Nikki begins her new job today, a fact which has little bearing on the rest of what I’m going to say except that it influenced our weekend and it should influence the next few months in as much as income ever does. For the curious, she—again—works at the city on a temporary basis, although this time not in the same building as I do, and in fact not even in the same part of town. You’ll have to trust me when I say it sounds more complex than it really is.
But I was talking about the weekend. Friday was technically not an off day for me, but it was Nik’s last day before this extended assignment where she would be home so I used a bit of vacation and took advantage of the opportunity to go see Episode III. After the movie we gathered ourselves and headed out to the Bay Area to meet up with Bossman and Lady to catch a comedy show in San Francisco. We took BART, which for the unfamiliar is like a combination L-Train and Subway which travels to mostly inconvenient locations around the Bay Area until you get to San Francisco where connecting public transportation is plentiful and frequent. Somehow, I always end up walking around after taking BART to the City though and Friday I wore my Doc Martens which virtually guaranteed a hefty hike.
I’m not sure why, but every time I wear those boots I walk a bare minimum of 1.5 miles in them. It’s not that they’re uncomfortable, quite the opposite. It’s just that I don’t wear them too much so my feet aren’t exactly acclimated them.
We were going to grab dinner at the Fog City Diner, a place I’ve been curious about since I was a kid and I saw some Visa commercial featuring the place. I remember the ad for a couple of reasons: One is that it was the first ad I recall which seemed to be for one thing (the restaurant) but was actually about something else (the credit card). I remember wondering if the Fog City Diner had needed to help pay for the ad since they were so prominently featured. The other reason I remember the ad at all was its vibe; it was a local place (I’ve always felt a strange sense of ownership of San Francisco, despite the fact that I’ve never actually lived there) and I sort of assumed the Visa ad was national. It depicted a San Francisco with style, class and a bit of attitude, too. It used the Fog City Diner as a proxy for the whole town with it’s slightly snooty exterior which betrayed a caustic wit and a calculated phoniness to the whole thing which was supposed to disarm the unaccustomed but welcome those in the know. I think it tried to give San Francisco a personality and to me, as a kid, it succeeded.
When we got there I recognized the “No Crybabies” sign on the door that the commercial made a point to highlight; we arrived on the dot for our reservation and were seated quickly near the back, overlooking the Pier buildings. My first thought upon glancing at the menu was that this could be a bad scene for Nik. Her choosy palate is well documented and somehow Bosslady had gotten the impression that the menu would be more classic diner fare (like a souped-up Denny’s). The truth is that Fog City Diner serves what I’d classify as gourmet food with a diner motif. The items featured might be loosely inspired by short-order specialties, but their preparation is definitely not grease-griddled heat lamp ready. The menu is basically two parts: Small plates and large plates. The prices of each are, for a casually upscale restaurant, pretty reasonable. To the adventurous, the menu is difficult to choose from. For the choosy, difficult in a different way. Nikki went with her only real option: Hamburger and french fries. Bosslady tried a chicken dish and Bossman selected two small plates; one with Mu-Shoo Pork Burritos and the other with Fried Green Tomatoes. I went with one of the small plate specials which was Lamb Chops and Potatoes.
I used to, when trying new restaurants, look for something familiar on the menu. The problem with this is the same problem I have with ordering steak at a restaurant: I can cook my own steak just fine. In fact, I have friends who cook steak even better than I do (coughHBcough) whose steak I would far prefer to eat than some random cook in some random restaurant. As far as tasty cuisine goes, I feel like I have steak covered. Likewise, when I used to find something familiar on a new menu, the possible outcomes I had were that it could be a bad example of that particular dish, it could be a decent but unspectacular example, it could be good but not the best I’d ever had or it could be the best example of that dish, ever. Considering that 75% of my options then were to have something that was not as good as similar things I’d had before, it began to seem like a wasted opportunity to pick the hamburger from every menu.
