It's a chain, so it's somewhat "chain like," but no more so than Ruth's Chris or Morton's. The meat, however, tastes great. The danger is that because you can eat as much as you want, you can easily become over-stuffed. I did.
During my Southern California sojourn, we dropped in for a drink and a (very expensive) snack at the recently re-opened uber-chic Shangri-La Hotel bar in Santa Monica. Apparently there's quite a bar scene there normally, but as we arrived at 3.3o in the afternoon, the place was dead empty, which was actually more than fine by me.
Overall, I would probably like to stay here on a future visit.
I've got an easier and probably less painful way of getting rid of this problem: don't wear tops that expose your stomach if you're overweight (that's what I do).
Anyway, I will try to get back to the usual semi-irregular schedule of posting, at least for the next two weeks!
The knowledgeable, efficient and very friendly service made our dinner a very pleasant experience, and even the bill wasn't too bad (for London at least). Overall, a good find.
The BBC has done a brief feature on it and there's even a live webcam where you can watch people walk across and annoy drivers by stopping in the middle of the street to take photos.
The NY Times published a good piece on the Ryanair chief and his unabashed philosophy that "passengers will endure nearly every imaginable indignity, as long as the tickets are cheap and the planes are on time."Respondents in western European democracies such as Britain and Spain were most hostile to the idea of even some degree of use of torture, whereas residents in big but poorer countries such as Nigeria, Turkey and India seemed most willing to tolerate the idea. . . According to the polls, Americans are more willing to tolerate the use of torture than are Chinese.Another shameful legacy of the Bush-Cheney-Rove era. 45% of Americans now think it's OK to torture people. America, I hardly know thee.
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. This is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country.Sound familiar? I guess we know where these guys got their playbook.
And of course, the politics of fear continues.
Paul Gowder at the blog Uncommon Priors gets to the real essence of the issue - it should not be illegal to yell at the cops:The racism is actually the least interesting part of this story, just because we all already know that none of this would have been happened had he been white.Another example of how far the police state has really evolved in USA. Remember the British historian that Atlanta police wrestled to the ground and arrested for jaywalking?No, the real interesting issue is this “disorderly conduct.” The cop’s stated reason for arresting Gates was that he was yelling at him in front of other people. Let me repeat it. That was the stated reason for the arrest. So riddle me this: since when do we live in a society such that yelling at a cop is sufficiently plausible as grounds for arrest that the cop can actually write it in the arrest report?
Let’s not be confused here: the cop did not claim that Gates was getting violent, or that he posed any threat to the cop or anyone else, including himself.
. . . legal minds will have to decide what is more likely – a medical miracle or a teenager lying to her mother to get out of trouble.
In 2002, the team delivered a sound performance, but disappointed in the 2006 competition. Nonetheless, the program has showed steady improvement over the past eight years, and most of the team play for European clubs, including at least five in the English Premier League.
Their tag line is "Let Homer Simpson be your co-pilot." They say "driving with Homer is as easy as 1,2 … doh!"
The Wimbledon fortnight begins today, and the British have again pinned their hopes and dreams on Scotsman Andy Murray. If he wins, he will be the first Brit to win since Virginia Wade in 1976 and the first British men's champion since Fred Perry won in 1936.
I do hope that Murray wins, but I cannot help feeling that the next two weeks will follow the typical British/English sporting scenario: everyone works themselves into a frenzy of expectation for an epic victory, only to face bitter disappointment and humiliation in the end.
Probably farther than most people think or would like to believe. Remember a government that:
(Picture from Goths in Hot Weather)
More than 250,000 LA area homes have still not converted, and nearly 2.8 million homes across the US will receive only blank screens on Friday if they do not get a converter box for their old analog televisions.
I don't drink, so I cannot comment on the quality of the wines. My French colleague was predictably not impressed, the Brits couldn't wait to switch to beer (but that's no indication) and the Italians seemed to like it. Everyone did enjoy the Bikavér, or "Bulls Blood," the most famous Hungarian wine, though apparently many consider it mediocre. That shows how much we know.
