Month: March 2010

Posted on

Nice flying, but you still owe me a thousand credits for the dish antenna.

The Daughter and I watched Return of the Jedi last week, and I remembered a thought that’s occurred to me a number of times over the years when watching the movie. I know, we see Han Solo and Lando Calrissian do some awesome flying of the Millennium Falcon over the course of the original Star Wars trilogy, but even so, I’m not sure we always appreciate how difficult it must be to do the things with that bulky freighter that they do.

Here’s the asteroid field sequence from The Empire Strikes Back:

And here’s the Battle of Endor (just the space parts) from Return of the Jedi:

So what’s so abnormal about this? The Star Wars movies, all of ’em, are full of lots of great space flying and whatnot, from Anakin’s podracer all the way to Lando blowing up the Death Star II. So what’s so special about flying the Millennium Falcon? Well, look at the ship — where every other ship in Star Wars has its cockpit nicely centered, the Falcon does not. Its cockpit is way over on the starboard side (from the perspective of the pilot), so when flying it, ninety percent of the ship’s width is to the pilot’s left! Now, since the Falcon is originally a freighter, this probably isn’t that big a deal, when you’re using the Falcon as such — as a ship to ferry stuff from one planet to the next. But if you’re going to engage in high-speed derring-do in the middle of an asteroid field, or if you’re going to fly the ship through the superstructure of an enormous space station at very high speeds, to be able to negotiate those tight spaces while being instinctively aware of your ship’s lopsided design, well — that makes you an even more awesome pilot than anyone ever believed.

Clearly the Falcon and its class of freighters weren’t designed to be used in the way that Han Solo and Lando Calrissian use her, but as I’ve noted before, design and use aren’t the same thing.

(BTW, in ROTJ, does anybody else besides me ever feel a bit sorry for that last TIE fighter pilot? The one that follows Lando and Wedge all the way to the reactor core and then follows them almost all the way back out again before getting killed in the fireball that’s swallowing the Death Star II from within? That’s gotta suck. I’m sure that guy wasn’t even thinking of trying to shoot down the Falcon once he reached the core; he’s probably saying to himself, “Oh shit oh shit oh shit OK I did it once before I can get through this again oh shit God I wish that f***ing freighter would move his ass otherwise I could get the hell out of here wow it’s getting hot in here oh sh–!”)

Share This Post

Posted on

Sentential Links #199

One more to 200! Woo-hoo!

:: In the end, that’s the real problem with reboots; not only do they not really give the title a fresh start, they don’t really make it any more accessible. Within a year or two, the new continuity has its own backstory to wade through, and a few years after that, it’s just as convoluted and messy as the old one. (This is about comic book reboots and not cinematic ones, which I’m more well-versed about, but the concerns are still real.)

:: Today marks the Vernal Equinox, the date in which the amount of daytime and nighttime are equal, bringing to end the long dark winter nights, ushering longer sunlit days. It’s typically a time of celebration, but in the kingdom of Urland, the Equinox is a day of woe. Urland’s King Casiodorus long ago made a pact with Verminthrax Pejorative, the feared dragon that terrorizes his lands: The dragon will leave the kingdom in peace in exchange for a virgin sacrifice offered up twice a year on the Vernal and Autumnal Equinox. (Oddly, I wasn’t that big a fan of the movie Dragonslayer when it came out, even though I was ten and it was full of wizards and dragons and young heroes and all that stuff. The book sounds interesting, so if I ever run across a copy, maybe I’ll give it a look.)

:: Batman in the 70s wasn’t quite the always-wins, prepared-for-anything, can-take-down-God-in-unarmed-combat dude he became post-Dark Knight Returns. Nope, Batman could be taken down by you or me (provided we were, like, not completely out of shape and sitting in front of our computers). (You know, that was what tipped me from being undecided about Dark Knight Returns into not liking it. I just can’t believe that, unless he’s filled his utility belt with Kyptonite, that Batman could last eight seconds against Superman. Batman is, for all his training and toys, just a guy, and I can’t believe Superman couldn’t kick his ass with a single punch.)

