Month: June 2010

Posted on

Sunday Burst of Weird and AWESOME!

Oddities and Awesome abound!

:: Jilted husbands across the land take whatever measure of revenge they can get, huh? Behold: My Ex-Wife’s Wedding Dress! Wherein divorced men strike back at the gown their former spouse wore whilst exchanging vows. Funny, in that head-shaking kind of way.

:: I know where I want to stay if I ever go to Singapore. Coolest swimming pool ever.

:: An apparent submission for some sort of contest, this will be hard to beat. It’s a buy on a unicycle, playing the Star Wars them, on the bagpipes! WIN!!!

(via)

More next week!

Share This Post

Posted on

Something for Thursday

This song dates from the 1970s, and it has loopy lyrics to match, but the instrumental playing makes it one of the most infectious songs I’ve ever heard. We played a shortened version once at music camp — mainly shortened in omitting a verse and the soprano sax solo — and it was a blast. This is…well, it’s the kind of song Dick Clark was talking about when he referred to a song’s beat. The rhythm of this thing will keep you going for hours.

It’s in two parts because of YouTube’s time limits, but the person who did this picked a perfect spot for the break. Here’s Chuck Mangione and friends with “Land of Make Believe”. During the bigger passages, listen for quotes from children’s songs, like “Old McDonald” and “The Farmer in the Dell”.

Share This Post

Posted on

Quizzery, again

Cal comes up with this, and I figured I’d play along, even though it covers a lot of old territory from quizzes of yesteryear:

1.FULLNAME?

Lord Kelly, Scourge of Orion (yeah, there’s a story there…I should post about it someday)

2.NICKNAME(S)?

“Hey you!”

3.BIRTHPLACE?

Pittsburgh, PA

4.WEBSITE

It’s the one you’re looking at. Unless you’re reading this on Google Groups, in which case, it’s not.

5.FAVORITE SALAD DRESSING?

Extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar (but I also like good old ranch).

6.FAVORITE ICE CREAM FLAVOR?

Mint chocolate chip. Or vanilla bean. Or butter pecan. Or B&J’s New York Brownie Super Fudge Chunk. Or H-D’s coffee, which is miraculous stuff.

7.FUTURE CAREER GOALS?

Writing tales of star-spanning epics.

8.PROBABLE CAREER?

Maintenance/repair/carpentry. (Which isn’t at all bad, actually. Love what I do.)

9.FAVORITE FOOD?

Ummmm…just check the “Food” post label.

10.FAVORITE DRINK? (Non-alcoholic)

Lemonade, green tea, mint tea, coffee, Cherry Coke

11.FAVORITE SCHOOL SUBJECT?

Music, history, science, literature.

12.FAVORITE SCHOOL ACTIVITY?

Any of the music groups in which I was a member.

13.LEAST FAVORITE SCHOOL SUBJECT?

Depending on the teachers, math. Good teacher equals good math class. Teacher I hate equals hellish math experience. Oh, and geology. That’s the one science I’ve never been able to work up any enthusiasm for.

14.LEAST FAVORITE SCHOOL ACTIVITY?

Gym class when it was wrestling, basketball, or “Hey, I’m the coach and I don’t want to do much today so let’s just go to the track and run a mile”.

15.WHAT DO YOU LIKE MOST ABOUT YOUR TOWN?

My little suburb is a beautiful little village.

16.WHAT DO YOU LIKE LEAST ABOUT YOUR TOWN?

I’m not as rich as some folks here? I guess? Hmmmmm.

17.GREATEST ADVENTURE?

Whitewater kayaking on the Youghigheny River in Pennsylvania.

18.MOST ROMANTIC MOMENT?

So many, so many…telling the server at a restaurant on Cape Cod that it was our honeymoon.

19.HOW MANY PILLOWS?

Two. I use a third when I’m reading in bed, but I put it aside when it’s time for sleep.

20.PETS?

Lester, Julio and Comet.

21.THREE FAVORITE MOVIES? (THIS YEAR)

Huh…I haven’t seen a single 2010 release yet. I’m almost exclusively a wait-for-the-DVD person.

