FOLLOW me on my popular Twitter feed. Just click this photo! @hbbtruth - David - Common sense on #Politics #PublicPolicy #Sports #PopCulture in USA, Great Britain, Sweden and France, via my life in #Texas #Memphis #Miami #IU #Chicago #DC #FL 🛫🌍📺📽️🏈. Photo is of Elvis and Joan Blackman in 'Blue Hawaii'

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Showing posts with label Hollywood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hollywood. Show all posts

Friday, October 6, 2017

#HollywoodFL's Krakatoa Indonesian Cuisine shows every sign of becoming one of Downtown Hollywood's newest icons -and a great reason to go out at night with family and friends -and forget about politics for a few hours


Do you see this design?
Yes, that's really volcano smoke arising from the second of three A's in Krakatoa. #clever.

 Krakatoa Indonesian Cuisine owner John Anthony is a very shrewd, savvy and self-assured fellow, as I was pleased to discover in a very wide-ranging conversation with him at his new restaurant last weekend, as he explained in quite some detail how it came to be that in 2017 he's channeling Johnny Appleseed, but with an honest affection, enthusiasm and love for Indonesian cuisine and culture in this part of South Florida, not the All-American apple.
And what an interesting story he has to tell, too.
Look for it on the blog in the next few days! 
You won't be disappointed.

 As for that clever design, well, get used to it since it's self-evident to me based on several conversations around town with what in Hollywood passes for the smart set, especially its #Foodie division, and my conversation with Mr. Anthony himself, that Krakatoa Indonesian Cuisine shows every sign of becoming one of Downtown Hollywood's newest icons and a great reason to go out at night with family and friends -and forget about politics for a few hours.
This, after the city has lost a couple of popular places on Hollywood Blvd. and environs for a variety of reasons, most of which people in the downtown business establishment don't want to talk about on the record.

 But whether it's a sign that the lingering signs of the worst summer in years is finally losing its death grip on us, or something else entirely, like a run of some much-needed good luck in the hit-or-miss Downtown Hollywood restaurant market, by my count, Krakatoa is at least the third new restaurant in Downtown Hollywood that I've visited in the past two weeks where even a short visit made me want to stay longer next time, always a good sign.

 For myself, it's good to finally see some honest-to-goodness enthusiasm, hard work and respect for the long-suffering Broward food consumer paying off for some entrepreneurs who were willing to take a chance in what has long been a helter skelter market, just like I wrote about last October with respect to some longtime Italian and Sicilian friends who were willing to take a chance on Downtown Hollywood, instead of just putting their first U.S. location in South Beach, like all the "experts" kept telling them to do, but which they bravely resisted:

 How & why #Italy's @tastagelato's first location in the U.S. is a huge coup for #HollywoodFL & #SoFL consumers, #Foodies & families -and a powerful magnet in creating a more dynamic, innovative Downtown Hollywood; TastaGelato Naturale
I suspect that Krakatoa will soon be "common knowledge" to many well-informed people and influencers throughout South Florida, not just my many thousands of blog readers, or my friends, but local Miami news reporters as well, who are always looking for new angles and new stories to do, and who read both my blog and Follow me on Twitter.
And who desperately want new, cool places to eat with their friends, too, as they are always reminding me!

Krakatoa Indonesian Cuisine's newest location is at 1910 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, FL 33020. (754) 221-0914. 
This location is open Wednesday thru Sunday from 11 AM  to 11 PM. 
baliciousmiami@aol.co.uk, 
The original location at Yellow Green Farmers Market, 1940 N 30th Road, Hollywood, remains open for business Saturday and Sunday from 10 AM to 4 PM.

 @Krakatoacuisine, https://twitter.com/Krakatoacuisine


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Friday, October 9, 2015

Perspectives on American TV, 2015: A public shout-out for some nicely-observed insight from Stacia L. Brown @washingtonpost - How @RosewoodFOX is expanding representations of black men in network TV. She correctly notes how the new Fox-TV show starring @Morris_Chestnut has already shown "how rare it is to see two black men onscreen discussing something other than violence, racism, or their own mortality." Amen.

Perspectives on American TV, 2015: A public shout-out for some nicely-observed insight from Stacia L. Brown @washingtonpost - How @RosewoodFOX is expanding representations of black men in network TV. She correctly notes how the new Fox-TV show starring @Morris_Chestnut has already shown "how rare it is to see two black men onscreen discussing something other than violence, racism, or their own mortality." Amen.

I've written the following post in reverse-chron order, with oldest on top, in an attempt to be more logical than usual.














For me, the highlight from Brown's column was this line: 
"The subtlest moments — like Rosie, Dante, and those flowers — punctuate how rare it is to see two black men onscreen discussing something other than violence, racism, or their own mortality."

 Exactly!

I've watched all three Rosewood episodes so far, and partly because it's set here in South Florida -#SoFL- and partly because I also think it has a good premise for a series and a nice core of actors around star Morris Chestnut, it's definitely starting to grow on me.
Especially as it finally stops trying to explain who every character is and can actually breathe a little and let the plots develop however they will.

Not that it's ever going to be M.A.S.H., of course, or even aspires to be, but most people now forget how really crummy some of their early M.A.S.H. episodes were when the writers and editors kept hammering home who the various characters were long past the point where we got it, esp. Klinger, 
Radar and Frank Burns.

 In retrospect, some of those early M.A.S.H. episodes often seem like the show's writers were intentionally bullying Larry Linville's Burns character just to see what sort of reaction it might provoke in either him or the show's audience. 
People loved seeing pranks performed on poor Frank Burns, but serial cruelty is another thing altogether. 

 It's always especially noticeable in those episodes composed largely of clips.
You almost wonder what the writers were thinking.

Most TV viewers nowadays forget that, for a while at least, like the Mary Tyler Moore Show,
M.A.S.H. was forced by CBS network execs to use a laugh track, which was cringe-worthy, even though it was performed without a studio audience.
As we know, as the two shows' dramatic success grew expondentially on Saturday nights, that foolish crutch was eventually dispensed with, even if it remained on so many other middling network TV shows well into the 1980's.

The really odd thing is that I was thinking the same exact things last night watching the newest episode of Rosewood as what Washington Post reporter Stacia L. Brown writes about. 
Weird. :-)

 Like Brown,  I also hope that they give the show a chance to properly develop and find its way.
It's always a good thing to have fully-realized characters on network TV, especially if they can be set against an area of the country that is -quite correctly I'm sorry to say- often regarded as the height of superficiality, where physical looks always-but-always trumps brain power every time.
(As I know so well from growing-up in sunny sand, surf and bikini-clad South Florida!)
How ironic would that be?

And if it can be a character that looks, acts and thinks like series star Morris Chestnut's,  one that's doesn't adhere to most Hollywood's showrunners' pre-conceived paint-by-numbers notions of what the show has to do, as opposed to what it can do, so much the better for everyone concerned, not least, the poor TV audience who desperately prefers to see more accurate depictions of complex people's lives on the tube. And lives different from their own, with their own separate struggles.
But then a sophisticated TV audience that wants more also has to let the networks know they want that, not more of the same old thing, or variations on a TV theme from 25 years before.
And so it is here with Fox-TV.
People have to use their voices.
So far, so good!













Since I sent out an email with much of the above Thursday afternoon to my corps of well-informed friends and Followers(!)  across the country, have been greatly heartened by the number who say that they not only like and watch the show, but also agree with points that Stacia L. Brown and I raise.
:-)

Dave
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