Se habla español??? As a callow youth, I never showed much facility for foreign languages. In order to honor California’s past and to foreshadow its future, Spanish was a required subject in the sixth grade at La Tijera Elementary School, strategically placed at the swampy, scissors-like intersection of La Cienega and La Tijera Blvds. Our…
Yo Quiero Taco Bell Newton’s three laws of motion, Dante’s nine circles of hell, the Bible’s seven pillars of wisdom. Tragedy or comedy, poetry or prose. Over the centuries, the brilliant minds of humanity have organized, categorized and classified knowledge so that we peons may better comprehend our universe and mankind’s place within it. Without…
Friendship I know that the public depends upon Braindoc, the maestro of mastication, for objective, impartial and dispassionate judgment (and occasional witty reportage) to guide your culinary selections among the multitudinous options throughout the Los Angeles Basin and the four corners of the earth. To sift, to winnow, to separate the wheat from the chaff…
The Waste Land I had intended to start this review of BLVD Steak, a new swanky restaurant in the San Fernando Valley, in my typical pseudointellectual fashion with a reference to T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land: “April is the cruellest month”…blah, blah, blah. To be honest, I never really understood poetry. At every lecture that…
Veni Vidi Mangia My worldly and sophisticated wife was born in Sansepolcro in the Valtiberina region of Tuscany, near the birthplace of Michelangelo. It is a rural area of picturesque forested rolling hills, quaint family farms and tiny walled medieval towns. Other than her parents, the remainder of her family stayed in Sansepolcro to live…
Are we really going to eat little Furball??? What flashes into one’s brain with the thought of Peru? Machu Picchu, the source of the Amazon, the Andes? Those with a more juvenile mindset might think of Lake Titicaca or toilets flushing counterclockwise due to the Coriolis Effect. I harken back to my teenage years, before I…
Third time’s a charm My close friend Morrie Grossman, brother of producer Les Grossman of Tropic Thunder fame and himself a celebrated food critic (and who introduced me to Dear John’s), has another brother, Bernie Grossman. Bernie is a power attorney, a mover, a shaker, a rainmaker. He is the supreme managing partner of the…
In vino veritas “Nothing more excellent or valuable than wine was ever granted by the gods to man” said Plato, who knew a thing or two about a thing or two. It has also been said that a bottle of wine contains more philosophy than all the books in the world, so you can thank…
Can we all get along? While valuably spending last Friday afternoon lounging on the couch with Nolan, my pet Yorkie, and a Bombay Sapphire and tonic watching reruns of The Rockford Files, my usually dormant cell phone rang. Who do I know with a 202 area code? Out of sheer curiosity, I answered the call…
“Digressions, incontestably, are the sunshine, the life, the soul of reading!”—Laurence Sterne My movie producer friend, Morrie Grossman, co-authored a classic book of reviews of dive restaurants in Los Angeles. This was back in the day when people actually read books. When it comes to commentary and criticism of eateries he knows of what…