San Francisco Bay Guardian

Curiosities, quirks, oddites, and items from around the Bay and beyond

A. E. Housman (who once deliciously referred to poetry as a "morbid secretion") said, "Perfect understanding will sometimes almost extinguish pleasure. " And as John McWhorter so ably demonstrates, Sarah Palin's words -- or at least the art of parsing them -- can be extremely pleasurable:
 
"This reminds me of toddlers who speak from inside their own experience in a related way: they will come up to you and comment about something said by a neighbor you’ve never met, or recount to you the plot of an episode of a TV show they have no way of knowing you’ve ever heard of. Palin strings her words together as if she were doing it for herself — meanings float by, and she translates them into syntax in whatever way works, regardless of how other people making public statements do it."

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Who says you can't get a proper pastrami sandwich in the Bay Area? Granted, that's one of the things I miss most from days growing up in Jersey when my Dad would take us to the city for pastrami at Carnegie Deli. You have to hunt here but there are a few gems, besides classic Miller's East Coast Deli. P.S. I'm wishing Orson would bring back its unparalleled pastrami and kraut pizza.

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A white tent, lit up like a lantern in the midst of a field darkened by night. A gathering of diverse souls; a musician, a hippie, a film director, all seated on the floor about a low, round dinner table. It could be anywhere (well no, not really, that whole tent thing is kind of crazy). But then, an exquisite dish is passed around, to the delight of the bohos gathered. It’s transcendent! It’s fresh! It’s radishes and strawberries. We’re not in Kansas anymore.

But we are in the midst of a beautiful film about Japanese food culture -- Eatrip, which has its US premiere at New People’s Viz Cinema Sat/10 through Thur/15. Read more »