Max "Beef" M.'s Profile

Bev Heckrotte was a shining light of sanity in a time that our family was deeply in grief. We had a terrible experience with local funeral parlors searching for a direct cremation and small memorial service. Bev arrived at 11:30 at night without a single word of complaint as to the hour. She patiently led us through their entire process, answering all of our questions gently and methodically. She is clearly used to people in grief and also was pleased that we were process-oriented people. We like to know every step of the way.

When we asked Bev how she started in the business she explained that she had a background in medical and hospice work - she had seen how people were treated and knew she could do better. The negative experience we had with the local funeral parlors was not unique. She enrolled in mortuary school and established a direct cremation business for Maryland and Washington, D.C. Her company charges $895 for everything, handling all the insane paperwork, and they haven't raised their prices in almost a decade. (Note - D.C. prices for paperwork are different than MD, and additional copies of death certificates are necessary for banks, trusts, real estate, etc which are additional costs.)

Cremation may not be right for everyone for personal or religious reasons. My family felt that cremation was right for my dad, as he had expressed on many occasions that he did not care what happened to his body and funerals were for the living. We chose to cremate and celebrate his life in his own home. Because cremation is a bureaucratic mess (the Medical Examiner has to release the body as it is considered evidence), the rules are different from state to state, and it takes many days to release the body, often memorial services are done with an empty urn or a simple photo. This means a funeral parlor is charging a premium for a space rental. I can understand using a parlor for a burial, but not for a cremation.

I would wholly endorse Bev and her Going Home Cremation Service for anyone wanting to take charge of their loved one's cremation. Have them handle the difficult work so you can grieve, and then celebrate the life of your loved one in a way best fitting their life.

My father died last Tuesday, early in the morning. Tuesday afternoon we were calling funeral homes discussing arrangements for a small memorial service and direct cremation. The rep from Hines-RInaldi gave us good information and so we drove to their office. The receptionist was clueless but finally found the rep we spoke with. We were taken by elevator into a cheap salesroom showing caskets, videos, and chintzy keepsakes. In the center of the room was a table, chairs, and a calculator. We reviewed what we had discussed over the phone and the mortuary director said she had to review our needs with her manager. She left for a time and came back and said that though she quoted us one price on the phone that it would be higher because of some forgettable excuse. My mom and wife got very cold as we all realized we had been bait and switched. My mom asked to speak to the woman's manager directly and she went go get him. While the first funeral director was quiet and gentle in her manner, the manager who came out was a slick, subhuman, used car salesman. He jabbed his finger at a brochure saying the new cost was the minimum cost. My mother stayed calm, never looked at his finger and stared at him quietly demanding he give a good reason why one price was given over the phone and now they were giving another. We began with $1300 for a direct cremation and $1,000 for the memorial service. He had moved us to a mandatory package with a floor of $2,600 even though we would not need their package components. We left disgusted.

The magnificent service we did go with pulled back the curtain of the funeral business and told us why we were quoted different prices like it was a used car lot. Most funeral parlors, at least in the Maryland area, do 150 "cases" a year and that has to cover their entire operating overhead. While you may get quoted $1300 for a direct cremation, they will bait and switch you to a $2,600 minimum once you're in the door and confined in the sales room. It goes up quickly from there. They really need to hit $6,000 or $8,000 on each family to make it worth their while. You can easily spend more than $25,000 on a funeral. They prey upon you in grief and expect that once you're in the room you'll just cave because it takes so much energy to leave and shop elsewhere.

I suggest anywhere other than Hines-Rinaldi.