Um, last time I checked, George Bush was president in the autumn of 2008 and Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson was the architect of the banking bailout (not that there's anything wrong with that - although it could have been done differently and better).
When a Bush administration aide asserted a few years ago that "we make our own reality," I guess he really meant it!
He says that the incident his given him in new insight into Labour's problems and says he's a metaphor for what's happening to the Labour party: "I have a broken rib and am bruised all over but am still walking."
The preacher says, "As a Christian pastor I believe that without a deep-seeded belief in God and firearms that this country would not be here." Because we all know that Jesus loves guns, right?
I guess it's just human nature. People look at the estimated arrival time and view it as a challenge. They want to prove to themselves that they're smarter than the machine.
The Sunday Times reports that the mayor of London is backing a new scheme where "31 pianos are to be plonked around the capital to encourage people to gather for a singsong with strangers. They will be placed at prominent sites such as the British Library, the Natural History Museum, the Bank of England and Tate Britain." The organisers believe the scheme will encourage trust. Although the pianos will be chained to bollards and railings, members of the public will be trusted not to vandalise the instruments or steal the laminated songbooks.Right. (Can you imagine how long these things would last in Manhattan?)
Colette Hiller, director of the scheme, which is part of the Sing London festival [says] “We want people to treat the piano nicely, as they would a piano in their own home, to enjoy the songbooks with care and to cover the piano when it rains.”
Although nothing can re-create the original (nor should it try), the space felt like a steakhouse should feel, despite the fresh paint and newly polished wood floors. Perhaps in eighty years it may even come to resemble Second Avenue - the ingredients are there.
I've always had mixed feelings about New York steakhouses the Palm and Smith & Wollensky branching out to other cities. It can only dilute the franchises, as the copies can never measure up the original - and they don't. They also run the risk of becoming chain restaurants like Chili's or Olive Garden, which I guess they really are, albeit with a much higher level of quality.
That said, because I do not go to New York often enough but do travel occasionally to other large American cities, I really like that I can eat at the Palm or Smith & Wollensky when I go to Miami, Chicago or Los Angeles. These restaurants are close enough to the originals that I always enjoy them.
And, Chelsea has already bowed out of the Champions League (I'm still having a hard time talking about it), so I don't have that to worry about this time.
The good thing about walking home in a dress on Sunday morning is that people mistake my walk of shame as a walk to God.Pretty good.
An independent alumni group of Boston University, long known throughout the Northeast as a party school, unveiled plans yesterday to open a ‘Walk of Shame Hall of Fame’. The Hall will honor BU students who have gained a certain amount of celebrity throughout the campus for shacking up with randoms, then making that long walk home the next morning in their nighttime attire.
Separately, Metro reports that rattraders.com uses trained rats to choose whether stock prices will rise or fall by pressing levers. When they make the right decisions, the rats receive bonuses just like real traders, although the rats get food rather than cash.Our program is a professional service to the financial industry; rats are being trained to become superior traders in the financial markets. Using our own methodology in accordance with well-established animal training techniques, our subjects learn to recognize pattens in historical stock and futures data as well as generating trading signals. We provide solutions for tick based trading data and day based data. RATTRADERS rats can be trained exclusively for any financial market segment. They outperform most human traders and represent a much more economic solution for your trading desk.Potential cat-rat office politics aside, for those calling for serious reform in financial market practices, perhaps the day has arrived.
Tonight I'm headed to one of my favourite London restaurants, Le Relais de Venise L'Entrecôte. It's a London offshoot of a Paris original that takes great pains to remain true to its Parisian roots.
Attacks?! Who is this woman, Tippi Hedren? I suspect we'll now hear calls for a "War on Birds." I'm sure my cats would enthusiastically support it.
From what I can tell, the core of their argument is essentially "Well, it works!"
The fact is that officials in the Bush administration instituted torture as a policy, misled the nation into a war they wanted to fight and, probably, tortured people in the attempt to extract “confessions” that would justify that war. And during the march to war, most of the political and media establishment looked the other way.The most telling phrase that sums up the essence of today's political reality:
It’s hard, then, not to be cynical when some of the people who should have spoken out against what was happening, but didn’t, now declare that we should forget the whole era — for the sake of the country, of course.
