→ March 8, 2016
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San Francisco and Los Angeles eats.

The San Francisco pizzeria del Popolo is run by Jon Darsky, who worked for a little while in player development and scouting for Cleveland and another MLB org … I forgot which one because we need to talk about how good the food was. The pizza was outstanding, both the dough – thin, not quite Neapolitan thin but close to it, with just the right bit of chew too it – and the homemade sausage that they use as a topping. The menu is simple, with about a half-dozen starters and a half-dozen or so pizza options, nothing more, which is more than enough when the pizza is this good. Jon, whom I didn’t know before that visit, sent out their Brussels sprouts starter, charred but still firm and bright green, with salva cremasco, shaved turnips, and hazelnuts; as well as the ridiculously luscious coconut-lime sorbet, since I was with Ian Miller (the bassist for Puig Destroyer and Kowloon Walled City), who is vegan. Del Popolo was on that Food & Wine pizzeria list I’ve mentioned several times and have been slowly eating my way through, and it’s one of the best I’ve hit.

Also on that list is the very highly-regarded flour + water in the Mission district, although I get the sense their pastas are better than their pizzas. I went with the margherita, feeling a bit uninspired by the other options, and what I got was just sort of average – the tomato sauce was pureed too evenly, the crust didn’t have much char or good chew, and the whole thing was a little bland. It’s a good pizza relative to most, but compared to the other places on that F&W list – Bianco, Keste, even Roberta’s which somehow missed that list – it’s just okay. The salad I got, however, was outstanding: curly endive with Meyer lemon vinaigrette, artichokes, cardoons, taggiasca olives, & fried capers. It was a big reminder that California produce is often the best produce of all.

I was famished when I got into San Francisco on Wednesday afternoon after appearing on a panel at the Stanford GSB sports analytics conference, so I went to Cotogna for a big meal rather than trying to eat light and hold on for dinner. Cotogna is fairly new and I found it on that Eater list of the 38 “most essential” (whatever) restaurants in the U.S. for 2016, a list I’ll mention a few times in this post. Cotogna does “rustic” Italian cuisine, but it’s not peasant food by any stretch – the restaurant includes a giant cast-iron, wood-fired hearth for spit-roasting meats, and a pizza oven where I presume they’re also baking their ridiculous focaccia ($4 for a giant strip of it). Their broccoli starter, which is so new it’s not on their online menu, was an out-of-this-world homage to my favorite brassica: the florets are cooked two ways and are tossed with neonata (a southern Italian condiment of small fish preserved in vinegar with garlic and chilis), then are served on a layer of bright green broccoli and parsley puree, seasoned with espelette, and topped with shaved bottarga and fried kale leaves. The chef de cuisine, Chris Marcino, was kind enough to explain the dish to me – also, he’s a Phillies fan – and said they pan-fry some of the florets and broccoli leaves, and then cook other florets and small stems in a cast-iron skillet in their pizza oven to get some caramelization. It’s ornate, but it’s like a monument to broccoli.

For the main course, I went with what I think is Cotogna’s signature pasta dish, agnolotti del plin, a classic Piemontese dish of small pockets of pasta around a filling of mixed pork, veal, and often turkey or chicken. Cotogna roasts the meats before grinding them into the filling for the paper-thing pasta, and then uses the juices from the meats to make the sauce (sugo d’arrosto, the “sauce of the roasting”) for the dish. The dish probably originated as a way to use meat scraps that weren’t enough for a full meal, but this is a plate I’d fly across the country to eat. I’m not treating Eater’s list as gospel, but they absolutely nailed it on Cotogna.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the coffee I had in San Francisco, where you can’t swing a cat around by its tail without hitting three hipsters discussing their favorite artisan roaster. I finally got to a Four Barrel location, even though I’ve been drinking their coffee on and off for years – it’s served at Giant Coffee in Phoenix, and I’ve bought beans from them online. It’s … well, it’s great coffee, really. I happen to really like their Friendo Blendo espresso mix, which varies seasonally but is usually half an East African bean (Ethiopian this time) and half a Central American (Guatemalan). I also stopped by a Sightglass shop for a cup of their Ethiopian coffee, which I found a little underwhelming just because I expected more brightness and fruit. I liked the fact that their space, right down the street from flour + water, is so bright.

–

Moving south to the LA area, I chased Guerrilla Tacos (also on that Eater 38 list) for two days before I finally caught them for a lunch that was absolutely worth the effort. The truck typically parks in front of some local coffee shops – Cognoscenti and Blacktop appear to be the current favorites, although they’ve been near a Blue Bottle location befroe – and are only open 10-2 on days they’re out. The menu changes daily, with four taco options and an agua fresca each day. The day I went the menu featured a breakfast taco with scrambled eggs, pancetta, pinto beans, and queso fresco; an ahi poke tostada with uni and scallions; and a sweet potato taco with feta, scallions, and almonds. The breakfast taco was my favorite of the three, in no small part because the flour tortilla was so good (made with lard, perhaps?), and the sweet potato taco was also superb, even though I’d never have thought to put feta with sweet potatoes. The eggs really benefited from the salt and spice in the pancetta and beans; I do love eggs in most forms but plain scrambled eggs are a little too boring. The tuna poke was more like sashimi and should have been sliced more thinly so it was easier to eat, although the quality of the fish itself was obviously very high.

Blacktop Coffee sometimes uses beans from Sightglass, but the day I was there they were using some local private roaster; their menu couldn’t be simpler as you order your espresso “black” for $3 or “white” (whatever milk-based drink you want) for $4. The coffee was good, well-balanced with good body, but should have been a little hotter. They also have a toast program, because of course they do.

I mentioned on Twitter that I had a serendipitous encounter at ink., the main restaurant of Top Chef Season 6 winner Michael Voltaggio; I was sitting at the chef’s counter when Voltaggio came out to speak to the diner next to me, which turned out to be season 7 winner Kevin Sbraga, whose namesake Philly restaurant I visited (and loved) in January. Anyway, I’ve been dying to get to ink. for a few years now, and just barely sneaked it in this trip – I was so tired I didn’t want to make the nearly hourlong drive from my hotel, but I figured I’d regret not going. I had four dishes, and three were just out of sight, stuff I couldn’t make at home and that was unlike most restaurant dishes I’ve had elsewhere. Their twist on cacio e pepe involved paper-thin vermicelli made of celery root, served over shima aji (striped jack or cocinero) sashimi with a truffle coulis, taking an Italian concept and making it over as a Japanese dish, pasta without pasta, lighter than a wheat-centric dish but more satisfying than raw fish would be by itself. Their octopus with “ink. shells” (a play on words, since the pasta is made with ink), shaved fennel, and paprika was a little more traditional but still exceptional because the octopus itself was well-cooked, meaty just up to the edge of toughness without crossing over, as masticably satisfying as red meat but lighter and almost sweet thanks to the browning on the exterior. And the dessert … the deconstructed apple pie dessert, with crumbled shortbread, apple gelee, apples, and “burnt wood” semifreddo (it had a slightly smoky flavor but if you hadn’t told me I would have said it was fior di latte) was just unreal. If you got everything in one bite, it was apple pie a la mode, but with new textures and a brighter flavor. I had one dish I didn’t care for; the radishes with togarashi-miso butter were not at all what I expected, just plain, whole radishes, served with shiso leaves to wrap them and dip them in the butter. We grow radishes in the backyard every year, so this was nothing I couldn’t do at home; I expected some kind of preparation of the radishes, at least, but the server noticed I didn’t eat much of the dish and took it off the bill without a word from me. I also had one of their house cocktails, a rye drink with cardamaro bitters, burnt orange, maple, and toasted pecan bitters that gave the whole drink the aroma of brown butter. I could drink this every night very happily.

I tried another spot on that Eater list, the Thai restaurant Night + Market Song, and was … confused, I guess. I don’t know authentic Thai food that well; I know Americanized Thai, and I think I know when something is more or less Americanized, but this menu mostly comprised foods that were new to me (not a bad thing), and somehow I ended up ordering a lot of meat. The “boxing chicken” is gai yang, a street food authentic to Bangkok that is coated in a wet rub of cilantro, sugar, garlic, pepper, and fish sauce, and then grilled until the skin is crispy. Night + Market Song’s version is all thigh meat, which is the best part of the bird anyway, and comes with papaya salad (medium or hot; medium was plenty hot for me) and sticky rice, which was served in plastic wrap and came out in a slab. You’re supposed to use your hands (fine) to roll pieces into a ball, but this slab was so tough I couldn’t make that happen. I also thought the knife work on the papaya salad was really rough – some vegetables weren’t even cut through. The pork toro, grilled fatty pig neck served with a chile-soy dip, was a good starter, salty like bacon but chewier like jowl meat, although it merely added to the sense that I was just eating way too much meat.

