Category: Tom

Kelly and I dined at a spectacular Southwestern (Santa Fe) restaurant here in town called Agave on Saturday evening.   It was the fourth or fifth time we have enjoyed their hospitality, but this visit was notable for the outstanding red wine suggested by our server:   Tittarelli Tempranillo Reserva 2003.   We were told that the grape was originally grown in Spain, in the area of Rioja. It has only recently been resurrected as a wine grape, due to the overwhelming demand for Argentinean wines forced the rediscovery of the potential of this grape.

Its flavor is BIG, with aggressive tannins, but is well-balanced, and aromatic.   Very velvety mouth-feel with notes of wild fruit, black plums, cherries and raspberries.   Gives a good buzz.

It was $35 at the restaurant, so I suspect it can be purchased in the $15-20 range at a jug shop.   I highly recommend it!

Here is a link to a site about this region: http://www.welcomeargentina.com/vino/index_i.html
  

Erykah Badu.   You may not have heard of her, but if you have, you”ll understand why Kelly and I didn’t question attending her  afterparty on Saturday nite at a downtown ATL club.   (For those who DON”T know, she is a very jazzy hip-hop artist, blending scat and jazz into the hip-hop genre.)

The invitation said 9pm, and being the white suburbanites we are, we arrived at the club at 9:05pm.   It was still closed.   A few well-dressed folks were milling around, so we hung out and waited, chatting up the other early birds.     (I was NOT one of the well-dressed ones…I had on jeans and a black Miles Davis  t-shirt…mor on that later.)   At 9:55 the GIANT security guys opened the doors, and began checking ID.   My sparkling smile let me thru w/o a check (it must have been that!) and Kelly and I went upstairs to the club.   We were early enough to get stools at the bar, so we settled in.   A DJ set up and began playing a really hot mix of old-school, hip-hop, trip-hop and euro rap.   Very nice.   We sipped our drinks and absorbed the surroundings.   I had been to the club before to see other shows, but punk bands bring out a very different crowd than Erykah obviously does.  
Continue reading “Hey, Dave Cappelle knows her” →

The will-call line snaked around the building and off into the distance.   Tom Waits.   Yeah..WAITS is the operative word.   But the crowd was of a common mind and passion; so many new friends were made in the long queue to the ticket window and the acquired taste that is Tom Waits.  

With just eight dates in odd stops like Asheville, Akron, and Louisville, the concert promotion seemed to be very low-key.   At 10:05am on the Saturday that the tickets went on sale, I logged onto the Ticketmaster site.   Rather than complete my sale (I had one ready to click), I hesitated as I was unsure of my travel schedule and decided to wait until Monday when I could verify I was in town.   Bad move. When I logged on early the following week, I was greeted with a SOLD OUT icon.   Damn.   I had underestimated the pent up demand for a Waits ticket.   Clearer heads convened over the next few days, and it was decided to undertake the challenge of getting face value tickets to the hottest concert since Cher played The Castro. The ensuing weeks were depressing.   What few tickets we heard of were 400 + dollars each,more than five times face.   Only days before the show, my friend Eric found a friend who had a friend who had a friend who couldn”t go, and was willing to sell two tickets for their face value.   We needed one more, so we decided to go anyway and hope we could find one on the street before the concert.   Security and “will-call only” sales made that dicey, but tenacity prevailed and I found a GA Tech student who stopped me while I was working the will-call line and said, “I have one, my girlfriend is sick”.   A LOT was said in that sentence.   Music to my ears.
Continue reading “Tom Waits…for TR” →

I saw this and couldnt resist.   I am about ready to “pull the trigger” on my PC and go MAC at home.   My business partner is even talking about converting (and that is a breakthru!)

A few weeks ago, Brad (Kelly’s brother, the restaurateur) emailed me and suggested we go over to Augusta for one or two practice rounds.   I had always been under the impression that even practice tickets were allocated,that’s turns out to be true, but despite the lottery distribution, there are plenty being sold on the streets into the course.   Who knew?   Brad did, and he convinced me that it was a given that we would have no problem buying them (shades of my boast for the 1986 Super Bowl in Pasadena, Marcus?).   He said they”d go for $100 each, but if I was OK with that, we”d plan to go.   We cleared our respective calendars for the target days.  
  
This past Monday afternoon, Kelly forwarded me an email from her boss asking “Does anybody want my Masters practice tickets for this year?   I can”t go,”.   How fast did I call him?   Right.   Got them.   SWEET!
Continue reading “Da Masters 2006” →

Last night, Kelly and I went to see Chick Corea and his new band Touchtone at the Ferst Center for the Arts at Georgia Tech.   I have been a HUGE fan of Chick for decades (I saw him in a small club in LA over 30 years ago) and have a number of his albums.   My expectations of what I was going to see, however, were not fulfilled — they were exceeded with surprise!  

As the band took the stage, he announced that the audience should be ready to hear all new music, and nothing we had ever heard from him before.   OK,cool.   But what?   He wasted no time in blowing us all out of our seats with a 30 minute improvisation interspersed with Spanish flamenco and Moroccan overtones.   His new collaborators are a global group: Jorge Pardo on flute and sax (ouytstanding!), Carles Benavent on bass (played as I had never heard it before!), Rubem Dantas on all manner of percussion, and a long-time FACOC (friend and collaborator of Corea) Tom Brechtlein on drums.     Astounding,but wait,there’s more. Continue reading “Jazz Giant Mesmerizes The ATL” →

  
Andy, the currently under-employed Hollywood filmmaker,  has been commissioned to  contribute to a  “cinephilia chronicles” collection, to be published in a respected French film magazine PANIC.    His name will  appear among  a group of  wonderful critics/filmmakers, only  inches away from an unpublished Godard screenplay in the same issue! As he states it: “In fact I am really only one degree from Godard in befriending Nicole, because she’s working on a book with him.”    Too cool!

Also, his Top 10 list was recently published in Sense of Cinema’s  2005 World Poll…

…Hmmm….not all these are on Netflix!    

He promises to begin contributing to our growing site as well…