Writing about restaurants
When I tell people I write about restaurants for a living (or for at least part of my living; I’m not privileged enough to live off my stomach entirely and I doubt I ever will be), they always ask the same questions. I know what they’re going to say before they even open their mouths; they get a curious look on their face and I just know what they’re going to say next. It’s one of four things.
They ask, “Do the restaurants know you’re coming? Do you tell them who you are?”
Then they ask, “Do you pay for the meals yourself?”
And then, “Do you get to bring your friends?”
Finally, “Do you get to choose where you eat?”
Sometimes the order changes, but they always ask all of those questions. I don’t know, if our positions were reversed, whether I’d ask the same things, but I’d bet good odds that I would. I like asking people about their jobs, and the four big questions really speak to what people, including me, are always curious about: secrets, money, companionship, free will.
So I will answer them for you here.
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• 5 August 2010 • 28 notes
TOMMY: I like this one. One dog goes one way and the other goes the other.
MOTHER: One’s going east, the other’s going west. So what?
TOMMY: And this guy’s saying, “Whaddya want from me?”
• 4 August 2010 • 4 notes
He cares not for Pope, Priest, Parson, or King William of the Boyne; all Joe wants is the Coin. He trusts in God in summer time to keep him from all harm; when he sees the first frost and snow poor old Joe trusts to the Almighty Dollar and good old maple wood to keep his belly warm, for Churches, Chapels, Ranters, Preachers, Beechers and such stuff Montreal has already got enough.
Had such a great meal tonight here. Never fails.
• 1 August 2010 • 1 note
“‘How large a crew do you use?’ David Lean asked him one year at Cannes. ‘I always work with 18 friends,’ Bergman said. ‘That’s funny,’ said Lean. ‘I work with 150 enemies.’”
— Roger Ebert on Ingmar Bergman, who died three years ago today.
• 30 July 2010 • 1 note
From a canoe, on a lake somewhere in Muskoka.
• 30 July 2010 • 1 note
I put this together last night from footage I shot over the weekend.
It was shot in the vicinity of Little Lake in Muskoka, Ontario. No hummingbirds were disturbed, disenchanted, disenfranchised or downsized in the making of this video.
Shot on a Canon Rebel T2i (550D) with a Sigma 30mm f1.4 lens at 720p/60p, then conformed down to 24p for the overcrank-style slow-mo.
• 28 July 2010
Do you hear music in your head?
Sure, but I try not to, now. I really have to block music out. It’s too painful for me. The sense of loss is unbelievable. I mean, my soul came through with music. Music was everything for me. I get musical ideas where I’m, like, “OK, don’t go there.” And actually, listening to music can be a real problem for me now, because it creates symptoms.
“Speaking With John,” a sad interview with John Lurie at the Huffington Post.
• 20 July 2010
W.G. Sebald opening lines
“At the end of september 1970, shortly before I took up my position in Norwich, I drove out to Higham with Clara in search of somewhere to live.” (The Emigrants)
“In August 1992, when the dog days were drawing to an end, I set off to walk the county of Suffolk, in the hope of dispelling the emptiness that takes hold of me whenever I have completed a long stint of work.” (The Rings of Saturn)
“In the second half of the 1960s I traveled repeatedly from England to Belgium, partly for study purposes, partly for other reasons which were never entirely clear to me, staying sometimes for just one or two days, sometimes for several weeks.” (Austerlitz)
• 19 July 2010 • 2 notes
