Quote of the Day

“I have found that if you love life, life will love you back.”

–Arthur Rubenstein, Polish born American composer and pianist

 

Travel: Marfa, Texas

I just came back from a long weekend in Marfa, Texas.  I loved the place!  Marfa is a small town in West Texas with about 2000 residents.  It is an art center – there are about 9 galleries and 3 museums there.  The last work by Andy Warhol (The Last Supper) is permanently installed in Marfa.  We also saw some great work from a local Marfa artist:  Julie Speed.  Speed moved to Marfa in 2006, where she has a studio downtown.  Speed said, “I keep hours just like a real job, only longer, and in my spare time I read books, drink tequila, garden, and drive around West Texas.”  To see more of her work, go to juliespeed.com.

Marfa is also a foodie town and we had some great meals.  We had great Italian food at Maiya’s and some of the best pizza we’ve ever eaten at Pizza Foundation (perfect crust!).  Most everyone agrees that some of the best food in Marfa is at Cochineal.  The 2 chefs had a Michelin rated restaurant in New York City, came to Marfa for a visit, and decided to stay.  Cochineal rotates their menu constantly based in part on what they are growing in their garden out back.  They offer small plates and large plates – we started with the homemade pate, and it was one of the best pates we’ve ever eaten.  A bold wine list has 250 selections in every price range.  For more info, go to cochinealmarfa.com.

Cochineal’s two star chefs:

 

 

New app – Stitcher

From the WSJ:

I love podcasts, so this app really appeals to me.

Check out Smart Station, a new feature in an app called Stitcher, that aims to simplify the hunt for great podcasts. Smart Station fills a station with audio content on a variety of topics that it thinks you’ll like, finding this content using an algorithm that compares your listening patterns with tens of millions of listening hours from other users. It is designed to improve as you listen to more podcasts.

StitcherThe Smart Station feature on the Stitcher app uses an algorithm to help listeners discover new sources of audio podcasts that they might like.

The Stitcher app is free and runs onApple‘s AAPL +2.63% iPod touch, iPhone and iPad, as well as on Android phones and tablets, Barnes & Noble‘sBKS +7.93% Nook Color and Nook Tablet and Amazon’s Kindle Fire. It provides an elegant interface for finding and playing some 100,000 hours of podcast programming. But the app, alone, wasn’t doing a good enough job of helping users discover content they might like.

The Smart Station feature is a delight to use. I listened to podcasts it suggested while I was commuting, exercising and cooking in my kitchen. As promised, the content in my Smart Station seemed to get more personalized the more I used it. Each podcast in the curated list lasted about 30 minutes, more to chew on than three-minute news clips.

Other recent additions to Stitcher are a sleep timer, as well as a feature that shows podcast-representative album art on your device’s lock screen.

Meanwhile, Apple just released a standalone Podcasts app with a Top Stations feature.

My Smart Station took days to start working rather than the required minimum listening time of five minutes. Noah Shanok, Stitcher co-founder and chief executive, said this was due to a significant server outage soon after the release of this new version of Stitcher; the outage has since been fixed. Currently, the only way to manually adjust content added to your Smart Station is to start playing it and give each podcast a thumbs-up or -down, which will add more or delete similar content, respectively. Mr. Shanok said a future version of Smart Station will let people vote content up or down without playing it first.

Stitcher first-timers can choose up to three topics of interest from categories such as current events, liberal or conservative politics, tech, entertainment, and lectures and education. Or they can type a topic or radio station into a blank search box.

I tested Stitcher using an HTC One S Android phone, an iPad and an iPhone. One of the app’s coolest features is its seamless cloud synchronization. This means that if you use your iPad to listen to a Jeff Daniels interview on NPR’s Fresh Air, pause it and then want to restart it later while standing in line at the post office with your Android smartphone, “Fresh Air” will play from exactly where you left off on the iPad. Just don’t forget your earbuds.

If you find a podcast you like, hit the thumbs-up button to tell the app and improve the Smart Station algorithm. If you tap the star icon to add that show to your list of Favorites, new podcast episodes will fill up Favorites whenever they’re available. You can share any podcast episode with friends via Facebook, FB -0.85% Twitter or email. If you do nothing while listening, Smart Station still knows what you’ve listened to, how far you’ve listened and when you stopped so it can tell whether or not to suggest similar content in the future.

I used Smart Station to discover the shows Freakonomics Radio and Moth, and found NPR favorites, like Car Talk, as well as some I didn’t know existed, like NPR’s Most-Emailed Stories Podcast. I learned a lot by listening to a podcast called Stuff You Should Know, made by Discovery Communications’ How Stuff Works. A podcast episode of Stuff You Missed in History Class taught me the fascinating history of John James Audubon.

Stitcher’s Front Page is a section of the app divided into In the Headlines, What’s Hot and What’s New. Another section of On Demand Shows lets people search podcasts by interest, such as Games & Hobbies, Local and Spirituality & Religion. A Live Radio section lets you hear what’s playing through normal radio stations, but I preferred podcasts. Smart Station is located in the My Favorites section of the app.

Stitcher’s new sleep timer offers seven options ranging in length from 15 to 120 minutes. And its lock-screen album art came in handy once or twice when I wanted to know the name of the podcast I was hearing in a quick glance.

If you’re already a fan of talk radio or you’re curious about what kinds of programs are available in free podcasts but don’t know where to begin, Stitcher’s Smart Station will almost surely surface several shows that will pique your interest.

How to start a movement

This is one of the funniest videos I have seen in a long time – it also has a great message!

http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_movement.html

Pulitzer prizes announced for books

I always investigate these, and add a couple or more to my reading list.

The 2012 Pulitzer Prizes award today had a big gap — there was no winner in the fiction category, which must have ticked off a whole lot of marketing execs. What will they do with all the “Winner of the Pulitzer Prize” stickers they had printed up for their covers?

