We missed the first 30 minutes due to a late arrival (hey, a birthday dinner at Dragonfly can’t be rushed) but it was totally worth it (both the dinner and the concert).

Mr Clarke has lost a lot of weight but none of his talent. Probably the highlight of the night was a rendition of Song for John from the Journey to Love album, in which Stanley showed us what he could do with an acoustic double bass.

He was ably assisted by three young musicians from around the world on Keys, Drums, and Electric Violin, not one of them over 25 years of age. It was a joy to watch them all play together.

We are big fans of the German film Mostly Martha on which this is based, so I admit that I sat down in the theater with some misgivings as to whether I was going to enjoy the film. They were unfounded. It’s kind of a “food movie” so I knew I wasn’t going to hate it, but I didn’t expect to enjoy myself as much as I did.

No Reservations closely follows its inspiration, as it should, but L thinks the ending is different. I couldn’t remember. (I think J has our copy of the Mostly Martha DVD and we’re looking forward to re-viewing the original.) If it is different, then I think No Reservations is better, in the way that shaving some white truffle improves the perfectly poached egg. Unnecessary, perhaps, but you’re going to enjoy it.

Zeta-Jones is always fun to watch and she manages to project the necessary “perfectionist single woman” despite being “too hot to be single” if you know what I mean. Aaron Eckhart, on the other hand, plays the unwanted love interest adequately but he is slightly unconvincing because he plays it as a “too hot and charming to be unencumbered by previous relationships” guy. But what the heck. All is made up for by the perfect casting of Abigail Breslin as the newly-motherless moppet. She’s perfect, adorable, and we just wanted to take her home and pet her.

Totally recommended if you have a honey you can go see it with.

Hail Malthus!

After a fine meal of Pho from a restaurant across the road from the theater, we went to see a performance of “Urinetown – The Musical” at the Las Vegas Little Theatre last night. It is an amateur company but they did very well. The Malthusian themes are probably not the best thing for my peace of mind right now.

Still. If you’re going to see a musical about water shortages, Las Vegas is definitely a good place to do it.

Ironically, inside the Transformers movie is a rather good movie trying to get out. But it doesn’t succeed. I think Michael Bay should have spent a little less “happy time” with the script, I think.

This post is brought to you by AccuSharp, makers of the knife and tool sharpener voted best manual device by Cooks Illustrated in a recent issue.

I’ve tried honing our knives using a sharpening stone, a steel, and a strange diamond dust crusted thing that you pull the blades through, and I haven’t had much luck keeping a nice edge on our kitchen weapons. When the time came to put together a nice selection of chef’s knives as a flat-warming present for Younger Son, we debated whether to add a knife sharper or similar to the package. I realized that I didn’t have a recommendation. So, to the “tubes” we went.

After finding a reference to the Cook’s Illustrated comparison, I ordered the device online, only to find it was carried in our local Ace Hardware store. I should have checked first, because where possible we like supporting our local stores instead of just using the LazyWeb.

Anyhow, I’ve been sharpening the major cutting edges in our knife collection, using the new sharpening gizmo, and I have to admit that now I realize that our knives haven’t really been “sharp” for some time. Now they are dangerous again. I have to alter my habits in the kitchen because every other time I’ve sliced vegetables with the newly sharpened blades, I’ve also managed to slice the top off one of my fingers. Bad chopping practice on my part, is all…. unless there is truly such a think as a too sharp knife. And I don’t think there is.

That was the best damn concert I have ever been to. At $15/ticket certainly the best value for money. I would have paid much, much more. We have Dolby’s DVD of his previous one man show (the “Sole Inhabitant Tour”) but this was better. The songs were more polished and the second half of the show featured three extra musicians, the Jazz Mafia Horns, and they really kicked the show up a notch. I don’t think poor Thomas knew what kind of audience he might get in a small “club” venue in a local hotel casino on the outskirts of Las Vegas, but I hope that during the concert he got the message from us that we were hard-core Dolby fans. One guy in the audience even had a couple of vinyl albums for him to sign.

Dolby blogs about his evening here.
And there’s a good write-up on the tour in general here.