Bespoke Chocolates is hidden down the aptly named Extra Place right off of Bleecker. Blink and you’ll miss it – but you won’t want to. While the occasion for which I bought their Chili Pepper Dark Truffles (to share with my fellow Dungeon and Dragons players on the first night of our adventure) may not have been the most romantic, the spicy heat and rich darkness is an ideal gift for Valentine’s Day.
Other equally enticing flavors are available and made fresh daily. The chocolatier, who I believe served me, is as nice as can be and speaks with a lovely British accent… she’s like Tammy Littlenut’s hot older sister from across the pond that makes incredible sweets.
Even Channel Four was there, so you know that City Bakery’s month-long Hot Chocolate Festival is a big deal. I headed over with co-workers on the first day, on which the special flavor (which changes daily) was Lemon. It tasted like a lemon dusted crepe with melted chocolate, which is the consistency of their outrageously thick hot chocolate. The four of us could have easily shared a mug, which will make this a perfect date place to share some sweets with your sweet.
Come Valentine’s Day City, they’ll feature a Love Potion flavor (mysterious!) – and if things don’t work out, the staff consists of a number of very good looking young men.
Not everyone is into the flowers, chocolates, hearts, and candies associated with Valentine’s Day – those particularly disinterested in the holiday’s Hallmarkiness might just want to take a page from my friend’s book and host a Bloody Valentines Day Party instead of snuggling by candlelight.
As many of you know, I’ll get into costume at the drop of a (top) hat, since Halloween but comes once a year, so I’m totally looking forward to this party.
My sister-in-law Maddy, who is behind the blog The Inspired Bride and now the new online magazine Nonpareil, has a special eye for romantic details. Inspired Bride, which she’s been doing for a year or so, is a treasure trove of resources for the modern bride: from cakes, to favors, to floral arrangements and rings – she covers everything for those looking for a stylish wedding that is decidedly non-cookie-cutteresque.
Nonpareil takes the same dreamy but natural aesthetic and applies it to a broader scope of design projects; the first issue is built around the theme ‘Beautiful on a Budget’ and features DIY hairpieces and easy-to-make centerpieces. Highly recommended.
It seems that 40 Garlic Clove Chicken is a modern day classic: so many of my cooking friends have already made it and recommended it in one form or another. Perhaps it has to do with what a gourmet, straight-out-of-a-restaurant taste you get from relatively little effort. Sure, it takes a bit of time to prep all the cloves (and yes, it truly calls for forty cloves if you make the full recipe) but the results are more than worth it.
I really can’t express how tender and flavorful this is, and with so few ingredients! If you’re enjoying a romantic night in with someone you love, don’t hesitate to make this – after all, if you love each other, who cares if both of you have garlic breath?
You might recognize Hausu from a viral video I blogged about months back. Surely, you might assume, the entire movie can’t be as insane as that clip of the killer lampshade and those images of severed limbs and demonic cats… but if that’s what you assumed, I’m happy to report that you are so, so wrong.
To describe this film as crazy, schizophrenic, bonkers, and wild is a gross understatement; it’s an excess of experiments that will blow the mind of the viewer and open the doors of perception to any artist (especially those working in film and video) to just how far the boundaries and tropes of the medium can be pushed… It’s basically the craziest thing I’ll probably ever see and my grand kids will probably hear tell of its cinematic insanity.
What happens is this: a group of school girls go to visit one of their auntie’s for vacation. Before you know it, a decapitated head jumps around and bites a girl’s butt, an old lady has an eyeball in her mouth and dances with a skeleton, another girl is eaten and dismembered by a piano, and a man turns into a pile of bananas after enjoying some ramen with a bear. What, really, can you expect from a film that lives by the logic “Old cats can open doors, but only ghost cats can close them again.” The ghost cat in this case is Snowflake, the coolest Persian ever put on screen, who is frequently flung into the arms of actors by off-screen feline throwers. The movie certainly has a sense of humor.
Director Nobuhiko Obayashi is an experimental icon whose career only just began with this masterpiece of mayhem. His other titles include If She Looks Back, It’s Love, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Beijing Watermelon, I Want to Hear the Wind’s Song, and only just a few years back,Before That Day. While much of his work is even harder to come by than Hausu, here is a site that features some of his early experimental work. And despite what you or anyone might think based on the description, Hausu does not quite qualify as purely experimental. It was, in fact, a huge hit in Japan upon its release.