22.THREE FAVORITE MOVIES? (ALL TIME)

Star Wars: A New Hope, Casablanca, My Fair Lady

23.FAVORITE TV SHOWS (THIS YEAR)

Grey’s Anatomy, Hell’s Kitchen, Castle

24.THREE FAVORITE TV SHOWS? (ALL TIME)

Star Trek, Seinfeld, The X-Files

25.LEAST FAVORITE TV SHOWS

Full House, The Bachelor, Touched By An Angel.

26.THREE FAVORITE SONGS? (ALL TIME)

“Hallelujah”, Leonard Cohen (but performed by kd lang); “On the Street Where You Live” by Lerner and Loewe (from My Fair Lady); “Let It Be” by Paul.

27.THREE FAVORITE ALBUMS OR CDs?

The Lord of the Rings scores, extended editions, by Howard Shore; Der Ring des Nibelungen, by Wagner (Solti, VPO); Invisible Touch by Genesis.

28.THREE FAVORITE MUSIC VIDEOS?

“Hot For Teacher”, Van Halen; “People Get Ready”, Rod Stewart and Jeff Beck; “Glory Days”, Bruce Springsteen. (Honorable mentions to “Come On Eileen” by Dexy’s Midnight Runners, for the overalls, and “Fight For Your Right To Party” by the Beastie Boys for the pie fight.)

29.FAVORITE SINGER?

Frank Sinatra.

30.FAVORITE MUSICAL GROUP?

The London Symphony Orchestra. And Van Halen. And Pink Floyd. And Abba. And, of late, the Beatles.

31.MUSICAL SHAME?

I have Barry Manilow’s “I Write the Songs” on my MP3 player.

32.FAVORITE CELEBRITY?

Nathan Fillion.

33.LEAST FAVORITE CELEBRITY?

Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh.

34.MALE STAR?

Liam Neeson, Harrison Ford, Nathan Fillion.

35.FEMALE STAR?

Stana Katic, Chandra Wilson, Tina Fey

36.WORD OR PHRASE YOU OVER USE?

“Yeah, that‘s a good idea.”

37.SUPERPOWER YOU WOULD WANT?

Flight, super strength, and adamantium claws.

38.BODY PIERCINGS OR TATTOOS?

None.

39.IF YOU COULD WITNESS ONE EVENT IN HISTORY WHICH WOULD IT BE AND WHY WOULD YOU GO THERE?

I have got to know who, if anyone, was on that damned grassy knoll.

40.WHAT DO YOU THINK OTHERS ADMIRE ABOUT YOU?

My reliability. I’m there, man.

41.WHAT DO YOU ADMIRE MOST ABOUT YOURSELF?

My hair!

42.WHAT WOULD YOU CHANGE ABOUT YOURSELF IF YOU COULD?

I’d ditch, permanently speaking, about fifty of the pounds I’m carrying about.

43.IF YOU COULD LIVE ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD WHERE WOULD YOU GO? WHY?

I’d like a house on a nice piece of land somewhere around East Aurora, NY.

44.WHAT WOULD BE YOUR LAST MEAL? (INCLUDE EVERYTHING)

Pizza with sausage and pepperoni, chicken wings from Duff’s (medium), a couple of bottles of Yeungling Lager. Then a pint of ice cream.

(And if I’m on death row, I chase it all with a shot of ipecac.)

45.WHAT IS YOUR PREFERRED METHOD OF EXECUTION?

Crucifixion. It gets you out in the open air.

46.WHAT LIVING PERSON WOULD YOU MOST LIKE TO HAVE LUNCH WITH?

Nathan Fillion! (But he’d probably get sick of reciting Firefly lines on request.)

47.WHAT DEAD PERSON WOULD YOU MOST HAVE LIKED TO HAVE LUNCH WITH?

Abe Vigoda. Oh wait….

48.THREE BOOKS TO TAKE TO A DESERT ISLAND?

The Lord of the Rings (JRRT), The Lions of Al-Rassan (GGK), The Complete Works of William Shakespeare. Or maybe Boat Building for Dummies, the 2nd edition with the new chapter on making boats from palm trees.

49.THREE PEOPLE YOU KNOW TO TAKE TO A DESERT ISLAND?

Am I leaving three people on the island, or do I want them with me? If the former, the folks named in Question 33. If the latter, The Wife, The Daughter, and Norm Abram.

