Because the world cares about what I think

So, I suppose this is a pretty common opinion of people who don’t live in my neighborhood.  I live in north Berkeley, but more specifically a neighborhood known as The Gourmet Ghetto.  And if the name suggests some sort of downtrodden living arrangements, let me assure you that the fact that I have to move just to be able to afford a house, the name is antiquated, crushed by the past gentrification of the area (though it probably was never even remotely close to a bad placed to live).  But I understand the criticism, and at times I feel myself agreeing with it.

I love to eat, and frankly I like to talk about food, but writing about this area is such a tired issue.  Let me summarize.

1.  Alice Waters and Chez Panisse define the neighborhood.  She once used a whole bunch of wood to cook one egg on an episode of 60 Minutes.  That being said, I think her message is positive.

2.  Peet’s coffee started here.  Strange that a city so anti-chain store produced one of the more beloved coffee chains in the U.S.

3.  The Cheeseboard Co-op has a great cheese selection and they make some crazy ass vegetarian pizza.  I like the stuff, and remarkably is a great deal no matter where the hell you live these days.

The lesser known places don’t seem to get any press, but I feel most are doing well so I don’t need to go into too much detail.  But again, a summarized list.

1.  Cesar has pretty good tapas.  It’s pricey.  They make great drinks.  It’s loud as fuck.

2.  Gregoire is a fancy takeout place.  I love this place.  It probably belongs in the previous list.  Gregoire (the chef) worked his ass off in a location that was just an absolute death zone for restaurants.  The effort has shown, and is probably the most immediate business that comes to mind when I think about the virtues of hard work.

3.  Juice Bar Collective has a great simple turkey sandwich.

4.  Saul’s is a Jewish deli, and is really the only one we have in the area.  I can’t comment on how good it is comparatively to other places outside the area.

5.  A Crepevine has opened here.  I avoid all pun-based restaurant names.

6.  There’s a fancy food court here called the Epicurious Garden.  It’s got really expensive soup, decent quality sushi, a alright place for burritos, the most condescending chocolate place I’ve could ever see or even fucking imagine, a chain gelato store, an Indian restaurant with full bar, and some sort of Chinese Tea House thingy.  I go here at most 5-6 times a year, and it’s usually for a burrito.

So what I plan on doing is some talking with my friend about restaurants that I like and why I like them.  None of them will be from my neighborhood, heck some of them might not be in this state.  Here’s a few restaurants that you can look forward to me talking about (in no real particular order, I’d say the order changing is a pretty good bet): O.B. Chicken Town, Lois the Pie Queen, Fonda, L’atelier de Joel Robuchon, Kabana, Indus Village, Angeline’s.  It’s still going to be quite Berkeley focused, but it’s going to be mostly places that don’t get too much pub.  I know Fonda gets pub but I’ve gone there every week for a few years, and there’s a lot of reasons why.

Momofuku – Pretty fucking awesome.

Here are a couple of things I’ll be working on this year.

1.  Getting healthy.  To those who know me, even just barely, they wouldn’t be surprised that my blood pressure is high.  Part of that is my just natural intensity, but a lot of it is due to the fact that I’m extremely overweight.

2. Paying a lot more attention to the stock market.  I’ve been good with it in the past, and I think I can be good with it again.

3.  Playing better poker.  I know I have it in me, and while it remains to be seen whether or not I can get to the levels of a few years ago, I’ll be highly disappointed in myself if I don’t get there.  And it’s not about the money.

4.  Buying a house!  More on this later.

Writing is a process that does not come naturally for me.  That sentence, alone, took eighteen tries.

Exaggerations aside, writing is an increasingly frustrating experience for me.  I postulated that maybe I’m happier, and that writing for cathartic reasons was pointless as I had reached a happy point in my life.  But for those of you that know my music listening habits, you’ll have noticed, and made fun of, the fact that my selections have been a little Cure-heavy lately.

So there’s still the need for me to spew mentally onto a piece of paper, and yet I fuss over word choice constantly.  I abandon everything I write.  I’ve given up any sliver of a dream to work as a television writer.