To be a successful businessperson you need to invent a widget. The widget fills a gap in the market, or a savvy person creates a perceived gap in the market and then fills it with their widget. The widget is then sold or used by exponentially larger numbers of people, then hopefully groups who adopt your widget as their own tool and proselytize for you. Hopefully your widget grows big enough to become the standard within the marketplace by which other widgets are judged. The Z hangar is a good example. Everyone has clothes hangars, but the Z hangar was designed to be inserted into clothing without stretching the collar. A simple gap in the market, filled by a smart engineer. Prepare to be flooded with Z hangar advertising. Thank god Billy Mays is dead so we don't have to hear his incessant yelling anymore.
I swear, if one more person yells at me to buy something I'm going to kill them with a cocaine overdose, too. Let May's death be a lesson to you - if your product is good, you don't need to yell at coke-induced levels to sell it. If you need a twat like Billy Mays, your product sucks.
Chipotle follows the same kind of widget process, a refinement of the Taco Bell model of Mexican food. If you mean by reducing all of Mexican culture down to six ingredients food, that is.
Calling Chipotle Mexican food is like calling the French cheese-eating surrender monkeys. It's funny for a moment, but then you realize that the French make really fucking good cheese. Cheese so good there are clearly defined standards for flavor, type, and nuance. The French have elevated their relationship to food to epic levels we can only dream of in our poetry and dreams. As for the surrender thing, well, you got me there. You fall to one fascist regime and it haunts you for decades.
Mexican cuisine has a multitude of sources. There's Spanish influence of multiple varieties, there's a plurality of indigenous people's foods and traditions, and then there is the constant fusion of cultural collision that's been going on for several hundred years. So Chipotle? Not Mexican food.
It's 3 kinds of animal, 6 types of vegetables, 2 types of legumes, and then sour cream that doesn't come out of a caulk gun. A fifth grader can do the math. Is it good? Yes, it's fine. It's expedient because there's so few choices.
It's a successful widget. We should all be so lucky to have millions of Americans choke down our product making us rich.

2009 is the year of India.
Have you noticed ever since we got a black president this country's been looking for a new minority? Poor Asians, they've been taken for granted. Maybe if they had something rad like saag aloo things would be different. Kung Pao chicken doesn't even come close. And is orange chicken even considered Chinese food anymore? I expect to see beef with broccoli as an option at McDonalds any day.
No, 2009 is definitely the year to be Indian. (The other side of this racist coin is you can blame the Indians if they screw up being cool.)
It was only recently I dared eating Indian food. My last experience had been when I lived in London twenty years ago and for my going-away dinner we went to a restaurant where my friends said, "order something that spicy and you'll be doing handstands in the shower tomorrow." Boy howdy, were they right. Any later attempts to digest Indian food were met with explosively bad results. I mean, install safety rails in the bathroom, I needed something to hang on to. And worse, if there was failure to launch from the seat I'd die like Gus Grisson, trapped by flames in my hellish small chamber.
But enough about that.
Something changed inside me after five years of doing yoga. This is simply causation with correlation to make a good story. I could also say I started being able to digest Indian food after reading one hundred books. Or shaving my head for the first time. Or watching people die unnecessarily for believing in homeopathy and Ayurvedic medicine. Whatever it was, things changed and I came back to indian food.
And I'm so happy to be back because it means I can eat at Agra. A lot.
This place rocks. Their lamb is moist, tender, and delicious without tasting like the underside of the animal. Their chicken is decidedly non-chickeny and succulent. We usually will get the lamb tikka masala, saag aloo, a garlic or other kind of naan, and the cauliflower and eggplant vegetable dishes. I could eat here all day. The staff is lovely, gregarious, and helpful. Very attentive. We've shared a table with people when it was crowded and we had extra seats, it made the dinner more interesting.
I'm drooling thinking about going back, and since I have also developed a bad reward system of carbohydrates for exercise, I have to go get on my stationary bike for two hours so I can eat here tonight.

My experience of Triathlon Lab is a testament to the power of blogs and Web 2.0.

I just completed my first season of triathlon, racing 5 events including Boise 70.3 and Santa Barbara Long Course. I started blogging at the beginning of the year, discussing my immersion in the field including training, product comparison, and my own personal growth. The triathlon community in Southern California is large for such an iconoclastic sport, but it's still a tight-knit community of intelligent, opinionated people. Which is why it felt out of place that I had several bad experiences my first several times shopping at Triathlon Lab. I felt brushed off, ignored, and not taken seriously. Eventually I took it personally and blogged about my negative experiences.

It came as quite a surprise that one of the owners personally reached out to me via Facebook (linked from my blog page), apologized for the way I was treated, and asked more details about my experience so she could address it as a customer service opportunity with her staff. I sent her a detailed report of my visits and spending experience, contrasted this to my positive experiences at Triathlete Zombies in Santa Monica, and thanked her for reaching out. That began a dialogue that has resulted in my purchase of a new 2008 Cervelo P3C triathlon bike.

For those who don't know, when you buy a bike you're buying the shop as much as the bike itself. A good shop will do a proper fit, and then a follow-up fit to make sure the bike is right. Also, there is maintenance, tune-ups, and the never ending list of STUFF that gets added to the bike over time. The way the owner reached out, accepted responsibility, and then made up for the initial negative experience was enough to encourage me to forge this new relationship.

