Let the Flames Begin

As previously mentioned, I’m dangerously susceptible to television. Turn one on while I’m in the room, and I’ll watch it, no matter what’s playing. Commercials, re-runs of Full House; it doesn’t really matter.

But, at the same time, there’s relatively little I’d be too upset to give up. No more American Idol? I’m pretty sure my life would go on.

There is, though, one exception: Bravo’s Top Chef, which starts a new season this evening.

Prior to discovering the show, I already considered myself a bit of a foodie, having eaten my way through much of New York, taken an array of cooking classes, and stocked up on key kitchen gadgetry. But over the course of even my first month of Top Chef episodes, I found myself appreciating cooking, really appreciating cooking, in a way I’d never before.

It was Top Chef that led me to read Heat, The Making of a Chef and Kitchen Confidential, that got me subscribed to Cook’s Illustrated, that got me taking wildly over-long and over-expensive culinary school professional development courses (thank you, thank you, Jess!).

And, more than anything else, it was Top Chef that led me to an ever-deeper exploration of the principles of cooking, rather than simply cooking recipes rote. This weekend, for example, when testing out a new red wine and mushroom pan sauce for the flank steak I pan-roasted, I could puzzle through how much stock to use to balance out the wine pre-reduction, knew to toss in shallots, mustard, and balsamic vinegar to balance tastes, could explain why I chose to ‘monte au beurre’ as a final step.

In other words, I’ve now moved past ‘foodie’ and into ‘total asshole’. And I have Top Chef entirely to thank.

Tonight at 9:00 on Bravo. Bon appetit.

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March 12, 2008

Tickets Please

An inside tip for any New Yorkers whose taste for cultural events exceeds their budget for cultural events: join play-by-play.com.

The idea is simple: theatre producers don’t like empty seats at their shows, as it makes people wonder whether they made the right choice in shelling out big bucks for tickets. So producers turn to services like Play-by-Play to fill unsold seats.

Conversely, theatre-goers can join Play-by-Play for $100 a year, then pay $3 a pop for any of those seat-filling tickets.

The obvious question is: what kind of crappy production has to resort to free seat-fillers?

And the answer is: surprisingly many.

Yesterday, Jess and I scored tickets to Things We Want (directed by Ethan Hawke, and starring Paul Dano and Peter Dinklage), which we’d long wanted to see. As those two tickets would have run us north of $150 on Ticketmaster, the annual cost of Play-by-Play membership paid itself off in a single evening.

This Saturday, similarly, we’re off to see Molissa Fenley and Dancers premiere Dreaming Awake and Calculus and Politics at the Joyce; another $80 saved.

What else can you find? Some Broadway, more Off-Broadway, and even more Off-Off. Plus dance, music, comedy, staged readings, and the like. For $100 a year, it’s a hard deal to pass up.

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December 14, 2007

Screen Player

Given my job, it’s a bit embarrassing to admit that I rarely watch movies. And I don’t mean rarely watch them in theaters – a common condition; I mean rarely watch them at all.

There was a time, early in the life of Cyan, that I was cranking my way through a good five or six a week – my own little Good Will Hunting hundred bucks of Netflix membership rather than hundred thousand of NYU tuition film school. By now, if I see one movie a week, I’m doing well.

Terrible, I know. And much as I wish I could blame this on Jess, she watches many more movies (and reads more books and magazines, is generally just far better informed on both popular and high culture) than I.

I have no good excuse. Sure, long work hours, helping run a gym, work and play social obligations, etc., all make it tough to block out two solid hours of time at a stretch. But lots of movie buffs have waaaaay crazier lives, yet seem to make it work.

So I’m particularly glad that, in the last four days, I’ve seen two movies. Even better, I’ve seen two movies in theaters. Granted, one (The Golden Compass) was a disappointing atrocity, and the other (The Great Debaters) might have made even Lifetime viewers roll their eyes. But still, I watched them! The whole way through! Both of them! Mere days apart!

Even better, for the first time in months, there are scores more movies out I really do want to see: Juno, The Savages, No Country for Old Men, just to name a few. So I’m trying to build this new momentum, to get back in front of a big (or at least small) screen ASAP. If nothing else, as one of the few people who can write off movie tickets as a business expense, I figure I should do my best to abuse that privilege.

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December 11, 2007

Take Me Out

My wily brother rounded up excellent free tickets to tonight’s Yankees / Mariners game. So he, Jess and I will be headed off to the ballpark to drink bad beer, eat sketchy hotdogs (assuming we’ve recovered from the even sketchier hotdogs served yesterday at Colin’s Labor Day BBQ), and generally revel in the nearly deciding game of the close American League wild card race.