As for submitting works to other places, I remember im’ing my friend Eugene about the use of the word quantum.  Eugene informed me that he knew where I was going with it, but he had an alternate idea for comedy.  This is the conversation that ensued, verbatim (to protect Eugene, he has been renamed as Ken):

2:18 PM Ken: Synecdoche NY!
dude come up with like 2 halfway decent ones
and i guarantee a mcsweeneys shoe-in
2:23 PM me: hrmm
umm
allegory alleghany?
see
fuck this shit
I’m tired
i mean
i’ve been tired of this
2:24 PM fuck submitting to mcsweeney’s
the run the unfunniest shit I send to them
jsut cause it’s their style of shit
I just want to do what I THINK IS FUNNY
2:25 PM Ken: SCHLONG JOKES FOREVER
2:28 PM me: well
not forever
just for a schlong time
2:29 PM Ken: You have doubts about the schlongevity of this joke?
2:32 PM me: i do i do
2:35 PM Ken: Dont be a doubting schlongmas
2:36 PM me: dude, that’s kind of a stretch

And I am now at the point where I just really don’t want to write anymore, my thoughts disorganized.  I suppose I could outline, to better bring what I write some sort of cohesion, but it really goes against why I like writing in the first place.

I work a technical job, that requires the right side of my brain.  Any sort of logical process to writing makes it feel like work and school, and I need it to be as freeing as possible.

Objectivist -

So I was at a supermarket one day, getting some bananas.  Why not right?  They are delicious and come in their own individual packaging.  As the world gets more hectic, the importance of the banana increases.

Now we live in a world where there are implied rules on how to buy your fruit.  Specifically with bananas, one usually buys them in bunches.  I suppose it’s okay if one needs just one banana, then one can just grab one banana.  I figure this rule, while not on any documents of note, is well known.

A woman walks by me, and promptly starts to snap off all the best bananas from different bunches and place them in her basket.  She was an Objectivist.

What a bitch.

This is an excellent question. Back when I actually ran a web server on my home machine, I used to have all sorts of crap there with absolutely no merit. So obviously nothing has changed. For various reasons, the main one being that I wanted to get rid of my DSL and switch to a cable modem, I wanted to actually host a web page but just not physically in my apartment.

My friend Eugene told me that I should just use my friend Ken’s account on dreamhost. Eugene set everything up including what would actually be the page that resides at www.jamesyeh.com.

I’ve had plans to replace it, but in all seriousness, I honestly have no idea what to put there. While I could have simply put this blog as my homepage, that seemed like the incorrect thing to do. I had an idea where I would use the BART map and replace station names with links to various aspects of myself, but it seemed tedious to do the image editing, and I couldn’t think of that many different things.

For the record, that is my voice. And I still have no idea what the words to that song are.

It hurts me somewhat personally that this guy is not going to be recognized for doing more, but it just wasn’t in the cards. He didn’t have the prolonged career necessary to get into the Hall of Fame, and while he fought more valiantly than any goalie I have ever seen in a Stanley Cup Final, when you’re facing the greatest NHL team ever assembled, sometimes you just have to be better than humanly possible to win.

What’s strange is that he’ll be remembered in the vein of Tommy John’s of the world. A revolutionary who changed how the game is played. I know Plante started the trend towards puck-handling goaltenders, but Hextall was the standard bearer in the 80’s and early 90’s. He’s the one who passed the baton to the Brodeur’s and the Turco’s.

The good news is that in February, he will be inducted into the Flyer’s Hall of Fame, and if that’s the final award for his playing career, then so be it.

Hextall is unique sports hero for me much because of the things he didn’t do. As a young child I certainly gravitated towards him as somebody to root for simply because he was violent and borderline psychotic. But in retrospect, unlike my other sports heroes at that time (the Bash Brothers and Rick Tocchet), Hextall kept his transgressions on the playing field. He was not juicing and he didn’t run a gambling ring.

Part of me wants to go to that game. Part of me wants to see him honored.

But hockey is a fickle game. General Managers who are considered geniuses one year are considered uncreative and unadaptable in others.

Paul Holmgren is doing a fantastic job. But should he falter in the future, I have no doubt in my mind that Hextall will be the next GM. And if we haven’t won a cup by then, maybe he can bring it home in a role none of us could have imagined 20 years ago.

I don’t really know why I moved my blog off Livejournal, and I really don’t know why I have a blog in the first place.  But I felt that I had to do something with jamesyeh.com because I’m sure there are other James Yeh’s who would actually do something with this domain name.  But they can’t, because it is MINE.  I imagine I’ll add a website, and perhaps change the look of this blog on occasion, this area is certainly in its infancy.

testing. TESTING.

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