Restaurant Review: 22 Bowens Wine Bar & Grille - Newport, RI

To use a probably trademarked and copyrighted slogan: "Beef. It's what's for dinner." That is the theme of 22 Bowens Wine Bar & Grille. Serving only USDA Prime grade beef, you can be certain of a quality meal. During the height of summer, this eatery (and Newport, in general) may be crowded and hectic. In the middle of winter, however, it is cozy and relaxing with a nice view of the water.

Regardless of the time of year you go, the food is always fantastic. It is apparent that the meals are prepared with a commitment to quality and attention to detail. What this means to you is that "rare" means rare. This is a welcome change from the typical dining experience. In most restaurants today, you can be glad if you receive something that remotely resembles beef when you order steak.

In this particular instance, my wife had the steak and scallop special which was thoroughly enjoyed by her. I ordered the veal ribs cooked rare and only had one small complaint. Anyone who cooks or grills ribs will know that there is a tough membrane on one side of the ribs. This tissue will dissolve around 180-190 degrees. If your meat will not be cooked to this temperature, it needs to be removed. In the case of my ribs, it was not removed. Since I had them cooked rare, it was quite difficult to separate the bones with anything other than my teeth, which traditional etiquette would say is improper.

Even with the challenge of my entree, I enjoyed my meal. Most especially, I enjoyed my dessert. I had a delicious Bailey's Pot De Creme (aka, custard) with chocolate-covered espresso beans and whipped cream on top. Overall, the prices are a bit high, but not out of reason for the Newport area. I would have to say that 22 Bowens would be one of the best places around to get a high quality meal.

Site Redesign Galore

My new and improved site should be “live”. I have redirected the XML feed so those of you who subscribe should find it seamless, other than the fact that every post I ever made is new. I had 2 casualties in the move. I have no idea what caused it, but the same thing happend once before. For some reason, moving directories into my root directory on my server causes my genealogy page and my gallery to go belly up. I should have those back online very soon (maybe tonight, but definitely by the end of the weekend).

Movie Review: Idiocracy

Luke Wilson stars in this hilarious-yet-simplistic movie about the dumbing down of future American society in the year 2505. Joe Bauers (Wilson) is a go-nowhere completely average military librarian who is selected for a military-run human hibernation experiment which is supposed to last one year. Rita (Maya Rudolph), Joe’s female counterpart in the study, is actually a prostitute. She is selected due to a lack of completely average female soldiers. As expected, something goes wrong causing Joe and Rita to wake up 500 years in the future. As explained by voice-over, the bottom end of the intelligence gene pool out breeds "civilized" society. This results in Joe and Rita being the smartest people alive on the planet.

This movie has quite a few laugh-out-loud moments. If you are up for a good stupid comedy, I can highly recommend this one. While the story is simple, there is almost a scary reality to it. At the risk of turning a simple movie review into a social/political commentary, the dumb far out breed the smart. In a short time, geologically speaking, we will be overwhelmed by those who only speak "Slanglish."

From the title, to the description, to the end credits, this movie delivers exactly what you would expect… 84 minutes of mental diversion and some great laughs to boot.

Random Thoughts: Screen Actors Guild Awards

A quick random thought today...

Does anyone really care about the SAG Awards? Really? All they are are a chance for actors to sexually gratify each other without anyone having to take their cloths off.

The only argument that I can think of to justify this awards show would be that an actor is the most qualified to judge the performance of another actor. Of course, if said actor was such a good judge of acting, he should be the recipient of the award instead of the judge.

Just imagine what kind of fantastic entertainment would be produced if all these "expert actor judges" put their knowledge and expertise into acting instead of awards shows. We would probably get at least 3 movies a year that would be worth watching.

Baby Video: Laura, Time To Wake Up

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/nKDma49D9Cw" width="425" height="355"/]

Movie Review: My Super Ex-Girlfriend

Jenny Johnson (Uma Thurman) plays the role of unsuspecting art gallery owner or coordinator or something in this ultra-predictable, but fast moving movie. Little do we know, she is also known as G-Girl.

Super powers aside, Jenny is super jealous and super controlling and super annoying. No one who is so self absorbed would ever even think about helping anyone other than himself (or in this case, herself). Taken as a generic movie, the characters are completely unlikable, other than supporting characters Vaughn Haige (Rainn Wilson) and Hannah Lewis (Anna Faris). Taken as a comedy, the only real scene that deserved a chuckle was the shark-through-the-window scene which was shown in the trailer.

Matt Saunders (Luke Wilson) rounds out the cast of jerks in this movie. While he is usually a decent straight-man comedy actor, you can only play the role you are given. Unfortunately this was a very one-dimensional role and the greatest acting in the world could not save it.

The one saving grace, as I said, was that this movie was fast moving. One reason for that was the length. At 96 minutes, one barely has time to finish an extra-large bucket of popcorn. Fortunately, the worst this movie will cost you now is rental price. With a lot of movies at Blockbuster going for $1 per day, it is almost worth it to see this movie.

Baby Video: Look at little Laura!!!

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/80lG8cdjtKM" width="425" height="355"/]