Category: News-Press

DRINK OF THE WEEK: Bistro 1111’s White Cranberry Cosmopolitan

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Photo by Nik Blaskovich
Photo by Nik Blaskovich

It was yet another lovely balmy spring day in Santa Barbara — or was it a summer day? We can’t tell anymore. But we took another leisurely bike ride down Cabrillo. This time we parked ourselves outside Bistro 1111, part of the Hyatt hotel, and a place where we once did a Drink of the Week some time ago. The bar is about to undergo some major renovations, and they sound great. Its current location near the corner of Ninos Drive and Cabrillo will move farther down to the pool, offering an oval bar that both looks out to the restaurant and over the deep end, depending on what side you choose. What should one order when celebrating the remodel (coming soon, but you can drink it now!)? Well, after a liquor rep stocked the bar with new alcohols, including Finlandia’s line of flavored vodkas, we recommend the White Cranberry Cosmopolitan.

How is this possible? Well, Ocean Spray makes a line of clear cranberry, and Finlandia makes a cranberry-flavored vodka, and so … you can see where this is going. Add a dash of lime, some triple sec, and you get what bartender Joel Alva tells us was all they made one recent night during a wedding reception. You can see the bridesmaids ordering one after the other: the cocktail tastes like an energy drink like Gatorade … only this one packs a vodka punch. It’s our Drink of the Week.

WHITE CRANBERRY COSMOPOLITAN
2 ounces Finlandia cranberry vodka
1 ounce triple sec
3 ounces Ocean Spray White Cranberry
Dash lime

Combine all ingredients over ice in a shaker, shake and strain into cocktail glass. Garnish with lime wedge.

Bistro 1111
1111 E. Cabrillo Blvd.
(805) 730-1111

Star, interrupted: Joe Lambert’s talent shows reconfigure name, dates

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Joe Lambert, promoter of Rising Star, is preparing for a renamed adult singing competition.DWIGHT MCCANN/CHUMASH CASINO RESORT
Joe Lambert, promoter of Rising Star, is preparing for a renamed adult singing competition.

DWIGHT MCCANN/CHUMASH CASINO RESORT

What’s in a name? Well, for Joe Lambert of Teen Star and Rising Star fame, he’s finding out yet again.

Last August, Mr. Lambert capitalized on the success of his Teen Star talent show by creating a similar show for adults, called “Rising Star.”

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Surface Tension: BRAD MILLER’S TRINITY OF TEXTURAL WORKS

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'Pealings'
‘Pealings’

On the web last week there was a viral photo going around. A man had photographed a single drop of ocean water and magnified it thousands of times, revealing a universe crowded with creatures of all size and shapes, beyond our science fiction dreams (or nightmares.) With this on my mind, Brad Miller’s work at Cabana Home — on view now through June 14 — struck a chord.

While there are no creatures to be found in his work, he too is invested in the microscopic universe that’s under our noses. Sometime he reveals it in his bubble and wave photographs, and sometimes he recreates it in his ceramics and his work on wooden canvas.

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Brave quartet: Four D-Day veterans honored as 70th anniversary approaches

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William Rourke, special representative of the United Kingdom, speaks about growing up in London during World WarÊII.
William Rourke, special representative of the United Kingdom, speaks about growing up in London during World WarÊII.

Four surviving members of the D-Day landing in Normandy were honored Thursday morning in a commemoration at Fess Parker’s Doubletree Resort.

Titled “The Boys Who Stormed Normandy,” the bruncheon honored Santa Barbarans Art Petersen, Bob Forties, Frank Johnson and Sal Perez in an event staged by the Pierre Claeyssens Veterans Foundation and the Channel City Club.

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Westmont graduates more than 350

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Bagpipers lead professors and graduates onto the field Saturday morning for Westmont College"s commencement. CARMEN SMYTH/NEWS-PRESS PHOTOS
Bagpipers lead professors and graduates onto the field Saturday morning for Westmont College”s commencement.
CARMEN SMYTH/NEWS-PRESS PHOTOS

At Westmont College”s Russell Carr Field on Saturday, 367 members of the Class of 2014 made their way to the podium to receive their diplomas and head out into the world while friends and family cheered.

The Christian college”s commencement featured choirs, awards, tributes to faculty both living and dead, and a rousing commencement speech by Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church.

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Tres Bon – ANJELAH JOHNSON RETURNS TO THE GRANADA WITH HILARIOUS CHARACTERS AND STAND-UP COMEDY

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Rick Navarro photo
Rick Navarro photo

From cheerleader to extra to TV star to stand-up comic: Anjelah Johnson has had a circuitous path to get to where she is now, a headliner with a full fan base. This is her second performance at the Granada, and, she thinks, her third in Santa Barbara. She’ll be bringing her clean — well, mostly clean — stand-up, as well as her well-loved characters Bon Qui Qui and the nameless nail salon worker whose incomprehensible language is part of the charm. Her second one-hour special, “The Homecoming Show,” aired last year on Comedy Central.

Ms. Johnson, who can claim both Mexican and Native American blood in her heritage, grew up in San Jose, which she describes as a “melting pot” of the best kind: big Latino population and big Vietnamese population. She bounced about through various high schools, including a performing arts high school, and then to an “independent studies high school” which she says was essentially her mom picking up her homework every week for her to finish.

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Angel of Death – FICTION FILM FINDS JOSEF MENGELE DURING HIS ARGENTINEAN ESCAPE

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Alex Brendemuhl as Josef Mengele in "The German Doctor
Alex Brendemuhl as Josef Mengele in “The German Doctor

Growing up, I had no real idea about Argentina except that it was the place that many high-profile Nazis fled to after the war, including, some said, Hitler. (They also said somebody had his brain in a jar, but that’s another story.) It was talked about in the same tones reserved for the killer bees, and both might just swarm north to get us all. However, by the time I came of age and learned more, Eichmann had been captured long ago and executed, and Josef Mengele … well, he kind of got away with it, didn’t he? Mossad agents never captured him, and in 1979 he had a stroke and drowned while swimming one day off the coast of Brazil, probably while humming “The Girl from Ipanema.”

The deranged doctor of Auschwitz, the so-called “Angel of Death” never got his day in court.

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At Long Last Love – BILL WAXMAN’S NEW PLAY RIFFS ON LOVE IN THE GOLDEN YEARS

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The cast of "The Coot Elimination Committee" includes, back row from left, Jerry Oshinsky, Stuart Orenstein, Ed Giron and Sandy McOwen; seated, from left, Tim heard that phrase and right then and there Whitcomb, Deborah Helm, Julie Allen and Char Smith.
The cast of “The Coot Elimination Committee” includes, back row from left, Jerry Oshinsky, Stuart Orenstein, Ed Giron and Sandy McOwen; seated, from left, Tim Whitcomb, Deborah Helm, Julie Allen and Char Smith.

Writer and director Bill Waxman was visiting his wife’s stepmother and significant other in a retirement community in Palm Springs. That’s where he heard about a committee that had been established to rid their environs of a disruptive duck-like bird: The Coot Elimination Committee.

“It was like a gift,” Mr. Waxman says. “I heard that phrase and right then and there I thought, this is a play. I came home and sat down and about a month later I had the play. It rolled right out.”

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