Sun thinking?

Charles Cooper said pretty much what several people on the Sun Alumni wrote to the mailing list, only better. Love these two quotes:

Sun needs to do something to get Wall Street off its back. The company’s stock has been a dog. Shares hit a 52-week low of $3.29 on Aug. 12 and are still stuck below four bucks. If Sun’s board of directors wasn’t on quaaludes, Scott McNealy would have joined Carly Fiorina on the retired CEO rubber chicken circuit long ago.

Later:

Each time McNealy or his No. 2, Jonathan Schwartz, gets through talking, I walk around starry-eyed for an hour thinking, “Gee, that really makes sense. Those guys might really be onto something.” Then the aura wears off and I’m back to wondering what I was smoking in the first place.

Cooper’s been writing for CNet and other techpubs for years. But wow, just wow, what language. Has to be an effect of blogs, no way you’d see that kind of verbiage in such a mainstream outlet five years ago. Really, the board of one of the largest companies in our little burg “on quaaludes!” Excellent.

Do I look that stupid to you?

Having an extreme virus attack the last few days. The software’s catching them, no problem, but I’m pretty freaking annoyed already. Just had five of the messages while typing that last sentence. They’re all supposed to look like stern problem warnings from the manager of my domain’s email system but why the real writer thinks I’d open a zip file to find out the problem is beyond me. The flood started four or five days ago, I just hope it ends soon.

All I think about is food: “This blog is intended to mostly be about food; specifically, vegtetarian recipes and restaurants reviews. I’m sure I will still use it to complain about random things, though.” To use one of Robert and Dave’s favorite phrases, subscribed!

Recent movies: Elf, Con Air

This past weekend we watched 2003’s Elf and Con Air from 1997. One was decent, the other only appeared to be on the surface. Can you guess which is which? Will Ferrell as an oversized, mixuped Santa helper wanna be or Nic Cage as an unjustly imprisoned ex-Marine trapped on a plane full of the worst loonies in America’s prisons.

Okay, I won’t make you guess: Con Air was surprisingly the one worth watching. Actually, worth watching again, I think this was the third time for me. The plot and characters were straight out of the Hollywood play book but the acting, staging and special effects trumped them. Not particularly Cage, though, he looks really strange with stringy long hair and rock-like facial expressions.

John Cusack, John Malkovich, Ving Rhames, Mykelti Williamson, Steve Buscemi, even Rachel Ticotin, Colm Meaney and Dave Chappelle decided to make a film despite a mostly useless script by Scott Rosenberg. Simon West (the first Lara Croft) took full advantage of the Jerry Bruckenheimer big boom explosions shop and added an interesting lighting scheme.

recommended

What went wrong with Elf? Hard to say. Ferrell at this point is kind of like Robin Williams, Eddie Murphy or Robin Williams at their manic primes, all over the screen and always able to take over any scene. Probably the script from David Berenbaum (speaking of Murphy, Berenbaum also wrote the script for The Haunted Mansion) and the directing of Jon Favreau weren’t enough to overcome the horrendous core concept: Ferrell as a tot sneaks into Santa’s bag one Christmas Eve and for some reason can’t be returned to his parents, remaining at the North Pole thinking he’s just an oversized elf to the age of 30.

At which point the “truth” becomes clear to him and, voila, he’s told who his real father is. Off we go to Manhattan and the completely different, angry, mean James Caan. Sure, Ferrell has plenty of bits to get laughs but the idea here is to make a movie. M-o-v-i-e. Anchorman is coming on cable soon, hopefully will be better.

not recommended

For no good reason I can think of, its/it’s is one of the hardest rules of English grammar for me to remember. Maybe that was taught one of those days when I was endlessly fascinated by the new breasts of my young female classmates. Maybe.

It’s what you put in your mouth

More precisely, what we put in our bodies. I mentioned yesterday the Sweet One and I are no longer on Atkins. After more than two and a half years we have no regrets, no health issues and no harsh words for a plan through which together we lostover 90 pounds. We have no doubt that our bodies are much healthier than they were on August 30, 2002, the day before we began.