If you’re ever able to access a copy of this movie and you want to know what it might be like to be an insane person, do not let the opportunity pass you by; we have our good friends Matthew and Nora to thank so very much for the DVD-R we now proudly own. The IFC theater on 6th Avenue played it just the other night (sorry for not giving enough warning), in the meantime, gaze upon the stills I’ve gathered below/after the jump.
David Peace‘s Nineteen Seventy Four is both a typical and atypical serial killer drama. Typical in that it focuses on a overly creative killer who leaves behind a trail of the kind of imagery pop-pulp authors can not seem to write enough of these days; typical in that I could almost exactly envision the BBC series it would spawn (actually, as I’ll mention later, 1974 – along with the other books in the quartet – has already been made into a series which will be in theaters soon); and typical in its gritty toughness.
Yet it’s atypical in just how gritty and tough it gets. This book, filled with violent beatings and equally violent love, is one that gets your hands and mind dirty. It’s also atypical in its staccato voice, which makes the giant, convoluted web of conspiracy, corruption and madness a little side-of-the-head-whoppingly hard to follow.
There were definitely times where I had to re-read pages, lost in the pacing, the references to British pop culture of the seventies, and the slang. Not to mention a list of character names that confuse, not in a Dostoevskian way with their complexity, but in their commonality (Johns, Roberts, and Eddies abound).
The first part of a quartet (I have the other three coming in the mail), Peace’s heralded crime drama was inspired by the horrific crimes of Peter Sutcliffe, aka The Yorkshire Ripper, though the child killer here is only one part of a whole cast of genuinely horrible people that litter the city. Heroes are not to be found in this world, which makes this a recommendation with a particular admonishment: this novel is not for the faint-hearted and it is not for those that want to feel good.
The theatrical release of the adaptation (starring among others, Sean Bean) comes to IFC Feb 5 but the entire series is available on DVD for region 2 players.
Do you remember the good old days when Edward Furlong was a promising young upstart that you had a teenage crush on? When Axl Rose was still kind of kicking ass and taking names (but those names were NOT Tommy Hilfiger)?
Remember when another notch in the Terminator franchise was actually something to get excited about? I remember those days, back when I had a small allowance burning a hole in my pocket which I used to purchase the You Could Be Mine single cassette tape (yes, the early nineties still saw plenty of cassette sales, particularly for single releases). It all came flooding back to me in the single millisecond of humor/frivolity in the bleak and forgettable Terminator Salvation when the now gruff voiced and angry John Connor listens to a lyric or two before doing something… I’ve forgotten exactly what at this point, but I’m sure it triggered a nearly 45 minute action sequence entirely devoid of suspense.
To further take yourself back to those heady days, do enjoy the music video below/after the jump where Arnold Schwarzenegger attends a G N’ R concert only to determine that Axl is a waste of ammo. Excellent foresight, Governor.
J.D. Salinger is one of the writers who has moved me most. I try to read Nine Stories once every couple years and its contents still touch me, so I was bummed to hear of his recent natural, though in no way untimely (the man was 91), passing.
I’m sure the publishing world is racked with curiosity as to whether or not this means that new work will finally emerge from the notoriously reclusive writer’s New Hampshire lair (or whether or not Salinger’s heirs will immediately sell all the rights in the manner of the Seuss widow, finally giving Hollywood the chance to cast Shia Labeouf as Holden Caulfield and subject the author’s oeuvre to the various exploitations and degradations Seuss’s work suffered after his death), but the books he’s already left behind are so amazing, legendary, and life-changing that if you haven’t read any of his stories (which I don’t believe many of you haven’t) don’t delay in discovering one of America’s most perfect bodies of work.
Zelda Rubinstein became a part of many of our childhoods thanks to her memorable role as a ghost hunting medium in Poltergeist and now, at the age of 76, she has herself finally gone into the light. Aside from that pivotal role, Rubinstein was a fearless activist against HIV and Aids and spoke out about the dangers before it became fashionable. Rest in peace, Zelda.
Chili Pepper Dark Chocolate