Jon & Vinny’s is an Italian restaurant and pizzeria, located across from their famous meatery Animal, in Fairfax, with a focus on southern Italian fare and a lot of dishes that showcase great produce. I went with a friend of mine who lives in the area, and he ordered the LA Woman pizza, essentially a margherita with burrata in lieu of the mozzarella, with a dough I’d put in between those of del Popolo and flour + water for overall taste and texture. It was the other stuff that set J&V’s apart, though: their meatballs are huge yet evenly cooked, rich but not too dense, served with enormous slabs of garlic bread in a garlicky tomato sauce with a pile of ricotta on the side of the plate. That could easily be a meal on its own, but we kept going. The salad of shaved zucchini with arugula, fennel, hazelnuts, meyer lemon vinaigrette, and a blizzard of shaved pecorino pepato, a sheep’s milk cheese with peppercorns in it, was a big pile of spring – very bright flavors, vibrant green colors, tangy and sharp with a hint of sweetness from the fennel and the nuts. The bruschetta was really about the bread; the tomatoes were certainly good, but the bread was a sponge of olive oil by the time I arrived and I was debating whether to eat it or exfoliate my face with it. (I ate it.) The fried scallions were amazing and stayed crunchy even as they cooled because of the cornmeal coating, although we overordered and didn’t expect the giant pile that arrived at the table. For dessert, because we are pigs, I got the Italian flag (rainbow) cookies, which were sublime thanks to the dark chocolate on top, although I didn’t get any real almond flavor from the sponge cake layers, while Jay got the cream-filled donut which was a tad better than your local Krispy Kreme’s version.

I also want to give props to Jason Kang over at Seoulmate, right next to Blair Field in Long Beach with a new location out in Fullerton; this wasn’t my first meal there but I don’t go to Long Beach without eating there. Seoulmate is fast-casual Korean food, both traditional dishes like bulgogi (Jason’s mentioned some of the recipes are based on family versions) and Korean tacos and burritos. Everything is top-notch, but it’s the preparation of the meats that separates Seoulmate from other Asian taco places I’ve hit; I had the pork bulgogi this time, pork belly heavily marinated in a spicy soy and ginger mixture that starts to inundate the rice underneath, served with kimchi (also spicy) and a small salad. I’ve also had the tacos, the beef bulgogi, and the bibimbap on previous visits, and can vouch that they’re all excellent, with the two bulgogis my favorites. Jason’s a reader, but I promise I wouldn’t recommend his place if I didn’t genuinely like the food.

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→ March 7, 2016
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Downton Abbey, season six.

I have a new draft blog post for Insiders on several LA-area high school prospects, and I appeared on Tor.com’s Rocket Talk podcast, talking about my interest in science fiction.

Two important things to know about my feelings on Downton Abbey’s sixth and final season:

* The season as a whole was a bit of a sapfest, a victory lap for the series that gave just about every character a happy ending of one sort or another; and

* I thought the final two episodes were two of their best, even with the surfeit of sentiment, and smiled through just about all of the last episode.

After the negative reactions to the deaths of two major characters in season three – both tied to the actors’ decisions to leave the series rather than sign new contracts – it was obvious we weren’t going to see any great tragedies in this sixth season, and if you were still uncertain about that, the quick resolution of a potential scandal for Lady Mary in the first episode should have made it plain. No one of consequence was going to get any lasting trouble, and creator Julian Fellowes – who, to borrow a phrase from the finale, had written himself into a corner – wasn’t going to incur the wratch of the masses by, say, screwing with Lady Edith’s happy ending.

That said, he didn’t have to go quite as far as he did in making everybody feel good about the conclusion of the series. Lady Edith didn’t just get a happy marriage; she got rich, and married into a title and a palatial estate. Fellowes at least upped the drama around this story in the last few episodes, but did you doubt for a second how it was going to end? It seemed as if he was determined to pair off every character he could, even if the couples were just implied in the last few scenes of the series, and it got a bit ridiculous; this isn’t Jane Austen’s England where you married whoever was close at hand.

Even the development of Thomas Barrow’s character over the last two seasons of the show, which was the most interesting facet of the show as it became increasingly focused on getting everyone married and settled, was a mixed blessing. The six seasons saw characters age and change directions, but few if any were truly different people by the end of season six from what they were in season one; Barrow did in dramatic ways, both discovering things about himself (including a tacit acceptance of who he is after self-loathing nearly killed him twice) and revealing unexpected aspects to his character. He’s still got the hint of spite in him, as when he tries to spoil Gwen’s return for her, but this time around there’s a sense of remorse, and the sadness that drives his behavior too. Jim Carter, who portrayed Carson, earned four Emmy nominations for his performance, but I’d argue Robert James-Collier, who played Barrow, had the more difficult task and was the more compelling character.

(By the way, I only just discovered that Carter played Déjà Vu in Top Secret, which was my favorite movie when I was a kid. I had a vague, unsettling feeling I’d seen him somewhere before.)

But the softening of Barrow meant that the downstairs portion of the show lost its main antagonist, and even Barrow’s former adversaries became increasingly invested in helping him over the course of the sixth season. Fellowes seems to have tried to replace Thomas’ (and, previously, O’Brien’s) bit of villainy with Denker’s shenanigans over at Lady Violet’s house, but that was pure slapstick in comparison. And, as the show’s only gay character, Barrow ended up without a romantic aspect to his character except as a plot point, as with his attempts to forge a platonic friendship with Andy or his pursuit of a quack therapy to “cure” his homosexuality.

The best aspect of the sixth season itself was the return of Lady Mary’s vicious side; she was always the show’s most central character, and her complexity and her desire to be an independent woman in an era that did not reward or even tolerate such thinking gave the show the sort of difficult protagonist it needed to avoid becoming total fluff. She had that love-to-hate quality that makes a great character, but season six gave us a little more insight into her personality, thanks to some help from Lady Violet, who was increasingly reduced to quip machine this last season (although Maggie Smith can still deliver a barb with the best of them). I had some hope Fellowes would leave her unmarried as the series ended, because she’d spent so much time insisting and acting as if she didn’t need a husband – and she didn’t, not in practical terms – so watching her turn into a big mush in the Christmas special was a bit of a disappointment, although we did get one last glimpse of her strength of character when she turned all business (instead of going to pieces as you might expect a badly written female character of the era to do) when Anna’s water broke.

Fellowes wrote himself into this spot because he made us like so many of the characters, even the flawed ones, over the previous six seasons, and because he created a house where everyone, upstairs and down, was part of an extended family of sorts. The relationship between Lord Grantham and the servants was probably highly unusual, if not outright unrealistic, for the time, and the camaraderie among the servants wasn’t balanced enough by the sort of petty squabbles and jealousies that arise in any group of people living and working in such close quarters. But you’d be a cold viewer to root for an unhappy ending for Daisy or Moseley or Lady Edith – those last two in particular were so downtrodden before season six that it was cathartic to see them finally fall into something good. That makes for a satisfying ending for the viewer, but the show never quite recaptured the dramatic spell Fellowes managed to cast in seasons one and two.

Other stray thoughts:

* It’s emblematic of the victory-lap nature of the season that three older male characters this season ran into what appeared to be serious health problems, but none of those turned out to matter much in the end. Lord Grantham and Lord Merton are fine, and Carson’s “palsy” was a mere plot contrivance that won’t prevent him from living happily ever after. (The man just faced the loss of his main purpose in life, but he was just sort of waved off screen.)

* Carson’s palsy may have been essential tremor, which I only bring up because Fellowes has the condition and is the honorary president of England’s National Tremor Foundation. The disorder is hereditary, and is eight times more common than Parkinson’s, so the few details we did get on Carson seem to fit.

* I knew Lord Merton wasn’t going to buy it, but I fully expected his pernicious anemia to be cured by the treatment that, at the time of the show’s setting (1925), had only recently been discovered by the American scientist George Whipple and was just about to become widespread. Fellowes would have been bending the timeline slightly, but having Lord Merton’s condition cured in the nick of time by a new discovery would have been both more realistic than the misdiagnosis resolution and a nice hat-tip to science.

