Uncouth Reflections

Belcampo Meat Co. at Grand Central Market

Posted on September 8, 2014 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

L.A.’s Grand Central Market has been undergoing a renaissance over the past few years. When a friend and I were there three years ago, the food offerings ranged from mediocre to lousy. While the middling places we ate at are both still there, they’ve been joined by a number of foodie establishments like Horse Thief BBQ, DTLA Cheese, G&B Coffee, and others. The quality has improved so markedly that Bon Appétit named it one of America’s 10 Best New Restaurants this year. During a recent trip downtown I tried one of the new spots, the Belcampo Meat Co.

Based in northern California (one of the workers was wearing a SF Giants baseball cap, a hanging offense in L.A., but I gave him a pass), Belcampo sources all of its meat from its own farm. Thus, in addition to offering a few dishes, it’s also a butcher. They don’t seem to offer any offal, though, so the hardcore Paleos are out of luck.

I got the meatball sub and it was delicious. Everything — the bread, sauce, basil, cheese, and meatballs — was very fresh. The sandwich is a little pricey at $11.50 but it’s enough for two, especially if you get a side of their beef tallow fries.

Related

KCET’s food editor picks her two favorite dishes and dessert at the GCM.
GCM, then and now.

Posted in Food and health, The Good Life, Travel | Tagged butcher, Grand Central Market, Los Angeles, meat | 13 Comments

“The Unknown Known”

Posted on September 7, 2014 by Fabrizio del Wrongo

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

Have any UR readers watched “The Unknown Known,” Errol Morris’ documentary on Donald Rumsfeld? It’s on Netflix Instant. I caught up with it last week and found myself fascinated by its lameness. For 100 minutes Morris — one of the favorite non-fiction filmmakers of “The New York Times” — asks questions of Rumsfeld, and the former Secretary of Defense answers them exactly as you’d expect him to. Since nothing particularly interesting is said — the explanations and rationales are retreads of ones from the early 2000s — Morris is forced to rely on his (and the audience’s) preconceptions of Rumsfeld to lend political and moral weight to the proceedings.

Continue reading →

Posted in Movies, Politics and Economics | Tagged documentaries, Donald Rumsfeld, Errol Morris, Film, George W. Bush, movies, The Unknown Known, War on Terror | 14 Comments

Architecture Du Jour: The English Cob House

Posted on September 7, 2014 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

Cob is an earth-base building material comprising subsoil, clay, sand, and gravel, which is mixed with straw and water to a stiff but malleable mass and used to build the walls of a house and numerous items within it, including shelves, benches, floors, and ovens.

…

Cob building has many advantages: the cob walls, when dry, are extremely hard and will last for centuries; they can be shaped to any required form using a sharp spade or mattock; cob is load-bearing, so cob houses need no wood framework. The only disadvantage is that because the building process involves various stages, the total construction time may be as much as fifteen months.

– Building Without Architects: A Global Guide to Everyday Architecture

Posted in Architecture | Tagged cob house, Devon, England, traditionalism, vernacular architecture | 8 Comments

Movie Poster Du Jour: “All That Heaven Allows”

Posted on September 7, 2014 by Fabrizio del Wrongo

Fabrizio del Wrongo writes:

The stone lithography process by which this poster was printed makes looking at it a rather sumptuous experience. Gotta love the delicate lighting effect on the faces and the array of blues and greens. With art by Xarrie. The poster dates from a ’60s release of the film.

Posted in Commercial art, Movies | Tagged All That Heaven Allows, Douglas Sirk, Film, France, Jane Wyman, Movie Posters, movies, Rock Hudson | 2 Comments

Showtune Saturday: “A Little Priest”

Posted on September 6, 2014 by Eddie Pensier

Eddie Pensier writes:

25 years after they created the roles of Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett, Len Cariou and Angela Lansbury reunite for a Sondheim tribute concert at the Hollywood Bowl. It goes without saying that they are of a certain age. It should also go without saying that any technical deficiencies are more than compensated by the verve and joy that these veteran performers bring to this ghoulish/hilarious number. (The video isn’t the best quality, so if you don’t know the lyrics you may want to read along.)

Related question: Does Len Cariou have the best evil laugh in showbiz?

