Mark L. Van Name's Blog, page 42

How Kyle and I ended up wet, sticky, and cold in Vegas

I assure you my intentions were good.

I've been in the splash zone at both O and La Reve and never really gotten wet, so I figured being up front at another Vegas play would be fine.  Consequently, when we decided to check out Evil Dead: The Musical--what's not to like about a musical version of a cult classic?--and the best tickets were for the "splatter zone," I chose them for us.

I should have paid more attention to the lines about "gallons of blood," but I assumed that referred to the show, not the audience.

Not long before showtime, a host led us to the front row, which was covered in plastic, and handed us white, logoed t-shirts, which he then insisted we wear.  Only we two and another guy were in the front.

As the show was about to begin, from way off to my left came a spray, presumably from a super-soaker of some sort, of red liquid with the consistency of Kool-Aid.  I was instantly wet.

From then on, the show consisted of moments of entertainment mixed with stretches of failed attempts on our part to avoid the jets of fake blood coming at us from the left and, in one case, from the stage.

We left the theater chilled to the bone, sticky, and soaked.  We took off the t-shirts but still had to walk through the cold night and then across much of the casino floor of our hotel to get to our room.

We have a pink towel from trying to wash the still-pink clothing we were wearing.

We both think the show was reasonably entertaining, but neither of us can be sure, because we spent so much of it trying in vain to avoid getting wetter, stickier, and colder.

Good intentions are no match for a determined splatter zone team.

Our not-so-crazy first night in Vegas

So what kind of Vegas party animals are Kyle and I?

Well, on our first night in Sin City, we walked more than a mile each way to go from our hotel to dinner and back, ate two small plates each at a decent Italian place (Lago), enjoyed small cups of gelato at our favorite gelateria in the Bellagio, and watched the last episode of The Ultimate Fighter in our room.

Oh, yeah:  we talked, I worked, and we read.

What wild and crazy guys we are!

I'm heading to Vegas in the morning

and I am still way behind and haven't packed, so I best get to it.  In the meantime, enjoy this lovely version of the Cohen classic, which has been on my mind since I first saw it a couple of weeks ago.  If you haven't watched or heard it yet, it's a treat.  If you have, let it play just to take in the song.



Enjoy.

Catch Arrival before it gets away

Arrival has been in local theaters for a bit now, so I wouldn't be surprised to see it soon vanish from our screens.  Don't let that happen without seeing it.  A thoughtful, moving SF film is all too rare, and Arrival is that and more.

The movie of course draws much of its strength from Ted Chiang's compelling original story, "Story of Your Life."  It brings the tale to life with a good adaptation and excellent performances from its leads, particularly Amy Adams, who delivers her best turn ever.

If you don't know anything about the story, don't feel that you need to read it in advance; just go catch the movie.  Then, to reward Chiang, buy a book that contains the story.

I'm glad I was able to catch this one, and I encourage you to do the same.

Moana is a delight you should not miss

A lot of folks have praised Moana for its interesting cultural background and for its strong feminist message, and the movie deserves all of that praise.  It also deserves accolades for its stars, its imagery, its music, and its animation.  What's most important about Moana, though, is that it's an hour and forty three minutes of delight.

If you don't know the plot, don't bother investing time in reading reviews; you won't need them.  The film stands beautifully alone, and it will win you over in no time.

I could go on and on with praise, but rather than tell you anything more about it, let me say simply that this is a movie you should not miss.  As a bonus, you can take anyone of any age to it, and they will almost certainly have a good time, too.

Check it out.

Saint Jacques is no longer a top Raleigh restaurant

When Lil and Lori Lacassagne owned Raleigh's Saint Jacques French Cuisine, our group were regulars.  We loved the food and the people, and we ate there multiple times each year, certainly at least once per season.  A while back, Lil and Lori sold the place so they could focus all of their efforts on the Burke Manor Inn, and we hadn't returned to Saint Jacques since then.  We'd been a little afraid of what we'd find, and we'd also felt a bit disloyal to Lil and Lori, but, hey, their place is a long drive away, and we love supporting good Raleigh restaurants.  So, off we went to Saint Jacques for dinner.

I am sad to report that this former mainstay of ours has slid rather precipitously.

