The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer
It’s that time of year again! February is Anniversary Month here at Byzantium’s Shores, as this blog went live in that month of 2002, and my traditional way of celebrating is to resurrect this meme-thing called Ask Me Anything! It’s exactly what it says: Ask Me Anything! Silly question, serious questions, questions about food, questions about football, questions about music, whatever. Drop your questions into the comments on this post.
Ask Me Anything!!!
Linkage time….
:: You were rude, arrogant, eccentric, reclusive — and that’s just what the people who liked you say.
More next week.
Oddities abound!
:: Now, my childhood had its deliciously twisted moments, thanks to parents who were aware but not freakishly protective. But still, I now wish I’d had some of these Playmobil sets:
What fun! A plastic dessicated skeleton! Buzzards! Bandits with guns!
:: Hmmm…I could swear that someone suggested counterprotesting those Westboro Baptist Church morons just this way…I wonder who that could have been….
:: Identify the movie by the robot. I didn’t get them all, I’m sorry to say….
More next week!
UPDATE 2-7-10: You know, I was thinking about doing some research and creating a nice long Super Bowl trivia quiz this year, but I just never got around to doing the research, so I filed the notion away for next year. And now I’m getting a lot of hits from people looking for “Super Bowl Questions”, so I’m definitely doing it next year. These questions probably aren’t what you all are looking for, but thanks for dropping by, folks! Go Colts! (But I won’t be bothered if the Saints win.)
Roger asks some questions regarding the Super Bowl:
Do you watch the Super Bowl? (That’s American football, BTW.) If so, is it for the commercials, the game or the halftime entertainment? Do you have special food for the occasion?
Yes, I watch the Super Bowl. In fact, with one exception, I’ve watched every Super Bowl since I became a football fan in 1988. (That exception was Super Bowl XXIV — 49ers 55, Broncos 10 — because I had something going on that night at college.) I don’t pay attention to the commercials much; I tend to use them for their intended purpose (get more food, refill my glass, go to the bathroom, et cetera). In fact, every year when I hear people talking about their favorite commercials the next day, I’m always a bit clueless until I track them down online.
In terms of food, I just tend to get a bit of snack stuff, like chips and dip, if we’re at home. Over the years we’ve been to a couple of Super Bowl parties at other people’s homes. Lots of food is usually nice, but I prefer to be in the comfort of my own home.
And speaking of halftime, don’t you find it interesting that it is The Who performing when the game is on CBS, since The Who provide the theme songs for all those CSI shows on CBS, such as CSI: Las Vegas, CSI: Miami, CSI: New York, CSI: Kalamazoo, and CSI: Portland (both the Oregon AND the Maine shows).
Yeah, that occurred to me this past week. I’m hoping that since the game’s in Miami, the halftime show starts with David Caruso on stage, saying something goofy in that oddball delivery of his, and putting on his sunglasses as The Who smashes into “Won’t Get Fooled Again”.
By the way, I didn’t know that The Who was even doing this year’s halftime festivities until just last Monday, when I said to my main football-discussing friends at work, “Hey, who’s doing the halftime show this year?” And he said, “Yes.” Luckily I thought over his answer for ten seconds and realized what was going on, before we launched into some weird Abbott-and-Costello routine. (“So at haltime, Dan Marino and Shannon Sharpe talk about the first half and then they kick the attention over to who?” “Yes!”)
If you don’t watch the game, do you have a ritual for that? I had friends who always went to the movies on Super Bowl Sunday.
I watch the game. Sometimes I watch a movie earlier in the day.
And those of you outside the United States: can you even access the Suoer Bowl?
Obviously this is not applicable to me.
Do you know how to write 44 in Roman numerals?
XLIV. I think the Roman numerals thing is starting to look goofier each year — we’re six years out from the Super Bowl logo being a giant L. I think it would be funny if, when that year comes, the logo is simply a big cursive L like the one Laverne used to wear on all her sweaters on Laverne and Shirley. It would be funny to see all these big, hulking football players in the Super Bowl sporting nice, pretty, loopy, feminine L‘s on their jerseys.
Do you have a rooting interest?
I’m rooting for the Colts, but a Saints win wouldn’t bother me much at all, except that we’d then have to hear a lot of crap about Peyton Manning being a choker and Gregg Williams’s head would get bigger, and I’m sure the Super Dome has a hard time containing that guy’s noggin already.
What do think of the Pro Bowl, the All-star game of the NFL, being played the week before the Super Bowl (i.e., today), instead of the week after?
The Pro Bowl sucks no matter when they play it. It just sucks. It’s lame and boring and I never watch it because it’s lame and boring. Plus, I don’t like that lots of guys go because the guys actually voted to the thing don’t, so you end up with something like half the league being called “Pro Bowlers”. On the Bills, Marshawn Lynch is a “Pro Bowler”, even though the only reason he got to be in the game a year ago is because a bunch of running backs ahead of him didn’t play. Only the guys actually voted onto the roster should get to be called “Pro Bowlers”, and frankly, if they just did away with the game and treated being voted a Pro Bowler as baseball does being awarded a Golden Glove, I’d be fine with it.
So yeah, I don’t really care when they play the Pro Bowl. I do think that the NFL’s rigid adherence to rules, thus requiring the Colts and Saints players to be in attendance even if they don’t play — resulting in them literally having to fly back to Indianapolis and New Orleans respectively and then turn right back around to return to Miami, since by another NFL rule, all Super Bowl players must travel with their teams together — is just colossal idiocy.
