My last Dine About Town 2004 experience was at Roy's Restuarant, located on Mission between 1st and 2nd streets. I ate there last night with a friend of mine.

My friend had been there before, and wanted me to try it since it was Hawaiian style fusion food. I had never heard of the place, so I was intrigued.

The restaurant was crowded, and while there were hawaiian sounding dishes on the menu, it wasn't exactly what I would call Hawaiian food. It's more east and west fusion food, with a Hawaiian accent. They did have butterfish on the menu however, which was cool because butterfish is like a staple in Hawaiian eating.

Anyway, the food was excellent and probably a notch below Chez Panise. Considering the prices and the quality of the food, it's a heck of a bargain. Chez Panise has unbelievable food, but it is so not cheap.

Here's the what I had from from the Dine About Town menu:

Appetizer:
Roy’s Hawaiian Fusion Sampler - Shrimp Stick, Szechuan Baby Back Rib & Kalua Pork Lumpia

Dinner:
Charred Garlic Honey Mustard Beef Short Ribs with Hanalei Poi and Lomi Lomi Tomato (I had to see what the poi tasted like. The colour was off, but it was real poi.)

Dessert:
Caramel Macadamia Nut Almond Tart With Our homemade vanilla bean ice cream (what's a hawaiian meal without some macadamia nut?)

My friend says the Szechuan Baby Back Ribs are her favourite. She had the Roy’s Classic Roasted Macadamia Whitefish with a Lobster Butter Sauce for her dinner choice.

They play cheesey loungey Hawaiian music, so it's like you're eating in a hotel in Hawaii. You can't escape cheesey Hawaiian lounge music when you're in Hawaii; it's everywhere.

Still, the food is so good that it warrants a return visit. Supposedly they have their own hawaiian cocktails on the menu, but we didn't try any of those and I'd go back just to see if they can get a cheesey Waikiki mai tai right.

So I saw the movie Mystic River yesterday, and it was interesting to watch the movie after having just finished reading the book. I was curious to see how the film screenplay and adaptation would compare to the book.

The movie faithfully sticks to the plot of the book, with some minor changes, and dialogue from the book is lifted into the screenplay. The novel was a crime novel, and like the book the movie is dark and gloomy.

There were a couple of what I would call schmaltzy scenes in the movie complete with sentimental loud music, where I'm looking at the screen and thinking what was that shot about.

I was surprised to see Kevin Bacon and Laurence Fishburne in the movie, because all you hear about is Sean Penn and Tim Robbins. It's an ensemble movie, meaning there really is no one character that stands out and the book as told from the point of view of the three boys.

Sean Penn was his usual explosive self. Having seen him on stage, you only get a hint (albeit a huge one) of the force of his rage and his powder keg personality. I'm not sure if it's his best performance since "The Sweet and Lowdown" and "I am Sam" I thought were better, but it's a good one. I've been told his performance in "21 Grams was fantastic, and the two combined might have led to his nomination.

Tim Robbins was fantastic. He really managed to inhabit his character very well, and his facial expressions and bod postures were so believable. Technically, Robbins gave a superb performance and probably his best.

It's not his usual character, and he probably got kudos from Academy voters for playing the role. I kept contrasting Robbin's character in Robert Altman's "The Player" with his "Mystic River" character, and I was amazed at how he was able to transform himself.

Robbins is a tall guy for Hollywood standards, and just by virtue of his height he has a commanding presence when in the room with most male Hollywood characters. Robinns managed in this role to make himself small, physically and emotionally, almost disappearing in a scene, and that kind of skill got him his oscar nomination. Plus his Boston accent was probably the best of the three main characters.

Marcia Gay Harden was very good as well, and by the end of the movie you could really feel sorry for her character. She was so tragic.

"Mystic River" is a damned good movie, but I don't know if it's Best Picture quality. Those schmaltzy musical shots gave the movie a subtle over the top feeling, like it's saying "look at me wink, wink, I'm an american tragedy". Those scenes were unnecessary because the characters themselves were all emblematic of the failure of the american dream and how one choice in life affects you for the rest of your life.

