Having followed Arnold’s career for 30 years and now having read the book, it’s clear that he beat those supposedly insurmountable odds because of four things:

1) An optimistic refusal to believe it couldn’t be done

2) Systematic step-by-step planning

3) Hard work

4) The support of friends

Arnold takes us through his entire life (so far), from the lessons he learned as a child in Graz, Austria to his return to Hollywood, after his terms as Governor.  Arnold is candid, throughout the book.  He takes pride in his successes and mistakes.  Arnold sees each mistake as a lesson that is needed for later success.

The bodybuilding career is well detailed, although I’m not sure the readers will come away with an appreciation for how much work it was, because Arnold looks back on it with a nostalgia that makes it seem joyful.  I found it very interesting how valuable the mindset he developed as a bodybuilder was to all his later accomplishments.  As a bodybuilder Arnold knew that to perfect a pose or to build a muscle it took thousands of repetitions of an exercise.  Nothing is accomplished instantaneously or without effort.  Therefore when he became an actor, he thought nothing of practicing dialog or stunt work for hours upon hours.  Although, thirty-five years of seeing hard work turn into achievement turned into a stumbling block when he entered the world of politics, where things aren’t as orderly.

I was a little disappointed that the chapters on his movie career were not as all encompassing as I’d hoped.  It appeared to me that each progressive movie was discussed less than the ones before it.  Some movies are never mentioned.  I understand why – the book has a theme and narrative and talking about some of the movies would not have added anything new to that theme or narrative.  Of most surprise was there being no mention of Christmas in Connecticut – a TV movie that he directed.  I would have been interested in what he learned being on the other side of the camera.

The chapter that unfortunately has been of most interest to the press is that chapter dealing with the infidelity that resulted in a child with a household employee.  It’s important for the sake of balance that that chapter is in the book – not only for the necessary candor but because it too was a learning experience.

Arnold’s story is a very motivational story.  He didn’t start with any advantage over the rest of us, he’s human and makes mistakes like the rest of us, and yet has accomplished so much.  I think you will enjoy reading it and will learn from it.

About a year ago I did an episode quality plot for Star Trek: The Next Generation.  Over the last couple of months I have watched the new Doctor Who series (2005-present) and decided to do the same for the 88 episodes (so far) of that show.

I was never a Doctor Who fan, growing up.  I watched a few, but it never quite caught my interest.  It felt too cheesy.  Because of that I never gave the new series a chance, until recently.  I had watched, and thoroughly enjoyed, Torchwood, and learning that Captain Jack Harkness appeared in several episodes of Doctor Who, decided I must watch it.

I now love Doctor Who!  It is smartly written.  The acting is superb.  The production values are impressive for television.  The real genius of the show is that it is constantly evolving, with companions and even the Doctor coming and going.  Each time one leaves it is heartbreaking and one can’t imagine how the next can be as good, but they are – in their own way.  I loved Rose and then I loved Martha Jones and then I loved Donna Noble.  Now I love Amy Pond.  Come Christmas I’ll love a new companion.  I loved Ecclestone as the Doctor.  And then Tennant.  And now Smith.  Tennant is my favorite, though.  I love the graceful physicality of his Doctor.

Doctor Who manages to jump from grand sci-fi concept to small personal story with the ease.  Amongst my favorite episodes are The Girl in the Fireplace in which the Doctor has several short visits with a girl in 18th century France, Blink a true horror story in which the Doctor barely appears, and The Big Bang, in which the universe is completely overwritten and one character waits for another for two thousand years.

I don’t think there are any truly bad episodes.  The ten I have listed as “Must Skips” are just the ten that I found least engaging.  I do expect I will watch some of them again.

The Napa Valley Wine Train has been a tourist attraction for almost 25 years.  It takes up to 370 passengers on a three hour, 36 mile round-trip journey between Napa and St. Helena, along a stretch of track that parallels State Route 29, the St. Helena Highway.  It makes two trips a day – a lunch trip and a dinner trip.

At 10:30 am we checked into the station, just off of First Street, in downtown Napa.  While getting everyone ready to load onto the train, they have a small wine tasting – a nice white and  a nice red.

Once we were on the train and it started its slow trek north to St. Helena, they served an appetizer plate and drinks.  We had a great bottle of Shramsberg sparkling wine (drinks are an additional cost).  After enjoying that, we explored the train, walking from end to end, and out upon both observation decks.  The train is very attractive.  The seating areas are well decorated and opulent and the dining cars suitably fancy.  There is a car with a glass dome roof.  As part of the end to end walk we got to walk through the kitchen.  Probably the most impressive memory of the trip was watching how the staff manages to prepare and cook all those meals on a moving train that jostles back and forth.

