Category: Thoughts

I have earlier stated that Cat Power does the best cover version of “Satisfaction,” but Devo does a great one too:

(Note also their brilliant cover of Nine Inch Nails’ “Head Like A Hole.”)

(Via Ectomo, the weirdest blog I’ve found all week).

From co-worker Joel Brown’s review of Bionic Woman: “This is moody, broody stuff, and I don’t just mean because Isaiah Washington begins a multi-episode appearance next week. (We kid because we love! But not in a homosexual way!)”

From my Friday night TV recs: “Moonlight: Debut. This “Angel” knockoff just might be the best new broadcast-network drama on Friday nights. I’m pretty sure it’s the only new broadcast-network drama on Friday nights. Anyway, watch it if you have a thing for vampire detectives.”

Seriously, there’s nothing good on TV on Friday nights. Anyone with anything better to do is out doing it, so the Friday night audience is more or less captive.

Also I continued a crusade against replacing actors with robots, and insinuated that a number of famous people are totally gay.

You know, I try to make the world a little better every day, so I also explained to my readers how to spot a particularly fancy suit.

That’s me. Saving the world, one worst-dressed-list and near-libelous insinuation at a time.

I’ve been buying various meats at the farmer’s market this summer: local organic natural beef from River Rock, that kind of thing. The farmers invariably have a bunch of coolers filled with ice packs and frozen packages of various items, set up in the shade, and the quality is absolutely fantastic. Really delicious meat.

Of course, being farmers who have the whole animal to sell, they have some odd bits as well as the usual steaks and ground beef and pork chops and sausage. And of course, being me, I always want to add one of the odd cuts because it sounds like a culinary adventure. And of course, being human, we eat the normal stuff first and then look in the freezer and find it full of less-common or harder-to-cook cuts.

Start with the five or ten pounds of short ribs and brisket and so forth, which just need long, slow braising. They’re great for cold weather, so we’ll hold off til then, but at least I know how to cook those things.

Then I get some weird things that don’t make a lot of sense, but which I just had to have at that moment. Like the six pounds of beef marrow bones, which you can’t really use for stock (not enough meat on them). You can really only do two things with them: roast them and serve them with toast and a very small knife (scoop out the gooey insides), or feed them to a dog. On the plus side, they were very cheap. I have no idea how to cook them, but I’ll learn, I guess. At least I have enough to try several times.

Same with the hog jowls (aka “pork cheeks”) I got this weekend. I snapped them up mostly because I remember Mario Batali using them and calling them guanciale. Well, when I got home I found out the difference: to get guanciale you have to be willing to hang your raw, salted jowls in a basement for six weeks, because it’s cured hog jowls. Basically, guanciale is to jowls as bacon is to pork belly. And all the other pork-cheek and hog-jowl recipes I can find are basically variations on using the jowls as a kind of bacon, and on them already being cured and/or smoked.

And my basement is just too damp to cure meat.

And I’m scared.

Right now, I’m thinking confit, but I’m kind of scared of that, too.

Did I say I was looking for food adventure?

My favorite acronym of the moment is “tl;dr” which means “too long; didn’t read.”

I was going to post something really deep about what that acronym’s existence means to our society, but… tl;dw.

NYT reviews “Good Luck Chuck”: “… a must-see for young men with a subscription to Maxim but no access to the Internet….” “Chuck gets a lot of action, but then — after a long, split-screen montage of his priapic exertions — he starts to feel empty and used. Me too. But if the logic of “Good Luck Chuck” holds, the next movie I see should be a masterpiece.”

I admit to thinking this cartoon is funny. I admit to owning a t-shirt based on this cartoon.

toothpastefordinner.com

But I can’t really wear it any more: The Canadian Dollar is now trading at parity with the US Dollar.

It’s not strictly bad news: should be good for the US export sector. What’s left of it, anyway.

