Breakfast with the snoots — the Pacific Whey Cafe and Baking Company knows its audience and knows its locale. That’s the well-off and then some crew that lurks not merely in Newport Beach in my neck of the woods, but Corona del Mar and th[…]

My August albums — there are three records that I listen to only at one particular time per year, and that’s an LA summer, smack dab in August. I didn’t get any of them in August to my knowledge, I don’t even think I first hea[…]

It’s not the Space Needle, so what EEES it, man? — the BT Telecom Tower has always tripped me out a little whenever I’ve seen it around London. I’ll turn a corner or the taxi I’m in will change a lane or something and t[…]

In praise of Apollo Heights — who I’ll be sorta surprised if anyone reading this has heard of, but no matter, that’s why I’m posting it! This week I’ve been indulging in the past four (well, three and a half) albums by […]

RIP Julia Child — I’m not too sure what her reputation outside of America was in the food world, so if others could chime in, but in it, she was hands down the queen when it came to famous chefs. Like many my age, I think I first learned[…]

Digging one up from the archives — this isn’t a new piece, but I stumbled across it in my work files; originally it ran on FT back in 2000 when it was a dot-com and was lost in the Internet underworld along with that domain. There are a […]

Skateboarding near the Thames — a brief observation today on how world culture functions. I still remember the first time I was at the Royal Festival Hall — trying to remember who was on that night, Jarvis Cocker’s one off Touch of[…]

Dave Q conquers the world, part 4154145 — in which quite probably the Greatest Living Critic has his say about one Metallica and a recent movie of theirs. The tears of laughter are still rolling down my face.[…]

It was actually the head and upper chest they saved — the ridiculous joy of They Saved Hitler’s Brain isn’t just the title, of course, but damned if that doesn’t have a lot to do with it. It’s a perfect time-killer movi[…]

The only living American boy in New Cross (not necessarily true) — as I mentioned yesterday, I had reason to be in New Cross for two of my London trips, and while I can’t say I got to know the entire area or anything like that, for me, fo[…]