As soon as we got to St. Helena, the train stops for a few minutes to move the engine car to the opposite end for the trek back.  At that point they moved us to the dining car (dining is done in two shifts – half the people eat on the way there and the other half on the way back).  If on the way north to St. Helena your seat is on the east facing side of the train, on the way south your dining table will be on the west facing side of the train, so that you see a different view.  The view includes key wineries like Robert Mondavi and Moet Chandon.

Lunch was a selection of one of three or four dishes.  I chose the vegetarian meal – sweet pea ravioli, grilled zucchini with goat cheese, and yam stuffed gypsy peppers.  My girlfriend had the steak.  It was a gristly piece.  For dessert she had the creme brulee.  The food was fine, but not a competitor for the food we had at the Napa restaurants.

The Wine Train was a fun experience, but I wouldn’t do it again.  As just mentioned, the food can’t compete with the local restaurants.  But also, the ride isn’t unique.  The track is right next to the highway.  We saw the exact same views a few times a day, for every day we were in Napa.  For $109 a person, I’d rather just go back to REDD or Bottega.

A must-do activity when visiting the Napa Valley is a hot air balloon ride.  We did ours with a company called Balloons Above the Valley.  The winds and weather tend to be most amenable in the morning, so the ride starts pretty early.  A van driver from Balloons Above the Valley picked us up at our hotel at 5:30am.  We were taken out to a field where three balloons were inflating.  These are big balloons.  Each balloon is attached to a basket that is partitioned into sections.  Each section is large enough to comfortably hold a couple.

Our pilot, Kevin, was great.  He’s flown balloons all over the world.  He has his banter down and made the ride informative and amusing.

The balloon gently rises.  I was surprised that there really was no sensation of movement.  The ground slowly shrinks away and the balloon rises to the clouds.  A competing company launched at about the same time, so there were a total of about eight balloons in the air.

Kevin took us up to around 2000 ft and then as the wind navigated us through the valley, Kevin alternately blasted the propane jets and opened vents in the balloon to take us up and down to take advantage of the winds.  Sometimes we were so high that the whisp-thin clouds were below us and the vineyards looked like a far away green carpet.  Sometimes we were skimming just over the vines, and every detail was in focus, as we waved to the workers pruning the vines.

After about 90 minutes of flight, Kevin brought the balloon down to a smooth landing in a local dog park.  From there the vans drove us to a local hotel where we were given a great champagne brunch including a full buffet of eggs, sausage, bacon, fruit and all the trimmings.

Although all the pictures in this post were taken by me, with either my old trust Canon Rebel XT or my iPhone, a professional photographer had taken pictures of us in our balloon, and those were available for purchase.

The balloon ride isn’t a cheap morning.  It costs about $240 per person (although we got a $30 discount by purchasing the tickets through our hotel).  It’s well worth it, though.  It not only provides memories that will last a lifetime, but it provides a perspective of the Napa Valley that couldn’t be obtained, otherwise.  Looking down on the wineries we had already visited and getting a few recommendations of others to visit, from Kevin, brought the geography, geology, and morphology of Napa into resolution.  And as any lover of wine knows, the terroir is everything.

“Nothing On” is as cliched as it could be – with characters going in and out doors and just missing each other, characters’ pants falling down, and a busty engenue spending much of the play in her lingerie.  It reminded me of the Carry On films from the 1960s and 1970s.

Noises Off! plays with those cliches by both mocking them and utilizing them, itself.  I think the Alley company is happiest when it is performing a farce.  They’ve done quite a few, including A Flea in Her Ear and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.  Actor, Todd Waite, in particular seems built for them.  He is consistently hilarious, play after play.  Todd plays Frederick Fellowes, a bewildered actor, barely able to keep up with the chaos around him.

The Alley’s biggest star, James Black, has a smaller than usual role, but an important one.  He plays the director of the play “Nothing On”.  And with a sly wink, he is made up and dressed to look like Gregory Boyd – the primary director of the Alley company, and director of this play.  Black spends most of the first act standing in the audience, “directing”.  The second act brings him backstage as he is forced to return to the play to try to whip everyone back into shape.

The gorgeous Melissa Pritchett (pictured left) steals scenes, not just for spending most of the play spilling out of her lingerie, but for her comic gifts, playing a bad actress and dizzy blonde (Brooke Ashton) – overacting and never quite paying attention to her surroundings.  Brooke also has a bad habit of losing her contact lens, on-stage.

Kimberly King plays Dotty Otley, an actress playing the housekeeper.  Dotty has her dialog learned, but has a terrible time remembering her stage directions, resulting in several funny scenes involving a telephone and a plate of sardines.