Posted in Music, Performers | Tagged angela lansbury, demon barber of fleet street, len cariou, showtune saturday, stephen sondheim, sweeney todd | 2 Comments

“A Damsel In Distress” (1937)

Posted on September 5, 2014 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

A musical comedy co-written by P.G. Wodehouse, with music and lyrics by the Gershwins, and starring Fred Astaire is pretty much essential viewing for me. Although the film is usually regarded as one of Astaire’s post-Rogers flubs, I enjoyed it despite its weaknesses. Here Astaire, playing an American movie star in England, is paired with a young Joan Fontaine, who couldn’t dance and later noted that the film set her career back a number of years. In Fontaine’s one dance number director George Stevens’ camera tracks her through a wooded glen so she’s mercifully obscured by the occasional tree. Yes, her dancing isn’t that great and her acting isn’t spectacular either, but it’s hard to fault her given that she was simultaneously in over her head and the story doesn’t give her character much to do.

As for the script, it’s not a great Wodehouse vehicle, but it’s a good one. Adapting one of his earliest novels, we’re firmly in his milieu: mistaken identities, grand English estates (Totleigh Castle presided over by Lord Marshmoreton), day trips to London, country carnivals, awful aunts, fickle yet winsome ladies, capable butlers, and jazz-playing bounders. Although it has all the trappings of a Wodehouse classic, except for a few flashes the script lacks his signature absurd dialogue that’s simultaneously sophisticated and blissfully clueless.

Perhaps to make up for the verbal comedy deficit, the film brings in George Burns and Gracie Allen as Astaire’s press agent and secretary. The movie then is an odd, uneven mixture of British farce and Brooklyn vaudeville with Allen spinning out her ditzy malapropisms and Burns trying to keep her in line as the exasperated straight man. But hey, who knew Burns and Allen were also good dancers? They acquit themselves quite well in two numbers alongside Astaire. The dancing is filmed in Astaire’s preferred style — bodies filmed from head to toe with little or no cutting, thereby giving the performances a tension and excitement that contemporary dance editing lacks.

Even if Astaire was on the downslope of his career, he’s still amazing to watch. The last time I was at a baseball game, it was hypnotic watching the players warm-up — just throwing the ball to one another, their movements were so confident and sure. Astaire merely walking around a chair or hopping on a table looks effortless, light, and graceful. It’s the kind of movement that can’t be faked, that only comes from a trained dancer who has put in his 10,000 hours. Combined with Wodehouse’s silliness and songs by the Gershwins, you can’t help but be transported.

Here’s Astaire’s closing number, “Nice Work If You Can Get It,” which prefigures Stomp.

A DAMSEL IN DISTRESS is available for rental on Amazon Prime.

Posted in Movies, Performers | Tagged Fred Astaire, George Burns, George Gershwin, George Stevens, Gracie Allen, Ira Gershwin, Joan Fontaine, Musicals, P.G. Wodehouse, Romantic Comedy | 5 Comments

Steven Pinker on What Ails Higher Education–or at least Harvard

Posted on September 5, 2014 by Fenster

Fenster writes:

When Steven Pinker writes Fenster listens. Well, not literally. He reads. But language is all a kind of metaphor, right?

From The Language Instinct on I have been amazed by this guy’s reach, educated through his insights and entertained by his prose. I only caught him in one actual error 😉 Of course it was on a minor point. In the first edition of The Language Instinct he mistakenly said it was the group Blue Cheer who recorded “I’m Your Venus”. Of course, it was not the hardcore pyschedelic band Blue Cheer, out of San Francisco, but the light and frothy pop outfit Shocking Blue, out of Holland. I sent him a note and he graciously acknowledged the error, correcting it in later editions.

He has a terrific article out in the current New Republic entitled “The Trouble with Harvard”. The article’s sub-title is “The Ivy League is Broken and Only Standardized Tests Can Fix It”. Which tells you something right there about the vector of his argument.

Continue reading →

Posted in Education | Tagged Don't Send Your Kid to the Ivy League, Ivy League, Steven Pinker, The New Republic, The Trouble with Harvard, William Deresiewicz | 10 Comments

Blowhard Esq.’s Tea Chronicles: Boxwood Cafe at The London West Hollywood

Posted on September 4, 2014 by Blowhard, Esq.

