Mickey has a warning (actually, it’s kind-of a “warning in progress” that’s been going on for a while, and I kept forgetting to link it) about the new DVD release of Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life. Apparently Disc One doesn’t play correctly in “progressive scan” players. (What does that mean, anyway?)

Anyway, those who are interested in this particular title should beware. (I currently own no Python on DVD, mainly because Python’s not really the sort of thing one can view in the presence of a four-year-old. Holy Grail is probably OK, and I suppose episodes of Flying Circus are fine. But Life of Brian? Nope. And Meaning of Life is right out.)

Share This Post

All the genetic research these days is fascinating. The implications are huge for things like when they identify the gene that makes people more prone to cancer and whatnot. But what I really want them to isolate is the gene that makes cats beg to go outside, so they can merely walk out, sniff the air, and come right back in. Or the gene that makes cats observe any object being placed on a floor, chair or bed, and deciding, “I’m going to lay down on that.” Or the gene that allows cats to sleep through all manner of incredibly loud noises, with the sole exception of the vacuum cleaner, which terrifies them utterly. Or the gene that makes cats carefully analyze the situation each time they want to make the roughly two-foot jump (total distance, that) from the floor onto my lap, when they can jump up heights of four feet or more without stopping to think about it at all in other circumstances. Or the gene that makes a cat walk across my lap, left-to-right, then back again right-to-left, and then left-to-right again, and so on until, having made at least four complete circumnavigations of my lap, deciding to lay down.

Share This Post

Kevin Drum wants to know what’s up with all the constant speculation on Hillary Rodham Clinton: will she run for President, will she stay out of the race, and why is it that every utterance by her or by her husband is interpreted by many on the right as a calculated maneuver in her and her husband’s long-standing conspiracy to return to power.

I doubt she’ll run in 2004. If she ever runs at all, I expect it to be either in 2008 (if next year’s Democratic nominee loses) or 2012 (if next year’s nominee wins). My thinking here is that Clinton wants to build up a record of her own in the Senate (where I generally think she’s doing a good job, although I’d like to see some more pork in Buffalo, to be quite honest) and put some distance of time between her and her years as First Lady. Even then, I suspect that the stars are simply aligned that Hillary Clinton is more likely to become a person of enormous influence in the Democratic Party, but probably never actually President.

I know that the mere mention of Mrs. Clinton’s name sends many on the right into fury, which I don’t understand, but there it is. I can certainly understand the antipathy to the most visible national figure on the opposite side of the political aisle, but the hatred of Hillary seems to go deeper than that, at least in my perception. A typical comparison is that she’s rather like Ted Kennedy, a figure to be revered on the left but who will never ascend to higher office because of dirty laundry. But that baffles me: no charge of “dirty laundry” has ever actually stuck or been proven true, and she was a victim of the one bit of dirty laundry that stuck to her husband. And the Ted Kennedy comparison doesn’t work, to me, because – – well, Mrs. Clinton never did anything that left anyone dead. (I take it as given that Vince Foster really did kill himself.)

Anyway, my reaction to all the Hillary Clinton speculation is a mixture of “Why?” and “Who cares?”

Share This Post

Neil Gaiman, a guy I really hate because he does everything I want to do and way better than I could do it, was featured on NPR’s Talk of the Nation the other day, in a good, long interview that mainly deals with comics. Gaiman sounds entirely too happy for some of the dark stuff he writes. For instance, when host Neil Conan asks Gaiman why the Sandman is so dour, Gaiman chuckles and says something like, “Yeah, he is a gloomy bugger, isn’t he?” Anyway, it’s a great interview. Gaiman’s take on the Joseph Campbell “Hero’s Journey” is a hoot.

