My take on the restaurant "Bouchon"

Ruth and I quietly celebrated our 47th Anniversary last week at the very hot and trendy Bouchon Restaurant in Beverly Hills just across from the Montage hotel (separated by a "Pocket Park" ).

The resaurant is owned by Thomas Keller who also owns the French Laundry in Napa Valley purported to be the best restaurant in the U.S.. He also has a Bouchon in Vegas and Napa.

Well, for all the hype it turned out to be a near disaster! First of all, the place is lovely but noisy and crowded....... They serve their bread with "home made" butter ....I asked for Olive Oil ....... Never got it .... We ordered Trout and Salmon ....pretty good... Ruth asked for a refill on her coke for which they charge!!!! I asked the waiter to take it off the check ... He wouldn't .. Told him to go to the manager .. He came back and said the manager would not remove it....... Asked for coffee .. Came stone cold ... Ordered dessert description sounded good .... It was 3 pieces if chocolate cake shaped like a wine bottle cork topped with a small dip of vanilla ice cream and 3 thin slices of banana!!! All for 12 bucks!!! I told the waiter to remember my face "cause I'm never coming back Should I be this fussy? Yes!!!! You should expect more from a restaurant of this stature

The Piece D'Resistance!

Now the Piece D' resistance!

My daughter who lives in Portland, came home for Thanksgiving, and since she is an avid skydiver headed down to a popular "Drop Zone " near the town of PERRIS,CA We followed her down and on the way drove thru the downtown section of Perris (all 3 blocks ) for some artistic reason it had great appeal to me. There were many empty stores and there were many stores with a strong"Mexican" Influence in the color of their signs and the type of lettering etc and there was Xmas decorations hung across the street there was also a once charming closed movie theatre called THE CHIEF with one of those tall Art Nouveauicons overhead.

Anyway, I went back to Perris on Xmas Day and photographed the 3 blocks (97 pictures) I printed the digital photographs,pasted them together and came up with pictures measuring from 52" long to 18" long. All 9 will be 10" in height. This will be my project for the entire year and I hope to have a show in either November/ December

There's definitely something magical about this very small agricultural town decimated by big malls but still holding on and supported by a strong Mexican (Not Hispanic or Latino but MEXICAN ) culture During the course of the year I'll post my progress on this inspiring project

Below are some of the pictures I took:

Flourescent Foreplay

Some of you may have followed the progress of my recent painting "FLORESCENT FOREPLAY " which I completed in October 2009 Well sometimes a picture is never really finished. It just kept staring at me saying "Come on now, get to work and finish this thing !") And so I did I made significant changes in the color and texture of the foreground where as before a reddish blue dominated the foreground and the picture , I altered it to a light grey to almost but not quite Black and I find it more pleasing and the foreground doesn't fight the main focus ( THe Wall)I'll take a new photo let me know what you think I will have to change the date on the painting from 10-09 to 1-10. The paintings show above is the progressing from start to finish not including the most recent which I am going to put up later today.