January 2011
35 posts
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Eating guts
My father raised his own beef cattle, on a small scale. He’d buy one or two calves at a time, raise them to maturity, then have them slaughtered and butchered. We knew a butcher who’d take care of the whole operation – slaughtering, cutting up, grinding, wrapping – in return for a quarter of the entire animal. A small cow yields at least a couple of hundred pounds of meat (usually...
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Sunday blog: Pee-wee Herman and Andy Samberg do...
Here is a SNL Digital Short for anyone who likes any of the following:
Pee-wee Herman;
Andy Samberg;
Anderson Cooper;
Doing shots.
http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/snl-digital-short-andy-samberg-and-pee-wee
Posted via email from FutureWorld: everyday life in the third millennium | Comment »
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Tunisia
Tunisia has been going through interesting times lately. I lived and worked there for a couple of years back in the 1980s, and I still keep in touch with some of the Tunisians I knew and worked with. They’re all okay so far; they’re posting on a daily basis on Facebook, and I wish my Arabic were better, because the videos and news stories are pretty interesting. I wish them, and...
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The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus
For a while in the 1940s, British cinema was really spectacular. Four movies are my particular favorites: “Black Narcissus,” “Stairway to Heaven,” “The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp,” and “The Red Shoes.”
All were directed and written by the team of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger. All are in beautiful Technicolor, or some mutant version of Technicolor that’s even more vivid...
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My life in the drug trade
I read recently that people are using bath salts as a drug. No joke. Some bath salts apparently contain a potent chemical which gives you a methamphetamine-type jolt. It apparently also gives you hallucinations, intense cravings for the chemical itself (some bath-salts benders go on for days and days), and violent self-destructive impulses. I don’t mean to make light of this. ...
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Jumping Jack LaLanne
Dead at 96: Jack LaLanne.
I remember watching elfin Jack do squat-thrusts on TV, way back in the early 1960s. He usually wore a bizarre little loose-sleeved smock with a plunging neckline and a shiny belt-buckle (see photo above). He’d been a bodybuilder in the 1940s and 1950s, but by the time he hit TV, he bore little resemblance to today’s fitness models; he looked more like a...
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Paula Deen: full of love and lard
I receive emails from the Food Network from time to time. Today’s email led with a PAULA DEEN RECIPE: FRIED MAC AND CHEESE. A less appetizing photo you cannot imagine. It looks like a slightly burnt pound cake with a flat mealy crust. And I’m pretty sure they put a filter on the camera to keep the grease from sparkling in the light. Please don’t get me wrong. I’m all...
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Solar system brings us wisdom
I loved astronomy when I was a kid. I devoured all the star books in the school library. But I didn’t make a career of it, for two reasons: I was desperately afraid of the dark until my mid-teens; I was (and still am) intellectually lazy. Science takes dedication. I knew a girl in grade school who was desperately devoted to geology and paleontology; no matter what schoolwork...
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Sunday blog: Bow Wow Wow
In keeping with my recent comments about dogs, and to counteract wintertime, here’s 1980s group Bow Wow Wow on a beach, buried up to their necks in sand, singing their classic “I Want Candy.” Arf! Arf! Posted via email from FutureWorld: everyday life in the third millennium | Comment »
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Jersey shore, season three
Partner and I agree that the new season of “Jersey Shore” is, well, intense. The last two episodes have been the most-watched shows in MTV’s history, bitches!
What is is about this show that’s so fascinating? The cast has no talent. But none. Okay, maybe Paulie has some self-awareness; he’s a DJ, and he’s often witty. But I am convinced that you could take MRIs...
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All the way with Cam Gigandet
Partner and I saw “Burlesque” a few weeks ago. We though it was pretty entertaining, and I learned a few things: Christina Aguilera can actually act. Cher can still sing. Pretty well, too. I could watch Stanley Tucci bake muffins, and I’d still give him a standing ovation. Cam Gigandet is adorable. Young Cam plays Christina’s love interest. He...
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The right to complain about absolutely everything
At fifty-three, I find myself in the demilitarized zone between middle age and old age. I used to think that people in their forties were over the hill; now, in retrospect, my forties were the bloom of youth. And, looming in the future, I can see hip replacements and cardiac episodes and mushy food and glasses even thicker than the ones I wear now. One of the consolations of getting older...
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Very bad dogs
Back in the 1960s, I used to read a comic strip in the Vancouver Columbian called “Odd Bodkins,” written and drawn by a guy named Dan O’Neill. He was a stoner, a biker, and an independent thinker; most papers dropped his strip when they figured out what he was talking about, which was mostly dropping acid and fighting the establishment. In one of his strips, someone announced that African...
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Black Swan
Partner and I saw “Black Swan” on Sunday. OMG! First of all, Natalie Portman is just about perfect. Why does it always amaze me when a movie star actually turns in a good performance? Well, hers is better than good, it’s terrific. She goes from fragile to terrifying and back again. And there’s a great supporting cast: Mila Kunis, Barbara Hershey, and especially...
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Better jerkitude through technology
Have you seen these television commercials?: An obnoxious neighbor taunts his neighbor’s holiday decorations, using text, email, and phone. A guy in a car pool receives an emailed joke seconds before his coworkers receive it. He reads it, laughs shrilly, and puts his phone away. When his coworkers catch up with him a few seconds later and try to share the joke with...
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Sunday blog: Happy birthday, Luise Rainer
Turner Classic Movies recently had a Luise Rainer evening. You know, the Viennese Teardrop. Oh, give up, you don’t know. But anyway. She won two Academy Awards in the 1930s, back to back, for “The Great Ziegfeld” and “The Good Earth.” She is still alive. She turned one hundred and one years old last Wednesday. Robert Osborne, bless his heart, did an on-stage interview...