Play Ball.

[Also, beginning this evening and carrying on through the balance of September, I’ll be doing my best to make up for my irregular blogging by instead at least briefly moblogging via Twitter and Flickr. Oversharing narcissism knows no bounds.]

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September 4, 2007

Tele-tard

As previously extensively blogged about, I wasn’t really a television watcher before I met Jess. When she moved in, however, for the first time I had cable installed in my (or, rather, our) apartment.

Jess watches relatively little TV. And, when she does, it’s mainly as relaxing background noise while multi-tasking: replying to emails, paging through magazines relevant to her job in the world of fashion design.

I, however, am far less able to healthily cope. Sitting at our desk, with my back to the screen, I find myself frequently swiveling around to catch more of what Heidi, say, might be saying to Spencer on the latest episode of The Hills. I even watch the commercials. And then I try to discuss them with Jess, who, having built more effective defenses against the tube, stares at me blankly, having completely ignored such unwanted interstitial content.

I don’t know if I’ll develop similar immunity with practice, or if I’m simply congenitally unable to sit in a room with television playing and not pay attention.

Either way, though, at least for the time being, if anyone needs to know exactly what Sanjaya said to Paula this week, or who does the Marshall’s celebrity voice-over, I’m pretty much your go-to guy.

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April 6, 2007

Book It

Jess moved in bearing largely two kinds of items: clothing and books. And while, fortunately, my apartment has ample closet space, leaving room for both her and my own (albeit now slightly more compressed) apparel, I had previously filled my own large bookshelf to near bursting, leaving certainly no room in which to store her many, many tomes.

So, to accommodate, we added a second bookshelf and some magazine baskets, commandeered a section of windowsill for library lineup. And, in the process, I also started going through all of my books, to see what I wanted to keep, and with what I might be willing to part.

And while it turned out, unfortunately, that I did want to keep most of my books, I also discovered there were a rather shockingly large number I had never finished, or, worse, even begun. Apparently, armed with an Amazon Prime account, my eyes are bigger than my literary stomach, with even my relatively voracious pace of book consumption falling steadily behind my pace of online book accumulation.

So, making a belated resolution that, in all honesty, I still won’t be able to keep: no new books until I catch back up on the old ones. Or, at least, no new books until I’m satisfied having simply judged each unread one by its cover instead.

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January 9, 2007

Tooting their Horn

This evening, headed to a special joint concert between the New York Philharmonic and the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra. The two played, respectively, Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker, and Duke Ellington’s arrangements of the same music, switching back and forth to allow the audience to compare the original classical and more newly jazzified versions of each movement.

As the concert also included Copland’s El Salon Mexico, it gave me the chance to hear featured playing from two of my favorite trumpet players in the entire world: the NY Philharmonic’s Phil Smith, and the JLCO’s Wynton Marsalis.

As ever, I headed home not sure whether to start practicing, or give up playing the trumpet completely.

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December 7, 2006

Guest Blog: Josh Lilienstein on Medeski Martin & Wood

With recorded music ever easier to find, fewer and fewer people take the time to go see their favorite groups perform live. Which is a shame, because a good live show is an experience completely unmatched by disembodied sounds floating out of living room speakers. My old friend Josh Lilienstein recently emailed along this summary of a MMW concert he attended. I’m posting it up here in the hopes that it will get a few more readers out of their chairs, and into clubs, bars and concert halls.

If you go see one popular band this week, this month, this year, or this decade, these guys should be on your radar. When was the last time you saw a concert where all three members of the group (plus the special guest) were ALL incredible musicians? When was the last time that you heard improvised music that made a crowd get up and dance? When was the last time you saw a jazz concert where each of the musicians onstage traded off leading the group, instead of trading solos?

As soon as i could find a musical reference, they were on to the next. Ellington degenerates into chaos which is rescued by funk slipping into blues, at which point the guy on the standup bass grabs his bow, hits the reverb pedal, and launches into Hendrix, soaring into a Miles Davis bebop breakdown and across the Florida keys to mid-century Cuban dance hall, shimmies out to Mariachi shores and back-to-Africa tribal chants, dropping the bass into some deep house, devolving into 80s metal, with country western rock and roll gracefully saving the day, and Indian raga bringing us back into downtown New York jazz. And that was just the first song. They played for two hours.

Medeski, the keyboardist, is a master of his craft. He actually used, often in ridiculously complex combinations, three keyboards, a moog, a sequencer, a sound board, and a record player. Often, in order to somehow account for genius, we imagine that impressive people had been born in the wrong decade; thankfully, this guy was not. Using a historically-informed musicianship and contemporary instruments, he shows up an entire generation of DJs and computer geeks.