* Amelia Grey, Lord Merton’s witchy daughter-in-law, had so much potential as a new troublemaking antagonist had the series continued, but instead she was left a one-note gold-digger in a subplot that was left uncooked the whole season.

* What exactly do all these boys see in Daisy? Aside from the fact that she looks about 14, as Mrs. Patmore said in the finale, she’s only nice to the ones who aren’t interested. Also, the subplot about Daisy standing up for Mr. Mason was a big waste of time; once it was resolved, in typically fairy-tale fashion, it was as if her outbursts to her employers had never occurred.

* Lady Rose returns, but left her newborn at home in America because … her nanny wouldn’t allow her to bring the child? I’m not surprised her milquetoast husband allowed this, but when did Rose allow people to start pushing her around?

* When all the servants were giggling and rushing upstairs, I assumed they were going to see Anna and the baby, not to say goodbye to Edith and Bertie.

* I was at least glad to see that Carson was still Carson, imperious as ever, still blissfully unaware of how the others view his shipshape-and-Bristol-fashion sensibility. That doesn’t make him the bad guy, but at least one character escaped the finale’s sugarcoating.

* Lady Violet had to have the last line of the series, and she did, ending it on a bit of a bittersweet note with her response’s to Isobel’s comment that we are moving forward toward the future rather than back into the past, saying, “as if we had a choice.” Perhaps Fellowes was giving us one small sign that he knew that the best moments were already behind us, and he was just putting a bow on what, despite its flaws, remains one of the most successful dramatic series in TV history.

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→ March 6, 2016
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Top Chef, S13E13.

We start with Isaac just heaping praise on Kwame as a super-talented, very promising chef. Again, Isaac is just the freaking best. Maybe he could do video blogs next season.

* Quickfire: Traci des Jardins, who always looks pained even when she’s smiling, is the guest. The challenge is to make artisanal toast. Artisanal toast is very San Francisco, in that it’s pretty good, wildly overpriced, and borderline annoying about itself. Also, Italians have been doing this forever and calling it bruschetta (among other names), so shut the fuck up already about your “toast program.”

* Oh, joy, a sudden death quickfire – the bottom two chefs are up for elimination and will face each other, with the loser going home. Let’s definitely eliminate one of the best chefs of the season because of something my daughter eats for breakfast before school.

* Marjorie is making hers the way I make lots of “toast” dishes – rubbing olive oil with her fingers on sliced country bread. This is the ideal way to make grilled or broiled toast to as part of fett’unta con fagioli, which is the Italian version of beans on toast, usually white beans cooked with rosemary and garlic. It’s highly flavorful and very filling even as a main course, although it’s traditionally a starter.

* The dishes – er, the toasts: Jeremy did chicken liver mousse, pickled cherries, white raspberries, jalapeño, and arugula on ciabatta … Marjorie used a sourdough baguette and made dungeness crab salad with a pancetta fennel marmalade … Amar made a duck breast with foie gras, fig marmalde, crispy prosciutto, and a balsamic and truffle reduction on sourdough … Carl did grilled sourdough with burrata, blistered cherry tomatoes, and shrimp … Isaac made a butter-fried ciabbata, percorino, prosciutto, red pepper spread like romesco.

* Winner is Jeremy, and he gets a Rational oven as a prize. Carl and Amar have to face off; Amar’s was “heavy-handed,” while Carl ended up on the bottom because he put fish and cheese together – and I agree that those things do not go together, ever. In Italian Catholicism, it’s taught that you’ll go to hell for that.

* For the elimination, Tom is there as a third judge – as he should be – and the two chefs have 30 minutes to cook anything they want.

* Amar says, “I do not wanna make a crudo, I came here to cook!” I respect this. Crudo – the Italian word just means “raw,” although now it primarily refers to raw fish – has become such a Top Chef crutch that it’s gotten ridiculous, but as some of you have pointed out, it’s become a crutch because the judges keep rewarding it.

* Just from how he speaks, I think Amar snores.

* Amar did a pan-roasted sea bream, watermelon radish cooked in dashi, pickled mushrooms, plums, and brown butter. Carl made a salad of raw thai snapper, corn, nectarines, and chiles. Padma sneers, “Another crudo, huh?” but then votes for him. Tom votes for Amar, but Amar is eliminated when Traci votes for Carl.

* Elimination challenge: Hubert Keller cooks dinner for the final four. He hosted the first ever quickfire – and did anyone else notice how young Gail looked in that clip? Or Harold, who ended up winning the season, getting the boot? The actual challenge is to make a tribute dish to Fleur de Lys, Keller’s just-closed restaurant in SF. Keller cooks them an Alsatian stew called a bacheofe, with pork, lamb, and beef marinated overnight, with a rope of dough used to seal the lid to the pot.

* Carl wants to make a torchon of foie gras, a process that requires three days, when he only has three hours. The foie gras must be dry-cured or marinated so that it doesn’t have the texture of putty, and the fat used has to be melted and then given time to set up. Marjorie points out the folly of this idea.

* Tom can’t get over the risks Isaac and Carl are taking, making dishes that should require much more time than the chefs have for prep and cooking.

* Where do these chefs get the foie they always seem to use on the show? I don’t think Whole Foods sells it but we never see them buying it anywhere else.

* Isaac serves first. He made a duck ballotine (a type of terrine) with chicken liver forcemeat, lentils with porcini, figs, cherry and aged balsamic gastrique. Padma says, “That’ll be all,” as if he should return to the servants’ quarters.

* The flavors in Isaac’s were good, but the dish needed more sauce. He also cooked it too fast at too high a temperature, so the duck meat was overcooked and the skin wasn’t crispy. We’re off to a roaring start.

* Marjorie made roasted lamb saddle with artichoke puree, artichoke barigoules (braised in a wine/water broth), squash, tomatoes, and niçoise olives. She cooked the lamb boneless, and Tom seems very unimpressed by this decision.

* Keller said she nailed the flavors of Provençal cuisine. But the artichokes were underseasoned and the lamb was improperly cooked, so it sounds like her dish wasn’t really any better than Isaac’s.

* Jeremy made branzino (filet de loup) with potato puree, heirloom tomato, vin blanc, and pommes souffles. This was the only dish of the four that the judges actually seemed to like. He also shaved truffle over the potatoes, because of course he did. The dish tasted good and was technically strong.

* Carl’s foie gras torchon en gelée with black pepper, strawberries, and fines herbes. He confited the foie first, then wrapped it as a torchon. It … did not work.

* Keller says Carl set himself up to fail. Harold says it’s not doable in three hours. The center was almost raw, which makes it pretty clear where we’re going from here.

* Keller and Tom both think the chefs all tried too hard to impress because it was the last-ever meal to be served at the site of Fleur de Lys. I doubt the setting was what intimidated them so much as the part about not getting eliminated from the show.

* Judges’ table: The winner was Jeremy, of course. No one else made anything even edible, if we read between the lines of the judges’ comments.

* The other three chefs all have to wear it in front of the judges. Gail’s comment afterwards, that she’d rather eat overcooked duck than undercooked foie gras, seems like the tell on the elimination – and I have to agree, especially since I don’t care for any meat cooked only to rare. Raw liver sounds all kinds of disgusting.

* Padma does that cruel thing where she says someone’s name – Marjorie – and then announces that that chef is going to the finals, not going home. I would always assume this was at the producers’ direction, but maybe Padma just enjoys putting the chefs through a little emotional torture.

* Carl is eliminated. It’s kind of a shocker to have him and Kwame get bounced before the finals.

* LCK: First, the three chefs have to make one sourdough dish in 30 minutes. Carl makes apple and tomatillo gazpacho with shrimp, only using the ready-made bread; Amar makes beef wellington, starting with the raw bread dough, enough to impress Tom given the time constraints; Jason makes smoked salmon bruschetta with lots of stuff on top, which leads Tom to criticize the lack of seasoning on the turnips and radishes. Tom keeps praising Amar for a “ballsy move” in trying to make something so complex in a half hour. His favorite was Carl’s; second was Amar, so Jason’s big winning streak comes to naught. His eggs were a little overdone, apparently.

