Gentlemen Prefer A Good Brand

This weekend I ended up watching two Marilyn Monroe films: Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and Some Like It Hot. I’d seen both of them before, a long time ago and I’d forgotten why people love Marilyn –after all, with the wealth of pretty blondes on the large and small screens, why would she stand out – a plump blonde in Technicolor?

But the truth is that she really does stand out: her studied sultriness is unmatched by any of her platinum blonde successors and her wardrobe hints at carnal knowledge without being overly revealing. She was a natural beauty but not shy about makeup and bling – this was after all the girl who sang Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend in a bold magenta dress, bedecked in sparkling stones. 

But everything about her – the grace with which she abandons herself into a man’s arms, the eyes that are half-closed most of the time except when she ogles (you guessed it) diamonds rings, the pouting lips, everything is true to the brand – a disciplined, well-manicured platinum blond brand that comes off effortlessly, a tribute to Marilyn’s real acting skills that come into play off the screen. If she comes off as a mediocre actress on screen, it’s an indication of the energy she siphoned off into sustaining her personal brand in real life.    

It takes a real woman to take on Marilyn’s roles in real life and on the big screen: the blonde seductress, the material girl, the unrepentant bombshell who can talk even the shrillest penny-pinching bachelor into submission. She stayed true to her brand in silly roles like “Sugar” (I mean, really, Sugar?) of Some Like it Hot and the blond half of the cabaret couple in Gentlemen… , and very few people, indeed very few women (authors included) can probably appreciate the burden of being the Belle of all balls, the pressure, the scrutiny, the malignancy of the jealous gaze in tandem with being reduced to a sexual object for all men, of all ages and all occupations (easily verifiable through an inventory of the men she charms in her films: from decrepit old oligarchs to pre-pubescent shoe-shine boys). 

But she stuck with it, unapologetically, until her untimely end. What a powerful brand!

Stars of Burma; Password - Mango

I think it would be safe to say that any respectable San Franciscan who has a simile of social life has at least  heard of Burma Superstar and its sister, B Star Bar.

Both are restaurants on Clement Street, less than a block away from each other, under the same ownership and serving a similar menu of Burmese food. On Yelp, they both average four stars and get kudos for their fare, which is apparently a combination of Chinese, India and Thai cuisine over unique Burmese preparation techniques. Mango (in many shapes and preparations) seems to be the unifying element cutting across appetizers, salads and entrees, and thank God for that. I would’ve never thought of mango as a main ingredient in a pork dish, and it rocks!

Having visited both restaurants a total of 3 times in under 2 weeks, I feel compelled to commit to paper some notes on the cuisine, ambiance and service, before they fade away in the cloud of cheap take-out, salad bars and numerous Trader Joe’s dishes that make up most of my nourishment these days.

Burma Superstar is at its very best on weeknights. In fact, the difference is so great between weekdays and weeknights that they might as well call them Weekday Superstar and Weekend-Fussy-Diva-Past-Her-Prime.  Tuesday evening we waited about 45 minutes for a table of six and on a Saturday evening about 2.5 hours again for a tabletop of six. On Tuesday we got seated at the house’s only 8-top, with a turn table in the middle, which made is exquisitely easy to share dishes and impressions. On Sunday, drunk, cold and unnerved, we were hurried through courses not only by the waiter but also by the notion that another hungry, drunk an unnerved 6-top was breathing down our neck outside, checking on the progress of our meal through the window. “Are they done yet?” “They just got their appetizers”. Or maybe that was us, waiting for the people before. (Before you judge: it's hard NOT to get drunk when you walk all day and wait to get seated until 9:00 PM... ) 

At any rate, in terms of ambiance, I am strongly biased in favor of the Weekday Superstar. The food, however, in both instances, was delicious and refreshing. From the mango salad (pickled mango! who knew?) and samusas to the basil chicken and lamb curry, even the vegetarian dish, which featured ginko nuts that were surprisingly pleasant – everything was adventure and delight. So maybe the mango chicken and the basil chicken were almost indistinguishable and the wood ear mushrooms tasted, well, a bit wooden, but really, that’s it.

As to B Star: take Weekday Superstar, add the possibility of making reservations, replace experienced staff with younger, slightly clumsier, but more accommodating folks, compress the menu a bit, eliminating the more hard-core Burmese stuff but adding salmon ochazuke (mmm….) and polish the décor to a more asian-fusion look – and there you go. I can strongly recommend the fried trout on a bed of rice and (!) mango, the pan roasted sea bass and the aforementioned ochazuke which is a so-called “comfort food” dish, which in the Japanese mindset includes green tea, salmon  and poached eggs.

Let me know what you think of either restaurant next time you try them. I LOVE to compare notes.  

… And a Merry Vampire Weekend to You All!

On a cold and gloomy week day, my better half and I drove to Oakland’s Fox Theater to watch Vampire Weekend give the last performance of their US tour, hoping (for our sake) that they would go out with a *bang*. The Fox Theater on its own deserves another review, which I will hopefully manage to write after completing the required amount of billable hours some other day …

As to VW: We were not disappointed. Even seated (seated!) at the mezzanine, VW’s infectious energy caught up with us and, by the last song, they had us bouncing off our chairs. If you’re not familiar with Vampire Weekend, I strongly recommend listening to eponymous debut album before diving into their latest Contra. Vampire Weekend, the album, has a familiar storyline for anyone who lived on the East Coast, specifically in Boston and Cape Cod, anyone who went to college, popped their collar, took English lit, listened to Bob Marley, fancied themselves a philosopher, waited tables in Wellfleet and spent innumerable hours in Harvard Square/Foggy Bottom sipping coffee and mingling with Ivy-league folks. But really, I’m doing VW a disservice by limiting them to such a select crowd – their appeal is universal.

On their first album, Mansard Roof opens with lyrics that speak volumes to anyone who’s ever spent a summer in a hot city anywhere in the world, yearning for relief from dust and noise: “I see a salty message written in the eaves/ The ground beneath my feet/The hot garbage and concrete/And now the tops of buildings, I can see them too…” And reversely, the song Walcott, even though it takes shots at a summer hotspots for Bostonites (“Hyannis is ghetto”), it applies to any place where pale sweaty people serve tanned, rested people tall glasses of Arnold Palmer (ah, the irresistible pull of accelerated seasonal income): “Walcott, Don't you know/That it's insane?/Don't you want to/Get out of Cape Cod?/Out of Cape Cod tonight?”

On stage, their footwork is as playful as their strings, and they’re leggy and bouncy in the fashion of ‘80s synth-pop stars, minus the affected stances. They take obvious enjoyment in their music and use the surprise factor in their favor, keeping their songs curt like their lyrics, with abrupt endings that leave you wanting more. Their brand of music has been dubbed by others (more knowledgeable than me) as “preppy punky afro-pop,” but VW themselves profess to be "Upper West Side Soweto" (whatever that is).

Anyway, I love these preppy leggy punks and I think you would like them too. If you don’t already.

PS: Thank you, Tom, for introducing us to them.