One of the things I miss by not work at an agency is working on the creative side of projects like the Phillips manalogue campaign, tremendous writing, excellent execution - just can’t beat excellent creative combined with a client that trusts an offbeat concept, looks like they spend some cash too.
I’ve been lax in my blogging here, and for that I apologize - enjoy this audio selection by the very talented Dee Dee Bridgewater, while I get back into the swing of things.
For the past few weeks Trudiann and I have been celebrating our 20th wedding anniversary, we’ve been a number of places - San Francisco, Monterey, Carmel, Death Valley, and we’re wrapping up in Las Vegas - we love Vegas - it’s been our go-to spot for the last 10 years or so - we loosely planned a few events, bought some show tickets, and made some reservations at some notable eateries.
Yesterday we had lunch at Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill, we’d been there for dinner in the past - and we always enjoy it - the menu is a festival of powerful and potent southwest flavor combinations - Mesa’s pricing is affordable and the service is attentive but not pushy - for us it’s a no-brainer.
As our post Elvis wedding dinner we went to Craft Steakhouse. Honestly, words almost escape me as to the quality of this meal, the Craft menu is an Ala-carte menu featuring the finest beefs (Japanese Waygu Beef, Australian & American Kobe Beef), seasonal vegetables, and exotic mushrooms - I should note I’m not a fan of ala-carte menu’s because I like the chef to pair my entree’s with vegetables to their palettes - I discover new tastes in the process - lucky for me Trudiann suggested we order the chef’s ‘Surf & Turf’ tasting menu and get a taste of all that Craft had to offer. What a great suggestion; the chef started us off with
I should qualify this by saying up until VERY recently Trudiann hasn’t been what I would call an adventurous eater, tartare and caesar salad both fall well outside of her comfort zone.
All three starters where amazing - the tartare (with quail egg) was perfectly balanced, the texture was smooth and the portion was more than enough to thoroughly enjoy this rare treat (excellent pun if I must say) - the caesar was really nice, the perfectly minimal dressing clung to the leaves which were crisp and tasty - the pickled anchovy garnish was a nice twist on the little fish and made the whole dish a bit special. the prawns - tasty glazed grilled goodness, Trudiann loves prawns and we thoroughly enjoyed these.
Next the chef sent out the entrees & sides-
Now if that sounds like a lot of food,, you’d be right, Craft isn’t the kind of place that skimps on food - at this point we still had a rather sizable bowl of Kobe Beef Tartare on the table - because I just wasn’t ready to give it up yet. The Entrees in a word SPECTACULAR, each with a simple preparation, let the high quality of the ingredients shine - the Skirt Steak was our favorite, it was juicy, flavorful and perfectly medium rare- I wouldn’t be exaggerating when I say the best piece of steak I’ve ever eaten. The Strip was also delicious, but our fondness for the other cut was obvious - as we finished that one first. The lobster was interesting, as it’s a dish we never have, and we where both amazed at the varied texture of the claw meat, and the buttery goodness of the lobster tail. The whipped potato’s where amazing - I hope to never find out exactly how much cream and butter were in there, needless to say they were a rich and tasty companion to the steak and lobster.
Of course what’s dinner without dessert? The pastry chef sent out an assortment of tasty things
I’m hard pressed to say what was best - but I will say that the mint ice cream was the best Ice cream I’ve ever had in my entire life - Trudiann also really like the mint ice cream and the MonkeyBread, I also finished the bread pudding, because I’m a sucker for bread pudding - it was as good as you would expect.
Overall we enjoyed everything - we must have, we finished most everything.
Service was top-notch, attentive, friendly and informative, the decor was understated and classy - pricing, well, good food costs money - and the food at Craft Steakhouse is excellent - I will happily return to Craft Steakhouse on my next Vegas jaunt.
I really like TV, it’s often simultaneously entertaining, informative and appalling, what’s not to love? But here we find ourselves on the precipice of 2010 - and aside from the advent of American Idolesque programming U.S. TV hasn’t changed since it’s inception - advertisers buy time to peddle their wares - how much they spend is based on viewership and demographic data of a show or block of shows - of course there is no guarantee people will but an advertisers product - but they’re playing a numbers game - casting the largest possible net by advertising on the most popular shows. It’s all very logical, and old-school.
Let’s think a bit differently, what if there was a way to guarantee ad viewership and potentially sales, while increasing the quality and availability of top notch entertainment? I enjoy ‘Project Runway’ (seriously) I’d be willing to watch a 10 minutes Tressimé infomercial and provide some type of feedback (internet, phone etc.) in realtime in exchange for commercial-free on-demand viewing of Heidi and Tim, now think about that - No more weekly shows, no more seasons, no-more reruns - unless of course you want to watch it again - a constant stream of first-run, always ready when you are entertainment at your fingers. I know what you’re saying, Saul, that’s just not possible, I’ll cut you off, it’s already is - via bit torrent.
Imagine you didn’t watch TV for a year, then you downloaded everything produced in that year, you’d have a massive catalog to view from - TV studios can do exactly the same thing, it requires big changes - but if the ‘cost’ for Project Runway was me completing a shampoo purchase, I would do it - advertisers would be happy - because their profits would be directly related to the popularity of a given show, TV studios would be happy because competition to advertise would be high, Viewers would be happy because not only would their always be something worth watching, we’d be essentially watching it commercial free.
Obviously this idea is rough, flawed, and pretty unlikely… but that doesn’t mean their isn’t a seed of a good idea in there somewhere.
Usually by 4 o’clock every afternoon I’m fairly certain that everyone in the free world is taking fifteen minutes to either email me or call me on the phone - seriously, it’s cricket quiet in my studio till 4ish most days, but busybusybusy from 4 to 6pm - In the last year or so I’ve started planning my day around the phenomenon - which I’ve named ‘saul-bombing’ - the challenge of surviving a ‘saul-bombing’ is how quickly you can sort, and flag the stuff that actually must get done overnight from the stuff that although it looks important - actually doesn’t require any action on my part. My usual approach is to quickly flag the do’sand take note of and then archive the not-do’s. I then take the flagged items and fold them into my list of work to be done - hopefully without causing a epic ripple that fills my week with late nights - it takes some resolve to watch your week deteriorate before your very eyes, but with a few simple goals - you can at least make the process mentally easier.
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