The service was so notably weak that I'm going to lead with it.  The servers frequently looked confused, and we sat for long periods, both initially and between courses, unattended.  The dining room was nowhere near full, but the service team--and, to be fair to them, the kitchen--seemed utterly unable to keep up.

I'd cut the place a lot of slack, though, if that was its only problem.  The food, after all, is the true star.

Unfortunately, every single dish I tasted, as well as almost all the dishes of the others in the group, was significantly worse than it had been before.  All of my dishes erred unpleasantly toward the sweet.  The onion soup, a basic French dish, lacked richness and flavor but tasted sweet.  The breads were okay but not as good as what you'd get at Whole Foods.  The goat cheese and duck appetizer proved to be a salad with two pieces of wilted bread sporting smears of goat cheese and a few thin and fairly tasteless duck slices sitting atop a mound of over-dressed greens.  The filet mignon with foie entree, at $42 rather pricey by local standards, was a bland piece of chewy meat with a tiny spread of foie atop it, an overly sweet reduction, and three tiny half-fingerling potato bits.

I was hoping desserts would be the saviors of the meal, and indeed the pastry in my profiteroles was promising, but the dish failed under the weight of utterly tasteless white ice cream.  The chocolate mousse was a more than passable chocolate pudding, but it was too simple to deserve the name mousse.

Saint Jacques was once a top-drawer restaurant where I could bring people from any city and expect they would have a good meal.  What we experienced was B- by Raleigh standards--at best, the kind of meal that makes you feel you paid too much for weak food and don't need to return.

I'm going to need to read a lot of positive reviews before I'll go back, and I can no longer recommend it at all.

Bad Santa 2

is not a very good movie.  In fact, by pretty much any reasonable standards, it's a fairly bad movie, a crass recycling of its predecessor that offers few surprises in the course of a journey into the very depths of foul language and awful behavior.

It is thus with considerable apologies that I must confess that I laughed my ass off through most of the movie and left convinced that I would watch it again someday.

Maybe it was the fact that Billy Bob Thornton, Tony Cox, and Brett Kelly were back doing the sorts of things their characters do.  Maybe it was my infatuation with Christina Hendricks, who remains breathtakingly beautiful and sexy.  Maybe it was Kathy Bates' astonishingly sick performance as Billy Bob's mom.

Or maybe my sense of humor is even sicker than I thought.

I don't care.  I had a grand hour and a half watching this film.

If you think your sense of humor might be as wicked as mine, give it a shot.  Otherwise, don't go unless you're prepared to be appalled.

Me, I'm already looking forward to buying the Blu-ray version and hoping for extended scenes.

Happy Thanksgiving!

If you celebrate this holiday, I hope your day is good and you have the time to think a bit about all the people and things for which you are thankful.  If you want to be with family and/or friends, I hope you are, and if you want to be alone, I hope you are.  If you aren't in the company you wish, I hope it goes well.

I am thankful for all that I have, but most of all for the people in my life, both friends and family near to me, and those more distant, even those, like many readers of my book, whom I have not yet had the pleasure to meet.

Happy Thanksgiving!

A Thanksgiving confession

I love canned cranberry sauce.  Sometimes, they call it jellied cranberry sauce, sometimes it has other names, but regardless of the name, I like it.

You know the stuff I'm talking about:  it plops out of the can onto a plate and sits there, quivering invitingly at you.  It's clearly nothing natural, and it almost certainly contains enormously more sugar than anyone needs with cranberries, but I've had it since I was a kid, and I genuinely enjoy it.

Some people get fancy and slice it before serving it, but I prefer to begin the meal with the whole loaf just sitting on a plate, being its bad jellied self.  I don't need the first slice; any slice will do.  I enjoy both eating it and looking at it.

I suspect this post could cost me any foodie membership cards I might have now or want in the future, but I won't deny my love of this strange canned concoction.

My Trump quote of the day

from the quote-rich New York Times story, is this one:

The president can’t have a conflict of interest.

Yup, that's a promising start.

I wonder if visiting foreign dignitaries will get coupon books good for discounts on stays at Trump hotels and bargains on Trump steaks--when you buy them in quantity.

Oh, yeah, it's going to be a long four years.