The Bros holla’ed. The tube-top girls grinded. The fat man clapped and jumped along. The hippies twirled. The stoners passed joints with a smile. The intellectuals bobbed their heads while scratching their chins. Something for everyone!

When was the last time you saw a drummer who was subtle? Who had a real dynamic range? Who used every snap, crackle, bop, wheeze, and thump he could think of to move the music instead of making noise?

When was the last time you really wanted to hear the bass, and actually could? Have you ever seen a standup bass played like a Stratocaster? Ever head a saw (yes, a saw, placed on the bridge of the bass so it resonated) ROCK the party?

Those of you who were involved in improvisational music thirty years ago need to see the fruits of your movement. Those of you who feel alienated from popular culture need a reality check. Take your kids. Get high. You musicians out there, go get inspired.

[Catch an upcoming MM&W show near you.]

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October 4, 2006

The Results

The First Annual Cyan Pictures Oscar Pool has come and gone, and, in the process, I’ve actually learned a number of things:

1. The crowd is smart.

Together, we correctly predicted 17 of the 24 Oscars.

2. Smarter than even our best entrant.

Still, congratulations to Jennifer Kearns, who, with 16 right answers (and missing only Crash for Best Picture in the eight ‘big’ categories) won the pool.

Also, ‘congratulations’ to Seanna Davidson, who, with 5 right answers (but still somehow getting Crash for Best Picture) was at the very bottom of the barrel. While, arguably, that means Seanna should be sending me movies, we’re sending her a prize pack as well; clearly, she’s in need of some good movie watching.

Jennifer and Seanna, shoot me an email to claim your prizes.

3. And way smarter than the average entrant.

Although, together, we got 17, on average, each of you only predicted 10.7 Oscars correctly.

4. Smarter than me.

Misled by my crush on Amy Adams in Junebug, I was in the (reasonably large) crowd of folks who would have tied for second with 15 predictions.

5. But not smarter than my mom.

While this last one pains me to no end, had she entered (rather than simply mocking me from afar), my own mother, with 19 predictions (including Best Picture), bested me, our winner Jennifer, and our collective wisdom.

As she emailed to say, “so when you want advice on moviesÖ”

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March 7, 2006

Wisdom of the Crowd

As promised, here’s your collective wisdom on who’s going home with statues tomorrow night.

In cases where the runner-up was within 5% of the number of votes, I’ve included both to account for margin of error. That happened on only two categories: Best Actor, where people were nearly perfectly split between Hoffman and Ledger, and Best Live Action Short, where people were clearly pulling decisions out of their asses.

Interestingly, the most unanimously decided category was Best Documentary Short, and I’m fairly certain no more of you have seen those shorts than the live action ones. Still, stick ‘Rwanda’ in the title (as in God Sleeps in Rwanda, which garnered 78% of your votes) and it’s got to be an Oscar contender.

Check back on Monday to see how we did together, and to determine which wise voter led the pack.
—

Best Picture: Brokeback Mountain (71%)

Best Director: Ang Lee for Brokeback Mountain (70%)

Best Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman for Capote (52%), Heath Ledger for Brokeback Mountain (48%)

Best Actress: Reese Witherspoon for Walk the Line (63%)

Best Supporting Actor: George Clooney for Syriana (44%)

Best Supporting Actress: Rachel Weisz for The Constant Gardener (51%)

Best Original Screenplay: Crash – Paul Haggis (41%)

Best Adapted Screenplay: Brokeback Mountain – Larry McMurtry (45%)

Cinematography: Brokeback Mountain (56%)

Editing: Crash (48%)

Art Direction: Memoirs of a Geisha (37%)

Costume Design: Memoirs of a Geisha (59%)

Original Score: Brokeback Mountain (41%)

Original Song: “Travelin’ Thru” – Transamerica – Dolly Parton (40%)

Best Makeup: The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (66%)

Best Sound: King Kong (49%)

Best Sound Editing: King Kong (71%)

Best Visual Effects: King Kong (69%)

Best Animated Feature Film: Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (67%)

Best Foreign Language Film: Paradise Now (Palestine) (48%)

Best Documentary Feature: Murderball (42%)

Best Documentary Short: God Sleeps in Rwanda (78%)

Best Live Action Short: Our Time Is Up (32%), Cashback (30%), Six Shooter (27%)

Best Animated Short: Moon and the Son (33%)

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March 4, 2006