* Second, Tom implies it’s a raw challenge. Carl has a good line, saying his foie gras was “sort of a crudo.” The chefs have 12 minutes to prepare a fish dish, starting from a whole fish. Amar grabs the loup de mer because he’s familiar with it, while Carl grabs the snapper because it looks the freshest. Amar decides to make an onion soubise – like a béchamel with onion purée – to which Tom says “good luck with that!” I thought that took about half an hour to make sure you don’t brown the onions. Amar made a crispy loup de mer with onion soubise and yuzu caper brown butter. Carl made grilled red snapper with apricot and ginger marmalade. The real message here is that when the chefs have only 12 minutes to cook but all manner of ingredients, they make dishes you’d eat – food that sounds great, but that you might make at home or order at a restaurant that isn’t $100 a head.

* Rankings: Marjorie, Carl, Isaac, Amar, Jeremy. Obviously one of Carl/Amar won’t be there, but regardless of who comes out of LCK, I think this should be Marjorie’s to lose.

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→ March 5, 2016
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Stick to baseball, 3/5/16.

My one Insider piece this week covered the Ian Desmond deal with Texas. I also held my regular Klawchat.

I have two pieces up on Paste this week too: my review of the cool, quick-playing deckbuilder Xenon Profiteer, plus a recap of games I saw at Toyfair. The price has varied a bit, but Xenon Profiteer is $26.49 right now on amazon.

And now, the links…

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→ March 4, 2016
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Klawchat 3/4/16.

Klaw: If they’re out of hand, I’m a give ’em handles. Klawchat.

Tim: What’s your opinion of Andy Green?
Klaw: I really know nothing of him as a tactical manager, but I like that the Padres actually considered managerial experience in the minors as if it has value (it absolutely does, in my opinion), and I have heard great things about his work with young players. I’m cautiously optimistic.

Stevie: Does Tom Murphy start at C for Col in ’16?
Klaw: If healthy? Might be a bit of a leap now, but possible later in the season.

Brian: The Braves seem to have a decent number of minor leaguers that should be able to hit, but there aren’t many with big power projection. Do you view this as a problem?
Klaw: I don’t know that I think that’s true – Davidson certainly projects for power – and power is a relatively scarce commodity. But I think this qualifies as looking for something to worry about: they have lots of pitching and players up the middle, so if they do have to trade for a power bat at a corner at some point they should have the pieces to do so.

Daniel: Back on the old ESPN chat days, you characterized and had concerns about Manaea being “all deception” in regards to his stuff and potential output. Have things changed given your current ranking of him?
Klaw: I don’t think that’s an accurate summary of my views on him at any point. It’s not like he was throwing 85 and getting guys out. He wasn’t throwing 96 like he did on the Cape, but I’ve seen him multiple times as a pro and he’s generally been at least 88-93, more often 90-94, with an above-average slider. Deception is why he puts up huge K rates despite stuff that’s more grade 55-60 than grade 65-70.

chris: what games did you go to yesterday
Klaw: I saw Nolan Martinez, Chris Murphy, and Nick Lodolo. I’m going to see Mickey Moniak today and probably Reggie Lawson tomorrow. The weather is screwing up my trip – I would have had the chance to see Lawson and Kevin Gowdy, but their games are now at the same time.

Jacob: Do you think the Braves should be encouraged by the standout performances (and surprising power)of Mallex Smith and Ozhaino Albies and does it bode well for their seasons?
Klaw: No, I think spring training stats are totally meaningless and trying to draw any conclusions from three days of games would only qualify you to participate in last night’s GOP debate.

John Uskglass: How confident are you in J. Profar still being an above average player?
Klaw: One hundred percent. If he’s healthy, he’ll be above average.

Andrew: What are your thoughts on Chris Lee’s progression since coming over to the O’s system from Houston? Could Baltimore actually be successfully developing talent for once?
Klaw: You’ll have to be more specific; I saw Lee’s last start of 2015 and saw more or less what he’s been before.

Matt: Is Ahmed Rosario more than just a glove?
Klaw: Yes. Someone asked Jonathan Mayo that same question on Twitter and I was dumbfounded. That’s a bad fake-scouting report going around if people think that’s what he is.

Philip: Padres supposedly have secret deals with Jorge Ona and Adrian Morejon I know you answered a question few weeks ago on Morejon and seem high on him. What about Ona?
Klaw: I’ve heard better on Morejon, but still good things on Ona. Still haven’t seen either. Once they’re locked up in deals, they turn into phantasms.

BD: Mike Shawaryn a worthy late first rounder?
Klaw: Will see him in April but area guys were telling me more like second round coming into the spring.

Mike P.: Who will be more known at the end of the season in Milwaukee: Hank or Arcia?
Klaw: I have no idea how this Hank story became a thing. Maybe Michigan’s Gov. Snyder should concoct a fake-dog story because it certainly seemed to generate more reader interest than poisoning kids in Flint has.

G: Do you listen to much Hip Hop? Any opinion on Kanye’s “The Life of Pablo” or Kendrick’s new release?
Klaw: Oh, I like hip hop, but please don’t lump Kanye into that genre. I thought untitled unmastered was much more interesting and streamlined than TPAB, and while he could have used some editing (track 7 anyone?), there are some real highlights that brought me back to the brief peak of jazz-rap, particularly track 8 and track 3.

Cole: Where does Alex Bregman fit with the Astros? Wouldn’t think he is the guy defensively to make Correa move to third and Jose Altuve i still at second. Is his arm strong enough for third base? Is a move to the outfield inevitable?
Klaw: It’s a 50 arm if you like it, 45 if you don’t. Second base is his ideal position. I wonder if the Astros figured he was the best player available at 2 in their minds, so if there isn’t an opportunity (with Altuve signed through 2019 including options, there probably isn’t one), Bregman would be the centerpiece in any trade for a big leaguer in July.

Andrew: You’ve mentioned the Rockies shortened Gray’s delivery. I seem to remember something similar being said about their handling of Matzek coming up. Is this a common practice in their development process and potentially problematic a la the Orioles?
Klaw: They really altered Matzek’s delivery, but aside from those two guys i’m not sure what other examples we have there. Often it’s these kids going to coaches in their offseasons, like Taijuan Walker and Aaron Sanchez apparently did, rather than getting it from coaches.

Zach: Promise it’s not driven by a hot spring start. How good is Mazara’s hit tool?
Klaw: Now, probably a 40 or 45. Future, jeez, if you wanted to push me to say 60 I wouldn’t argue too hard. He’s always had an approach well beyond his age.

Jonny B: I always get overexcited about spring training performances, despite understanding that it is foolish to do so. However, I am curious if you think there is anything about spring training that might be predictive or informative (particularly relating to prospects)?
Klaw: If a kid shows up looking different physically or mechanically, that might mean something significant. I heard secondhand that David Rollins was throwing harder with a better slider than before – now that’s a guy I would want to watch. But you can take the spring training stats sheet into the bathroom with you in case the stall is out of toilet paper.

Craig: You mentioned that you find minor league experience very useful for evaluating possible MLB managers? Because a minor league manager’s job is primarily about developing talent (a team would be thrilled with a manager who routinely finished last in his league, but consistently developed players), what traits/experiences from the minors are useful? I’m genuinely curious.
Klaw: I disagree that that’s all there is to a minor league manager’s job. No team would be thrilled with a manager who routinely finished last, because the affiliate (if it’s not owned by the MLB team) would be seriously pissed off and would seek a new affiliation – and no MLB team wants to end up in High Desert. The actual experience of running a club, handling tactical situations in-game, and balancing developmental needs with trying to win is valuable and can’t be replicated through any means other than experience.

Thomas I. Shollar: Yo Bro, trying to up my home brew game….not a home espresso drinker more of a pour over homie…Baratza Encore get it done for a grinder or is that still JV?
Klaw: I think it would. I own their Virtuoso but it’s because I needed a consistent, finer grind for espresso.

Jay: Your comment on Mac Wiliamson’s bat speed being a tad slow…is that based on what you saw pre or post surgery?
Klaw: Post. Saw him in AFL.

Bartolo4ever: I read your review of Spotlight. Just out of curiosity, which was the scene that “rang a little false” for you?
Klaw: Ruffalo’s character blowing up at Keaton. Not sure if it actually happened or not, but it seemed very made-for-commercial.