:: “American Idol” is like the Academy Awards this year – a plethora of nominees but only two real contenders. (Sheesh, don’t get me started. I may not even bother watching the rest of this season. I already missed last week’s show owing to a school function for The Daughter, and I didn’t feel like I was missing anything. Thousands of people audition at all those stadiums, and the judges boil it all down to this group of crappy singers? And America votes Lilly off just before the final 12, when she was by far the most unique musician in the lot? Rubbish. I used to love me some American Idol, but my enthusiasm is seriously on the wane.)

:: I want more wood and brass in my life and less plastic. (I agree. And more light by burning flame!)

:: I’ve whined about this before and I’m sure I’ll whine about it again, but the business model the big box stores, and the littler box stores, have pinned their greedy hopes on is, basically, that every customer who comes into the store to spend one dollar ought to leave having spent two.

:: I’ve gone and bought a turntable. (Of course, I can’t go this retro, as I don’t have room for a turntable anywhere. But when I buy a new stereo, which will probably happen sometime later this year, it’ll still have a CD player.)

:: How else do you date a cute girl while wearing THAT shirt. (Boy Howdy….)

All for this week. Tune in next week!

Share This Post

Posted on

A quiz thing!

There’s a blog out there called Sunday Stealing that does nothing but provide quiz things. So I’m officially doing one of theirs. Hooray!

TEN TO START.

1. Are you single?

No.

2. Are you happy?

Kinda.

3. Are you bored?

Not right now.

4. Are you naked?

I like to keep readers, so…no. (Really! No.)

5. Are you a blonde?

No. But I was at birth, oddly enough.

6. Are you moody?

Sure.

7. Are you a lover/hater?

I hate loving. Or love hating. OK, not really, but I’m not sure what this means.

8. Are you hot/cold?

Right now I’m on the warm side. But I can cool off quickly.

9. Are you Irish?

Half. The other half is German.

10. Are you Asian?

Wow, that came out of nowhere. No, I’m not.

TEN FACTS.

1. Name:

I don’t give out my name.

2. Nicknames:

“Hey you!”

3. Birth mark:

A map of Poland, with its pre-1939 borders.

4. Hair color:

Brown, but graying rapidly. Just typing that answer saw three more gray hairs appear.

5. Natural hair color:

The one I’ve got now.

6. Eye color:

Blue or “hazel”, whatever the hell color “hazel” is.

7. Height:

5’10”.

8. Facebook Mood:

Errr…not sure.

9. Favorite color:

Purple

10. One Place to Visit:

Well, you can visit the State Penitentiary, but I don’t recommend it unless you know someone there.

TEN THINGS ABOUT YOUR LOVE LIFE.

1. Do you believe in love at first sight?

No. But I believe in overwhelming physical attraction.

2. Do you believe in soul mates?

No. That is to say, I don’t believe we only have one.

4. Have you ever been hurt emotionally?

No. Somehow I’ve spent 38 years on Planet Earth, interacting with other human beings, and never suffered the smallest emotional trauma. Yay!

5. Have you ever broken someone’s heart?

I hope not.

6. Have you ever been cheated on?

Lord, I hope not!

7. Have you ever liked someone and not told them?

Always! And never!

8. Are you afraid of commitment?

Yes. Wait until The Wife figures this out, huh?

9. Who was the last person you hugged?

The Wife.

10. Who was the last person you kissed?

The Wife.

TEN THIS OR THAT.

1. Love or lust?

Luvst. Mix ’em together, says I!

3. Cats or dogs?

Cats. Dogs are OK, but they mostly bug me.

4. A few best friends or many regular friends?

Both.

5. Television or internet?

Internet, which is where I get my teevee. We don’t even have cable. Don’t need it. (Hey, what if they had the Internet on television? They could call it WebTV! Gotta call the patent office….)