50.THREE WISHES? (NO FAIR WISHING FOR MORE WISHES)

Someone freakishly rich to buy the Buffalo Bills and keep them in Buffalo; New York State’s government to be completely scrapped and started over; the discovery of whatever power source drives the United Federation of Planets.

51.WHAT IS SOMETHING THAT MAKES YOU UNIQUE?

I like the Star Wars Prequel trilogy.

52.SPORT YOU MOST LIKE TO WATCH?

Football. Real football, with absurdly large guys in contact gear. Not that thing that’s going on in South Africa.

53.SPORT YOU MOST LIKE TO PARTICIPATE IN?

Biking, hiking.

54.WHAT DO YOU COLLECT?

I gather books.

55.WHO DO YOU ADMIRE MOST IN YOUR LIFE?

My parents. They put up with an amazing amount of my shit!

56.WHAT HISTORICAL PERIOD WOULD YOU HAVE LIKED TO LIVE IN?

The 1960s. I would have liked to see the beginning of the space age, the coming of the Beatles, and all the rest of it.

57.FAVORITE MONOPOLY PIECE?

The lead pipe. Oh wait, that’s Clue. The thimble, I guess.

58.FAVORITE BOARD GAMES?

Sorry. I should get off my butt and learn Settlers of Catan, though.

59.SPIRIT ANIMAL?

According to this quiz, it’s a hawk.

60.FAVORITE ANIMAL?

Cats. And orcas. And bison.

61.BEST AND WORST PARTS OF LIVING IN THE FUTURE?

Spaceships to the stars, yay! Everyone wearing gray jumpsuits and taking food in pill form, boo!

62.DO YOU PREFER CATS OR DOGS?

Cats. Dogs are OK, but I’m suspicious of them.

63.WHAT WOULD BE YOUR SPICE GIRL NAME IF YOU WERE IN THE GROUP?

Jedi Spice.

64.DO YOU PREFER COKE OR PEPSI?

You know…I really like both. Especially when they’re sweetened with cane sugar.

OK, there we go. Another quiz-thing bites the dust!

Share This Post

Posted on

Maybe it’s the name “Rand”

(Warning: I’m annoyed and political here.)

Rand Paul has some awesome advice for the unemployed:

“As bad as it sounds, ultimately we do have to sometimes accept a wage that’s less than we had at our previous job in order to get back to work and allow the economy to get started again,” Paul explained. “Nobody likes that, but it may be one of the tough love things that has to happen.”

Really. No shit. That’s all it takes, because Rand Paul has told us that all you have to do is just snatch up one of the millions of jobs that are out there, ripe for the picking like the apples in fall. All you gotta do is swallow your pride and take less pay!

Mr. Paul? I’d just like to say: No, f*** you.

I was unemployed some years ago, from July, 2002 to January, 2004. To hear Rand Paul tell it, I must have clearly been spending my time sleeping in, watching teevee and surfing Teh Interweb, chowing down on Ramen Noodles and enjoying the scenery on the back of my small unemployment checks (which sure didn’t run for eighteen months, either).

You know what I was really doing? Combing job classifieds in every local publication I could find. Searching online for jobs. Applying for all kinds of jobs that — guess what! — paid less than what I’d been making at the telesales job that had canned me. I tried lining up freelance work, and aside from a few nibbles and a few volunteer assignments, I found nothing. It took me eighteen months to finally land a job with a company that, in that time period, I applied with five times. And that was when the economy wasn’t in the toilet.

Someday when I collate my list of Things You Can Say That Will Instantly Reveal That You Are In Fact An Asshole, I’m sure that any variation of the conservative “Unemployed? Go get a job!” meme will be high on the list. To conservatives, there are always tons of jobs out there. There are always great schools that you can get your kids into. There’s always charity health care to be found, or, failing that, the ER. All millionaires should get tax breaks no matter what the economy is doing, science is something we should just ignore when we wanna, we can drill drill drill our way to energy independence, and our corporate overlords are demigods whose wisdom we should never, ever question.

(Hey, Rand? If you’re still looking for a job come the day after Election Day, I’ve got one for you: You can go around and take your idiot father’s Presidential campaign placards off all the telephone poles. Thanks.)

(Comments are closed.)

Share This Post

Posted on

Warren

One of my favorite college professors, Dr. Warren Schmidt, died last week. I’m not really sad about it, because he lived a long, full life that was full of music. He was 89 years old.