Catholics beware! I'm not sure if it's deliberate, but I thought there was not so subtle slap at the Catholic church in the movie especially in the light of certain recent scandals that have rocked the church. It might be just my imagination, but I got message.

And I guess other people did too. Check out this review from Newsday, Mystic River: Effect Eastwood shows a slow, sure hand in tale of revenge.

I thought this would be a lazy lay about the house day for me, but I ended up doing my taxes. I'm getting a huge refund! YEAH!!!

The refund is much more than I was expecting, so I think I'll buy a new TV, a dvd player and new vcr with the extra money. Maybe even a mini stereo as well, depending on what kind of deals I can get.

I'm going to wait another month just in case more forms come in, and then I'll get do some serious entertainment shopping.

So my weight loss is going ever so slowly, but I just measured myself and I lost an inch off the bum, one inch off my thighs, and an inch off my waist.

My clothes are fitting better, but they're still tight because gaining 10 pounds added two to three inches practically everywhere. To think that back in April I was complaining that my jeans were too loose and I was so not happy at having to buy smaller jeans since I'd just bought my jeans two months ago.

Maybe it's true what they say that every five pounds that you gain means you go up one size.

The loss of inches are coming from the walking and my light workout. Perhaps if I just increase my workout, I'll lose two inches off my thighs and two inches off my butt. And cross my fingers, my jeans should fit again. If the scale stays the same, I'm fine with it (although not very happy) as long as the inches keep coming off.

I made myself finish "Mystic River", even though I was sort of bored by the story. It's a good story, it's just not the type of story I like to read. Oh well. Now I can go and see the movie.

I don't consider myself a romantic. I rarely cry at movies, but this movie just made me ball. It's an Australian film called Innocence.

I saw the trailer for it while watching another video, and I decided to rent it. I loved the premise of the movie, which is about rekindling your first love after 40 years. I have a thing about my first love so I had to see it.

I was in tears the whole time. It made me wonder what it would be like to see my first love again after 40 years. Would the guy still even remember me? He was my first love, but who knows where I ranked in his life.

It makes me teary eyed to think about rekindling a first love. Is it possible to start again, start all over? Can you pick up where you left off 40 years ago?

I've tried to answer this question myself, and tried to write a play about running into my first love. The play was hard to write, so I didn't finish it. I wanted my characters to have a happy ending, but I couldn't do it.

It made me wonder if I believed in second chances in life. I don't think I do. Once an opportunity is gone, it's gone forever and you can never get it back, not in the same way anyway. The play started to be about how there are no second chances in life, and even if there were, my characters wouldn't choose them. What couldn't work in the past can't work in the present. The thought depressed me so I stopped working on the play.

Watching the movie made me want to work on the play again. Maybe my characters can't have the happy ending they've always wanted, but maybe they can have happy moments. And perhaps a few happy moments are better than no moments at all right? I hope so.

Check out this Victoria's Secret link, Victoria's Secret Sale page. You can find some really good deals on clothes for under $20 under Clearance. I love shopping for marked down clothes on the Net. It's like digging through the sales racks at stores.

I picked up two Victoria's Secret matching lounge outfits to wear at home, each for under $20. They're cute outfits, 100% cotton, the top and pants match, and they're terrific when you want to look good but still be comfortable.

It looks like John Kerry won, and Chris Matthews and the Hard Ball gang are saying Howard Dean has a stint and and a 1 in 10 chance of winning the democratic presidential nomination.

I've turned the TV on just in case Howard Dean decides to give another "I have a scream" speech. God, I love that phrase. I wonder who coined it. People are so clever aren't they?

I never liked Howard Dean. He was too much angry talk and no substance on his policy issues. I still think the 2004 presidential election race will be close, with the Smirkiemeister coming out on top.

I'm a democrat, but I'm also a pragmatist at heart. Political pundits have been reporting lately that the republican party is united behind Shrub giving 90% support. This the real story of why the Shrubmeister will win. 9 out 10 people in his own party support him.

The democrats are fighting amongst themselves, and when there is too much infighting there is no unity. Demos just don't get that, and until they do people like Smirkiemeist will be running the country.