6. Chinese Or Indian?

Food? Chinese.

7. Wild night out or romantic night in?

Romantic night out, followed by a wild night in.

8. Money or Happiness?

Money, with which I will buy happiness. Yes, you can totally buy happiness. Don’t believe the naysayers!

9. Night or day?

Night.

10. MSN or phone?

Neither. E-mail or Facebook message. You can call, but I almost certainly won’t answer. I will call back, though. I just don’t answer my phone unless I’m married to you or the person I married gave birth to you.

TEN HAVE YOU EVER.

1. Been caught sneaking out?

No.

2. Been skinny dipping?

Yes, and I have photos right here. (No, I haven’t, and no photos, either. What kind of weirdo do you think I am?)

3. Stolen?

Yes, but either accidentally (as in the small item I forgot to pay for at the checkout, or the usual “swiping a box of paperclips from the office” thing).

4. Bungee jumped?

No. Would like to, however.

5. Lied to someone you liked?

Yes. I like you, after all, and some of these answers are false.

6. Finished an entire jaw breaker?

Yes. Don’t like ’em.

8. Wanted an ex bf/gf back?

No, because they were uniformly insane. (Except one, actually. She’s the one I felt bad about.)

9. Cried because you lost a pet?

Absolutely.

10. Wanted to disappear?

Absolutely.

TEN PREFERENCES IN A PARTNER.

1. Smile or eyes?

Smiling eyes.

2. Light or dark hair?

Any color hair is fine. Red’s awesome, though.

3. Hugs or kisses?

Both.

4. Shorter or taller?

No preference. If taller, not a foot taller or something like that.

5. Intelligence or attraction?

I’m attracted to intelligence.

6. Romantic or spontaneous?

Why are these mutually exclusive? Spontaneous can be romantic, can’t it?

7. Funny or serious?

Funny.

8. Older or Younger?

Either.

9. Outgoing or quiet?

Either.

10. Sweet or Bad Ass?

Sweetly bad-ass.

TEN HAVE YOU’S.

1. Ever performed in front of a large crowd?

Yes.

2. Ever done drugs?

Aside from alcohol, no.

3. Ever been pregnant?

I’m a guy, so….

5. Ever been on a cheer leading team?

No.

6. Ever Been on a dance team?

No.

7. Ever been on a sports team?

No. (Should have tried out for swim team in school, though.)

8. Ever been in a drama play/production?

I was in the orchestra for a couple of shows, does that count?

9. Ever owned a BMW, Mercedes Benz, Escalade, Hummer or Bentley?

Why would I want to? A car should get me from point A to point B, be able to play some decent music while doing so, and have enough room for my tools. And it shouldn’t cost a ridiculous amount to fill it (or require filling freakishly often).

10. Ever been in a rap video?

You gotta love these quizzes where questions come out of left field.

TEN LASTS.

1. Last phone call you made:

To dial my own voicemail. (Before that, The Wife.)

2. Last person you hung out with:

The Daughter. (Non-relatives: a friend from work.)

4. Last time you worked:

Friday.

5. Last person you tackled:

I sacked Tony Romo for an eight yard loss in the Cowboys’ third preseason game last year. (No, I didn’t. Tackling? Is there some slang definition of “tackling” I don’t know about?)

6. Last person you IM’d:

It’s been a really long time since I IM’d anyone. Odd, since I always liked IMing people as a means of communication.

8. Last person(s) you went to the movies with:

The Wife.

9. Last thing you missed:

I winged a large rock at the head of a rhinoceros, but missed. OK, no, I didn’t. I’m not sure what this means — I miss my mother in law, who died a year ago. Is that what this means?

10. Last thing you ate:

A banana. In a little bit I’m going to drink a Dr. Pepper.

That’s all she wrote!

Share This Post

Posted on

Arrrr!


Arrrr! The BPO plays Piratical Classics, originally uploaded by Jaquandor.