I had Dr. Schmidt for music theory and ear training classes. He also taught organ, as well as serving as the college organist for worship services and the like. He was exactly what you would expect an old music professor to be like, in appearance and dress, and while he conducted classes at first in the same way, as you got to know him, he would gradually loosen up until you knew what everyone else who had already had him for class knew: that Dr. Schmidt was a terribly warm and compassionate man with a wickedly sharp sense of humor.

It’s hard to remember too many specific examples of things he said, this long after I studied with him. (I was a freshman twenty years ago, after all!) One time, we were analyzing a chord progression that he had written on the blackboard, when one of my classmates raised her hand and said that the progression employed parallel octaves. “Parallel octaves” are when two voices in a chord progression move in such a way that they stay one octave apart. It’s a “no-no” in music theory and composition circles, although I was never entirely clear on why. The problem with this particular example was that the two voices involved actually stayed on the same notes from one chord to the next. Dr. Schmidt pointed this out, and the girl argued the point, insisting that since it was a new chord and since those two voices had stayed on the same notes one octave apart, we were looking at parallel octaves. Finally Dr. Schmidt grinned and said, “But they don’t move! They stay right there! In the example, nothing is moving! These aren’t parallel octaves, they’re constipated octaves!”

One other time, I was walking past his office when he called me inside. I couldn’t fathom why, but in I went. Dr. Schmidt’s office was the “homiest” of all the offices in the music department, with its carpeted floors and book-lined walls and the fact that he always kept the blinds drawn and the ceiling lights off, preferring instead to light the place with a couple of regular old lamps that looked like they’d come from a living room in the 1950s. Well, anyway, I went in, and he handed me a piece of paper and asks me what I see on the front of it. It was the bulletin from the campus worship service the day before, and on the front was the usual church bulletin stuff, plus a little picture in the middle, which was a stylized picture of the head of Jesus, wearing a crown. I was puzzled, but then Dr. Schmidt said, “Look!” And he covered the face of Crowned Jesus with his finger, so only the outline was visible: an elongated, spikey-headed face. “It’s Bart Simpson! Ay caramba!” I laughed, more out of disbelief than anything else. Dr. Schmidt was up on The Simpsons. And at that time (fall of 1989 or spring of 1990), I wasn’t even up on The Simpsons — they were only just beginning to capture the pop cultural imagination of America, and my freshman year I didn’t have a teevee at school anyway.

Dr. Schmidt’s organ playing was something to behold. He was a big believer in the notion that if you have a big space to fill with sound, well then, you’d best be about the business of filling it. He’d play small and intimate organ works, but that’s not what everyone wanted to hear when he was at the controls. When he would accompany a hymn during a service, he would up the ante with each verse, until at the last, he wouldn’t just pull out all the stops (literally!), it was almost like he installed new stops just so he could pull those.

He was very good at improvising, too, which sometimes led to amusing results when he’d start improvising during the hymns at the services. Dr. Schmidt would cheerfully modulate into any key he wanted to, at any moment. A common question on the lips of Wartburg College music students after one of Dr. Schmidt’s hymns was, “What key was that in?”

When he announced his retirement in 1991, and then gave his final recital in the spring, every single music major was there. It was one of the most emotional musical events I’ve ever experienced, although I couldn’t tell you now what he played that night. He closed it out with one of his typically theatrical tour de force pieces, by which time everyone who knew this was his farewell recital was in tears. He gave a single encore (I think), and then, acknowledging the second ovation with a single nod, left the auditorium and didn’t return.

After his retirement, Dr. Schmidt did some touring and traveling before eventually settling into a retirement facility in Waverly (the town where Wartburg is located). I was, in all honesty, a little surprised that he had still been alive last week. He’d been a regular smoker, and could often be found on the front steps of the music building, indulging himself. Once I asked him why he still smoked, given what we now knew about the habit, and he just shrugged and said, “None of us are getting out of this world alive, right?” I thought his response cynically funny, and preferable to the possibly more appropriate response to the question posed by a know-it-all college student: “Mind your f***ing business, dumb-ass.”

