Foodie To-Do List

For the overwhelming amount of good eating, small business, and creative community enterprising happening in the Bay Area, I always have a running list of the random places people have recommended and I need to experience before ever leaving the Bay. Somehow the list never gets any shorter-- as I check one off, I seem to have two to add. This list is mostly devoted to food, with a few random others thrown in.

Last Lecture, First Casual Carpool Prophet, and the Idea of Full Circle

In the spring of 2005, as a senior in college with a diploma within grasp in less than two months and thirsty for wisdom wherever I could get it, I wandered into Professor Harry Segal's "Last Lecture" one Monday night in Goldwin Smith Hall.

The Dark Knight and the New (Old) America

In the past several years post-9/11, the values of our country-- freedom, opportunity, justice, mercy-- almost seemed to be turning obsolete. A variety of pressures seemed to be saying the ideals of our country were trite, naive, nonrelevant, or had to be sacrificed, in times of terror, war, or economic downturn. But we elected to the presidency a candidate who stands for those values, and with the inauguration just days away it feels like the original values of our country are being reignited and reaffirmed. At least for this moment, however long it may last, it's proud to be American again. The Styles section of The New York Times has declared that irony is out, and hope is in.

My Oscar Ballot (Because This is How We Do It)

Bring Your Own Beer? Try, Bring Your Own Meat.
SuperBowl? SuperTuesday.
March Madness Brackets? Academy Award Brackets.

San Francisco Revealed!

One day last week that brought uncharacteristically rainy and slippery weather to San Francisco (and don't let anyone tell you otherwise or they must be from SoCal), we were commuting home-- me and the rest of the 50% of the city's workforce that works in SF (what a staunchly-located East Bay friend refers to as the "The West Bay") but calls somewhere in the East, North, or South Bay, home.

I Promise, Sports Atheists, This Isn't Really About Tennis

Watching Serena Williams lose to Jelena Jankovic in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open a few weeks ago was an act of witness that overcame the mere spectation of sport. Even someone with the most casual knowledge of tennis who sat down on the sofa to watch 5 minutes of this match would have been made aware of the higher-level human act that they were painfully beholden to-- giving up.