Monday, Monday

Hope everyone's weekends were fun-filled and interesting. Mine wasn't, and that's the way I like it. To me, life's like a plane ride: I want the most boring flight possible, no “funny stuff.”

Food

Once again this weekend, P. F. Chang delivers. Is it even possible to get a bad meal there? I don't think so—highly recommended, especially the Mongolian Beef, cooked well (crispy) and spicy with white rice. Yum.

Movies

Saturday saw me, R, and my in-laws watching the new animated movie from Pixar: Ratatouille. Marred though it was by the inevitable presence of pesky, loud, sniveling, unruly children, I thought it was well-done.

The animation itself was par excellent and the voice work was really good, especially Peter O'Toole as Anton Ego, a food critic extraordinaire. The story unfolded nicely and with good pace and though far-fetched in certain areas, I had to remember it was geared toward children after all.

This quote from the movie, spoken in O'Toole's inimitable voice stands out:

In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. Last night, I experienced something new, an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's famous motto: Anyone can cook. But I realize that only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau's, who is, in this critic's opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in France. I will be returning to Gusteau's soon, hungry for more.

This is Anton Ego:

If you watch this, poison all the children (and their fucking idiot parents) first.

Books

Once again my disease, Bookaphilia Nervosa, reared its ugly head and I bought two: Michael Timo's Aristotle's Poetics for Screenwriters and Clear and to The Point by Stephen M. Kosslyn.

In addition, I'm reading a most interesting book by Robert Kagan, Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order. To call this work superlative is inadequate. There are very few books that produce Aha! moments for me, this is one of them. I will produce a full-length post on its contents soon.

Clear and to The Point is a fascinating work about information transfer using PowerPoint by a Psychologist, a Harvard Psychologist no less. In the few pages I was able to read in between munching away at a godawful muffin at Borders (great bookstore, terrible cafe, coffee, and food; Barnes & Noble is much better), he mentions the guru of visual communication (Tufte) thrice, alas, each time to poohpooh Tufte's principles. In one example, he criticizes one of Tufte's well-known examples of superlative data transfer, Minard's chart. I didn't find his argument compelling on the surface and were that it for content, I wouldn't have purchased it.

Luckily, there's a lot of original work in the book. Essentially, like the sub-title says, the book explains 8 psychological principles for compelling PowerPoint presentations. I'm looking forward to finishing this one.

SOTD

Chez Bond, superb. By the way, Wal-Mart has a 1-oz. bottle of Unforgivable by (spit!) Puff Daddy for $16!