Archive for September, 2011
Ang taroush! Christian Espiritu reviews James Reyes
Purity of Lines and Intent
by Christian De Leon Espiritu
After a heavily rich smorgasbord, a collection of interesting fashion numbers employing all known dress maker’s trickery and magic sorcery, one may fear the ensuing entry would surely suffer by sheer comparison.
That did not hold water at the September 8th episode of Fashion Watch held at its permanent venue, The Lobby of the Makati Shang. Sans fanfare or trumpet blare, James Reyes tossed his opening salvos when his turn came during the afternoon’s dual fashion derby.
One, two, three numbers were enough for this commentator to conclude James Reyes has focus and a concrete fashion dialogue and sensibility. He stumbled into a simple trickery. Combining three contrasting disparate colours, definitely is no afternoon walk in the park. Even veteran colourists can make a booboo and end up with messy often sour numbers. But James Reyes miraculously passed this acid test…
Read Christian Espiritu’s review of James Reyes’s collection at Fashion Watch.
Happy Birthday, Cookie!
Here we are at my sister’s birthday lunch, which also marked the first time she’s been out of the house in over a week. Doctor’s orders: She had to be locked up to keep her from sneaking off to the office. Because she just found out that she’s pregnant! My niece Koba Stalin Mika, anticipating competition, has already struck up an alliance with me. Clever kid.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! Massive foreheads! Look away!
Hitchens on waiters who interrupt your conversations
Recently we wrote about waiters butting into our spoken stream of consciousness at the table to ask us if everything is all right. Obviously it was all right and we were scintillating until he rudely broke in. (However, since this is the Philippines, we would be considered the rude ones. Argh.) Here is Christopher Hitchens’s piece on that subject. It’s included in his new essay compilation Arguably, which we need immediately. (Thanks to Jackie O for the alert.)
Notes on Etiquette from From Leonardo da Vinci’s Kitchen Notebooks
The other night, I was having dinner with some friends in a fairly decent restaurant and was at the very peak of my form as a wit and raconteur. But just as, with infinite and exquisite tantalizations, I was approaching my punch line, the most incredible thing happened. A waiter appeared from nowhere, leaned right over my shoulder and into the middle of the conversation, seized my knife and fork, and started to cut up my food for me. Not content with this bizarre behavior, and without so much as a by-your-leave, he proceeded to distribute pieces of my entree onto the plates of the other diners.
No, he didn’t, actually. What he did instead was to interrupt the feast of reason and flow of soul that was our chat, lean across me, pick up the bottle of wine that was in the middle of the table, and pour it into everyone’s glass. And what I want to know is this: How did such a barbaric custom get itself established, and why on earth do we put up with it?
Leonardo: Top Chef, Old Master in Lapham’s Quarterly
There are two main ways in which a restaurant can inflict bad service on a customer. The first is to keep you hanging about and make it hard to catch the eye of the staff. (“Why are they called waiters?” inquired my son when he was about 5. “It’s we who are doing all the waiting.”) The second way is to be too intrusive, with overlong recitations of the “specials” and too many oversolicitous inquiries. . .
Read Wine drinkers of the world, unite in Slate.
Our straight guy columnist reviews Friends With Benefits
by Jon Morales
Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake in Friends With Benefits
I’m not a huge fan of rom-coms. The predictable plot arcs, the stock characters and the happy endings are a bit boring. The only way for a rom-com to win me over is through the charm of the main characters. Friends with Benefits manages to pull that off, being charming, genuinely funny in a predictable way, self-aware of its tropes and then unabashedly plunging right into them anyway complete with the rom-com standard ‘misunderstanding’ and reconciliation ending.
The two stars, Mila Kunis especially, are so likeable and look to be genuinely having a good time, so I ended up getting drawn into the movie and appreciating it. The plot doesn’t offer any great surprises and seems to have a couple of weird continuity jumps like the neck-cracking scene in LA, but this is light fare, easy on the eyes, and enjoyable if you want something breezy to take a date to.
There’s also the strange idea that two young, fairly well-off, fairly fashionable people from New York and LA have never been to the other city, which is a little difficult to believe.
Woody Harrelson makes a great extended cameo as a non-stereotypical gay foil character. Although the gay character is still dispensing sage and timely advice to his straight friend, at least his straight friend is not the girl for once. They even manage to work in an allusion to White Men Can’t Jump, working in an even more unbelievable than the first time dunk by Woody in a pickup hoops game.
Take a friend, hope for some benefits afterwards, straight guys…not a chore to sit through.
Do you have questions about FWB arrangements? Ask Jon.
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