I’ve been remembering other things about Dr. Schmidt: his neat and precise handwriting, which he kept aligned by writing along a straight-edge; this little ditty he would play in ear training classes when someone would fail to identify a perfect fourth (one of the most basic of all musical intervals); the day he suddenly broke off in the middle of a lecture because the musical example in the textbook was from Franck’s Symphony in D minor, which Dr. Schmidt especially loved and proceeded to tell us why; talking about professors with a couple of other music students and having one girl say, “Do you have any idea how good looking he must have been when he was our age?”

Farewell, Dr. Schmidt.

Share This Post

Posted on

Dispatches from Popculturtopia

Some random stuff that I’ve seen around Teh Interweb:

:: Ridley Scott wants to make a couple of Alien prequels, apparently detailing the back story behind some visual thingie in the movie that fans have come to call the “Space Jockey”. I’m sure I won’t be queuing up for this when it comes out, as I’ve never been favorably impressed with the Alien movies, or, Attack of the Killer Space Vaginas, as I’ve come to think of them.

:: Ralph Macchio rules:

(Bad language alert!)

:: After a very long gestation process, Doug Adams’s book The Music of the Lord of the Rings Films is nearing publication! Huzzah!

More here.

:: Apropos of that, an interesting article on Richard Wagner and his legacy in film music. It’s kind of frustrating, though, to see a professor of music and a scholar of film music say something like this, referring to the leitmotif approach: “You can close your eyes and know who’s on screen.” No! No no no a thousand times NOOOO! A well-composed leitmotif-based film score is so much more than the composer simply saying, “Oh, Bob’s on the screen, so here’s Bob’s theme.” But it’s still an interesting article, nevertheless.

:: Ummmm…what the hell is this?!

OK, that’s enough of that, I suppose.

Share This Post

Posted on

Sunday Stealing

I stole this from Sunday Stealing, even though I’m posting it on Monday. Weird, huh?

1. The phone rings; who don’t you want it to be?

It can be anybody. Our home phone never rings anymore; we turned the ringer off years ago and now let the machine pick up all calls to that phone. As for the cell phones, I give the number to folks who are welcome to call, so it’s fine!

2. When shopping at the grocery store, do you return your cart?

To the thingies in the parking lot, yes. Always. I find it rude not to.

3. In a social setting, are you more of a talker or a listener?

Listener.

4. What was the last compliment that someone gave you?

“Hey, nice work on that thing you did that time!”

5. Do you play the lottery?

No. I used to play the occasional scratch-off, but even that was sporadic. Now, the only time I ever play anything lottery-related is if someone gives me a ticket. I did purchase a ticket for a basket-raffle a while back as a benefit to a coworker whose husband had passed, and I won a basket that was nothing but about three dozen lottery scratch-offs. I won $65.00 out of that. But no regular playing.

(And in truth, now that lottery scratch-off’s come in automated machines, I find it very depressing to watch old people stuffing some portion of their fixed incomes into those damned things.)

6. If abandoned alone in the wilderness, who would you want with you?

Wolverine from The X-Men. (Nothing about this specified a real person, right?)

7. Do you like to ride horses?

I’ve never tried. Horses kind of freak me out a bit, because they’re so friggin’ big.

8. Did you ever go to camp as a kid?

Music camp, yes. The Bristol Hills Music Camp in the Finger Lakes region. It was a wonderful, wonderful experience. I should probably write a post about that sometime.

9. What is your favorite party game?

I’m not a big fan of party games. But then, I don’t attend many parties, either.

10. If a sexy person was pursuing you, but you knew he/she was married, would you go for it?

Well, if I knew their marriage was already on the rocks and they were divorcing and her infidelity was unlikely to have any effect on that, then hey, why not OF COURSE NOT I’M MARRIED!!!

11. When was the last time that you lied?

Last night. It was one of those little white lies designed to throw The Daughter off the track of what our plans were for her birthday. She then went ahead and guessed what we were doing, anyway. Because she has an uncanny ability to guess surprises before we even say anything.

12. Could you date someone with different religious beliefs than you?

Sure, why not? (As long as they’re not an Objectivist. And I’d probably have a tough time with a Scientologist.)

Speaking of that, one of the funnier episodes of Cheers involved a big fight between Woody and girlfriend (or maybe wife by that time) Kelly, when they discovered they believed in different religions. Kelly was an ELCA Lutheran, while Woody was a Missouri Synod Lutheran. Woody screaming “Heretic!” at Kelly when she referred to some obscure point of Lutheran theology was hilarious.

