Riley's Farm Journal June 20-29, 2009

Riley's Farm Feed Summary June 20-29, 2009

 

The Timeless Standard

Why It's Difficult to Redeem the Standard in Media June 20, 2009

Your correspondent is not a big fan of the beach, (I'm more of a beatnik, lounge-loving Calvinist) but his kids dragged him down to Newport/Balboa last night for hot dogs and s'mores. The company and the conversation was good, and it was a cold night, so it didn't quite seem as much like the running of the bikini salmon as usual. I marveled to see Ruby's still out there at the end of the Balboa pier. Concept Eateries always seem to change every few years in trendy, high-rent spots and there was the same Ruby's I remember on college trips down to Balboa--clean, polished, stainless steel with homage to swing era Coca Cola advertising. Some of our extended circle of home-schoolers even did a little impromptu swing dancing next to the machine-age appointments, and I took it as proof of my contention that if you adapt some sort of classic standard, family pictures will save you from being memorialized in baggy, prison-inspired beach gear.

My friend, Mike Lewis and I discussed the goal of starting a kind of film academy and center..read more.

Making a Day of it on the Farm (Video)

June 22, 2009

A Restaurant Commercial (Video)

Based on a John Adams Story June 24, 2009

They Just Aren't Man Enough to Say It...

The Anti-Human Agenda of Cap & Trade June 25, 2009

I've written about this before, but the zero population, anti-human, "global village" band of policy freaks know they will never be able to sell what Earth Day baby-hater Paul Ehrlich once tried to pitch when he wrote:

"(We need) compulsory birth regulation... (through) the addition of temporary sterilants to water supplies or staple food. Doses of the antidote would be carefully rationed by the government to produce the desired family size."

Only a tenured half-wit, or an S.S. field marshal could write that sort of thing. In practice, the way to keep people from read more

Patriots and Parishioners

June 29, 2009

We had a full public house on Saturday with the Pasadena Patriots and our larger than normal read more.

 

 

 

Family Night

We took the kids to Macaroni Grill last night, and to a tux fitting for Mallory & Eric's wedding. On the way down the hill, as we passed through Cherry Valley, we saw a teenage girl on a small, fat pony galloping at full tilt up the other side of the street. You never see horses gallop on suburban streets, and I don't think I've seen a pony that fat move quite that fast. The pony's master was holding a new bag of grain on the saddle in front of her, balancing it between her arms and the reins. We all stared at once, fell silent, and then burst out laughing.

"I'm getting this grain home," I said. "That pony is thinking 'I'm getting this grain home--NOW.'"

I turned around to watch. She was still kicking up gravel, charging off in the other direction. "The city of Cherry Valley," I said, thinking out loud, "should pay that girl and her pony to ride the grain around like that. People would drive from miles from all around to see it."

Just as I said that, we turned the corner at the gas station and saw an old homeless man playing an electric guitar--without an amp, next to a trash can. He looked something like Jerry Garcia, and he was singing with a great deal of gusto, multi-tasking for aluminum cans at the same time.

Mary chuckled. "Maybe Cherry Valley is up to something."

 

The Macaroni Grill wasn't full--but I take some fellow-merchant solace in the fact that there was a wait, on a Tuesday night. (Heah, Americans, eat out! Especially at charming little living history farm restaurants.)

I keep thinking I want to tweek the Hawk's Head Public House formula because, really, the Macaroni Grill isn't just good food. A good restaurant has a kind of "atmospheric take-away," a sense-of-place you carry away with you in one of your mental shirt pockets: Cool rooms, wall art, an open view of the grill itself, signature music, credible hospitality on the part of the servers. I don't really want to do the old Bobby McGee's thing, where every server is a character from history. I think there are some waiters who can pull that off, but I find constant drama at the dinner table a little off-putting, and finding people who can act, sing, and serve is...nigh to impossible. What I'm thinking is one, or maybe two people at most, who travel from table to table, eating, arguing, singing. If the guests want to listen in, they can. If not, that's fine too.

There was a time in Men's formal fashion (the 1970s) where tuxedo fashion was dominated by the lady's urge to decorate her man as a kind of fashion accessory. I believe that era has blissfully gone the way of the world, and I can happily report there are no more peach vests or dusty-lime colored dinner jackets for rent. Not that Mallory would do that to us, of course, but it's nice to see clothing more or less settled into a classic trend. If it were up to me, every man would have his clothing issued by Jeeves or by Mary Johns, of our wardrobe department. As far as I'm concerned, when lapels starting get too wide and pants begin to flare and you start to feel you're trying to conduct business in a Yellow Submarine cartoon, then the fashion designers are sitting somewhere having a really good laugh.

Very little that is "new" is really worth it. All the good ideas are old ones.

If you agree, you should like our place.