A few weeks ago I made a new pasta dish called “Straw and Hay”, and at the time, The Wife commented that the dish would be really good with shrimp. So, tonight for dinner, I made the dish again, with shrimp.
And lo, it was Teh Awesome.
For those interested, I made the dish as indicated in the recipe I gave on the previous post, with this change: when I sauteed the garlic in the butter/olive oil mixture, I threw in about half a pound of cooked shrimp that I’d previously thawed and drained. Then I just tossed the pasta with the shrimp/garlic/oil combination.
Maybe next time I’ll try scallops!
Early in 2009, the folks at Pepsi noted the growing interest out there in stuff that’s not sweetened with High Fructose Corn Syrup, so they did something that I assume was mainly to test the waters: they introduced Pepsi Throwback and Mountain Dew Throwback, which are Pepsi and Mountain Dew sweetened with actual sugar. And both were, shall I say, wonderful. Since we don’t drink pop all that often here at Casa Jaquandor, I proceeded to buy a twelve-pack of Pepsi Throwback every week as long as it was available. We still have some in our closet, although I’ll have to start replenishing now that the stuff is back on the market.
It’s not just the taste that’s better; the drinks have a mouth feel that is so different from what I’ve become accustomed to after years of HFCS. They are less, well, syrupy. Sweetened soft drinks these days always tend to feel heavy in the mouth, as if both thick and thin at the same time. Not so with the Throwback drinks: they taste crisp and clean. It’s not at all unlike having real maple syrup on your pancakes after years of using Mrs. Butterworth’s. The drinks also smell sweeter, and feel less filling after consuming a full can or bottle.
I just discovered a couple of weeks ago that the current limited run of Throwback sodas now includes Dr. Pepper, which warms the cockles of my heart. I’ve always loved Dr. Pepper, which I have never had in a sugar-sweetened version (I didn’t start drinking it until college). This stuff, called “Heritage Dr. Pepper”, is a revelation in a bottle. (I know, sugar-sweetened Dr. Pepper has been available for years via a single bottler in Texas, but I’ve never thought it important enough to actually try to order some.)
Now, if Coke would get with the program…to taste Coca-Cola in its original, sugar-sweetened formula again would be amazing. (Again, I know that the stuff exists on an annual basis, marketed in Jewish neighborhoods so the Kosher laws can still include Coke around Passover, but I’m not sure if anyplace around here sells it. My own Store doesn’t carry it.)
I never knew Gabrielle Bouliane, but a few of my Facebook friends did, and they are mourning her passing this week from cancer. She was a poet, and here is a selection of hers, performed at the Austin Poetry Slam, that I find quite powerful:
Condolences to friends and family. How often do we learn of wonderful people only after their deaths?
Heavens, what a depressing photo this is:
What’s next? A Starbucks outside the Well of Souls???
(From Calvin’s Canadian Cave of Coolness)
The classic movie The Philadelphia Story — the tale of a man still in love with his divorced wife, with said wife still being in love with him although she doesn’t realize it even as she prepares to remarry — was remade in the 1950s as a musical, called High Society. In truth, that’s the version of the story I know best, as High Society is one of my parents’ favorite movies. In the original, the leads are played by Cary Grant, Katherine Hepburn, and Jimmy Stewart; in the musical, we have Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, and Frank Sinatra. Now, Bing Crosby’s merits as a romantic lead may be open to some debate, but High Society works pretty well, even if some of the nuance of the original Philadelphia Story script was lost in order to accommodate the new film’s musical numbers. Some of these are very, very fine songs indeed. Here are a few.
In a flashback to the honeymoon of Tracy Samantha Lord (Kelly) and C.K. Dexter Haven (Crosby), we hear “True Love” (which I believe is also the only time Grace Kelly ever sang on screen):
The film explains the musical content partly by positing Dexter Haven as a songwriter who is organizing a local jazz festival in Newport, Rhode Island. Thus the presence of Louis Armstrong and his band in the film, sometimes acting as a Greek chorus of sorts and goosing things along. Here, Louis prompts Dexter to sing the song he once wrote for Samantha:
The jazz festival all yields a song where Crosby and Armstrong explain what jazz is all about, in “Now You Has Jazz”:
I mention above that the film includes Frank Sinatra, so of course, he has to get into the act with the film’s music. He plays one of the two gossip reporters sent by SPY Magazine to cover the Tracy Samantha Lord wedding, and he’s generally disgusted by the antics of the rich and wealthy — until, in the course of getting to know some of them, he learns that they have their own real problems. Anyway, here’s an early comedic number with Sinatra and Celeste Holm wondering “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”:
Sinatra also gets, of course, his own soulful love song, “You’re Sensational”, which he sings to Grace Kelly:
The film’s best number brings Crosby and Sinatra together for the only time in the film. They’re at a party and neither is particularly enthusiastic about the proceedings, so both duck into the bar for some frank talk about the rich and the gossip that surrounds them. Here’s “Well Did You Evah”:
This is the movie’s only real show-stopper. I love the moment when Sinatra stops Crosby with the line “Don’t dig that kind of croonin’, chum,” to which Crosby responds, “You must be one of the newer fellas.”
The Philadelphia Story is probably the better film, but High Society is not at all without its charms.
The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer