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Ray Davies, the greatest Kink of all
New York Magazine has an online feature called “21 Questions.” They choose a celebrity – an artist, an actor, a random NYC flash-in-the-pan – and ask the same set of questions: What do you think of Donald Trump? How much is too much to pay for a haircut? Do you give money to panhandlers? (The best set of answers ever were given by the actor Bernie Kopell, whom you will probably remember as Doc...
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Seed-catalog nirvana
It is the worst bit of winter now here in New England. January and February are not bright cheerful months hereabouts; they are a long slow death-slog through snow and cold and ice and mush. Wednesday’s mini-blizzard dumped about fifteen inches of snow on us. Partner and I both had the day off – the university (wisely) closed preemptively the day before – so we stayed in the house,...
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Grumpy old customers
Bad customer service makes my head cave in. I didn’t used to be this way. For a long time I was very reluctant to make a scene in a public place. With age, though, I hide my feelings less. Also, life with Partner (who is far more forthright than I am in expressing himself) has made me a little more, ahem, openly expressive. So, for example, when supermarket cashiers get...
redqueenxlt asked: the Horus and Isis are there as fore-shadowing in the museum scene because the lovers get entombed together, then meet in a new life in the museum at the end. (That is cool right?) Since this was musical-rock-story-Egypt-land, we felt free to borrow symbols and gods from many periods.
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Land of saints and scholars
Partner and I spent a week in the west of Ireland back in 2007. We still daydream about it. We saw some of the tourist sights – the Cliffs of Moher, the Rock of Cashel – but we also spent time knocking around big towns and small towns, walking, taking in the sights, talking to people. Highlights of the trip: Our flight got in early, and we rode from the airport to Limerick,...
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True Grit
Partner and I saw “True Grit” last week. I was doubtful at first that this movie needed to be remade; then I realized that all I remembered from the 1969 original was John Wayne’s eyepatch, and Kim Darby (of whom no one had ever heard, and about whom we never heard again). We liked the new version. It looks like the American West (and I should know): washed-out, sepia-toned....
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Drinking poison
I bought the most darling little bottle of poison the other night, and I’m gonna drink it one of these evenings soon. No, I’m not talking about suicide. I’m talking about absinthe. I’ve been reading about it for years; I’m a great fan of the French writers and composers and artists like Satie and Debussy and Mallarme and Verlaine and Manet, and they...
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Sunday blog: Getting political
I had a nice light-hearted little Pointer Sisters video all queued up for today, but real life came crashing in and made it seem irrelevant. As of this writing, on Saturday evening, Representative Giffords has made it through surgery, and the doctors appear to be optimistic. I hope she makes it. I am so sorry for those who died in the shooting, and for their families, and I...
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Old, cranky, and frail
I walk to work almost every morning. It takes about half an hour, and I burn a few calories, and I get a chance to talk to myself while waving my arms and everything. All the people driving by think I’m a lunatic. So I get to work the other morning - it was around twenty-eight degrees outside, by the way - and I am delicately trying to blow my nose. And one of the younger staff...
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My team big and good, your team weak and stupid
I’ve learned pretty much everything I know about sports from Partner. Much of this information is garbled in my mind; I will not ever understand what a “safety” is, for example, because I made up my mind early on that it involves a football player running backwards. But now and then something in the sports world catches my attention, and I strain to figure out what...
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The little book of Hindu deities
A couple of months ago I picked up something called “The Little Book of Hindu Deities: From the Goddess of Wealth to the Sacred Cow.” It is a perfect delight. The various members of the Hindu pantheon, peaceful and wrathful, are drawn in bright Hello Kitty style, the nice gods with big smiles, the mean gods with ferocious cartoon scowls. Some, like the wonderfully playful elephant-headed Ganesha...
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Hey, Bulldog
I used to like gin best, but I progressed to vodka over time. Now, vodka is really nothing but grain alcohol and water; if it’s correctly made, it should be completely flavorless. The idea of “quality” vodka is really pretty silly. People always swear that Grey Goose is best, or Belvedere, or Stolichnaya, but when the companies run taste tests, people always end up picking Store Brand...
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Come out, come out
Some magazines I read for information. I read “Out” for fun. It’s not meant for my demographic, that’s for sure. I am not so young nor so smooth-skinned as the men in most of the advertisements. But it’s fun and glossy and colorful. And sometimes interesting too. A recent issue featured the 100 most important people in the gay/lesbian community. The...
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Big theatah, small theatah
There was a nice little piece in the Times recently about a little play I’ve never heard of. It’s called “Almost, Maine”; it lived and died off-Broadway several years ago; and now it’s having a very happy afterlife in regional theater all over the world. According to the article, it’s ideal for local groups for any number of reasons. It’s pleasant without...
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The dark side of children's literature
The Times recently presented a “Room for Debate” feature on dystopianism in young-adult literature. Why are recent books and series (the Dark Materials books, the Hunger Games series, the Twilight saga) so dark? The contributors offer lots of different answers: cultural changes, technology, kids are changing, the world is changing, kids want reality, etc. Here’s my answer:...
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New Year's Day blog: 'Tis well that the old year...
I’ve always found the poetry of John Dryden congenial. Here’s something from “The Secular Masque”:
All, all, of a piece throughout,
Thy chase had no beast in view;
Thy wars brought nothing about;
Thy lovers were all untrue.
‘Tis well that the old age is out,
And time to begin a new.
Good riddance to a mostly crappy year.
Welcome, 2011.
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