Andrew: Re: Chris Lee–> when in Houston never made it past A ball, fb sat at 89 and command shaky. Since coming to baltimore got to AA, fb 93-96, stronger and seems to have better command this spring
Klaw: He’s not 93-96 as a starter. Might do that in relief – I heard he did in instructs in short stints – but that’s not really a change when you take a guy from starting to relief and see his velocity increase.

Greg T.: Is Daulton Jefferies a first rounder?
Klaw: Yes. Although I’m not totally sure he’s there on merit.

Ed: If you’re the cubs, do you approach this draft differently? Like, would you utilize your available scouting resources to spend more time scouting the lower ranked or diamond in the rough types? Or do you approach it same as always?
Klaw: Well they have so little money to spend relative to other teams that I’d probably avoid many of the HS kids who are expected to go first round and wouldn’t be signable for less than first-round money. Can still find value later in the draft; perhaps there’s a way to scout those guys more efficiently when you’re not spending resources scouting Corey Ray or Jason Groome.

Dusty: Do you see any scenario where Desmond plays SS for the Rangers?
Klaw: If Andrus gets hurt or hits even worse than he did in 2015, don’t they have to try it?

Jake: Any industry rumors around who the Phillies will take at number 1?
Klaw: No. And if there were, they’d be bogus. It’s three months from the draft and there’s no Bryce Harper type to make this an easy question.

Kyle: I always admire your stances on twitter and speaking up on things like Baylor and Tennessee. In light of that, I’m curious to hear your thoughts on the Erin Andrews news and how you feel to be working for the same company that would make her live through that on TV
Klaw: I was not happy to see that at all, and I won’t say a word to defend ESPN’s actions, but I also have no idea who those executives might have been or if they’re still with the company. I can only hope that if they are still around that they are being made to answer for their actions. Erin deserved so much better.

Andrew: Pick one: Pandemic or Catan
Klaw: Pandemic.

Chris P: Are you looking to make any spring games, or is it all HS/college at this point?
Klaw: I have gone to spring training every year since joining ESPN. This year is no different.

Mike: If once of the Cardinals current starting five went down tomorrow, would you put Reyes on the 40 Man?
Klaw: I would have done it anyway just to make it clear that I think suspensions for weed are stupid. I have real optimism that the union is going to try to get that eliminated in the next CBA. I’m in California now and I could probably be legally high right now (I’m not, just to make that clear). There’s no justification for MLB being this far behind the times.

Anonymous: Do you think the Pirates treatment of Gerrit Cole is an example of an exploited inefficiency on PIT’s part? Figure a pitcher isn’t likely to be healthy or affordable by the time he is a FA, the player will take advantage of arbitration, why give a raise now?
Klaw: I wouldn’t have tried or threatened to cut him, but as I said on the BBTN podcast, there is no benefit to paying these guys more before they’re arb-eligible. I just wouldn’t go out of my way to antagonize them.

wrburgess: Who would you bet on being the 2016 version of Conforto, such as a 2015 draft pick that, given the chance, makes a late-season impact in the majors?
Klaw: I think Benintendi could do that. Hell, Bregman could do it if Altuve or Correa had some serious injury.

Nik: Which team will make the playoffs first, the Phillies or the Braves?
Klaw: Hm. I think Atlanta is more motivated to go spend some money to improve the team quickly in 2017-18, but the Phillies’ prospects are a bit closer to helping the big-league club.

Michael: Do you call out your colleagues when they refer to RBIs, OPS, “clutch,” or other stats/concepts you disagree with, like you do with people on Twitter? Is that uncomfortable?
Klaw: I have done so on Twitter and on air. I’ve called out colleagues for supporting anti-science and pseudoscience too. So this seems like a very silly question.

Amit: Check out any eats while you were in the bay?
Klaw: Cotogna, del Popolo, flour + water, Four Barrel, Sightglass.

Clay: Have you ever tried curing your own meat? Would love to try but I worry about getting it wrong and making people sick.
Klaw: I’ve cured and smoked bacon. I haven’t done anything to be eaten uncooked like prosciutto.

Ryan: Out of all of the Braves pitching prospects who’s most likely to reach/come close to expectations?
Klaw: Aaron Blair, because he’s just about there already.

Scott: With Archie Bradley and Jon Gray both reportedly showing increased velocity on their first spring turns, seems like both of their local media are hoping for the best and forgetting it was two inning stints after a long stretch off. How much of their problems the last two years can be tied directly to the lost ticks on their fastball?
Klaw: A lot. Although Bradley also had issues with his shoulder, and both guys have struggled to develop a good third pitch.

Ciscoskid: Any prospects that are top 2 rounds worthy out of Northern CA?
Klaw: Jefferies and Matt Manning are the two definites, although Manning is playing hoops and won’t make his first start until April 11th.

Colin: what disgusted you most about the GOP debate last night?
Klaw: I actually didn’t watch it; I’ve only read recaps and reactions, which of course are going to highlight the most ridiculous moments.

William: re: Spotlight….that Ruffalo weird accent/cadence he was going for didn’t annoy the living hell out of you?
Klaw: No – actually, I thought it enhanced the performance because it made him fall into character more. Plus I don’t know what Rezendes actually sounds like; I read an interview with Sascha Pfeifer which one of you sent to me where she said the actors all worked to adopt the real reporters’ accents and gestures.

Kevin: Thoughts on fantasy baseball (not daily). Good for the game or a hindrance?
Klaw: Good for the game. Daily fantasy, not so much.

Kevin: Best rapper ever?
Klaw: Rakim. I’ll entertain an argument for 2Pac, but Rakim is known by a single letter for a reason.

Guy Bissonnette: H ramirez end the season as the Sox 1B?
Klaw: Yes. I think he’s going to hit better than expected. He was OK before he slammed into the wall last year.

Michael: You made it seem like it was completely wrong to be in the minority on the gay marriage cases last week on Twitter. While you may not agree with originalism, it’s a legitimate way to interpret the Constitution. The ratifiers of the 14th Amendment never thought they were giving people the right to marry a person of the same sex. Leave it to the legislature.
Klaw: There are two problems with this. The ratifiers of the 14th amendment promised due process under the law to all, with no exceptions or conditions. Indeed, the authors or ratifiers of the Constitution or any amendment could not have imagined the world in which we live today, and saying that if they didn’t anticipate modern technology, biology, knowledge of genetics (of which they had none), and so on that the documents don’t apply renders them useless. As for Scalia’s argument that marriage equality should have been left to state legislatures, that’s an outright failure because so many federal laws and policies – including the favorable tax treatment of married couples and survivors’ benefits in social security – rely on marital status that it is undeniably a federal issues. Scalia was smart enough to know this, but let his own opposition to gay marriage inform his opinion instead.

Dan: Periscopes coming back soon?
Klaw: Tough to do those when I’m on a plane or in a car all the time.

Chris: Agree with the 30 games for Aroldis? I thought it was light, to be honest.
Klaw: I thought it was reasonable for a negotiated settlement (no appeal) in a case where the victim recanted, so whatever additional evidence MLB may have gathered that we don’t have, their case against Chapman was likely weaker than they’d wanted.

Steve: What kind of line would you expect from Park in Minnesota this year?
Klaw: .250ish with 75 walks and 20-25 homers? I don’t know him that well as a player, just some video.

Michael: I meant, do you do it in person? Doing it behind the comfort of a computer screen is a lot easier.
Klaw: Really? I would never say anything online or in a text that I wouldn’t repeat in person. You seem ignorant of what my job actually entails. When I say the Angels have the worst farm system I’ve ever seen, I still talk to many people in their organization and must be willing to stand up and answer for what I’ve said.

Fitzy: Does the White Sox initial aggressive assignment of Courtney Hawkins explain why he’s never really developed?
Klaw: It’s a strong hypothesis, and in my opinion, a good one that’s probably incomplete. He was fairly crude to begin with and there was always a chance he’d never hit.

Adam Trask: The underrated 9th amendment: The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
Klaw: No, we’re only picking and choosing amendments that fit our preconceived notions here. Please don’t confuse us.

Ronald: Do you have a feeling that, behind the scenes, Aroldis and his reps said, “we’ll settle with you if you agree to leave his free agency alone?”
Klaw: Absolutely. Not a bad strategy for them. I actually have no real problem with leaving his free agency alone while keeping him off the field for a month. MLB’s problem is not about these guys getting paid, but having them on the field at all. I would hope every opposing announcer would bring it up whenever Chapman’s in the game.

