Restaurant: Red Medicine [1, 2, 3] Location: 8400 Wilshire Blvd. Beverly Hills, Ca. 90211. 323-651-6500. Date: February 19, 2011 Cuisine: Modernized Vietnamese Summary: Really interesting food full of very bold flavors, and at very reasonable prices. For my brother’s birthday we decided to head…
Now, in the interest of protecting my dear and tender readers, I’m not going to actually tell you the premise of this film. If you are so inclined, you may watch the trailer and decide for yourself. Be warned. Let’s just say it’s terrifying, gross, and of totally dubious possibility.
Restaurant: Gladstones [1, 2] Location: 17300 Pacific Coast HwyPacific Palisades, CA 90272. (310) 454-3474 Date: Jan 18, 2011 Cuisine: American Seafood Summary: Updated classic coastal seafood Just 48 hours after our Sunday trip down the coast to Paradise Cove (REVIEW…
Restaurant: Paradise Cove Location: 28128 Pacific Coast Highway, Malibu, California 90265. 310-457-2503 Date: Jan 16, 2011 Cuisine: American Summary: Great place to spend the day. Food is fine but hardly inspired. Sunday morning rolled around, January 16, and the temperature…
As the process of the revising my — hopefully — almost finished novel, The Darkening Dream, draws out the amount of work I have to personally do on it declines toward the limit of… well very little. More and more…
Restaurant: Nobu Malibu [1, 2, 3] Location: 3835 Cross Creek Road # 18, Malibu, CA 90265 (310) 317-9140 Date: February 16, 2011 Cuisine: Japanese Fusion Rating: Maintains it’s very high standards, and price. In my continuing quest to eat the oceans of the…
Restaurant: Drago [1, 2] Location: 2628 Wilshire Blvd., Santa Monica, CA 90403. T: 310/828-1585 Date: February 5 & October 15, 2011 Cuisine: Italian Rating: One of LA’s top Italians! _ Celestino Drago and his brothers have a bit of a mini Italian culinary empire…
Restaurant: Capo [1, 2, 3] Location: 1810 Ocean Ave, Santa Monica, Ca. 310-394-5550 Date: February 14, 2011 Cuisine: Italian with Cal influences Rating: Well done, particularly for a special night. _ Valentines is tricky restaurant-wise, and rarely shows off a place at it’s best. The economics…
After Naughty Dog Jason and I joined forces with another game industry veteran, Jason Kay (collectively Jason R & K are known as “the Jasons”). He was at Activision at the time of the Crash launch and offers his outside perspective.
Ben was a pretty amazing guy, as influential in his own wry way as any man in history. And he didn’t kill thousands or conquer nations doing it. Ben was a man of rare genius. And he’s depicted here with all his very human faults. But fundamentally he was a spirit of curiosity, optimism, energy, and general good intentions.
Restaurant: Takao [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] Location: 11656 San Vicente Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90049. (310) 207-8636 Date: March 9, 2010 and February 12, 2011 Cuisine: Japanese / Sushi Rating: 9/10 creative “new style” sushi _ Takao is my local outlet…
Restaurant: Sushi Sushi [1, 2, 3, 4] Location: 326 1/2 Beverly Dr. Beverly Hills, CA 90212. (310) 277-1165 Date: February 11, 2011 Cuisine: Japanese Sushi Rating: Old school sushi – fantastic fish and presentation! ANY CHARACTER HERE Last week I ate at this…
Restaurant: Saam [1, 2, 3] Location: 465 S La Cienega Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90048. 310.246.5555 Date: February 10, 2011 Cuisine: Spanish influenced Molecular Gastronomy Rating: Awesome, even better than The Bazaar. _ I’ve been to The Bazaar (REVIEW HERE) about 8-10 times. For the…
So at long last we meander to the final, and worst, season. Not that it’s awful, but it does suffer from a number of serious problems.
Dave Baggett, Naughty Dog employee #1 (after Jason and I) throws his own thoughts on Crash Bandicoot into the ring.
Restaurant: Xino [1, 2] Location: 395 Santa Monica PlSte 308Santa Monica, CA 90401. (310) 755-6220 Date: February 7, 2011 Cuisine: Modern Dim sum Rating: A little heavy, but I’m glad to have some more good dim sum on the westside. Xino is another…
Restaurant: Zengo [1, 2, 3] Location: 395 Santa Monica Place, b/w Broadway & Colorado, Santa Monica, CA 90401. Tel. 310.899.1000 Date: February 4, 2011 Cuisine: Latin-Asian Fusion Rating: Color me confused — It’s in a mall, and it’s pretty good. ANY CHARACTER HERE With…
Since I’m always cryptically referring to my novel in progress, I figured I’d post a few words about it. The Darkening Dream is a historial dark fantasy. It’s currently 95,000 words and I’ve just finishing up the line editing and polish. [ Updated…
Not only did we need to finish our E3 demo, but we needed a real name for the game — Willie the Wombat wasn’t going to cut it. Now, in the Naughty Dog office proper we knew he was a Bandicoot. In fact, we liked the idea of using an action name for him, like Crash, Dash, Smash, and Bash — fallout from the visceral reaction to smashing so many boxes.
But once the core gameplay worked, these cool levels were missing something. We’d spent so many polygons on our detailed backgrounds and “realistic” cartoon characters that the enemies weren’t that dense, so everything felt a bit empty.