We’ve just returned from attending the Buffalo Philharmonic’s “Family” concert this afternoon, which was “Pirate” themed. It was an entertaining hour, with musical selections that were all relevant to either pirates or the sea or both. They started with the overture to The Flying Dutchman by Wagner, although in what is starting to seem like an odd habit for the BPO, they didn’t play the entire thing. I’m not sure what all the abridging is about, over at Kleinhans, but it’s starting to get really disconcerting to hear pieces I know well and then note the absence of parts of those pieces. I suppose the rationale today was that it was a children’s program and the entire ten minute overture might lose them at some point, but…well, I’m a fan of playing the entire work, as I’ve noted previously.

Anyway, they did one of the Pirate King’s numbers from The Pirates of Penzance, a selection from Debussy’s La Mer, the storm from Peter Grimes by Britten, and a couple of welcome selections of film music: Captain Blood by Korngold and Pirates of the Caribbean, credited to Klaus Badelt but really written by Hans Zimmer. Everything was played with lots of vim and vigor by the BPO musicians (minus a few of the personnel, whom I assume must have been given days off as the orchestra has just returned from a Florida tour), even if conductor Joseph Young set some awfully brisk tempi and kept things moving a bit too quickly for my tastes. (A little rubato never hurt anyone, folks!)

The selections were played amidst a running storyline of sorts as Maestro Young tried to win over the guest “pirate crew” (played by members of a local college men’s choir) and let him onto their crew. He conducted a good portion of the program wearing an enormous tricorn on his head, which was nice. I keep waiting for the tricorn to come back into fashion, but I think it may be done.

Anyhow, it was an enjoyable hour at the BPO. These family concerts are fun. Now, if I could get the Resident Kid to get more enthusiastic about them! But Rome wasn’t built in a day, and I remember that when I was her age, going to orchestra concerts wasn’t my favorite thing to do, either. Took me a few years of playing an instrument before I decided I loved the idea of concert-going.

Share This Post

Posted on

So much awesome in one place!


300+ bikes, originally uploaded by mtflickyou.

I saw this photo on Flickr. I have no idea what the story is behind this, but it appears to be a bunch of people setting out on a long excursion involving bicycles. For some reason, they’re all wearing overalls. Bikes and overalls? Never thought to mix the two, but hey, why not? Cool!

(BTW, looking a bit through this fellow’s photostream, it appears he’s been to a lot of amazing places. I love travel photography, and there’s some awfully nice shooting going on here.)

Share This Post

Posted on

Sunday Burst of Weird and AWESOME!

I’m retitling this weekly feature, so as to take the emphasis a little off the “weird” and put it more on the AWESOME which I often tend to post in this series anyway. OK? OK! Oddities abound!

:: With the exception of that road in Bolivia, which would almost certainly either scare the living crap out of me or outright kill me, I’d cheerfully drive any one of these roads. Wow!

:: I waffled on linking this here or in Sentential Links, because it’s pretty well written as a crude humor piece. But I’m going to put it here, I suppose. There’s a spice mix out there called “Satan’s Ashes”, which is apparently as hot as food can possibly get. A guy decided to make, and eat, a curry using this stuff. Hilarity ensues, in a post called The Day My Arse Died.

Satan’s Ashes are comprised of the usual things you might expect in a quality curry powder: Garam Masala, Cumin and so on but also the Dorset Naga chilli (880,000 on the Scoville scale), the Naga Morich (953,721 on the Scoville scale) and the infamous Bhut Jolokia which – at 1,001,304 Scoville units is the world’s hottest chilli pepper. To put that into some kind of context, that makes the Bhut Jolokia over 100 times hotter than a Jalapeno, 20 times hotter than a Tobasco pepper and 3 times hotter than a Scotch Bonnet.

In India, Bhut Jolokia is smeared on fences to repel elephants. This noxious, possibly poisonous substance which even elephants have no truck with, was precisely what I intended to put in my mouth and eventually pass out of my arse.