The store is well stocked with a wide variety of gear, clothing, and staff. They have a considerably large bike shop and a solid spread of brands from entry-level and road all the way to pro level. I suggest talking to different staff members and finding someone you get along with and then coming back to them. Going in alone and browsing might not yield immediate gregariousness, but asking questions and getting to know the staff will make your experience better.

We were in town for the inaugural 70.3 half ironman and my wife's local research told her Goldy's was the place to go for our post-race-day brunch with our local friends. Research don't lie, folks! Goldy's was the PERFECT place to close out our time in Boise. Besides having an epic time in the city itself, and being greeted with overwhelming enthusiasm and hospitality for the entire race weekend, finishing at Goldy's was icing on an already stupendous cake. When we got there at 10am on a Monday we were told there would be a 1 hour wait. The hostess took our name down and my cellphone number. No one in L.A. has this kind of common sense even though Paris Hilton's DOG has a cellphone (and a held table at Spago, but only dogs eat at Spago). We went to get a cup of coffee around the corner at local chain Moxie (damn fine cup of coffee), and in less than half an hour my phone rang that our table was ready.

Everything on the menu looked delicious! I had a very hard time making up my mind. (I should state that in my caloric-deprived and post-race endorphin high state it is possible that a Home Depot aluminum gauge chart would have seemed delicious.) Because of the day before I decided to take the brakes off the diet and go for broke. I ordered the day's special: two chicken breasts split over eggs, bacon, on English muffins topped with a spicy garlic Hollandaise sauce. And what the hell, I also ordered the French toast stuffed with bananas, brown sugar, walnuts, and butter! Bring on the carbs! Rest of party ordered pancakes for the kids, omelets, salmon cakes, and more. Everything is made to order and many of the items like the salmon cake and sausages are made on the premises so the meal took some time to get to our table. But the staff was extremely friendly and attentive and we certainly didn't feel ignored.

Because when the food arrived IT WAS DELIVERED FROM OLYMPUS. Zeus's beard never had such offerings as I tasted. Farm fresh ingredients made perfectly and served in generous, almost mid-west proportions. I have been punishing myself by calling the ingredients I get in my urban hellhole "food" because the bounty that was on my plate that morning was worthy of the Platonic ideal of breakfast. Stealing bites off other plates yielded more detonations of joy, leading me to proclaim I was not going back home to L.A. I was moving in to a permanent table at Goldy's. My friends were welcome to visit any time.

I'm sure Goldy's won't mind me moving in. Especially since I'll need to race a half ironman EVERY DAY to justify eating the menu EVERY DAY. It will be a life lived in sweet, terrible ecstasy.

O cursed location of Sepulveda and Braddock. It's the flyover section of Culver City, a badly timed light that clogs 405 access via Braddock, and is the launchpad for drivers desperate to accelerate after the construction at Sepulveda and Culver. It is no surprise that Synergy died a sputtering death at that location; the only pedestrian traffic is from teenagers eating Taco Bell while walking home from school.

So rather curious that a wine bar would choose the husk of a failed coffee shop to incubate (though it could have been the live music that killed Synergy. Live music can be the death dirge of many a fine location). Scuttlebutt has it that the owner was a former partner with the Bottle Rock chap, but split over some quarrel. Vinoteque is his idea of a wine bar.

With an outstanding selection of wines from all over the world, but favoring French and Spanish, you can find something for every palette and budget here. A flight of 3 wines is a very reasonable $15, and as mentioned in other reviews a television scrolls the wines opened for other tables that are available by the glass. Bring your speed reading skills because the TV changes too quickly - especially after a glass or six of wine.

The food was a wonderful surprise. An excellent variety of cheese served at perfect temperature, all of which didn't puss out on flavor, intensity, or deliciousness. The middle east burger was a scrumptious pair of kefta rolls, the gazpacho soup was a lovely surprise, but the knockout by far was a sandwich of fig compote and a cheese blend of Gorgonzola and Camembert. This was pure panini perfection.

Dinner and several drinks for four came to $130 before tip. Our server was lovely, our drink was wonderful, and the food surpassed all expectations.

IT'S JUST A FUCKING SHAME ABOUT THE MUSIC.

The entire time our ears were assaulted by what could only be called "cruel and unusual jazz". I hate jazz, and the only thing I hate more than jazz are people who subject others to the playing of jazz.  Vinoteque has a severe infestation of both jazz, jazz enthusiasts, and jazz musicians. It's bad, people. I mean, health department F-rating bad. White dude with his eyes closed twinkling the upper 88 keys bad. Double bass playing, soul-patch sporting, tweed pork-pie hat bad. Constant threat of "jamming" bad. It makes conversation impossible, it drowns out reasonable thought, and drives you screaming into the street looking for the pleasant sounds of truck drivers hammering down Sepulveda.

