Ghost Like Swayze

This sucks.

Patrick Swayze was told that he has five weeks to live after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Swayze, 55, has been sick with the disease since he was diagnosed in late January with pancreatic cancer, but the cancer has since spread to other organs and now the Dirty Dancing star is dying.

For the past month, Swayze has been traveling to Stanford University’s cancer center for radical chemotherapy, but his doctors are no longer hopeful that the treatments will be successful, according to the National Enquirer.

Eerily, VH1’s Best Week Ever put up the Top 20 Swayze Facial Expressions from Ghost yesterday.

UPDATE:

Patrick Swayze is undergoing treatment for pancreatic cancer but does not have just weeks to live, the actor’s reps and doctor said Wednesday.
“Patrick has a very limited amount of disease and he appears to be responding well to treatment so far,” Dr. George Fisher, Swayze’s personal physician, said in a statement. “All of the reports stating the timeframe of his prognosis and his physical side effects are absolutely untrue.”

Hartford Blight

WFSB’s Dennis House did an interesting interview with Mayor Eddie Perez last Sunday, March 2, on urban blight in Hartford. I like House. He lives downtown (or used to), married well, and genuinely seems to care about Hartford while he waits to get a gig in a bigger market.

Eddie told House that he had City Council approval to take $50M of “his” capital fund (money, he said, that was normally used for schools and libraries) and reallocate it towards resolving blight in three target areas downtown and one in each of the Franklin Avenue, North Hartford and Frog Hollow neighborhoods. Through use of eminent domain and his war chest, he predicted he’d be able to wrestle under used property from negligent owners and hand them over to developers.

House and Eddie then reviewed plans for dilapidated and empty property (including major parking lots) in the downtown area.

Here are some of the interview highlights, but go watch the full thing since I had to set my universal translator to “WHAT-THE-HELL-IS-HE-MUMBLING” in order to understand Eddie.

Capitol West BuildingPerez says that the building’s owner is very cooperative and even replaced the broken windows. He wants “worker’s housing” owing to the “pent up demand for entry level worker housing in downtown near the insurance companies and union station.” It looks like Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace Hospital.

111 Pearl StreetIt’s been empty for 20 years, but a local firm was selected to develop. Perez would like to see a mixture of retail and housing (he didn’t sound too sure about what the plan was) and expects it to move forward in 6-8 months. I’m thinking Barney’s Warehouse or a (Way) Off-Saks outlet.

Maharishi Hotel on Constitution PlazaI always liken Constitution Plaza to the one-day movie set for Logan’s Run 2: Get Out of Town Before the Crystal in Your Hand Starts Blinking. Think about the big boom it would add to the downtown economy. Anyway, this is one of Perez’s target areas. He will retake it by the Force of Eminent Domain (FoED) if it comes to that. Which would be cool to watch.

410 Asylum StreetThis is where I like to go when I’m lonely to party with pretend friends. Kind of like that scene in Home Alone, but more A-lonlier. Perez wants affordable housing. State’s on board. Should move forward next year.

Main/Trumbull StreetPerez said former councilman Bob Painter coined the “Butt Ugly Building” moniker for the site. Scary Bunny #4 says the GHAC’s Ken Kahn said it first. Either way, Perez will use his FoED to retake the land after highly paid advisers figure out what to do with it.

Former YMCALuxury condos next year, bitches.

Asylum & Main Parking Lot“It is providing parking downtown, which is very much needed.”

SoD’oh!

Cate’s Corner Bistro…we hardly knew ye! Just mere moments after we began the Cate’s Corner Bistro Death Watch, CCB has passed. You can taste the saline in our tears…or was that their pasta primavera?

Cate left town a few months back, handing over ownership to her partners who had designs to turn the place around. Their lunch was brisk, but their dinner was deadly. Waiters breathed over you like a puppy begging for affection. SoDo residents desperate for a place to eat that didn’t break the bank like Peppercorn’s held their noses as they struggled down the night’s special. Mountains of paper fliers cut by kindergartners exclaimed that happy hour was indeed HAPPY!

Our thoughts now turn to the Emperor, which sits across the road, like Mordor witnessing the fall of Isengard. It hasn’t even opened yet, but let the Emperor Death Watch begin!

R.I.P. Cates, sort of

Well, the Cates Corner Bistro Death Watch didn’t last as long as we thought it would. But, that’s probably for the best since even the occasional stroll by its empty dining areas was starting to bum us out.

Although it doesn’t look any different inside, and “Corner Bistro” sounds an awful lot like “Cate’s Corner Bistro,” there’s an assortment of fortune cookie-like paper flutterings in the windows promising cheap food and happy hour specials, so perhaps it truly is going to try to turn a “corner.”

Death Watch: Cate’s Corner Bistro

Okay, we feel bad for Cate’s. We really do. We watched the space being put together on the corner of Capitol Avenue and Main Streets last summer in gleeful anticipation of having a new restaurant and bar option in SODO (”south of downtown”–roughly the five block radius south of City Hall).

And it opened sometime in the early fall, and the Scary Bunnies went… and were disappointed with the high prices and the rather bland food. And we were the only one there besides a waitstaff that repeatedly interrupted our conversation to ask how we liked things, to the point where one person in our party had to tell them to buzz off just so that we could get a word in edgewise.

But still, we hoped for the best and kept watching…

The Courant gave it one star in late October, seemed to have pretty much the same impressions we did, and remarked:

“That corner is cursed,” said a friend one evening as we drove by Cate’s Corner Bistro, newly opened and ripe with promise. “I want the place to do well, but I can’t stop fate.” … Throwing superstition to the wind, I made a visit to Cate’s, hoping that this would be a downtown restaurant with staying power. Alas, it seems not to be so.

The Hartford Advocate, for some reason, just got around to noticing it last week:

Lisa and I think the folks at Cate’s Corner Bistro should be given a ribbon by the city of Hartford. Cate’s is in a challenging spot on Main Street near the South Green, but it’s one that naturally pulls people from downtown toward Park Street. … Cate’s is pretty new, and the management and staff seem sufficiently tuned in to the details so that any little kinks can easily be ironed out.

We’re still trying to figure out who they think is walking down Main Street regularly at night towards Park Street… people waivering between dining options at either Peppercorns or the methadone clinic?

We were particularly puzzled (or maybe amused) of the Advocate’s mention of the introduction of Blackberry technology at Cate’s for use by the waitstaff. It’s probably best not to theorize…but we’re guessing someone there is making use of it to send off resumes.

Let’s hope for the best, we’d actually like to see it pick up some momentum and survive. Someone recently told us a rumor that Cate was on her way out and the other owners were taking over and re-tooling it. The Scary Bunnies will be watching.

Fork on the Left review in the Courant: Link
The Hartford Advocate: Link