The finalists were not a shoddy bunch: “Train Dreams” by Denis Johnson, “Swamplandia!” by Karen Russell and “The Pale King,” by the late David Foster Wallace.

Other highly acclaimed novels of 2011 would have been worthy winners, too. Among them: “The Art of Fielding” by Chad Harbach and “The Tiger’s Wife” by Téa Obreht.

This isn’t the first time the judges have withheld a prize — it has happened six  times since 1948, the most recent in 1977. Among the books published that year was “Song of Solomon” by Toni Morrison, and you have to woinder whether the judges would like a do-over for that year.

Other literary prizes for 2012 were:

History — “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention” by the late Manning Marable

Biography or Autobiography — George F. Kennan: An American Life” by John Lewis Gaddis

Poetry — “Life on Mars” by Tracy K. Smith

General Nonfiction — “The Swerve: How the World Became Modern” by Stephen Greenblatt

Two great concerts

I saw 2 very good music concerts this week:  Pink Martini & Anoushka Shankar.

Pink Martini

One of my favorite groups and my 2nd time to see them perform  – They are a huge band, about 12 members.  Most are Ivy League educated and speak & sing in multiple languages.  China Forbes is the group’s diva and has an amazing voice.  Forbes, a graduate of Cambridge, has performed in at least ten different languages, including English, Spanish, Italian, French, Portuguese, Greek, Arabic, and Japanese.

Their music is impossible to categorize – you hear a song and think, “Ok, that’s what they are about” then the next one changes totally.  The diverse Pink Martini have offered music from jazz (mainly swing), world music, cabaret, lounge, and 1940s-1950s film music. Their world music covers a wide range – French chanson, Afro-Cuban salsa, Argentinian tango, Brazilian samba and bossa nova, Italian folk, Greek rembetiko, Middle Eastern music, and Asian music.  Not surprisingly, they have a cult following.

A defining moment in a group’s career arrived in 2007 and  came courtesy of the United Nations ….   Srgjan Kerim, the  president of the U.N’s General Assembly, ordered 30 copies of Pink Martini’s second album “Hang on Little Tomato”. The Macedonian was so smitten after catching a recent show in Vancouver B.C. that he passed out the cd during his first official meeting!

Anoushka Shankar

It was my first time to see her in concert and I was not disappointed.  She is the daughter of Ravi Shankar and half sister of Norah Jones and is classically trained in the Indian sitar  (she currently records under the Deutsch Grammophone label).

Incense wafted thru the auditorium as she started the concert by playing some beautiful classical music early in the show.   She showed huge versatility though – she composes her music from a variety of influences – including flamenco, electronica, jazz and Western classical music. The show’s finale was most impressive – she was jamming on the sitar – Eddie Van Halen style.  The drummer, who plays barefoot, also did an amazing solo – I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone play a more impressive drum.  Twice-nominated for a Grammy Award, Anoushka was the first Indian musician to perform at the Grammy Awards in 2006 when she was nominated for her album Rise.  She has made guest appearances on recordings by diverse artists, among them Herbie Hancock, Joshua Bell, Lenny Kravitz, Rodrigo y Gabriela and Thievery Corporation.

Although she travels the world for her concerts, she currently lives in London and is married to the British director Joe Wright (Atonement, Pride & Prejudice, etc.).

Quote of the Day

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.

– Anais Nin

 

My next movie

Chico & Rita is my kind of movie.  I always think Cuba is such a sexy venue.  And the jazz music should be wonderful!  It has an 87% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Cuba, 1948. Chico is a young piano player with big dreams. Rita is a beautiful singer with an extraordinary voice. Music and desire unite them as they chase their dreams and each other from Havana to New York to Paris, Hollywood and Las Vegas. With an original soundtrack by legendary Cuban pianist and five-time Grammy-winning composer Bebo Valdés, Chico & Rita captures a defining moment in the evolution of history and jazz, and features the music of (and animated cameos by) Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Cole Porter, Dizzy Gillespie, Woody Herman, Tito Puente, Chano Pozo, and others.

Jiro dreams of sushi

Can’t wait to see this one –  I think he has such a great face!

The documentary is about chef Jiro Ono, widely considered to be the world’s best sushi chef, who runs a small restaurant (10 seats) in the Tokyo subway station.   Despite its humble presentation, it is the only sushi restaurant in the world to be awarded a 3-star Michelin rating.

The movie, called Jiro Dreams of Sushi,  opened  in New York on March 9.   It currently has a 95% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

While it remains to be seen whether there will be Oscar buzz for this one, I probably can’t watch it without feeling the urge to go blow a fortune on sushi.

Denton TX native Mark Ward will be ringmaster for Cirque de Soleil “Quidam”

From the Dallas Morning News:

It’ll be a homecoming for Denton native Mark Wardwhen he stars in the Cirque du Soleil production of Quidam in Frisco. After 19 years on the road and more than 6,700 performances without a miss, this tour marks the first time Ward has taken the Cirque stage in Texas and the first time for his family to see him perform since he left. He plays the comedic principal role of John, a sort of ringmaster in Cirque’s surrealistic fantasy world. Ward describes John as “a kid trapped in a man’s body,” who does “these crazy things” to gain the affections of Quidam’s other central character, the young, bored Zoe. Ward has come a long way since his dance teacher in Denton helped raise money for him to buy a one-way plane ticket to New York City so he could pursue his dream. “It’s a miracle kind of story,” Ward says. “I’ve been blessed and lucky.  The show will be March 7-11 at Dr Pepper Arena, 2601 Avenue of the Stars, Frisco. $51.10-$115.16. Parking $5-$15. Ticketmaster.

Kinda makes me want to go see it!