Kevin: If you have to eat at a chain which one is it?
Klaw: Shake Shack is excellent for a chain. Chipotle and Panera are solid choices when I’m in chain-world. I used to hate Panera and there are still things there I won’t touch, but often when I’m traveling I don’t want really heavy foods.

Dan: I’m pretty sure the ratifiers of the 2nd Amendment never thought they were giving people the right to carry semi-automatic weapons to kill…
Klaw: Key & Peele did a great sketch on this – maybe the framers would have loved semi-automatic weapons.

AJ: I know Andrew Suarez didnt make your top ten list for the Giants. What are your thoughts on him?
Klaw: Health history is a real concern. Could be a 4th starter if healthy but has had so many problems already I can’t forecast durability.

Nelson: Braves better off with Swanson or Simmons at shortstop?
Klaw: Simmons’ defense is irreplaceable but Swanson will provide far more offense than Simmons ever could. Probably a slight downgrade because Simmons’ glove was so good, but I still think Swanson makes a bunch of All-Star teams.

Owen (London): Did everyone else get the Robert Louis Stevenson/lighthouse reference a few weeks ago ? Fuckin’ A, bubba. This is why we love this game.
Klaw: Only a couple of people did, but that’s OK. My rule of thumb is that if one person gets one of my ridiculous references, I’m happy. Otherwise I’d lose my damn mind.

Michael: Originalists don’t agree with substantive due process. It’s completely made up to someone like Scalia. Moreover, the federal government could easily change those benefits if they wanted to. Vote people in who do if you don’t like it. I happen to be in favor of gay marriage; I just wanted it done the right way, not by nine unelected judges.
Klaw: I find the idea of leaving questions of fundamental rights up to elected officials, and thus the people who elected them, rather scary, or haven’t you noticed that the leading candidate for the GOP nomination wants to restrict the rights of Muslims?

Theo: Obviously A Espinoza looks great now. Being as small as he is and and young as he is, what are the percentages that 1) he actually makes it to the big leagues and 2) he develops reasonably well (#2/3)? Is he a lottery ticket at this point, or are the chances better?
Klaw: I was trying to think of the last guy like him – and there have been very few – who didn’t turn into anything at all. Brien Taylor? Felix did. Pedro did. Who else has there been?

BD: Any tricks to get a young child (2 in my case) to eat vegtables?
Klaw: I’m not the best one to talk, as my daughter is a great eater but still doesn’t love vegetables, but I have found that roasting them till caramelized helps bring out the sugars naturally present in the vegetables. I would often get my daughter to eat broccoli cooked like that and tossed with grated Parmiggiano-Reggiano or Pecorino Romano.

Mike: The Brewers outfield is stocked full of intriguing prospects, big fan of Michael Reed, how does he fit in there?
Klaw: I think he should be their everyday CF by year-end.

Michael D: Unlike the Rangers’ strategy to sign Desmond rather than going with an in-house platoon/rookie option, should Cleveland stick Naquin in CF as opposed to potentially overpaying for a guy like Austin Jackson? Not like Abraham Almonte was Kenny Lofton …
Klaw: I would. Even if Naquin hits .230/.290/.350 he’ll probably still help the club with his defense. And while they need a bat or three, Jackson probably isn’t the solution.

addoeh: What one regional or national chain restaurant, that isn’t close to your house, do you wish was near by?
Klaw: I’m glad Shake Shack isn’t nearby or I’d eat there too often. We do miss Grimaldi’s from Arizona as it was a favorite of my daughter’s and I happened to like their salads as well as their pizzas.

Kevin: Next to you is buster the hardest working guy in the business?
Klaw: True fact: Buster actually hasn’t slept in six years.

Marshall: How much time do teams spend evaluating an average draft pick? How much time in the farm system before the team has enough new information to make the draft position meaningless (i.e., not a factor in promotion decisions)?
Klaw: Come on, you saw Trouble with the Curve. Teams don’t see the player until a week before the draft, and then they only have the area guy see him even if he might be the first or second overall pick.

Drew: What was your impression of Connor Jones last week? And did you eat at Mas again or try somewhere new?
Klaw: I didn’t make the trip – I’m shooting for March 18th to try again.

Michael: Discrimination exists and is legal in this country. Other than rights specifically mentioned in the Constitution, legislatures decide the rest. People who love weed get incredibly discriminated in this country. Does due process and equal protection apply to them?
Klaw: Yeah, that’s not discrimination.

Lyle: I like popular music, restaurants, etc…but I want to seem super unique to people when I describe my tastes. What is wrong with me?
Klaw: Why? You like what you like. You certainly shouldn’t try to be something you’re just not.

Kevin: ever seen breaking bad and if so thoughts?
Klaw: I watched S1 and two eps of S2 and bailed. Just did not grab me.

Ed: Do you see Giolito starting the season in DC?
Klaw: No, and I’m guessing we don’t see him till late in the season given their other SP options.

Corey: Your prediction about whether or not JBJ, Castillo and Sandoval produce where the Sox expect/need them to ?
Klaw: I’ll say JBJ does, Castillo doesn’t, and Sandoval is OK but short of expectations.

Johnny: Do you think Rio Ruiz can take Atlanta’s 3rd base job by 2017? Or do you see him only being a bench guy?
Klaw: Bench guy.

Eric: Does it bother you when someone (who is hiding behind a computer screen) accuses you of hiding behind a computer screen when you criticize someone?
Klaw: You kind of just described Twitter.

Corey: Think Joe Kelly sticks as the 5th starter or ends up in ‘pen? and is Owens or Johnson (or Elias) the better replacement ?
Klaw: I think Kelly has to be in the bullpen but they seem committed to trying him as a starter again.

Jeff Chisholm: What anti science faction do you hate more: the “global warming is a myth” contingent or the “vaccines are dangerous” group?
Klaw: Do I have to choose? If you deny one part of science you might as well be denying all of it. We don’t get to pick what facts to believe. Well, we do, but if we don’t believe them all then we might as well go extinct.

Kevin: I keep hearing that the Trea Turner/Joe Ross for Wil Myers trade is a disaster for the Padres. Do you think there is a good chance Wil Myers breaks out and makes it a great deal for the Padres?
Klaw: I still have hope for Myers, but that trade will never look good for them because of how much they gave up.

John: berrios has to start in the Twins rotation right? Who else do they have….. How did they win that many game last year with that rotation
Klaw: I think he’s ready.

Klaw: I need to get rolling and figure out my plan for today as the game I was supposed to see (Moniak) was cancelled. Thanks as always for all of the questions – I’ll chat again at some point next week!

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→ March 3, 2016
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Forbidden Desert app.

The iPad app version of Forbidden Desert is absolutely stellar, one of the best adaptations of any physical boardgame i’ve seen to date, and I can verify that the game is highly addictive – in some ways even more so than the strong app version of Pandemic. Forbidden Desert just could use a little more fine-tuning to help it run more quickly, but the app is stable, the graphics are bright and clear, and the game – which I gave a fairly positive review when it first came out – showed itself to be more difficult than I’d realized after a couple of plays of the physical game.

Forbidden Desert is from Pandemic designer Matt Leacock, and the mechanics are similar to those of Pandemic and Forbidden Island. Two to four players, each with a specific role and power, play team members stranded in a desert that’s represented by a 5×5 grid of 24 tiles plus a central dust storm. On each turn, one player takes four actions, which can include moving to an adjacent tile, flipping a tile over to reveal what’s underneath, or clearing one sand token from atop the tile. You can only flip a tile once there’s no sand on top, and you can’t occupy a tile with more than one sand token on it; if you’re on a tile that ends up with two or more sand tokens on top of it, the tokens are also on top of you and you must clear all but one before you can move. After each player’s turn, the team draws two to six cards representing the progress of the storm, which may move the central storm and add sand tokens, increase the number of cards drawn each turn, or show the sun beating down on players, reducing their water supplies. The goal of the game is to find the four pieces of the escape vehicle and get all players to the launching pad before any of the various loss conditions occurs: one player dies of thirst, the supply of sand tokens is exhausted, or the storm level reaches the end of the track.