I’m reaching for a water bottle just thinking about this. He’s got pictures, too! (Don’t worry, no horrible pictures or anything. It’s a food post. With inedible food.)

:: Check out this gallery of the posters NASA produces for each space mission it launches. Some of these are great.

More next week!

Share This Post

Posted on

Food: I like it!

I’ve been doing a greater than normal amount of blogging about food this year, haven’t I? Oh well, it’s all part of my rediscovered love of cooking and whatnot. Here are some recent doings in Food at Casa Jaquandor.

:: I do love a good salad! I tend to keep my salads fairly minimalistic; I don’t pile on numerous kinds of veggies and other things for an enormous explosion of different kinds of flavors. My favorite salad these days consists of lettuce (of a dark green variety) or spinach, a can of tuna, and a dressing. Here’s a non-tuna salad I had last week:

Salad: the dinner of champions!

All that’s on this is the lettuce, a tomato that I diced up, and a dressing of extra virgin olive oil and red wine vinegar. A hunk of good bread is a must for sopping up what’s left of the oil and vinegar after I’ve eaten the salad.

:: Waffles are wonderful in all possible ways. I love waffles. I adore waffles. I couldn’t live without waffles.

The bestest of all possible meals.

My favorite way to have waffles is the basic way, with a couple of sausages on the side and covered in beautiful, beautiful maple syrup. The real stuff, that is — a few years ago we bought some real maple syrup for a recipe and used the rest of the bottle on waffles and pancakes, after which we realized that we’d never be able to go back to Mrs. Butterworth’s or Log Cabin or whatever else. Gotta be real maple syrup.

Most times we make normal, classic waffles. We do own a Belgian waffle maker which we dust off once in a while for a change of pace; Belgian waffles are nice from time to time. (They tend to have a lighter batter and have larger squares.) One restaurant we used to go to had an ice cream sundae that consisted of half a Belgian waffle onto which they would plop a scoop or two of vanilla ice cream and then top the whole thing with hot fudge. Ooooooh, now I want one of those.

Waffles rock!

:: We’re huge fans of sausage at Casa Jaquandor; sausage is wonderful stuff. Italian sausage, Polish sausage, pork breakfast sausage, and our favorites, bratwurst! The best way to have brats is to grill them over charcoal, obviously, but pan-frying them is a good way to go in a pinch (or when it’s winter in Buffalo and you just don’t feel like digging the grill out from under the snowpack that covers it).

Droollllll....

I prefer to brown them on a medium-high setting on their sides, and then turn the heat down to cook them through all the way. When cooking inside, I’ll put a bit of liquid — water or beer — into the pan to keep the smoking down. These bratwursts are cooked perfectly, I must say.

Don’t turn them too much, just enough to keep them from getting too brown on one side.

Turn, turn, turn....

When finished, serve in buns. I slather mine with mustard (either brown mustard, like Gulden’s, or horseradish yellow mustard, like Webbers — French’s Yellow Mustard is just wrong for brats). The Wife likes to slather her mustard on both sides of the bun, as opposed to my way (the top of the sausage). Nothing wrong with that practice at all; I just like it this way.

Brats! Wurst!

(Let’s not discuss the tater tots, OK? I thought I had a can of Bush’s Baked Beans for the side dish, and it turned out I didn’t. As I didn’t have time to do proper roasted potatoes, it was tater tots for the side dish. My preferred side dish for brats is potato salad, anyway. Oops.)

:: The day after St. Patrick’s Day, The Daughter suddenly exclaimed, “We never had Shamrock Shakes!” Yes, we like the minty green shakes from the shake machine at Mickey Dee’s, but…well, they’re from a machine. And I’m not even sure if Mickey Dee’s even had them this year. Usually they advertise these a little, right? Actually, I have no idea what’s going on at Mickey Dee’s anymore. We’re not much for the fast food scene these days.

And in any event, I have the ability to make my own Shamrock Shakes. You’re finished, Shake Nazi! No more Shakes for you! Next!