As we were leaving I told the server how wonderful the food, service, and wine was but the music was an attack on all that was good in the world she said, "oh, well, some nights we have singer/songwriters, too".

So much for going back.

My wife and I were married at the Harbor House in Marina del Rey. We've gone back to celebrate our anniversary, paying too much for mediocre food but reminiscing at what a fabulous wedding we had. We'd order scallops and steak and maybe a martini or two, talk about what the last year has meant for us, and how we've grown together as people and a couple. Now that it's gone, we needed a new place. Akasha's proximity to home, beautifully designed interior, and exciting menu seemed like a good fit. My wife got reservations via http://OpenTable.com, and when I stopped in two weeks before our reservation I mentioned it was our wedding anniversary to the host who noted that in his computer.

The previous restaurant was an Italian piano bar that avoided closure by tinting its windows to avoid discovery. The renovations were mysterious, masked by large wooden panels. From a distance one could clearly see they were gutting and updating the location with high ceilings and serious interior design work. We knew nothing about Akasha herself, or that the restaurant's renovation was part of TLC's Flip this Restaurant. When you've lived in the same city in L.A. for eight years you become a dumb local yokels looking for a nice dinner.

Yokels who know what a dining experience ought to be and an axe to grind when it's sloppy.

We were greeted with an enthusiastic welcome and a congratulations on our anniversary. That was sweet. The waiter then added his kind congrats as well. We looked over the menu and gave our entire order at once - martini for the wife, glass of red for me, tumuric seared pear salad with goji berries and chevre, shiitake, roasted squash, and basil pizza as appetizers; Punjabi mung bean bowl and wild pepper scallops entrees. Nice waiter, lovely interior, great wine list and decent prices for all items. Well, mostly lovely interior. The chairs are the leather-strap variety your sleazy uncle had in his apartment in 1984.

The pear salad comes out - five minutes after we ordered. No wine. No cocktail. Then the pizza shortly after, simultaneous with the wine and cocktail. I'm annoyed. There's an order to a meal, and this isn't it. Fine. We roll with it. The pear salad is stunningly mediocre. Pears aren't in season and there was maybe three slices of it. I felt like Woody Allen, "the food here is terrible - and such small portions!" Four small bits of chevre and a truckload of arugala. Salad is the Styrofoam packing of the food world and there was enough of it here to ship the chandeliers back to whatever Chinese factory that knocks off Frank Gehry furniture made them. The pizza isn't really a pizza, it's a failed foccacia with stuff on it. My wife loved her cocktail, the Emerald City, and my 2005 "Prisoner" red was spectacular. But as we're enjoying our drinks out of sync with our meal, our waiter comes over and tells us he's handing us over to another. Not a trainee, just another waiter. OK. New guy is nice enough. But a handoff? "Happy anniversary." Thanks.

Entrees are served - there's still salad in the bowl and a slice of pizza on the plate. Expediter asks, "do you want me to hold the entree?" No, idiot, I want you to know better than to ask. What's the deal here, Akasha? You woo me in with your hubbub and then you hustle me through with organic grease? I understand if you've got tables to turn but this is ridiculous. We send back what's left of the styrofoam (having eaten the pear and chevre in the first two bites) and accept the entrees. I'll take them hot from the kitchen rather than warmed over and held, thank you. The scallops were outstanding and the mung bean bowl was delicious - there is no denying them that. We took our time with them, and had to ward off the busboys from taking them away. Dessert was nice, too, the salty chocolate tart was the right balance of sweet and salty. Coffee was the expected fair-trade hippie garbage.

We were given our bill with another sincere congratulations on our wedding anniversary. To be fair, I don't expect a complimentary dessert, but when the staff is falling over themselves to both acknowledge my special day and get me the hell out of their restaurant I was thinking maybe a mint and a kiss. Nope. The bill before tip was $104. Whatever.

It was the next day we found out that a friend had left his credit card to pay for our coffee and dessert. That never made its way to the bill.

I would have forgiven the weak appetizers if we didn't feel like we were being pushed out the door. But because of the shoddy service (even though our waiters were kind, they weren't expediting) I'm docking two stars. One for the appetizers and another for the mangling of the experience. And it wasn't like they didn't know it was a special occasion - they took every opportunity to remind us that they were screwing up our night.

Update: the hostess felt terrible and they made it up to me nicely with a gift certificate!