It's that theory of if you give people enough rope, eventually most people will hang themselves. The demos are hanging themselves, voting Green in local elections and saying it doesn't matter. Of course it matters.

It's the effect of living in a very connected world. What one small part of the world does really affects another. You can't be a demo and vote green in a local election, and not expect there to be consequences on the national party and national politics.

The GOP has disciplined itself to understand this theroy. They've learned to put their differences aside and present a united front. Arnie's win in the governor of Cali's race is testament to that.

But the GOP had to suffer a long time in politics to figure that one out. And their takeover of the federal government has been in the planning stages for years, and it started out in local elections all over the country. The GOP started connecting with all kinds of people, and well look where they are now.

Demos, I'm starting to think, are so insular, thinking that everyone is crazy and stupid except for them. That's not a great strategy for getting people over to their side.

So maybe it's the demo's turn to suffer. The only problem is, how long are people willing to suffer? It looks like to me another four years.

I'm glad I saw "Master and Commander: The Far side of the world" before it left the theatres. It got so many oscar nods. I'm bummed however, that I missed "Seabiscuit", but hopefully the studio will redistribute the movie now that it's been nominated.

Okay, I saw "Lost in Translation" and while I thought it was a good movie, was it really "Best Picture" oscar worthy? I don't think so. I think Sofia Coppola got the nod because her movie is one of the only movies that is making any money. It was made with a low budget, and it's raking in the big bucks relative to much it cost to make. It's movies like "Lost in Translation" that are financially propping up the Hollywood film industry.

I likes LinT because it's an indie movie that appeals to a commercial audience. Coppola proves you don't have to make artie fartie movies that are self indulgent and that don't make any sense to be an indie, and you can make an indie type movie that does sell commercially and is entertaining. She breaks the myth that a movie can be artie and good, only if very few people have seen it, it loses money and it's not in the least entertaining.

"Master and Commander", which is also not a great movie, got the nod for Best Picture because technically it's a difficult movie to make. Academy voters like epics, and M&C is an epic. From a technical point of view, M&C was a difficult movie since they filmed on an actual ship. For all its techincal prowess, M&C did not make money in its run at the USA box office although DVD sales and its overseas box office, may help the movie to break even.

M&C, while not a great movie, is the type of movie that Hollywood used to make in its past. It's the kind of movie that really looks great on screen, and worth seeing in the movie theatre. It's also the kind of movie that generates a ton of jobs for Hollywood people, actors and techs.

Since Academy voters are all union members, it makes sense that they would vote for a picture that insures for them a sort of job security. Vote for oscar films that employ a ton of people, so those kinds of film keep getting made.

I'll watch "LOTR: Return of the King" and "Mystic River" this weekend.

"Mystic River sounds like an actor's movie, and "LOTR" had to get nominated because it's a box office smash, the story is great, and it employed a ton of technical people.

Everyone is weighing in on SF Supervisors Daly and Gonzalez wanting to rename SBC Park, 2 supervisors say hey, why not Mays Field? SBC, Giants unreceptive to name change.

But what no one seems be talking about is I think it's a reaction to what our sister city on the other side of the Bay San Jose is doing.

From a SJ Mercury News article on 1/21/2004;

**Facing an $85-million-plus deficit and anxious to find new revenue, the council unanimously passed a resolution Tuesday that allows City Manager Del Borgsdorf's office to seek out donations and sponsorships of up to $100,000. ... The new policy "is not intended to supersede or modify'' San Jose's ability to name its facilities, said a memo from Borgsdorf. It does not grant the city manager the authority to rename buildings, parks or services -- a power that rests with the council."**

I'm sure these supervisors are wondering whether San Francisco is going to do the same thing.

Like this for example. Snapple has agreed to pay New York City $100 million for exclusive rights to be the Big Apple's official drink.

Most cities are going broke or about to go broke. It's not just the federal government and states that are cash strapped, but the cities as well.

What's a city to do for money except sell itself for corporate sponsorship. Athletes do it all the time. Every sporting event on TV is awash with advertising signs. Why not cities and everything they own?

