Happy Valentine's Day (Baby)

Hello, young lovers.

In case you missed it, I made history this evening when I live-tweeted my romantic dinner for two with Claire. You can relive the magic below.

At restaurant; in finery. http://twitpic.com/1h4dc
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elecray7k Appetizers: BLT mac'n cheese gnocchi, duck spring rolls. http://twitpic.com/1h4ek
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Salmon with spaetzel and artichoke purée; beef tenderloin on mashed potatoes over steamed spinach w/fried onions http://twitpic.com/1h4wn
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Champagne sorbet, and champagne with rosepetal sorbet. http://twitpic.com/1h5ec
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Our escpades did generate some response. This from pal-Kris:

krishva @elecray7k Oh heavens that sounds delicious.

And this from pal-Justin:

ExploderFace @elecray7k Amazing live-tweeting of a romantic dinner out on the town! It's almost like I'm there with you guys!

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The restaurant in question is called Evening Star, and it is easily the best place in town. Possibly one of the best places in the NCR. The food is certainly gourmet quality, but comes at reasonable prices and healthy helpings. You certainly don't feel ripped off when you eat here.

Here's the menu for tonight's meal.

"BLT" Mac & Cheese
Spinach Gnocchi, Tomato Concasse, Apple Wood Smoked Bacon, Caramelized Onions, Triple Truffle Cream

Duck Spring Rolls
House Cured & Braised Duck, Caramel Garlic Basil Sauce

Pan Seared Salmon Filet
Crispy Spaetzle, Artichoke Puree, Fennel Choke Salad

Grilled Beef Tenderloin
Roasted Garlic and Buttermilk Mashed Potatoes, Sauteed Spinach, Rosemary and Parmesan Onion Crisps, Bordelaise Sauce

Evening Star is very close to where we live in Del Ray, and is actually where Keith and I went to dinner before we even knew I was going to move here. Fate, I tell you!

The beef tenderloin is truly fantastic, and probably the best steak to ever cross these lips (the giant piece of meat once prepared for me by Jan Wagner excluded). Usually, the salmon is served on a ever-changing market setup, but tonight's was excellent -- if static.

Oddly enough, a place this classy only has one beer on tap: Pabst Blue Ribbon. I wonder if Frank, from Blue Velvet, is one of the investors?

I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Evening Star has a deal with the wine shop next door, which provides a truly prodigious selection of wine. I stick to the beers, though.
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Claire got me this for V-Day. It's awesome!

From MarsEdit Images

There was a first edition of this book in my house growing up, but it has been long out of print until recently. Fabulous!
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I'm not really big on this holiday, but I do wanna say that my family and friends are so dear to me. Love to you all, and happy Valentine's Day.

Twittering Telescopes

Many of you, dear readers, are familiar with the online-phenomenon "Twitter."

I've been doing more Twittering lately, and I'm having a good time with it. I've yet to get it up and running on my phone, but that's my problem.

Today, in my wanderings, I discovered that several radio telescopes in the UK are twittering. They might be the worlds most boring twitterers:

Knockin Observing: space (16:28:38.403 +47:34:16) http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/vlb...

Knockin Observing: space (16:33:23.435 +47:18:58) http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/vlb...

Knockin Observing: space (16:28:38.403 +47:34:16) http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/vlb...

Knockin Observing: space (16:34:02.340 +48:09:25) http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/vlb...

Knockin Observing: space (16:28:38.403 +47:34:16) http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/vlb...

And so on.

Obviously, the only people really interested in these are the researchers themselves. Although, there is something kind of fun about having this kind of knowledge on hand. For bonus fun, take a look at whose Twitters the telescope is reading (hint: other telescopes).
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On another note, more of you all out there should start Twittering. That way, you (like me) can be part of the United Internet Idiocy (UII).

Briefly Noted: eFame

My eFame continues to set the world ablaze.

Now I must return to completing another application for the Atlantic magazine.

Quickly:
While I was sick, I did a phone interview with comics publisher Fantagraphics. I had a raging fever, was naked, bedridden, and sweated profusely throughout the course of the six-minute interview. At one point, the following exchange occurred:

Fantagraphics: What is the worst thing you've ever had to do at a job?

Max: Well, once I had to chase out some homeless people, and then bury their feces.

Fantagraphics: (silence)

I don't know if I perhaps misheard her question in my delirium, or if she thought I was trying to be funny. Either way, I did not get the job. It's just as well, since it would have required me to relocated to Seattle for several months.
I bear no ill-will towards Fantagraphics: more than anything I am pleased to have been given the opportunity and am utterly grateful at their flexibility while I was ill.

Twitter and Vertigo's DMZ

Some of you have already started asking, "Max, just what is twitter functionality?"

Twitter is a sort of global away message. From phone, computer, or instant messenger, you can tell the internet what you are up to. I know, it's totally lame. But I got bored a few nights back and didn't have anything better to do. So I made a twitter account.
The 'Twitter Live Updates' box on the right shows the last thing I sent to the Twitter Network. Think of it like a super-compressed update to the blog.

[EDIT: I've noticed that the twitter box is really lagging the blog's load time. Let me know if it's worth keeping, or if it's just too irritating.]


Recently, I started reading "DMZ," published by Vertigo. Link. It's an interesting story centered around a young journalist who finds himself trapped in Manhattan - the battle ground of America's next civil war. With obvious allegorical ties to the War On Terror, the title easily could have slipped to being nothing more than someone's soap box. But the writer has stayed focused on what's really interesting in this series - the characters and the environment that they're in. I should take a moment here to digress and also mention that so far, the only irritating thing about DMZ is that our protagonist 'Matty' does occasionally become the writer's mouthpiece. His idealism and naivete draw screaming breaks on an otherwise tight story.
The people 'Matty' meets are complex and mysterious, and if nothing else I keep reading just to see who stays a friend from issue to issue.The backdrop is uniquely modern, where in the face of a war on their porch regular Americans are able to put together some kind of life for themselves. This is really a marked departure for the languishing sense of self reliance and apathy that you get from reading the news.
Both somewhat anarchic and uplifting in the face of the face of the times we live in, the series is hailed as the 'next big thing' in comics. It seems pretty good after 12 issues, but an extended run will show whether it can really stay together.

This is something that I have noticed in long-running series of any variety. Like a projected image, a character fades further away from it's origin. It becomes indistinct and nothing more than an uncertainty. Hopefully this won't happen to DMZ.