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Due to traffic, we missed the first few minutes of "In Bruges." If you like things like "Pulp Fiction," or "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels," hunt this one down at your art house. Ralph Fiennes' telephonic rant about Bruges as a f****** fairyland is every bit as blue-in-the-service-of-a-great-speech as anything David Mamet wrote and if Ireland had Living National Treasures the way Japan does, Brendan Gleeson would be one. At turns hillarious and horrifying, "In Bruges" takes you on a journey.
Unfortunately as well, due to traffic, we did not get a chance to order dinner with our movie, so the complete Speakeasy Theatre experience will have to be tried again. Instead, we ended up having gourmet burgers at Barney's up on Solano. Ellen had the French burger (bleu cheese and bacon on a baguette) and I had the pesto and swiss, also on a baguette. The steak fries were every bit as good as I remember.
WTF moment of the day: There I am reading a biography of an august personage of the 14th century by a well known professor from NYU. I neglected to inspect it more thoroughly at the bookstore, but am I totally wrong to be frustrated by supposedly scholarly works that do not contain footnotes? Then there's the "Whoops, I haven't mentioned homosexuality for at least twenty pages. Better throw something in there right now!" Even when it has nothing to do with the subject at hand. The last straw, however, was when I found myself reading a completely speculative (you know, fictitious!) love letter from said august personage to his mistress in which he reminisces about how impressed he was by her rack the first time he ever saw her. I'd never read any Norman Cantor before, I'm not bloody likely to ever again based on this piece of trash.
As long as I'm in media review mode, I had acquired Eleanor Herman's Sex With Kings at the same time as the Cantor. As I have been guilty of my own brand of snappy, smartass titles for articles of my own, the title was hardly a turn-off. It has footnotes! Ms. Herman's book is clearly a labor of love - or at least fascination. Touching on the lives of various royal mistresses over the course of several centuries, she describes how the role of royal mistress changed with the times. The heyday is clearly the 17th and 18th centuries (until 1789), when mistress was an official court post. Enjoyable, interesting, and will have you thinking, "Must go look for more on that Nell Gwynn!" Or Pompadour, or Dubarry or Lola Montez.
Unfortunately as well, due to traffic, we did not get a chance to order dinner with our movie, so the complete Speakeasy Theatre experience will have to be tried again. Instead, we ended up having gourmet burgers at Barney's up on Solano. Ellen had the French burger (bleu cheese and bacon on a baguette) and I had the pesto and swiss, also on a baguette. The steak fries were every bit as good as I remember.
WTF moment of the day: There I am reading a biography of an august personage of the 14th century by a well known professor from NYU. I neglected to inspect it more thoroughly at the bookstore, but am I totally wrong to be frustrated by supposedly scholarly works that do not contain footnotes? Then there's the "Whoops, I haven't mentioned homosexuality for at least twenty pages. Better throw something in there right now!" Even when it has nothing to do with the subject at hand. The last straw, however, was when I found myself reading a completely speculative (you know, fictitious!) love letter from said august personage to his mistress in which he reminisces about how impressed he was by her rack the first time he ever saw her. I'd never read any Norman Cantor before, I'm not bloody likely to ever again based on this piece of trash.
As long as I'm in media review mode, I had acquired Eleanor Herman's Sex With Kings at the same time as the Cantor. As I have been guilty of my own brand of snappy, smartass titles for articles of my own, the title was hardly a turn-off. It has footnotes! Ms. Herman's book is clearly a labor of love - or at least fascination. Touching on the lives of various royal mistresses over the course of several centuries, she describes how the role of royal mistress changed with the times. The heyday is clearly the 17th and 18th centuries (until 1789), when mistress was an official court post. Enjoyable, interesting, and will have you thinking, "Must go look for more on that Nell Gwynn!" Or Pompadour, or Dubarry or Lola Montez.