I read the following in a NY Times article on 1/25/2004 entitled Whoop, Oops and the State of the Political Slip;

**...consultants for Mr. Bush tried in vain to get him to control his smirk. Still, the smirk slips out from time to time, as it did last week during the president's State of the Union address when Democrats clapped at Mr. Bush's warning that the Patriot Act, an antiterrorism law, would soon expire.

"Bush is vulnerable when that smirk rears its ugly head," said a Republican strategist, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It comes across as not only cocky, but arrogant, and nobody likes an arrogant politician."**

It made me chuckle that people were trying to get the Smirkiemeister to control his smirks, because obviously it didn't work.

I heard the new interim pastor at my church preach today. He's a nice older guy and his sermon was actually quite good, but it's his prayer for the people that I think shocked me and I think quite a few other people in the congregation.

The pastor is old, between 70 and 80, and he's been around. He even mentioned in his sermon that it was his greek professor who was one of the people responsible for the New Revised Standard Version translation of the Bible.

Okay so he's old, which means he's kind of old fashioned. Anyway, in his prayers he prayed for the president of the USA, "George and Laura Bush". Talk about shocking! I've never heard anyone pray for the health of George Bush ever in my church. It's just not done, not at least in my church.

As soon as words came out of the pastor's mouth, people were coughing and going "ahem", like they couldn't believe it either. I think if he had gone so far as to pray for "Dick Cheney and his wife Lynne", some people might have walked out. He also asked that we pray for the people of New Hampshire so that they make a good decision in choosing the winner of the democratic presidential nomination, and the congregation seemed to like that idea.

Poor guy. He'll probably get an earful for doing that. It is kind of odd, but I think it's just because the guy is old and old fashioned, and in his day you did pray for the president of the country as a matter of course, no matter what you felt about him. It's just weird to hear somebody pray for the health of a person many people in my San Francisco congregation would consider "the most hated man in the world, the next Hitler and the possible anti-christ".

I don't care either way. I mean, maybe we should be praying that the Smirkiemeister see the light and come to his senses and change some of his policies. It can't hurt.

It's odd that the new interim pastor prayed for him on one level, and it's odd on another level that I don't remember anybody else praying for the Shrubmeister before either.

Has my church congregation become so partisan in its views that we don't pray for someone that some people in the congregation don't like, even though there are other people in the congregation who think the Smirkmeister is God's gift to the world?

Shockingly true but yes, there are some people in my city of San Francisco church who totally love W and everything he's doing.

Went out with another friend of mine for a post birthday lunch at The Beach Chalet. I forgot how great the view of the beach is there. It's the only place in San Francisco where you can eat a good meal and get a great view of the Pacific Ocean.

There were so many people at the beach, and The Beach Chalet was packed! I even ran into a friend from writing group there. San Francisco is such a small world!

It was such a beautiful day out at the beach. If you didn't know it, you'd think that living out on the coast of San Francisco was really nice and sunny all the time. It's not.

The second apartment I moved into in San Francisco was on the Great Highway. We were on the second floor, and we could see the ocean from our living room and kitchen. Oh my god, the weather down there was foggy all the time and freezing. At night, the wind would whip right off the ocean and into our apartment.

There were maybe 10-20 days out of year where it was a sunny and the weather was nice. The rest of the time, it was miserable. One week out of the year, the sun would set directly in front of our living room. That was cool.

And when you live out at the beach, public transportation sucks. It would take 45 minutes to an hour to get downtown. If you lived outside the city, you could get to downtown faster than I did living down there.

When I lived out there I never felt like I really lived in the city, even though my address said San Francisco. I was so far away from everything. It's like you're living in a foggy beach town.

We shopped at the Safeway at the end of Fulton, and it reminded me of grocery stores in San Diego, LA and Hawaii. I started calling it "the LA beach Safeway". There were always surfer types in there, beach bums, and the kinds of people I remembered seeing in beach town groceries.

Even the food they carried catered to the beach crowd. They had alot of vegetarian types of foods, stuff you'd never see in other Safeways in the city. The "LA beach Safeway" is still my favorite Safeway to shop at in San Francisco.