Share This Post

Speaking of Gone With the Wind, I’m watching Sunday Morning on CBS right now, and there’s a story about Bob Mackie, a costume designer who did (among many other things) the outrageous costumes for the Carol Burnett Show. To this day, the mere sight of Carol Burnett, doing a GWTW parody, wearing that dress with the curtain rod through it sends me into spasms of laughter. In the interview, Mackie said something like, “I’m best known for the curtain-rod dress…”

Share This Post

This will probably sound insane to anyone who happened to be in Hurricane Isabel’s line of fire, especially those who live close to where the storm actually came ashore, but I must report that I feel a bit “gypped” because the storm took a more westerly route than predicted: it basically approached Buffalo, and then went around it. So all we’ve got is a lot of wind and a bit of light rain.

Oh well, we’ll still have blizzards.

Share This Post

Via Ionarts, I spent a little time perusing an online art gallery entitled Painting the Weather. It’s a fascinating exhibit, notable in the range of art represented: there are Japanese screens beside Impressionist works beside English pastorals, like this particular painting by John Constable (whose work I’ve always loved):

“Salisbury Cathedral from the Meadows”

For some reason, looking at a Constable painting always makes me want to read some Tennyson. Or watch Monty Python, I’m not sure which.

Share This Post

(Explanation here)

:: JANE GALT.

In a recent column, Paul Krugman takes a break from being shrill about President Bush to be shrill about chickens. Krugman considers the increasing numbers of chickens crossing roads to be a scandal of major proportions, one which illustrates the perfidy of this Administration, which just proves my adage that the party out of power is always insane. (How the out-of-power party, being insane, ever manages to convince people to put them back in power is a mystery. But I digress, my little chickadees.)

The problem is one of opportunity cost, and how such things scale across a large-scale economy. The problem is that resources have to be allocated, and in any such system, one has to keep in mind who is doing the allocating. So we end up in a situation where chicken-crossing surpluses are not only inevitable, but desirable. It is indicative of a general trend toward more wealth being created in the chicken-crossing set, and that, contrary to what Krugman would have you believe, is a good thing. Ergo, those who question the wisdom of the chickens crossing the road are ignoring a fundamental economic reality, and they’d really all be a lot happier if they’d become libertarians and realize that I’m right about everything.

(NOTE: It should be clear that I basically made up a lot of economic-sounding folderol here. If this post makes any sense, that is by sheer accident rather than by design. As if I needed to say that, in a post about chickens.)

Share This Post

There is a long post about digital stuff – – music, movies, assorted whatnot – – over on 2 Blowhards that’s really worth reading. I want to single out two particular grafs (but the whole post, really, is pretty interesting):

* Aside from copyright concerns, the big worry people have expressed about the effect of programs such as Itunes is that they destroy “the album” as a creation. Now that the program itself is all about the individual songs, who’s going to go to the trouble of listening to a carefuly constructed album?

Exactly right. One big argument in favor of digital music, and against the RIAA’s pricing, is the “Sixteen bucks for two songs” argument, as in: “Don’t you get mad when you pay sixteen bucks for a CD with twelve songs on it, when you only want two of them?”

Well, no, not really. I’ve never understood this argument. Yes, I used to buy rock or pop albums on the basis of the one or two songs I’d heard on the radio or on MTV, but then, I always understood the idea of the single as a marketing item for the album. And quite often, I found that often the best songs on an album are not the ones released as singles, and more importantly, a well-produced album is a delight in itself, in the sequencing of the songs, the interplay of their subject matter, et cetera.

Any classic rock radio station will play Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick In the Wall, Part II” fairly often. And it is a great song, most assuredly. But it’s even greater when you hear it in the context of the album of which it is a part. Digital distribution is going to kill that aspect of music, and that’s a damn shame. Chalk it up as a further reduction of our cultural attention span.