13. If you have a S/O, who pursued who? If not, do you like to pursue or be pursued?

I’m married. It was mutual pursuit. She proposed, though.

14. Use six words to describe yourself.

Evil genius bent on world domination. (Huh, looks like I just lied again!)

15. Name a song that could make you cry?

“I Can Only Imagine”. We had it played at Little Quinn’s funeral.

16. Are you pleased with your education?

Sure. Even if I don’t use much of it for practical purposes.

17. How do you feel about gun control?

I don’t have a strong opinion. On the one hand, I’m continually puzzled by America’s odd gun fetish and the belief apparent in some segments of the Right that they need their guns to protect themselves from the Government. On the other hand, well…what’s the problem with owning a gun? Seems to me most efforts to control guns run afoul of the Second Amendment, and I’m not at all interested in repealing that.

I am unlikely to ever own a gun, though. I have no desire to so much as touch one.

18. If your house was on fire, what thing would be the first thing you grabbed?

The cats. Followed by laptop, external hard drive, and wallet.

19. How often do you have a romantic weekend?

Not often enough. A whole weekend? Maybe once a year.

20. Do you think more about the past, present or future?

The future.

21. What was the last adult magazine that you have read?

I’ve never read one, except for the occasional flipping through one with a friend in grade school when I’d be at their house and they’d show me their father’s stash that the father didn’t know the kid knew about. Porn is, for me, like guns: hey, rock on if that’s your thing, but I have no interest, myself.

22. What are you told about your eyes?

I’m told that every emotion I have shows in them.

23. How tall is just right?

Tall enough that your pants are neither dragging on the ground nor “flood pants”. Of course, this can be alleviated by having one’s pants at the right length. Therefore, I have no opinion on “correct” height.

24. Where is your dream house located?

Just a couple of miles away, actually.

The house across the street is for sale now. I floated the plan of buying that house, and then becoming sufficiently bad neighbors that the evil folks squatting in our dream house get the hell out. This plan was rejected by The Wife, for reasons passing understanding.

25. Do you have a secret fetish?

Let’s see…well, there’s that one, but I assume that one’s out of the bag…and then there’s that one, which is probably pretty obvious…nope, they’re pretty much all right out there in the open!

26. Have you tried bourbon? If yes, what type?

Yup. Jack Daniel’s, obviously, and a couple others. It was OK, but I remain a rum person.

27. Have you ever seen a male or female stripper?

No.

28. When was the last time you were at TGI Fridays?

Years ago, for lunch following a meeting for work. It was when I worked with Pizza Hut, I think. It was OK.

29. When was the last time you were at Church?

This morning.

30. Where was the furthest place you traveled today?

Church. This morning.

31. What was your favorite job?

The one I’m working now! (And I’m not making this up just in case my bosses read this. It’s the actual answer.)

32. What condiments do you like at your BBQ?

Depends on what all is being served. Mustard, if it’s dogs and/or sausages; ketchup and mustard if it’s burgers; barbecue sauce if it’s that sort of thing.

33. Bud is hosting Thursday Thunks this week. Will you play?

Ummm…maybe? (“Thursday Thunks” is another weekly quiz-thing blog.)

34. Do you look like your mom or dad?

People always told me as a kid that I looked like my father, so I guess that’s my answer here. Not sure how true that is. (He has neither long hair nor a beard.)

35. Who was the last person that you showered with (it’s okay to leave out the name)?

Well, the answer here is who you think it would be, but I’m not saying that outright, because, well, you know….

Share This Post

Posted on

Sentential Links #209

Linkage time! Hooray!!!

:: If Republicans gain control of the House, there is no question they will attempt to impeach Obama, for SestakGate, for iPodGate, for Henry Louis GatesGate. I don’t think there’s any question that much of the liberal media will support impeachment too. I am pretty confident that the public will not support it.

:: She still had a ways to go, but she was surely one lucky dove.

:: And you know what’s so badass about my new BFF? He was really, really good at killing Nazis.

:: HAPLESS DUDE is ahead of me on line. He is stammering compliments to ADORABLE CASHIER. She is looking like she would rather be anywhere, even on the MOON, rather than being hit on by this guy.