I think it's still one of the few Safeways in San Francisco that has a perpetual supply of Red Stripe Beer. Talk about the king of beach beers. Red Stripe is one of my favourite beers!

Best Red Stripe beer memories ... walking along South Beach in Miami with friends, watching the sunset and drinking Red Stripe beer ... dancing and drinking Red Stripe beer at the reggae festival in Washington DC at Malcom X park.

Happy Birthday to me!

A friend took me to Grand Cafe, and the restaurant was so cool. She made the reservation and told them it was for a birthday. When we arrived, there was a happy birthday card on the table from the restaurant. Inside it said thank you for choosing Grand Cafe to celebrate your birthday. How sweet is that?

We ordered the Dine about Town menu, and I had a the seafood soup, and the pan roasted petaluma chicken with lemon thyme braised carrots & yukon gold potato puree. I was going to get the pumpkin creme brulee for dessert, but the waiter said since it was my birthday I could order whatever I wanted off the dessert menu for the same price.

I ordered the banana creme pie, and when it came it was a mini pie with sugar covered macadamia nuts and caramel drizzled all over. Yummy, yummy!

The restaurant also served us a free mini crab cake each as part of our appetizer. I totally love restaurants that give you free food.

I think I'm definitely a "Blair Democrat". I'm not sure who coined this phrase, but Thomas Friedman of the NY Times used it in his column on 1/22/2004 - War of Ideas, Part 5.

**"It was a good night for the [Tony] Blair Democrats in Iowa," said Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute. By "Blair Democrats," Mr. Marshall was referring to those Democrats who voted for the Iraq war, and conveyed "a toughness and resolve to face down America's enemies," but who believe the Bush team has mismanaged the project. **

I was just about to sign for a writing class on February 1, when I realized that's Super Bowl Sunday. I'm torn. I really want to take this class, but I also want to see the Super Bowl commercials. Watching the Superbowl is so fun, so traditional, and such a world wide spectacle.

I was just talking to a friend of mine tonight, and we were talking about getting together to watch the Superbowl at her house. Watching the Superbowl with friends is the best, although some nookie, a quick little shag actually, during the half time after the music program when I'm watching it with a SO runs a close second. As one of the ex's used to say, "isn't that what the half time is for?"

Okay, yes I do watch the football game as well, but I have no feelings for either of these teams.

I'm torn, I'm torn! How weird is that to hold a class on Super Bowl Sunday? The class instructor is my screenwriting teacher and she's a Brit, so maybe she can be forgiven for holding a class on a party day.

I hate this! I've been watching the Superbowl for years. It's like so traditional. Oh well. No writing class on Super Bowl Sunday for me.

Listening to The Cure's Wild Mood Swings.


It's his voice I love. It's so achingly heartbreaking!


Goth Girls of the World Unite!

So like the World Economic Forum doesn't have enough to worry about without this issue, World Economic Forum meeting is addressing the issue of aliens.

You know if the aliens are going to invade the earth soon, I wish they would tell us.

Just in case you've joined the world wide web hunt for Howard Dean speech remixes websites here's one, Dean Goes Nuts. MTV.com has an article and links as well, but their bandwidth isn't handling the demand well.

The Ozzy Osbourne remixes are the best, although the AC/DC remixes are a close second.

I was discussing weight loss with a friend of mine who does weight watchers, and she said there's a program on weight watchers called Wendy's plan. With Wendy's plan, you vary your points every day to fool your body into thinking it's not starving. She said it's a great way to break plateaus and when your weight loss is going extremely slow.

I like to eat the same amount of calories every day, but maybe I need to try this Wendy's plan. My weight loss is going so slow, and I seem to need fewer and fewer calories to lose weight. My body is stingily holding on to the weight, and maybe I'm in starvation mode and don't even know it.

I'm going to try it, and maybe even have a free day once a week where I can eat anything I want. My weight loss is going so, so very slowly.

I think I'm going to have to vary my workout as well. My body has adjusted to me walking 4-5 miles a day, so at this point exercise isn't doing a thing for my weight loss. I'm either going to have to vary what I do, up the aerobic amount or walk more miles.