Posts by Andre Alessi
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(who’s screwing an evil white devil bimbo who escaped from a bad parody of Go Girls).
Is it possible to parody Go Girls, badly or otherwise?
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If we were searching for an overly trite comparison of UK vs US television, it might be that British shows take horrible characters and intentionally make them sympathetic, while American shows take sympathetic characters and unintentionally make them horrible. Curb Your Enthusiasm is surely the exception that proves the rule.
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Hard News: Because it's about time we…, in reply to Matthew Reid,
But did Italians bring espresso to NZ, were they owners/operators of early espresso serving coffee shops/cafes around the country?
Well, my father and uncles weren’t, but I’m sure there was the odd one or two machines out the back of someone’s shed during those years. Whether that ever translated into a formal business somewhere, or whether it just laid the groundwork for later entrepreneurs to flourish, I don’t know.
There definitely wasn’t anything like an espresso machine in use in the cafes of Hastings in the 1980s though. My father made do with Turkish-style coffee off the stove.
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Muse: The High Aesthetic Line, in reply to BenWilson,
Yup, the action sequences were still very well done. I don't think anyone's really captured the "titanic space battle" quite so well as Lucas.
The key there is that Lucas, much like Peter Jackson, is a fanboy of the old matinees-his space battles are WWII dog fights writ large, with a group of people behind him who are happy to create new technology to make it all look bigger and better than ever.
I think there were a couple of moments in Battlestar Galactica that approached the grandeur of those epic space battles in Star Wars, but they were few and far between and certainly didn't last as long.
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Hard News: Because it's about time we…, in reply to Matthew Reid,
Australia, and presumably NZ, had an influx of Italians and other continental Europeans after WWII, and with them the magnificent espresso machine.
Yeah, that sounds plausible. My father and his two brothers moved here in the late Sixties as part of the construction boom and settled in Island Bay for about a decade before dispersing around the country.
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Hard News: Because it's about time we…, in reply to Sam F,
From what little I’ve heard, McCafe is doing alright for McDonalds; I wonder what they’re doing right that Starbucks did wrong?* Might be an exercise for a really good senior analyst…
From what I've seen, McCafe is consciously modelled on the same setup that works in your typical suburban cafe, rather than attempting to reinvent the wheel the way Starbucks did. I was quite surprised when McDonalds went this way, but it's hard to argue that it works better than you'd expect.
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I've never been philosophically opposed to Starbucks-as-a-concept: sure it's not a silky flat white in a cup the size of my palm, but it's an experience in a specific cultural context, with specific expectations. Just because I enjoy Sal's Pizza doesn't mean I'll turn my nose up at Pizza Hut on a quiet day.
However Russell, you're quite right that a significant problem is that Starbucks has only sometimes delivered on the product it promised. The coffee often does taste weak or overexpressed. More worrying (to me as a former barista anyway) is that the time it takes to get one of these mediocre coffees to the customer is longer than the time it would take to produce a "traditional" espresso or flat white. The production flow behind the counter is horribly designed for what is essentially the coffee equivalent of fast food, and the one-beverage-at-a-time approach to making coffees is absurd with the kinds of capital Starbucks could invest in its equipment and training. Why the hell should I wait longer for a bad coffee than I have to wait for a good one?
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Shorter NZ Herald: "We report stories that the public want to hear about! It's not our fault the public was interested in a story we published that invited speculation by not containing the information that would have convinced the public that they wouldn't want to hear about it!"
Next up: "Secret business plan inside company to set mystery product price at an unspecified level! We ask why you haven't heard about this shocking development! Update: Grapefruit now 3 for $5 at Foodtown."
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Muse: The High Aesthetic Line, in reply to Ngaire BookieMonster,
ZOMG Bea Arthur was in it!!
And Jefferson Starship! And Carrie Fisher sings! It's just...I can't even describe it, you have to watch it.