Restaurant: N/Naka [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] Location: 3455 S. Overland Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90034. 310.836.6252 Date: August 13, 2011 Cuisine: Modern Kaiseki Rating: Awesome ANY CHARACTER HERE I first went to the amazing Omakase only N/Naka just three weeks ago,…
This is an old Crash Bandicoot 20 questions that used to be on Naughty Dog‘s site a long time ago. I’ve gotten a lot of messages looking for them, so I dug them up, but I haven’t done any editing…
Restaurant: Takao [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] Location: 11656 San Vicente Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90049. (310) 207-8636 Date: August 6, 2011 Cuisine: Japanese / Sushi Rating: 9/10 creative “new style” sushi _ I’ve already covered Takao in some detail HERE and then separately here, here, and here,…
I’m always reading books on writing and storytelling. In fact, I read three this week. One of them was Save the Cat by the late Blake Snyder. This post isn’t a review per se of that book, but more some…
Restaurant: Via Alloro Location: 301 N. Canon Drive – Beverly Hills, CA 90210. Phone: 310.275.2900 Date: August 5, 2011 Cuisine: Italian Rating: Very nice _ The Drago brothers have an ever expanding little empire going in Beverly Hills. This includes Il Pastaio,…
These are answers (of mine) to a series of interview questions from Russian game site www.crash–bandicoot.ru. They’re a major Russian Crash fan site, hence the bad pun in my title. If you happen to speak Russian, they’ve it here. The questions…
During the long long dark ages of fantasy filmmaking, before the wonder that is Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings, or the epic new HBO Game of Thrones, we fantasy fans had to be content with a sorry set of films indeed. Above the pathetic likes of Willow and Krull, the 1982 Dino De Laurentiis epic starring the pre-Terminator Mr. Universe was high art indeed.
Restaurant: Shamshiri Grill Location: 1712 Westwood Blvd. Los Angeles, Ca 90024 (310) 474-1410 Date: July 31, 2011 Cuisine: Persian Rating: One of my favorite Iranian restaurants _ Shamshiri is one of my favorite Iranian restaurants on the westside — and we certainly have…
My original theme, Quentin, was getting a little long in the tooth and didn’t support custom menus, post formats, and the like, although it was attractive. So I switched to the brand new Quintus which is an updated version. This…
One of the great mysteries of the culinary universe is how Brentwood in general, and San Vicente in particular, is able to support so many Italian restaurants. Every time someplace dies, it rises again Italian! Anyway, the food at Villetta was first rate. Really good actually, and the service was very friendly too (not super fast, but warm). The prices however are high. So I’d put this in the same category with Capo, Georgio Baldi, and Vincente of excellent but overpriced westside Italian.
Restaurant: Ozumo Location: 395 Santa Monica Place Santa Monica, CA 90401 T: 424.214.5130 Date: July 15, 2011 Cuisine: Modern Japanese / Sushi Rating: Good ANY CHARACTER HERE I’ve been slowly working my way through the new Santa Monica Place Mall dining scene. Which…
This novel has the amusing premise of taking the straight up traditional noir detective novel, like The Maltese Falcon or The Big Sleep, and giving it a modern paranormal spin.True to it’s noir roots, the book is pretty dark, with grisly murders and (off screen) sex. But by being supernatural, and more importantly campy, it looses that black edged moral ambiguity that the best classic noir had, making it just a fun read.
Restaurant: Trés [1, 2] Location: 465 S La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90048. 310.246.5555 Date: July 31, 2011 Cuisine: Modern Brunch Rating: Fantastique ANY CHARACTER HERE I follow José Andrés on twitter, and I was reading (and crying) about the final meal at…
Restaurant: Vu [1, 2] Location: 14160 Palaway Way, Marina del Rey, CA 90292 310.439.3033 Date: July 28 & 30, 2011 Cuisine: Modern Rating: Interesting, but a little all over the place ANY CHARACTER HERE My brother and I were out for our weekly lunch adventure…
My post showing Game of Throne’s transparent CGI was wildly successful (over 25,000 views on my site alone). Apparently its been popular across the web at large because the SFX company released another video of even more. Particularly interesting is how many…
Restaurant: Kiriko Sushi [1, 2] Location: 11301 Olympic Blvd #102, West Los Angeles, CA 90064. TELL (310) 478-7769 Date: July 8 & 21, Sept 21, 2011 Cuisine: Japanese / Sushi Rating: Very nice! ANY CHARACTER HERE At our giant Go Sushi love-fest one of…
Restaurant: Moko Location: 9540 Culver Blvd. Culver City, Ca. (310) 838-3131 Date: July 9, 2011 Cuisine: Modernized Korean Rating: Very tasty — Spicy! ANY CHARACTER HERE Moko is a newly opened Korean bar/restaurant serving very modernized variants using a Korean palette of flavors. This…
Restaurant: Continental Airlines Location: Somewhere above the Atlantic Date: June 30, 2011 Cuisine: Inedible Rating: Barftastic ANY CHARACTER HERE So after an epic four weeks of eating in Italy — where the worst meal was merely mediocre — we boarded…
My second novel, Untimed, is a YA time-travel adventure. And I just finished the rough version of my second draft. Whew! Happy to be done with that. The book grew to 84,000 words (it’ll probably get trimmed down a bit…
Restaurant: Pizzeria Santa Lucia Location: Santa Margherita, Italy Date: June 29, 2011 Cuisine: Ligurian / Pizza Rating: Good pizza ANY CHARACTER HERE On our last night in Italy (/cry) we wanted an early and quick meal prior to getting up…