Dear Yelphouse letters: I never thought your stories were true until it happened to me. I was a student at a small, liberal college in Western Massachusetts. I had been seeing this girl, this really amazing hot Italian girl who had mastered a skill that most would simply learn to do decently and then skip ahead to the big event. Not this girl. She spent years perfecting her technique, getting everything right, learning the right use of her hands, the kneading, the pulling, the mouthfeel. And she practiced relentlessly, so that when she finally could unleash her skills she would show that no one could do it as well as her, that her talent would cement her at the top of her game. And she was right. She was the best pizza I ever had. But I kept hearing about a sister, a visit that always seemed delayed, an opening forever postponed. And when she finally did arrive my temptation to try her grew with every passing day. The promise was beyond indecent - if one could make pizza so good, imagine what the same genes could do unrestrained! Every day without knowing was a day too long. But when the time came and the sister arrived, I discovered that the promises were false. The sister did not deliver on her wanton, unrestricted talent. The same genes let loose were nowhere near as good as those hands and mouth committed to a singular, glorious act.

Pizzaria Mozza is undoubtedly some of the finest pizza to be had in Los Angeles, the Osteria next door does not deliver the same quality!

Poor, poor Osteria Mozza. So sad that they didn't open ten years ago when I would have been impressed with them. Before I had educated my cheese palette at the Cheese Store of Beverly Hills. Before I had the pillowy, perfect gnocchi of Angelini Osteria. Before I'd eaten a perfect steak, or superb short rib, or even before I had been to Pizzeria Mozza next door where even the desserts are much better.

Yes, the grilled octopus was sensational - thick, meaty tentacles of pure chewing satisfaction. But the Mozzarella bar was disappointing - for someone with a sophisticated love of cheese, I wanted more exotic flavor combinations and experiments with the Burrata or sheep's milk varieties. The wild boar gnocchi was the right serving style for the boar, small pieces that didn't overwhelm, but the gnocchi was gritty, too dense and lacking in flavor. Splitting the dish with my father made it easier to tackle, but this would be a belly bomb for any eater. The flank steak was very good, probably the second best dish behind the octopus, but the short rib over polenta was uninspiring and weak in taste. The mussels predictable, and the herb stuffed Oreta (fish) a lazy walk in the park. You might as well skip the desserts altogether. The chocolate tort with almond nougat and bourbon sauce isn't nearly as fun as it sounds, the fig cake with strawberry jam and Meyer lemon custard is awkward and strange, and the almond cake thing with blood orange and a vanilla yogurt gelato looks clumsily thrown together from good parts - like Tom Skerrit's face.

None of these dishes were bad - but the pizza next door is so stellar it makes the Osteria a promise unfulfilled. Nancy Silverton commands both establishments, and was even manning the counter the night we dined. But the meal made me yearn to return to the Pizzaria, the sister restaurant devoted to a singular act so good it transcends mere pleasure and soars to great heights. The Osteria lacks focus, refinement, and at worst, feels whorish.

Should I fault a restaurant for being my final straw? It's not like Wilson was hiding anything from me - all indicators said this would be an expensive meal. But I think I've finally reached a point where I'm appalled by the price of things, regardless of their quality, pedigree, or sophistication.

Wilson's is good, believe it, but we paid $40 for lunch. I had the beef stuffed calamari for $13, my wife had the meatloaf for $15. I was delighted by the idea of stuffing a land mammal into a cephalopod, so I had to order it. It was tasty, to be sure, but surprisingly less complex in flavor than the meatloaf! The loaf was infused with an Indian curry that elevated it beyond just a slab of processed meat and into - no, I can't do it. It was fucking meatloaf. For $15!

Here's the thing - now that there's fine dining all over the place, shouldn't competition drive the price of this stuff down? Wilson's decor is dominated by a huge black and white photograph of a burly chef leading a squadron of chefs in morning calisthenics. Clearly Wilson is trying to portray themselves as leaner, meaner, tougher, and fitter than the rest. Shouldn't I get a death match for my quadruple duke? Maybe even a floor show? I used to live two blocks south of the place - there's a whore who lives above the hair salon, or used to anyway. The Chris Market is a bloody Mexican abattoir that hoses pig blood into the sewers nightly. Harper's, the store across the street, sells the clothes of dead street hustlers. And this is where Wilson has put a forty dollar lunch.

At this point, unless I'm eating an endangered species like the delicious gold-encrusted lobster or sweetbreads of Care Bear I'm done, done! with the forty dollar lunch for two.

Unless someone else is paying.