Blowhard, Esq. writes:

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you’ve probably developed a certain image in your mind of how I am in real life. No doubt you think of me as a mega-Alpha male not unlike a combo of Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, and a Major League pitcher. And of course you’d be correct. But I have my foppishly dandy side, too, which I got to indulge recently by having afternoon tea at the Boxwood Cafe, one of Gordon Ramsay’s restaurants.

The cafe is located in The London West Hollywood, an elegant hotel catty-corner from the Whiskey A Go Go on the Sunset Strip.

When we arrived at two on a Saturday the place was pretty empty, but a few more couples came during the hour or so we were there. I didn’t get a good look at them, but two young women (late 20s?) sat behind us talking in great detail about the one’s new relationship. “So, you’re in love. Let’s talk about it from every angle,” the chatty one said. The first order of business was whether the one was going to sleep with her new beau for the first time that night given that it would be their third date. (I swear I’m not making any of this up.) After that topic was settled, the chatty one started talking about her dating travails. Of her current boyfriend she said, “He’s not interested in anything so he’s not interesting. Weird how that works.” No, lady, not weird at all, makes complete sense.

When we asked for recommendations the waiter admitted he wasn’t much of a tea drinker (“I prefer coffee.”) but noted the rose with French vanilla was the most popular, so that’s what I ordered.

I’m not the tea connoisseur that Eddie is, but I thought my choice was lovely — an herbal/garden flavor touched with sweetness, just as one would expect. As the right-hand column on the menu states and the picture below shows, the tea was accompanied by a generous selection of finger sandwiches and desserts. My favorite sandwiches were the curried chicken with raisins and ham with asparagus, while my favorite desserts were the licorice macaroon and blackcurrant scone with Devonshire cream. Everything was sophisticated without feeling too fussy.

The English have their afternoon tea, the French have their long lunches, and the Spanish have their midday siestas — some cultures really know how to pace the day, don’t they?

Related

Many Yelp reviewers are underwhelmed by the Boxwood. Which reminds me, valet parking is $15 but only $6 if you eat at the hotel, so don’t forget to take advantage of that.
More of Eddie’s tea chronicles here, here, and here.
I eat and drink my way through New York.
My photoessay of an epic meal in Las Vegas.

Posted in Food and health, The Good Life, Travel | Tagged afternoon tea, Boxwood Cafe, Gordon Ramsay, Los Angeles, Sunset Strip, The Kinks, The London West Hollywood | 8 Comments

Linkages

Posted on September 3, 2014 by Fenster

Fenster writes:

University syllabi are getting larger all the time with the temptation to sometimes include the kitchen sink, and things not directly relevant to the course and the educational process. Now a call to incorporate admonitions about sexual harassment.
This scolding of celbrities who had their nude photos hacked seems way too Victorian for my tastes.
Besides which, the Brits have lost any remaining sense of moral high ground since the Rotherham scandal. Turns out one of the key figures trying to out the situation was to “never, ever” repeat the allegations that the perpetrators were Pakistani and was sent out for diversity training. The more one reads about this unbelievable series of events, the more questions are raised. Political correctness surely played a huge part but it is hard to escape the conclusion that money and influence also were involved. A truly civilized country would clean out any local leadership involved and put many people behind bars for a long, long time. How is it that a lot of the rapists are still walking around in the streets of the town? Let’s see how far the Brits are willing to go.
Intrade, the prediction market for current events, was shuttered a few months back. A pity. After all the posturing, what do you think the actual odds would be on propositions such as “Darren Wilson will be shown to have suffered severe trauma to the head” or “Michael Brown will be seen to have been charging Wilson when shot”. Could be proponents of the Gentle Giant theory would put their money where their mouths are, in which case an arbitrage opportunity would likely exist. But cold hard cash is good at scouring away accreted ideological thinking. So it is probably more likely, when put through the wringer of real money, tht the Wilson side would be looking OK in a betting situation. Now I don’t know what happened, but sooner or later we will likely have answers to these questions. Meantime, there’s the odds. Any idea where you can place a bet?