OK, where was I? Well, this is very easy to do. It’s ice cream, milk, and flavoring.

Ice cream goes into the blender:

"Shamrock Shakes" I

Followed by milk:

"Shamrock Shakes" II

"Shamrock Shakes" III

Followed then by flavoring, in this case, creme de menthe syrup:

"Shamrock Shakes" IV

And then, we blend!

"Shamrock Shakes" V

(Blending is more fun if you make a mock face of horror as the blender goes to town.)

After blending, we pour!

"Shamrock Shakes" VI

And finally, we enjoy.

"Shamrock Shakes" VII

These didn’t turn out as smooth as I wanted, which means that my blender setting wasn’t high enough. They were still mighty fun and tasty, though. Obviously, one can change up the flavor any way one wishes, simply by using a different flavoring — I’ve made maple shakes by putting maple syrup in instead of creme de menthe, for example. And it occurs to me that adult shakes could be made by using rums or some kind of liqueur.

So there you have it — recent food follies at Casa Jaquandor!

Share This Post

Posted on

Why so serious?

A while back, The Wife and I watched The Dark Knight. What did we think of it?

Well, The Dark Knight is certainly a good movie, but wow, it’s dark. Really dark. It’s a grim, grim, grim movie. It’s so grim that when The Wife and I finally watched it recently, we each liked it but we each also felt the need to decompress after with a couple of episodes of Mad About You. There is almost no humor in The Dark Knight, which may seem kind of ironic, considering that the villain this time out is the Joker, but then, the film also understands that there’s nothing funny at all about the Joker. That’s something the first Tim Burton batfilm didn’t really understand, to that film’s detriment. Who, watching that movie, didn’t find the Joker just a bit awesome and fun? The Dark Knight gives us a Joker whose jokes just aren’t funny in the slightest, because they almost invariably involve someone dying horribly.

I don’t have a lot to say about the movie that hasn’t been written before. I’m actually not the biggest fan of Batman around, and I’ve never found Batman to be the eternal source of Awesome that many do. I like the character’s somewhat grim background, but lots of characters have grim backgrounds, and it always seems to me that Bruce Wayne’s background is pretty contradictory — he’s able to build this enormous business empire despite a near total lack of ability to sustain any kind of human relationship. I don’t know, but there’s always something about Bruce Wayne that makes me want to slap him and say, “Jeez, man, you’ve got it made! Quit brooding over everything!”

Basically it seems that the current notion of Batman is to take, say, the brooding qualities of Peter Parker and crank them up to 11. Spiderman defeats the villain but can’t reap the rewards? Well, Batman defeats the villain and becomes a total pariah from society! Batman is haunted by the deaths of just about every single person he’s ever allowed to become close! Batman doesn’t even seem to enjoy the gizmos he gets to play with; at least Peter Parker gets to enjoy web-slinging his way around New York.

I admired The Dark Knight‘s production quality (even though some of the action sequences are a bit hard to follow). One thing I liked is that a surprising amount of the film takes place in bright daylight, including the bank heist that opens the movie. All of the promotional materials, trailers, everything for the movie — including the ending of the previous movie — paint a picture of Gotham City as being a place of constant darkness and rain, not unlike the Los Angeles of Blade Runner. Thus it came as a bit surprising that when the movie opens, it’s mid-afternoon on a bright sunny day. You don’t need physical dark to have a dark movie, after all.

That’s about all I have to say about The Dark Knight. I liked it, thought it was really good, et cetera. But wow, I wish Batman was even a little fun to be around.

Share This Post

Posted on

Sorry for the radio silence….

…but it’s been a really busy week, and come to think of it, the weekend is pretty jammed up, too. Yowza.

(BTW, on a “metablog” note, I’m noticing that sometimes I approve comments for publishing here, and yet, for some reason, they don’t actually appear, and then I notice when I log on a day or two later that I have a comment awaiting moderation. Odd….)

Share This Post