Richard Dansky's Blog, page 62

Because occasionally the state I live in is insane...

...in a good way, I give you this:

Arr.

Larry and a Lot of Sand

Caught the 1988 print of Lawrence of Arabia tonight at the Carolina with badger . It's largely badger's fault that I've started enjoying the act of moviegoing again, to the point where it's a genuine pleasure to catch an older film as it was meant to be seen - in the theater - instead of alternating between hitting the latest cultural touchstone in the megaplex for quotability or skimming DVD purchases.

So, Lawrence of Arabia. Blah blah blah, great performances, very loud music, lots of shout...

Dear Miracle Whip

I'm sorry. No matter how many waifish, spike-haired hipsters you put in your commercials, you are not, in fact, hip. Rather, you are mayonnaise, which may be the least hip condiment in the history of gastronomy. I applaud your efforts to get in touch with your inner mole' sauce or whatever, but at the end of the day, you are what you are. Having a skinny young thing in a thrift store sweater sashay toward the camera whilst holding your blocky jar out like a bottle of Spanish Fly isn't going t...

Calling Philadelphia-area Cohorts...

Does anybody have any recommendations for restaurants/things to do in the Phoenixville area? I've got a couple of coworkers potentially headed up that way for a conference and I want to give them a decent scouting report.

Thanks in advance.

Dear Time Warner Cable

If you are going to offer a service called "on demand", I would very much like it if it allowed me to demand movies, specifically, ones I am happy to exchange legal tender for.

This weekend, not so much. The trailers all came through just fine, though.

Austin in the rearview

So.

Austin GDC, or GDC Austin, or the Writers' Summit at GDCA. Over for another year, safely in the rear-view mirror as I try to figure out what exactly happened.

First things first. The summit? For me, fantastic. The content - Eric Wolpaw and Marc Laidlaw from Valve talking about their process, Evan Skolnick and Jonathan Mintz giving an elegant post-mortem on the narrative for Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 (and taking endless crap from me about not including The Fabulous Frog-Man), Mary DeMarle's...

Sorbet: One up, one down

First, the failure, namely, tomato. I suspect the fault is in the specific raw materials, which is to say the bountiful excess of plum tomatoes that our food co-op bestowed upon us. Apparently Mighty Brother-In-Law Ian uses heirloom tomatoes for his sorbeting, so that might be a better way to go. But mine never quite set up right, and I'll chalk the whole thing up to a learning experience.

On the plus side of the ledger, we have blueberry-cantaloupe, which was made despite Melinda's warning me...

To every rule, an exception

I'll be in Austin for the Writers Summit at GDCA this week. Standard hangout for writer-types is the Ginger Man, which means I'll be there at some point every evening through Wednesday.

A quick programming note

Now that Houseboy Ian is on the road, I'm going to be shifting the travelogues back to friendslock.

That is all.

The Best Lunch Option in Downtown Durham on a Saturday

That would be Bull McCabe's pub, in part because every other place we tried was closed, closing, or strangely afflicted by a group of people handing out random slices of pecan pie on the sidewalk.

But the food at Bull McCabe's is pretty durn good, too.