Mic Matarrese makes his debut at the Alley as Garry Lejeune, he plays the central character of “Nothing On”, a real-estate salesman that had planned to use the supposedly empty house for a romantic escape with Brooke Ashton, only to have the housekeeper, the owners of the house, and a burglar get in between him and the lovely Brooke.  He’s romantically involved with Dotty and much of the chaos from the second and third acts comes from his jealousy as that relationship unravels.

John Tyson plays Selsdon Mowbray, an alcoholic actor past his prime trying to play a burglar.  Tyson has a tendency to overact, so I feel he works best when cast in a farce.  He’s quite funny as the near deaf Selsdon, constantly mishearing people and desperately looking for a drink.

Josie de Guzman is Belinda Blair, an actress desperately trying to hold the play together and becoming more shrill as she breaks down.

The play also introduces Alley newcomers Ben Diskant as the stage manager, Tim, and Allison Guinn, as Poppy, the assistant stage-manager romantically involved with the director.

The cleverness of the play is that by depicting the same act of the play within the play, three times, the audience is aware the moment some backstage or onstage disaster causes the actors to go off-script.  I particularly liked the structure of rotating the stage 180 degrees for the second act, to show the perspective from backstage.

Noises Off! runs through June 24 at the Alley Theatre.

(pictures are taken from the Alley Theatre Website and are by photographer T. Charles Erickson).
 

I had the Wisconsin Sourdough – 100% family farm raised beef, griddled mushrooms, bacon, cheddar cheese, mayo and barbecue sauce, on toasted sourdough rounds and chili-dusted sweet potato fries washed down with an Anchor Steam beer.

Absolutely delicious.

With all the fancy French restaurants in Napa, it’s a nice break on the wallet and stomach to have something simple like a burger.  You can’t go wrong at Gott’s.

Bottega has an interesting option in between a glass or wine and an bottle – they offer caraffes that hold about a glass and a half.  We did two such caraffes – a Giana Zinfandel and an Eileen Cabernet.  For an appetizer we did the  Pasta Fritta with organic Prosciutto “house cured”, white balsamic strawberries, lambrusco “nuvola”, pickled crosnes & basil – very tasty.  Then for a pasta dish we did a fettucini with soft shell crab and pork belly.  For our entrees, I had the Smoked & Braised Natural Short Ribs whole grain mustard spaetzle, Sicilian pickles, quince paste & smokey horseradish jus and she had the Duck Three Ways Roasted breast, confit leg, watercress, poached rhubarb, Sierra Beauty apples, spiced hazelnuts & duck liver mousse.  For dessert we shared the chocolate cake.

The short ribs really could not have been better – melt in the mouth tenderness with a smoky flavor.  The duck was sublime.

Many of the restaurants in Napa are French influenced, Bottega is a wonderful alternative option and I highly recommend it.

Our server, Juan, was very friendly and helpful.  We started with an excellent Robert Sinskey Pinot Noir.  She had the soup du jour (a lobster bisque) and  the Roulade de Saumon – Loc Duart Salmon, Potato and Pancetta Galette, Cauliflower Fleurettes, Sauce Arbois (pictured below).  It was absolutely delicious.  I had the Joues de Veau – Braised Veal Cheeks, Kohlrabi, Leek Fondue, Pickled Ramps, Squash Blossoms.  It was an amazingly tender and tasty piece of meat.

We started with the Quiche du jour.  It was very tasty, but as can be seen in the picture, a tad burned.  For our main course we each had a fish.  She had the Truite Amandine, which is pan-roasted Idaho trout with haricots verts, toasted almonds & beurre noisette.  I had the Esturgeon Fumé, which is lightly smoked wild sturgeon with Maine lobster, fava beans, braised radish, new crop potatoes & horseradish crème fraîche.  The trout was okay, but nothing special.  The sturgeon was cooked well, but salty.  We also had the French Fries as an appetizer, because they had been recommended by a nearby winery.  They were the saltiest French Fries I’ve ever had.  For dessert we shared the Tarte au Citron  (lemon tart).  It too was a bit burned.  Compare the picture below to the picture on the Bouchon website.  Ours was markedly darker.  The lemon was flavorful, however.

When we arrived we were seated at a cute little table next to a window.  The restaurant is attractive and very much resembles the cafes I’ve visited in France.  The waiter took a little while to appear and paid us little to no attention throughout the evening.  I do have to give a small credit to the Sommelier.  I had asked the waiter to recommend a white wine that would go well with the fish, preferably a sauvignon blanc rather than a chardonnay.  The waiter didn’t have a recommendation, but he went to ask.  A few minutes later the Sommelier came by and recommended and brought us a bottle of wine.  I was very surprised to see, when the bill came, that she had selected one of the least expensive bottles on the menu.

I really can’t recommend Bouchon Bistro.  It so paled in comparison to our dinner at nearby REDD, the night before.  But I can recommend a visit to the Bouchon Bakery, next door.  They have a very nice chocolate brownie.