Still, you might argue — and many do — that revisiting the abuses of the Bush years would undermine the political consensus the president needs to pursue his agenda.Of course, the Republican view of bi-partisan consensus is "do what we want, and if you don't do what we want, you're partisan." Will they ever wake up and realise that America doesn't like their policies. That's why we voted them out!
But the answer to that is, what political consensus?
The 10-year budget gets an A. It's an extraordinary vision of what America can and should become, including universal health insurance and environmental protections against climate change.I agree on all counts, especially his conclusion: good but not good enough.
The stimulus package gets a B. Good as far as it goes but doesn't go nearly far enough.
The last grade is for the bank bailouts. I give them an F. I'm a big fan of this administration, but I've got to be honest. The bailouts are failing.
When the Republicans impeached a president for committing perjury in a civil suit, it was about the rule of law. But when it comes to holding a president accountable for war crimes in his public capacity, it is about criminalizing political differences. Do these people even hear themselves?Although I understand the current US government's desire to "look forward," I find it difficult to accept the reluctance to rigorously investigate criminal acts of the previous government and prosecute if laws were broken. Sure, the wingnuts on the right will cry that these actions are politically motivated and divisive, but the US remains, as far as I can tell, a country of laws.
If most people tried to make the case that prosecuting their criminal acts was just "looking backwards", or a sign that the prosecutor was motivated by a desire for retribution, they'd be laughed out of court. Imagine the likely reaction if your average crack dealer were to urge the judge not to dwell on the past. . .The US legal system rests on the foundation that no one stands above the law, especially those who govern. The current government has an obligation to quash the Bush/Cheney paradigm of "it's legal if the president says it's legal" before the cracks in our Constitution cause it to crumble.
One clever cat owner has rigged up a cat flap that only allows authorised cats (identified using RFID tags) through, and sends real-time information about the cat-flap usage to the internet.Now, while I do admit that this is fairly ridiculous thing to do, I do think it's a pretty clever use of Twitter, which is a fairly ridiculous thing anyway.
Naturally, this being 2009, the information is sent directly to Twitter, so the entire world can follow the cats' daily peregrinations via messages like 'Gus is out to sit on the porch' and 'Penny is in to vomit in owners shoes.'
The LA Times carries an article about the infamous Area 51, where conspiracy theorists and UFO aficionados think the government keeps captured aliens and their spacecraft.You don't need to listen to him. You've heard enough to know he's a) racist, b) hateful, c) stupid, d) merely an outrageous entertainer not to be taken seriously or e) all of the above.Now, I don't know who this guy is or who he's actually been listening to, but I have listened to Rush Limbaugh. I also watch Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck sometimes too (ick!) because I like to know what these guys are thinking (I use the term loosely) and saying.
Now let me tell you the real answer: You're a lowdown, yellow-bellied, lily-livered intellectual coward. You're terrified of finding out he makes more sense than you do.
I listen to Limbaugh every chance I get, and I have never heard the man utter a single racist, hateful or stupid word.
Anyway, Barack Obama's teleprompter (TOTUS - the Teleprompter of the United States) has a blog, Barack Obama's Teleprompter's Blog: Reflections from the hard drive of the machine that enables the voice of the Leader of the Free World
Yesterday she e-mailed me to tell me she didn't like the brand of food we use.You can probably deduce that All-You-Can-Eat ballpark food might lead to substantial gas emissions, which is where corporate sponsor, Subtle Butt, enters the picture. Made of activated carbon fabric, each disposable 3.25" square shield is held onto the inside of the underwear with two self-adhesive strips. Subtle Butt effectively filters flatulence, absorbing and neutralizing its odor.At fist I thought this must be a joke, but this product really does exist. You just tape it to the inside of your underpants and blast away odour free!
Therefore, the first 250 fans in attendance at every "Fat Tuesday" ballgame (the first is on April 14, mark your calendars) will receive a free product sample of Subtle Butt.
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