Kafkaesque really is the only way to describe it: “Hello and welcome to the United States. Your visa has been revoked. We cannot tell you why. Goodbye!” Or for that matter, Welcome to K-Mart. You may not leave. You have committed a crime. Unlawful detention anyone? I’d make fun of her for shopping at K-Mart, but seriously: what is the world coming to when everyone is nothing more than a suspect, guilty until proven innocent? Also, I read today that pirates are causing trouble. Not the joke kind and not the software kind, mind you. I mean real pirates with automatic weapons.

Oh hey, children do neat stuff:

Go out for a gigantic birthday dinner. Eat and drink way too much.

Come home and want to go to bed, but feel honor-bound to watch and blog about the “America’s Next Top Model” season premiere.

Skinny bitches! Skinny bitches everywhere!

Motorcycle manufacturers occasionally have special test-drive events, but otherwise it’s really hard to try one without actually buying it. So my actual motorcycle riding experience is pretty limited… that said, I can’t help but want to write up notes comparing Megan’s Ducati Monster 750 and my Suzuki SV650. They’re both from the same year (2000), both have similar engine sizes (750 and 650cc, respectively), and are of course made in the same ‘naked’ style. As I’ve said before, the SV is in many ways a tribute (don’t say ‘knockoff’) to the Monster.

At first I made fun of her for getting the Italian bike– it was pretty beat up, it’s more expensive to maintain, it cost more, produces less power, it weighs more. But having ridden both, I have to admit I’m really loving the Monster. The center of gravity is lower, and the handling is just so much more… planted. And do I really need the extra five or ten horsepower? Not as such, no.

Not that I don’t love my bike. The handling is still excellent, and I’ve got a little flyscreen that keeps more of the wind off me. The seat also lets me have more variations on seating positions, and it’s got a little trunk under the passenger seat that will hold a toolkit and my papers. They’re a pretty close comparison, and given the difference in purchase and maintenance costs, I’m still inclined to vote for the SV.

I’m wondering what the head-to-head equivalent will be this year, though. Does the SV still stand close to the Monster in the ’07 model year? They’ve cut back to 695 cc on the Monster (OK, dropped to 620 for a few years, then increased back to 695, but whatever), but increased power and decreased weight. Both manufacturers have switched to fuel injection. To improve handling, the Monster added a slipper clutch (popular with racers) to ease downshifts, and the SV has optional antilock brakes. In all, the SV has probably changed less… which means the Monster has probably pulled away in the rankings. Do you have to look at the Triumph 675cc 3-cylinder machines (Daytona and Street Triple) for Monster competition?

Yes, I’m still lusting after the Triumphs.

This weekend at a family gathering people raised their eyebrows at my line of business. Megan reminded me that it’s an opportunity to polish my writing skills and critical thinking abilities. Whatevs. I have been working on my one-liners.

This week, I described “K-Ville,” a serious cop drama set in post-Katrina New Orleans, as “Storm-damaged police struggle to preserve order in a storm-damaged city and their storm-damaged lives.” And tomorrow’s premier of “Kid Nation” is getting pegged as a “lawsuit-inspiring child-labor reality show, in which 40 kids head out into the desert and try to create a society without going all “Lord Of The Flies.” Spoiler: Piggy dies at the end.”

When some kid got Tasered at a political event, I obviously had to make it the video clip of the day. But since TV With MeeVee is a blog about entertainment, I kept the tone light by pointing out that the dude was now totally famous, and that the phrase “Don’t tase me, bro, AUUUUUUGHHHHH” was hilarious. You might think that’s in poor taste, but Michael Savage characterized the arresting officer as a “Bull-Dyke Fascist,” so I’m still well within the spectrum of acceptability. Here’s the clip:

On my other blog, I characterized Chloe Sevigny as the Christa McAuliffe of fashion. (That last is not an insult I invented, but it’s still totally great.) I’m also rather proud of the closing lines of an earlier dispatch about Reese Witherspoon, Ryan Phillippe, and depression: “Still, it’s touching to know that both Reese and Ryan experienced the same overwhelming, bottomless despair I feel every day when I wake up. I mean, wow, you know? Stars! They’re just like us! Only better-looking, and with more money, and with people who care about them!”

(Yes, really, that’s how the plural of bon mot is spelled. French declines the adjectives, you know.)