The app plays beautifully: Everything is clear, there’s a great undo function (although you can’t undo a tile flip or a storm card), and the app makes it immediately evident what you’re allowed to do. Cooperative apps are easier to develop than competitive ones because you don’t need to create AI opponents; the opponent here is the clock, so to speak, but the developers did hit just about everything else you’d want to see. I did have two minor complaints with the app. First is that some indicators end up covering others temporarily, such as the location of a vehicle piece covering up the indicator that a tile contains a tunnel, in which players can hide from the effects of the sun beating down. The second is that flipping a Storm Picks Up card causes a needless delay to show the board shaking, an effect that players should be allowed to turn off. They’re both pretty minor, really.

Indeed, any issues I have with the app are really issues with the game, like the need for a few more role choices to give more diverse options for replay. The game comes with six, and while I did beat the app without the Water Carrier, the challenge is more reasonable when you’ve got a Water Carrier (who can retrieve more water during the game than other players and can pass water to other players more easily) among your team. Even just adding a role similar to Pandemic’s Generalist, who has no special powers but gets a fifth action each turn, would help boost replay value. I probably played the app 40 times on the normal setting and only beat it four games, way below my typical rate on Pandemic, so I have to think this game is much more challenging than I originally thought.

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Two other apps of note: Reiner Knizia’s The Confrontation originally had a Lord of the Rings theme in the physical version but has been rethemed (sort of like The Shinning) for the app version, which treats the two-player game to a hybrid board/videogame treatment. It’s an unbalanced two-player game where the victory conditions differ for the two players, and conflicts between pieces are resolved in a separate screen that adds animations to the battles. I thought it was well-done and the hard AI was appropriately hard but not unbeatable, but I own an iPad 2, which is below their recommended hardware levels, and the app does run too slowly on my device for me to play it often. When I eventually upgrade, I’ll likely play it a lot more, since I think I like the game and generally enjoy Knizia’s products.

Tsuro: The Game of the Path is a very simple boardgame for two to eight players where the goal is to build a path that keeps your token on the board the longest. On each turn, you place one of three tiles in your hand, mostly trying to keep yourself on the board, but also trying to limit your opponents’ options late in the game and occasionally even getting the chance to run an opponent’s token off the board or, most fun, making two opponents smash together, eliminating both at once. It’s a basic game and there is a lot of luck involved as well as a disadvantage for the first player – if everyone manages to stay on the board till the end, the first player to play will be the first eliminated.

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→ March 2, 2016
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Spotlight.

I’m not a big movie guy in general, and the Academy’s leanings the last few years in Best Picture nods haven’t done a lot to bring me back to the fold – not that they’re choosing bad movies, but that they’ve favored a lot of movies I wouldn’t even want to watch. (I’m sure 12 Years a Slave was amazing. I just can’t watch that kind of cruelty.) I did watch Birdman, last year’s winner, and thought it was clever but lacked any sort of resolution to the main story, as if the screenwriter had a great idea for a movie script but couldn’t figure out how to finish it.

Spotlight (amazon • iTunes), which of course won Best Picture earlier this week, appealed to me more than any recent winner I can think of. The story shows how a small group of reporters at the Boston Globe known as the Spotlight team conducted a months-long investigative effort that uncovered the scope of the abuse scandal within the Catholic Church, including the fact that the Archbishop of the Boston diocese, Cardinal Bernard Law (no relation), knew about it and did nothing beyond moving the pedophile priests around to new parishes. It’s a film that’s going to be talky – big on dialogue, light on action, highly dependent on everything from acting to directing to editing to make it a compelling film. The whole concept of a dramatic film that has no action, no sex, no romance, not even a proper antagonist (in the conventional sense of a ‘villain’), feels very British to me, just because their TV programs and films tend to be more story-driven in my entirely anecdotal experience.

Spotlight is an incredible film in the most old-fashioned sense: It tells a great story and never lets up until the end. The pacing was perfect, the performances were very strong, and no nonsensical subplots interfered with the unfolding of the main story. Only one scene rang a little false, one that felt like it was inserted so that there was a Big Dramatic Conflict to use on awards shows, but otherwise the screenplay was taut and efficient, wasting few words and even less time on irrelevant details.

I thought the performances were almost all excellent, yet none seemed likely to win an award – I was surprised to see the nominations the cast received, because these performances were all so understated. Liev Schreiber plays the new editor of the Globe, perceived as an interloper because he’s not from Boston and because he’s Jewish, with such restraint that it was hard to remember who was behind the glasses and facial hair. Mark Ruffalo, playing reporter Mike Rezendes, was just as unrecognizable with a little change to his hairstyle, a slight accent, and, aside from the one scene where he blows up at Keaton’s character, delivers a similarly spartan portrayal. A mediocre writer could have had him explode at the imperious file clerk who won’t give him access to public records that would prove damning to the Church, and a mediocre actor would have hammed it up, but instead, we get a scene that works because it’s so mundane.

The lesson of Spotlight the movie – as distinct from the scandal, which certainly gets its air time in the film but doesn’t need me to thinkpiece it any further – is that the drama in a good dramatic film doesn’t have to come from the screenplay. This story was inherently compelling: A small team of reporters, given unusual autonomy, discovers and reveals a massive, decades-long cover-up of sexual abuse by one of the world’s most powerful and most implicitly trusted authorities through hard work and ingenuity. I could give you a dozen places where someone could have Hollywoodized the script – a screaming confrontation between reporters and church officials would be the most obvious – but instead we get a simple, linear story, where the narrative greed comes from the piecemeal uncovering of the scandal. Even my short attention span was riveted for two solid hours, and when the story was over, the film is over, and if that last scene wasn’t real, well, I am going to pretend that that’s what actually happened the day the story finally ran.

The defunct Phoenix also did some great work on the story and does get a brief mention in the film, although there’s a debate over how much credit they deserve. The Globe certainly pushed the story much farther.

I’m going to watch a few of last year’s highly-rated films now that many of them are available digitally (legally – I won’t Torrent), so if you’ve got a favorite or two, nominated or otherwise, throw them in the comments. I will watch movies in any language, but I draw the line at Room, which I think I will find far too upsetting because I have a young daughter.

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→ March 1, 2016
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February 2016 music update.

I wrote up my thoughts on the Ian Desmond contract for Insiders. I also have a recap of this year’s new boardgame offerings at Toyfair over at Paste.

Not a great month for new music, although we did get the School of Seven Bells album, a comeback from Lush, an amazing new single from FKA Twigs, and two extreme metal tracks worth including.

The Jezabels – Come Alive. An Australian act that’s been around since 2007, the Jezabels create serious drama with the steady crescendo and bombastic finish to “Come Alive,” the lead single from their just-released third album Synthia. Unfortunately, the group just had to cancel their 2016 tour as their keyboardist undergoes urgent treatment for ovarian cancer, which does not sound good at all.

Lush – Out of Control. I loved Lush’s music back in the mid-1990s, especially when they transitioned from shoegaze to more straight-up Britpop with “Ladykillers” and “Single Girl” before disbanding. They reformed last year and have gone back to the sound that first put them on the map in the early 1990s, with the sort of shimmering, fuzzy guitar lines that got them lumped in with Ride, Swervedriver, and MBV. Lush was always a little more pop-informed than those other acts – perhaps a function of having a lead singer with a pretty voice that didn’t pair well with the waves of distortion that characterize true shoegaze.

FKA twigs – Good to Love. I was not a fan of FKA Twigs’ first full-length album, with praise that seemed more about who she was than about the quality of her music, but this is a remarkable song, showing off her voice and her vocal restraint, in a sparsely arranged ballad that’s radiates emotion.

Grace Mitchell – White Iverson. I’d never heard of Mitchell or this song before last week, and I’m only half pleased about this, because I went back and heard the original song, by yet another white pseudo-rapper appropriating black culture for profit, and it is truly atrocious. Mitchell’s cover turns it into a sinuous trip-hop track that suffers only for the ridiculousness of its lyrics.

Animal Collective – Golden Gal. Animal Collective got a little less weird on their new album, Painting With, which is why 1) I’ve listed two of its songs on monthly playlists and 2) you’re hearing their songs on the radio a little more than ever. Weird and experimental is great, but I’m not going to want to listen to it repeatedly if there isn’t some kind of hook.

Clairity – Don’t Panic. Another cover, this of one of the better yet less-known songs from Coldplay’s debut album, Parachutes. (For those of you rolling your eyes because you think of Coldplay as the atrocious pop band they are now, I promise, they weren’t always like this.) I love the new arrangement, but can’t fathom Claire Wilkinson’s bizarre pronunciation of the long ‘o’ sound throughout the track.