Back to the Blowhard:

* But as I played with Itunes, one other worry occurred to me: it seems inevitable that Itunes (etc) will be the end of the song-that-grows-on-you. Why? Because you’ll never give a song that doesn’t instantly grab you a second (let alone a tenth) chance. I’m not the world’s most impatient listener, yet with Itunes I find myself not just skipping the in-between-the-hits songs; I don’t even transfer them to the hard drive in the first place. I also find that there’s a strong temptation to listen to songs for just a few seconds at a time. Click — and you get that rush that the first bars of a song you like deliver. And then it’s Click again. Pretty soon you’re like a rat who’s developed a taste for speed; you’re going from place to place, looking for another up. When you don’t find it, you’re outta there, and outta there fast.

Again, exactly right. This will encourage our fetish for instant gratification. I’m reminded of a bit of dialogue in the movie Mr. Holland’s Opus, in which Mr. Holland (Richard Dreyfuss) describes his youthful initial encounter with the music of John Coltrane. I don’t recall the exact wording, but it goes like this: “I listened to this record, and I hated it. I mean, I really hated it. I hated it so much that I took it home and listened to it every day, trying to understand why I could hate it so much. And then I realized that I loved it.”

This isn’t uncommon. I’ve had this experience many times, and not just with music (although you could take the same bit of dialogue, substitute the name “Hector Berlioz” for John Coltrane, and you’d have my exact story with regard to who is now my favorite classical composer). I suspect that we won’t take time to get to know an artist, to allow his or her work to slowly cast its spell upon us. It’ll be “Gimme magic now, or I’m on to the next person.” That’s not good.

What I fear (or, not so much “fear” as “suspect”) is that this soon-to-be idyllic heaven, when there are millions of songs out there for pennies each, is going to have serious repercussions for not just the way we buy music, but for how the music itself will impact our lives. We should think about that.

(I’ve written about these issues before.)

Share This Post

A while back, someone arrived at Byzantium’s Shores via a Google search for a Buffalo-style chicken wing recipe. Just in case anyone wants to do this at home, here’s how.

For the sauce, melt 1/3 cup of butter and miz it with 1 / 2 cup of hot sauce. Now, the hot sauce is obviously a matter of preference, but my personal favorite is Frank’s Red Hot, which has a pleasant vinegary taste along with the heat. Tabasco works too, but it’s not my favorite. There’s also a Mexican brand whose name I can never remember exactly, but it’s always on the table at Don Pablo’s.

For the wings themselves: in this region, you can actually buy frozen wings already prepared for use as Buffalo wings. However, if such a thing is not available in your neck of the woods and you have to resort to buying packages of whole wings, then what you do is cut the wings apart at each joint, discarding the tips. (The tip is that little, scrawny part of the wing that’s virtually useless.) You’ll end up with a wide, flat piece and a piece that looks like a little drumstick. (By way of analogy, if you compare a chicken wing to your arm, the drumstick is the part of your arm from the shoulder to the elbow, the flat piece is the forearm, and the tip is the hand.)

Once you have your wings prepared (roughly two pounds for each recipe of sauce, as given above), you can either bake them at 350 degrees until done, or you can deep-fry them. Deep-frying is the authentic method of cooking, but this is, shall we say, less than healthful.

After the wings are cooked and drained, plop them in a mixing bowl with the sauce and toss them until they’re all well-coated. Serve while hot, with beer. A typical side item is celery sticks and blue cheese dressing. Some people even dip the wings in the blue cheese, but I’m not big on that. And the beer has to be really, really cold. None of that British room-temperature stuff. The point of wings is the contrast between the heat of the hot sauce and the icy goodness of the beer. (Wings also go incredibly nicely with equally-cold Pepsi or Coke, for the non-drinkers.)

So, there you go: authentic Buffalo-style chicken wings. If you find wings someplace that are breaded before frying, they may well be very tasty. There are a lot of fine ways to prepare chicken wings, but only one way to prepare Buffalo chicken wings.

(I also like to cook wings over a charcoal grill and put barbecue sauce on them, but that’s not Buffalo, either. And you have to be careful with that, because wings, by virtue of their small size and more concentrated fat and natural gelatin, can burn very quickly on the grill.)

Share This Post