Of course that leads to a bit of a problem with decisions since I’m not exactly decisive. So my next issue began to be the long and arduous task of trying to figure out what I wanted. Usually what I want is a little bit of everything on the menu. Since I’m not independently wealthy, that’s usually not an option so I ended up staring at a menu trying to figure out what to order far longer than the waitstaff, my dining companions and the patrons at the bar enviously eyeing my booth were comfortable with. In establishments I’ve been to frequently, this is still an issue for me. But at least I’ve figured out how to get around it with new places: I either order the special of the day or I ask the server to suggest something. I figure that way I’m less likely to choose something that the chef is sick of cooking (specialties and rotating menu items are probably more satisfying work for a cook) and chances are the restaurant isn’t going to promote something that they do poorly. Plus that way I may end up ordering something I don’t get very often, like lamb chops. Which, I might add, are delicious.
My final assessment of the Fog City Diner is that it was good; good enough that I’d be happy to go back and try something else. Nikki did enjoy her hamburger but for $11, I think she’d much rather just have Nation’s (and I can’t really blame her there) so I may need to find another person or group of people to dine with before I return. Or at least stop by a Carl’s Jr. on the way.
Anyway, after dinner we walked up Battery street to the Punchline where Nikki decided to pick a table right up against the edge of the stage. Granted it was stage right and back toward the wall, but it was still as close as you could get on that side to the stage without actually getting up on it and taking a seat. I wasn’t thrilled with this decision.
Let me briefly explain the conundrum of attention which plagues me. On one hand, I secretly desire to be noticed, to stand out in the crowd. I want people to recognize me and listen to the things I have to say, to say kind things about my wit and talent and give me pointless rewards and accolades I probably only thinly deserve. But on the other hand, I loathe being noticed. I abhor the thought of fame and typically feel that what I have to say is insipid or trite and that my witless displays of ineptitude are more likely to be pointed out than anything else. It’s this odd tug-of-war between warring sides of my personality, one being the self-assured extrovert and the other being the self-loathing introvert. Environment seems to be the determining factor over who wins: In comfortable settings I can be charming, funny and outgoing. In strange surroundings I revert to wallflower and either way I half hate myself during and afterward.
How this manifests itself in entertainment venues is that I absolutely cannot stand the thought of having attention drawn to me. For example, I love attending sports events, yet I always worry that I’ll be caught on camera, broadcast around the country with my finger two knuckles deep in my left nostril or something. Or that I’ll have a big glob of nacho cheese chilling on my chin or something. I spend the whole time in mild paranoia, trying to identify the various potential cameras and track their focus so as to avoid somehow becoming the next Internet phenomenon with a WMV file downloaded hundreds of times per second called “Nose Picking Nacho Cheese Guy” or something.
This is not a camera-shy thing only, either. The last thing I want in a crowded comedy club is for the comedian to start razzing me or asking me to come onstage for some kind of humiliating “demonstration.” Nikki didn’t think of these things ahead of time, so we sat in the front and I was jittery and nervous almost the whole time. At one point an opening act actually began ribbing the audience members across from us and front center, and Nik finally realized my points about the wisdom of her choice were valid and demanded to switch places with me. I feel a little bad for not doing it, but I can think of no worse idea to avoid notice than to start shuffling around in the middle of some joker’s act. I made her hold firm (a mild punishment for her putting us in the position to begin with, I admit) but we escaped unscathed.
The headliner, whom we were actually there to see, was Mike Birbiglia. He was as good as I’d hoped (although some of the funnier bits from his Comedy Central special were absent, at least they were replaced with equally funny new stuff) and though he digressed into an anti-Bush segment which, as expected, had mixed results he managed to be funny during so even rabid conservative Bush fans were still on the hook enough to come back when he moved on to less divisive subject matter. The opening acts were pretty dull, the first being spotty with a few really funny jokes but long stretches of snoozers and the second really just trying too hard and ultimately failing.