The decision just kind of came to us. The most explicit beginning to the process was an email from the husband of TS1’s best friend early last month. Just one of those “thought you might find this article useful” emails of which I’m a frequent sender. Given the source, I clicked the link and read. I didn’t think too hard on it but did mention it to Viv as we drove to the gym one morning, mostly to let her know in case her friend mentioned it and also to see what her response would be.

The other early factor in our conversation was the simple realization that neither of us had really lost any weight in more than a year, though we hadn’t really gained any back either. We’d developed a routine: a whole roasted chicken and bok choy for Sunday dinner (the leftovers took care of lunch on Monday and Tuesdays); home-baked Atkins-brand muffins, bread or bagels, low carb yogurt or the occasional fruit bar plus a hardboiled egg for breakfast on weekdays (green tea for me and water for TS1). A couple of Advantage Bars as between lunch and dinner snacks for me. The occasional split basket of strawberries. Easy enough even if I don’t think there was ever a time where one of us said “Let’s do it.”

I guess that we were both just ready for a change. And so, after finishing the last packet of Costco-bought meat from the freezer, on our second wedding anniversary, we went to Garden Fresh Restaurant on El Camino Real and had our first “official” vegetarian meal. In the 20 days since then, neither of us has had any meat and we’re both settling in fine. Trying new dishes all the time, sharing recipes. We’re going to the Mountain View Farmers Market every Sunday morning together, picking out fruits and veggies for the first half of the week or so and even have a new Sunday standard: we each pick out a vegan pirouzki for lunch and a flourless, sugarless tea cake to share as dessert; today’s was a great apple tea cake with thin slices of apple scattered inside.

Viv has been really terrific in researching and preparing our meals–how can a man ask for more from a wife? (Stop sniggering!) Anyway, next time you eat with us keep it in mind. Most restaurants are still fine, excepting sushi and BBQ though even there we can usually have salads and soup. Both of us have already lost a couple of pounds, if you’re wondering.

Shiva’s, Mountain View

The restaurant reviews at Jason and Terry’s Bay Area Reviews are a terrific resource. Based on Jatbar’s listing we ate dinner at Shiva’s rather than Passage to India tonight (all of Mountain View listings). We had a great meal, though I still want to try P2I one of these days. Amusingly, Shiva’s is across California Street from TS1’s office but between being on Atkins, which we no longer are, and a false impression that the place was expensive we always gave it a pass.

For an appetizer we split a dish called Kolhapuri Chat, a Delhi-style potato cake stuffed with chick peas served with a few very light pieces sort of like three dimensional potato chips and tamarind and fresh mint dips; it reminds me a bit of an old fashioned New York knish, just a bit lighter and with different spices. Nice, and the tamarind dip was great spread on top.

Sweetie’s main dish was the yummy Bharawan Mushroom kebab, fresh mushrooms stuffed with minced vegetable and cheese, roasted in the Tandoor oven; the mushrooms had great texture, a sturdy and moist density. I had the Dal Lakhnavi, a roasted lentil sauce with roasted garlic and spices. Mine was spicier but both were really good.

The service was really something too. The waiter was friendly but not in grating way. Our food came out quickly, still hot and for the main dishes he portioned them out on our plates. When we finished a busboy took our dishes and flatware and another used one of those little metal sticks to clear the crumbs. Unlike some places we’ve eaten at around here, the bill came promptly and our waiter watched for me to put the credit card out.

definitely recommended

Quick return

Well, LittleSteven needed ANOTHER new hard drive but this time Fry’s was able to pull one from in-store stock and get the machine back later the same day. Not that the process was without absurd pain due to the legendary chain’s craptacular internal computer systems, no I wasn’t that lucky. Not to mention the hours of work reinstalling everything from WinXP Pro with all its service packs and critical fixes to Firefox and its extensions. Thanks once again to AJSystem’s EazyBackup for saving my bacon. What I want to know is how the hell did I get such a lemon from a manufacturer with a reputation as good as Toshiba has?