Bleached – Wednesday Night Melody. I always get a little Joan Jett vibe out of this trio, with big, simple riffs, although Jett’s stuff didn’t have the surfer vibe that informs a lot of Bleached’s music.

Bear Hands – 2 AM. You know, they’re right: Nothing good happens past 2 a.m.

Astronautalis – Papillion. And right on cue, here’s a white rapper, although the appeal of this song is the spacey music rather than the rhyming, where Astronautalis boasts good rhythm but generic lyrics.

Wild Nothing – Life of Pause. I’m a little disappointed in Wild Nothing’s latest album after the huge success of Nocturne, as he seems to be taking fewer risks and chasing more ’70s soft-rock sounds (when he isn’t ripping off Talk Talk as he did on the first single). This was probably my second-favorite track on the record.

Minor Victories – A Hundred Ropes. Is it a supergroup if the members come from groups that aren’t very popular in their own right? With members from Editors, Mogwai, and Slowdive, the band’s lead single sounds … well, a lot like what you’d get if you mixed Editors, Mogwai, and Slowdive. It’s good, though.

Spirit Animal – World War IV (To the Floor). If you’ve heard “Regular World,” which is way too douchebro for me to tolerate for more than a few seconds, put it out of your minds and listen to the rest of their EP, which is far less sneering and childish and brings some better riffs that bring in a few elements of funk to a hard-rock foundation.

Run River North – Pretender. The Korean-American sextet seems to have ditched the soft folk-rock style of their debut album for electric guitars and angry lyrics, perhaps not to the better, as the strongest appeal of their debut album was the harmonies that brought one or both of the two female members into the vocals.

Kero Kero Bonito – Lipslap. Their 2015 song “Picture This” should have been a huge crossover pop hit, but never caught on, so it appears the group has now gone back to their previous style, a little harder-edged J-pop with lead singer Sarah Midori Perry rapping in Japanese and English.

White Lung – Hungry. The lead single from this punk band’s upcoming album Paradise marks a big step forward in songwriting from their previous efforts, which resembled early punk rock in their semi-controlled anarchy. This is still hard-edged, but it’s also a pop song with a clearly identifiable hook, and puts Paradise on the list of albums to look forward to this spring.

School Of Seven Bells – This Is Our Time. The emotional closer to SVIIB, which I reviewed here last week.

Omnium Gatherum – Skyline. It’s been a while since I included any metal tracks on a monthly playlist, but this time we have two. This Finnish melodic death metal band employs growled vocals, but the tempo isn’t as extreme as straight-up death metal and you can pick out individual guitar lines (sometimes rather intricate) and even understand the occasional word or two. Their newest album, Grey Heavens, is a good example of the Finnish flavor of MDM, with fretwork that wouldn’t be out of place in more commercial songs.

Entombed A.D. – The Winner Has Lost. The progenitors of the death-n-roll subgenre are back, sort of, with their second album under their slightly revised name. (Hey, anything’s better than Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe.) The newish band’s sound is definitely a little heavier and less bluesy than Wolverine Blues, but the tradeoff is substantially better production values and cleaner guitar riffs, similar to what they brought on 2014’s Back to the Front.

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→ February 29, 2016
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Rabbit is Rich and Rabbit at Rest.

I read Rabbit, Run in 2009, shortly after the death of author John Updike, because it appeared on the TIME list of the greatest 100 English-language novels from 1923 (the year the magazine started publishing) through the year the list was published, 2005. I truly disliked the book because I disliked the main character, Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a wildly immature young adult who peaked as a high school basketball player and can’t adjust to adult life and responsibilities.

Updike wrote three more Rabbit novels, the last two of which, Rabbit Is Rich and Rabbit at Rest, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. I read both books this month, skipping the second book in the series (Rabbit Redux), as part of my effort to read all the Pulitzer winners, and now, after reading over 1000 pages of Updike’s writing about Rabbit, I can say with great confidence that Harry Angstrom is an asshole.

I suppose someone better equipped to diagnose a fictional character’s psychological issues could have a field day with Rabbit, who can’t stop cheating on his wife, resents her and her mother for the way they’ve made him financially comfortable, can’t connect with or even fully trust his own son, and has a puerile, almost perverted obsession with sex that would be appropriate for a teenager but hardly for a 56-year-old man, as he is in the final volume. Even when faced with his own mortality after a mild heart attack at the end of the first section of Rabbit at Rest, Rabbit can’t even be bothered to grow up enough to follow his doctor’s rather obvious advice – eat right and exercise – try to prevent a recurrence, instead continuing his old-man leering while facing the unwelcome stress of a crisis with his wayward son.

In Rabbit, Run, we meet Angstrom, who still can’t quite get over the fact that his basketball career – and, we later learn, his life – reached its apex in high school, after which he experiences a long if nonlinear decline across four books and almost four decades. (Updike revisited his character every ten years, and we are fortunate he stopped writing when he did, or he would have won the 2001 Pulitzer for The Five Rabbits You Meet in Heaven.) The first novel is unpleasant, but has a clear direction and point. Rabbit’s refusal to grow up is rooted in recognition that it’s only going to go downhill from here, and with the ennui of a lower middle-class existence, tied to a wife and child he didn’t plan to have so soon, staring him in the face, he runs. By the third book, however, he’s at least come into money via his marriage, and is now running a Toyota dealership in the late 1970s as fuel economy entered the lexicon – Updike seems to be at great pains in each of the last two books to remind us of the mood of the time, as well as lots of brand names and details that seem like quaint product placement in hindsight (although I doubt Sealtest cared for Updike’s flavor suggestion). That shifts Angstrom’s angst (built right into his name!) to his desultory marriage, his ne’er-do-well son, and a simmering conflict with his wife over their son’s role in the family business.

The marital antibliss culminates in a couples’ weekend in the Caribbean where the eight participants agree to a one-night swap of partners – if ever there was a 1970s anachronism, there you have it – which puts Rabbit not with the woman he lusts for, the youngest wife of the four, but with Thelma, who has been in love with him for years. Rather than giving the scene any kind of emotional depth, or exploring what it might mean for Rabbit to see a woman truly (if rather perplexingly) in love with him, Updike has the entire book climax (sorry) in a scene where the two engage in anal sex, a moment he has Rabbit revisit in his mind in utterly bizarre fashion for the remainder of that book and in book four. I’d credit Updike with a clever metaphor if it weren’t so distasteful.

The escalation in Rabbit at Rest makes the book read like a Very Special Episode, where Harry’s son, Nelson, ends up a cocaine addict, destroying the family business and possibly contributing to Rabbit’s heart problems. After an angioplasty that’s designed to tide him over for a few months, after which the doctors recommend he have coronary bypass surgery, Rabbit goes to recuperate in his son’s house the first night, only to have his daughter-in-law, Pru (a nickname given to her because she was prudish as a teenager), seduce him while Nelson is away at rehab. I mean, this is what you do with a man twice your age who’s fresh off heart surgery, right?

Despite his frequent dalliances with women other than his wife, and desire for even more, Rabbit is one of the most outright misogynistic characters in modern literature, increasingly out of step with the times in which he lives. He frequently characterizes women as his enemy, referring to them by the most vulgar term you can use (and thus reducing them to a single body part), yet harbors a long-running obsession that he has a daughter by one of his former lovers. His relationship with Janice worsens in Rabbit at Rest when she begins to assert her independence, pursuing a career for herself after years of Rabbit telling her she was stupid. It’s hard not to root for her and quietly enjoy Rabbit’s accelerating decline, although Nelson’s mistakes and initial refusal to take any responsibility for his actions (just like dear ol’ dad) are infuriating in their own right. What could have been a thoughtful meditation on a man facing his own mortality at an age when most Americans are still working and looking forward to a long retirement is instead a pathetic coda to 1500 pages written about a terrible husband and father who is unworthy of any of our sympathy.

Next up: Steven Weinberg’s To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science.

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→ February 27, 2016
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Stick to baseball, 2/27/16.

My ranking of the top 25 prospects for impact in 2016 is up for Insiders. I also held my Klawchat on Thursday.

I updated my Arizona dining guide for those of you heading to the Valley for spring training.

I also joined the boys of Cespedes Family BBQ on their podcast for an hour of silliness and a lot of prospect talk.

And now, the links…

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