We had to fight some of the A’s/Giants game crowd on the way home, which we mostly managed to avoid with a clever ploy of getting on the wrong train, going up two stops and getting back on the correct train there, ahead of the game traffic so we got nice comfortable seats while the drunken sports fans stood or, more accurately, swayed.
Saturday I watched The Bridge on the River Kwai as part of my movie history lessons (a self-imposed revisitation of classic films I never saw which has been an enjoyable assignment). I liked the film, it is a nice change of pace from typical war films in that it doesn’t include a lot of arbitrary fight scenes and somehow manages to paint both main character from the British army and the main Japanese character as equally nuts. Which is to say the movie strangely lacks a traditional protagonist unless you count William Holden as Shears, which I don’t, exactly. I did think the film could have used some additional editing; a lot of the Shears subplots seemed unnecessary and distracting from the much more interesting clash of insanity between Col. Saito and Col. Nicholson. Once the mission to take out the bridge was underway it was better and appropriately suspenseful to build toward the climax. Still, a good movie and it was nice to see Alec Guiness as something other than Obi-Wan Kenobi.
Nik and I basically spent the rest of the weekend taking a break from doing anything else; the coming week promises to provide plenty of stress and we decided it would be better to enjoy some relaxation time now than race through lists of chores and cry later for our weeks without any rest. This coming weekend we have a wedding, a convention, at least two trips to the Bay Area and possibly a party to attend so there will be enjoyment if not much relaxation and in the meantime we have to attend the responsibilities we purposely delayed, a dinner, preparations for the weekend and a continuation of an arduous task which I cannot speak of in a public forum. Plus I for one have a lot of painting to do before the con so as summer finally seems to try and settle in for a few months (Sunday was particularly beautiful), the days are just packed.
I, for one, am certainly not complaining.
Episode the Third
Yes, I mentioned above that I had seen Episode III. The general consensus as I hear it is that it is the best of the prequels and while not perfect, it doesn’t completely suck which is better than nothing.
I mostly agree with this assessment. As someone who was disappointed with the other prequels but not outright hostile toward them, my perhaps surprising take on Lucas’ supposed rape of our childhoods has been less than hyperbolic. My experience has been that most of the stuff I saw as a kid and thought was just awesome does not stand the test of time. I’ve seen Star Wars again recently and it is still a good movie, it just isn’t some kind of definitive SF masterpiece. It’s a solid flick with memorable characters and a happily detailed plot and backstory. As an introduction to a fantastic world, it works great. Empire focuses more on the plot at hand and does so magnificently. Return of the Jedi brings a satisfying conclusion to the original trilogy but stumbles at times along the way. Episode I on the other hand stumbles more often and ultimately doesn’t work because it feels like a technology test based on a sketchy outline of a plot; which it ultimately was. Episode II was better but still had problems with plot partly because that world that was introduced in the original trilogy is given a greater focus than the story trying to be told. Pivotal scenes that are supposed to develop key relationships seem like they were shot in one take while prolonged action sequences (which feel ripped from any of six dozen video games) are obviously given loving attention.
Episode III manages to find some of what has been missing since Empire. Namely, a focus on story. What Lucas seemed to forget for a while is that there is a really intriguing story that is, sometimes painfully, begging to be told here. In between all the Darth Mauls and bad casting and crummy acting and CGI-only characters, the redemption of Anakin Skywalker is a fascinating tale. Why it took so long to get to the point of it all is hard sometimes to understand, unless you cynically point to the merchandising tie-ins and endorsement deals.
Like the Matrix Trilogy, I feel that there is enough material in all three movies to make two really solid ones. Some sillier bits and less important subplots can be axed to make way for a better, snappier tale. If I ever had a chance to get my hands on the footage and developed a semblance of editing skill, I wouldn’t mind trying it myself, just to see what the result might be. Unfortunately we’re consumers and fanboys and we live at the mercy of creators who send us our drug of choice in measured doses. This dose is still not the jolt we got back in the early days, but it’s better than we’ve had in a long time.
I guess that’s something.
