Lincoln Restaurant

Another weekend, another James Beard nominee. Lincoln Restaurant is located in a burgeoning strip on N. Williams Ave. that has several good restaurants and other shops. They, like many places in town, are going for the local ingredients served in creative ways theme. The food and drinks are great. We had an excellent Bruschetta with grilled lamb, blood orange, pine nuts and mint creme fraiche, that was hard to eat, but very tasty and a Arugula salad with buttermilk blue cheese, shallot, walnuts and dates that was amazing. We were not very adventuresome on the entrees, both deciding on the Hanger Steak with Cornmeal onion rings. It was a hearty meal that soon filled us up, with another meal left between us. We finished it off with a grilled walnut and date cake that was topped with a great salted carmel ice cream.

I will say that the food, the cocktails and the service were all excellent, but I am not sure why I would choose Lincoln over any of the 100 other places exactly like it that have now sprung up in Portland. Maybe the way you survive is by becoming a neighborhood staple.

Hours: Tuesday-Saturday, 5:30 PM - close.

Lincoln Restaurant

3808 North Williams Ave.

Portland, OR 97227

(503) 288-6200

Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley

I first heard of Walter Mosley when I read an article about him in the LA Times. His book Devil in a Blue Dress was making quite a stir and it was rumored that it was going to be made into a movie with Denzel Washington playing the lead role of Easy Rawlins. The thing that interested me was his depiction of life in post WW II Los Angeles, which I had never heard much about before. Turns out it was a great time to be an Angelino, especially if you were black. There were lots of good paying jobs in the military industrial complex and there were lots of ways to spend your money.

Spending your money on good times and the trouble that can sometimes bring is where Easy Rawlins comes in. He is a part time private detective and the kind of guy who knows everyone in town. If you have a problem in the Watts neighborhood, he is the guy you come to. Devil in a Blue Dress is the first of almost a dozen Easy Rawlins books that now exist and it is worth reading, not only because it's a great book, but it also gives you a base to understand the reoccurring characters you will see throughout the series.

The author Walter Mosley now lives in New York, and has created several detective series including Bad Boy Brawly Brown and Fearless Jones, the NY and Southern versions of Easy Rawlins as well as children's books and a sci-fi series. I was not a big fan of crime genre until I started reading Mosley's work, but now I am hooked.

Riot in the Streets

There was a small demonstration just outside our office today. A bunch of kids in black hoodies blocked of the intersection of NW 13th and Everett and then dumped over trash cans and a couple of dumpsters in the street. They were protesting police brutality and the death of a you black man a few years ago. It took quite a while for the police to show up and at first it was just one bicycle cop. Eventually a horde of bicycle cops showed up and after some shouting back and forth the kids left. Luckily my car was not on the street.

TMZ was right

It can now be revealed that TMZ.com was right, we were in Florida shooting a commercial for Tiger Woods return to golf a couple of weeks ago. I guess we were naive in thinking we could somehow keep this out of the news, but I was surprised how fast it was posted on their website. We finished shooting at 11:30 AM and this was up by 1:30 PM.

If you somehow haven't seen the spot yet you can see it on the Nike Golf YouTube page.

The Blind Side

My catch up with the 2010 Oscar winners continues with The Blind Side. My first question is how did Sandra Bullock win an Oscar for this role? My second question is can I get the hour and a half I wasted on this movie back?

Sandra Bullock plays Leigh Anne Tuohy, a rich Southern bell who is married with two kids. On the spur of the moment they decide to take in a very large African American kid who has just enrolled at their son's expensive private school. He has terrible grades, but the coach has talked the principal into making some concessions to help the football team. Problem is, the kid is not a very good football player. Not to worry, one speech from Bullock converts him into an NFL caliber player.

Based on the true story of Michael Oher, a homeless and traumatized boy who became an All-American football player and first round NFL draft pick, the movie takes a few liberties, but is basically true to what really happened. The story is not the problem, the problem is the super cornball Hollywood execution. The acting is terrible and the schmaltz is so thick you can cut it with a knife. The only good part of the movie was the closing credits, one, because the movie was over and two, because they showed some interesting pictures of the real Michael Oher and his family.

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut is one of the best American writers to ever live and Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death is his most popular book; have I started a post like this before, because this sounds familiar. I have read almost everything Vonnegut has written and there are books I love equally, but you have to read Slaughterhouse-Five because it is a great book and you should have read it in high school. That is where I read it, freshman English with Ms. de la Garza. I was a little surprised that they made us read such a weird book, and I am not sure I altogether got it, but I got it well enough to write a half ass report that got me a B. I re-read the book after college and while it was still weird, it made a lot more sense.

This is an American classic, add it to your reading list now. You have a reading list, right?

World Record Founders Day

As you know Wieden+Kennedy, the people who pay me to make ads, founded our company on April Fool's day. As is tradition we closed down the office at noon to celebrate 28 years of being in business. This year everyone divided up into teams and tried to set a world record. We got flip cameras to record the records and then posted them to an Internet authentication site to make sure they were real. Unfortunately I spent the entire day at Nike trying to get some work approved, so I missed out on the fun, but it sounds like it was pretty cool.

One group went down to the Taco Bell about half a mile away, and tossed a burrito from person to person all the way back to the office, to set the world's record for longest burrito toss. Another group set the world record for the number of times they could make a mattress salesman to say the word mattress on a call with Mattress World before he got mad and hung up. The day ended with a show from comedian Aziz Ansari who plays Tom Haverford on the NBC show Parks and Recreation and music from a really weird band that undressed down to their underwear as the show went on.

Another Founders Day complete with no deaths.