:: Rather disturbingly, Wonder Woman herself also seems to enjoy anything to do with chains – they bring out a gleeful delight in her, mostly because she believes it’s great fun to break them.

:: So, most of the wars fought by the United States, starting with the Revolutionary War, included a subtext, even the promise, of justice for, and fair treatment of African-Americans. World War I and especially the Civil War brought the issue to the fore. But it was with World War II, with large numbers of black soldiers in uniform, that the contradiction between fighting for freedom for others and a lack of freedom back at home reached a tipping point.

:: When you’re replacing a memory stick in your computer, there’s a satisfying little slide-and-click sound that lets you know you not only did it right, you also got the right part. Writing is like that.

All for this week. More next week!

Share This Post

Posted on

Food is now flying out of both kitchens

We got caught up on Hell’s Kitchen last night, by watching the episodes that aired this past Tuesday night. Apparently they’ll have two episodes again this Tuesday, so I suspect that FOX is trying to get through as much HK as they can before Gordon Ramsay’s new show, Master Chef, debuts sometime in July.

Anyway, some random observations on where everyone stands and how the season is proceeding:

:: I liked seeing the Blue team (the men) use their “punishment” for losing a challenge as a way of building their teamwork. They had to go to a particularly nasty spot along the Los Angeles River and pick up trash, which wasn’t just small crap but stuff like shopping carts. (The LA River, in LA, flows through a bunch of man-made flood-control channels made of concrete. Remember the “Thunder Road” race in Grease? That’s one of the LA River channels.)

:: Strong contestants are emerging: Nilka on the Red team, and Benjamin on the Blue. Others are falling into the “making it interesting” category: Holli and Fran for the Red, Salvatore and Jason for the Blue.

:: Contestants I don’t have a handle on yet: Siobhan and Maria for the Red team; Ed and Jay for the Blue. These folks haven’t distinguished themselves one way or the other yet. Siobhan seems a bit fragile, but maybe she finds her strength and bounces back a bit. It’s happened before on HK — in fact, it might have happened already this year, with Salvatore. (And I still like her because of her red dreadlocks. I’m shallow.)

:: The contestants I’m unimpressed with: Scott for the Blue team, Autumn for the Red. Of course, now that’s reversed, because both were nominated for elimination this week only to be simply switched to the other team. Scott is an obnoxious know-it-all whose high opinion of his own knowledge and ability is not yet backed up by any evidence, and Autumn has the same faults plus a bit of added backstabbery in action. She’s the kind of person who is very quick to find someone else to blame for her screw-ups, like when she played dumb about the oversalted water last week and when she simply refused to speak up when Siobhan was getting pilloried by Chef Ramsay for not cooking all of her eggs herself, as she’d been instructed to do. (As soon as they went to the kitchen, Autumn said “Hey Siobhan, I’ll cook some of your eggs for you.”) Plus the way Autumn looked down her nose at the burgers-and-fries cooking challenge (“I cook at a much higher level than lunch stuff”) was utterly obnoxious. Her “blame others” schtick may work for a while, but sooner or later Gordon Ramsay always sees through this.

:: Speaking of that, I find it gets annoying on these reality teevee shows when contestants don’t show any evidence of having watched the show they’re on before! It always bugs me on The Amazing Race when contestants flip out over what plane they’ll take at the beginning of the episode, when the show is clearly set up to make sure that all contestants more or less get to the same place at the same time. Ditto Hell’s Kitchen, when a week ago, the teams nominated contestants for elimination for reasons other than picking who had just had the worst dinner service. Every year someone tries the “I’ll nominate the annoying person!” or “I’ll nominate the person I really don’t like!” or “I’ll nominate the person I believe to be my toughest competition!” strategy, and every time, Gordon Ramsay ignores the nominations and gives the truly deserving person the boot.

:: In one of the episodes this week, two contestants — Salvatore and Holli — were sent out into the dining room to work that end of things. They were both put into identical suits, which reminds me that I just hate it when women are required to wear what is essentially a man’s uniform. Neckties on women bug me. Always have.

:: Before last week’s episodes, I had never heard of the vegetable “salsify” before. If I had seen that word on a page, I would assume it was a verb meaning, “to make salsa out of”. As in, “Take these tomatoes, onions, garlic, and peppers and salsify them.”

More observations as the season progresses!

Share This Post