In Madrid

Thanks again to Marcus and Astrid for sharing another Madrid culinary adventure:

“Mondays are tricky to eat out in Spain.  A lot of the good restaurants are closed so it makes your options limited. However, it’s El Cisne Azul‘s best day. The reason?  So the owners can head out to the countryside the day before to harvest the freshest mushrooms in the area. Mushrooms are the specialty here and they have about ten different kinds that they serve about ten different ways.

We were a little overwhelmed when we saw the menu, but looked around at some dishes coming out and pretty much pointed and said ‘that’s what we want’. It turned out to be a great strategy.

We had mushrooms with cheese, mushrooms with foie gras, and mushrooms with a sort of ‘pasta’ that we later found out was imitation baby eel.  It was all delicious.

They have other spanish specialties like fish, ham, and local beef but the next time we’re there we’ll definitely be pointing at new mushroom dishes to try.

One word of advice its a very small space and unlike most Madrid restaurants it was packed with hungry Madrillenos before 9pm and closed at 11.”

Click here for the rest of El Cisne Azul

See more: Restaurants Guest Writer: Astrid Spanish

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Posted on December 6, 2010

Folk Duo

This one’s for all the fellow nerd lovers out there, classic oldies edition. Chad and Jeremy, the folk duo whose mellow, lovely songs include Willow Weep For Me, Yesterday’s Gone, and A Summer Song were never as big as the Beatles though they possessed the fun loving, floppy haired moppetness of the foursome.

Sporting perfect square glasses, corduroy, turtlenecks, professor blazers, thin ties, well fitting suits, and adorable non threatening smiles, these are boys that girls could dream of meeting and bringing home to mom. Nowadays, you could day dream of The Sartorialist possibly nabbing a shot of them during your date too.

They found there way onto television and made appearances on, among other shows, The Dating Game (which Jeremy won) and the excellent Batman series. Chad also voiced the vulture in The Jungle Book. Following in the TV tradition, Chad’s son is James Patrick Stuart, a character actor with leading man looks.

Click here for the rest of Chad and Jeremy

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Posted on December 5, 2010

Directed by Alan J Paluka (1971)

Deliberate framing and pacing, rich, artistic cinematography, and an adult story that ignores the teen market, Klute is a film of it’s time – the great 1970’s, far before the music video era. Not that I dismiss everything made in the last several decades, just that there’s something distinct about a classic film like this one and though it hasn’t come to be remembered as well as some of its contemporaries, it will be worth checking out if only for our generation to grasp onto the fashions: feathered shags, midi skirts, sequins, and caftans…

Jane Fonda is Bree Daniels, a skilled prostitute trying to become an actress. She’s self-sabotaging, tough, world weary, angry, intelligent, vulnerable, mean, and kind hearted. She’s one of the most damaged characters put to screen and Fonda deserved the Academy Award she earned for her fierce portrayal. Her foil is Tom, played by Donald Sutherland (love) who is quiet, forgiving, seemingly naive and passive but proves himself to be complicated and brave. They are thrown together when Tom’s friend disappears leaving behind only a stack of obscene letters to Bree as any clue to his whereabouts.

As self appointed private detective and reluctant assistant, they traverse the sometimes opulent, often dismal seedy underground of the sex trade in New York, where Rod Schneider is deliciously seedy as a pimp. The mystery is tense at times, with almost horror movie like music and great sets for thrills, but it’s really the relationship that develops between these two unlikely lovers that is at the heart of the movie.

If you want to make an after noon of it, watch along with The Parallax View and All The President’s Men for what’s been called director Alan J Paluka’s “Paranoia Trilogy”.

Click here for the rest of Klute

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Posted on December 3, 2010

Visual Futurist

It  might take a while before I see Bar Basque and Foodparc, the new city eateries designed in part by Syd Mead, futurist and awesome man, but in the mean time, I can be happy looking at his work.

After browsing his illustratrations – that often are of ultra cool automobiles surrounded by swanky, rich swingers who populate the future people imagined back in the decades when the future seemed a more optimistic place.

Of course, one can spend a great, fantastic night learning about the career of Mr. Mead by watching the movies his vision helped make: Star Trek, Blade Runner, 2010, Aliens, TRON, and Short Circuit (take a lunch break during this one).

Click here for the rest of Syd Mead

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Posted on December 1, 2010

by Roy Orbison (1963) and Linda Ronstadt (1977)

Still on a Roy Orbison kick, I thought I’d recommend his most beautiful song, Blue Bayou. Also recorded wonderfully by the lovely Linda Ronstadt, it’s a sentemental song and one of the prettiest I can call to mind. In fact, it ranks high in my favorites of all time, so it surprises me I’ve not recommended it here before.

As winter begins to nip at us, one can relate to dreaming of someplace with fishing boats and familiar sunrises. By the way, it does not refer to the Louisiana Water Park (though it would shake my whole reading of the song if it was) nor the Disney restaurant.

See more: Songs 1960s 1980s AM Gold Ballads Oldies

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Posted on November 30, 2010