A roundup of miscellaneous crap for March 9, 2011.

March 9th, 2011

Some things worth noting in the NYT on this fine day:

Michael Ruhlman reviews Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, previously noted in this space.

I was left wondering how a book could be mind-crushingly boring, eye-bulgingly riveting, edifying, infuriating, frustrating, fascinating, all in the same moment. Every time I tore myself away from these stunning pages to emerge for air, I had to shake my head so hard my cheeks made Looney Tunes noises.

Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider

The producers of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” are planning a significant overhaul of the $65 million Broadway musical that would involve shutting down performances for two to three weeks, as well as delaying its scheduled opening on March 15 for about three months, according to people who work on “Spider-Man” or were briefed on the producers’ plans.

Never mind.

You may ask yourself, “Why would someone pay $20,000 for a replica of an Eric Clapton Stratocaster, ‘complete with every single nick and scratch, including the wear pattern from Mr. Clapton’s belt buckle and the burn mark from his cigarettes’?” You would probably answer that question, “Because they’re a moron.” The NYT would like for you to know that evolutionary psychology suggests you’re wrong:

…the seemingly illogical yearning for a Clapton relic, even a pseudorelic, stems from an instinct crucial to surviving disasters like the Black Death: the belief that certain properties are contagious, either in a good or a bad way. Another conclusion is that the magical thinking chronicled in “primitive” tribes will affect bids for the Clapton guitars being auctioned at Bonhams in Midtown Manhattan.

Yesterday was election day in Bell, California. How did things go?

…residents voted overwhelmingly to recall Mayor Oscar Hernandez and council members Teresa Jacobo and George Mirabal, as well as Luis Artiga, who quit the council last year but remained targeted for recall. Even Lorenzo Velez, the lone councilman not charged in the Bell corruption case, appeared to suffer collateral damage and lost his bid to keep his seat.

Noted: Austin now has a Peruvian restaurant. (Okay, technically, Pflugerville.) Yes, I’m thinking Saturday Dining Conspiracy. No, not right away; we generally give places three months after opening before reviewing them.

Posted in Art, Food, Geek, Music, Theatre | 2 Comments »

Guns up!

March 8th, 2011

Missed this one until I saw a link on FARK, but FARK’s link was to the USAToday story.

Pat Knight fired as Texas Tech basketball coach.

This does not seem to have been unexpected, with a 13-18 record (5-11 in conference).

Overall, the younger Knight went 50-60 during his three years at Tech, which saw the Red Raiders log a single winning record in 2009-10 and no appearances at the NCAA Tournament.

(And, once again, someone told a local newspaper that auto-play videos are A-OK.)

Posted in Clippings, Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Random notes: March 8, 2011.

March 8th, 2011

Slow. Slow. Slow. And WordPress ate the first draft of this post. Argh. “Introduction to Literary Studies” is finished, but “Applications in Business Programming” fires up tonight.

So where were we?

Ken Hoffman in the HouChron on more rodeo food. The chocolate covered pickle makes us gag.

The NYT reports that Julie Taymor and the “Spider-Man” producers are “negotiating”. “Negotiating” in this case apparently means either “work with a newly expanded creative team” or “pack your <stuff> and get out”.

Speaking of art, damn it, art!, Lawrence has brought us happy news for those of you who own iPhones and are fans of Guy Debord, Karen Eliot, Monty Cantsin, and the Karen-headed Smile Monty (see also): there’s an app for that.

By way of Tam, we have learned that the Department of Homeland Security, which is apparently not satisfied with not actually catching terrorists, is going around confiscating Nissan Skylines. The Skyline is a car we were previously unfamiliar with, perhaps because it was never officially imported into the United States. One of Tam’s commenters provided this link to an excellent article about the rise and fall of a Skyline importer in California, which we commend to your attention.

Speaking of commenters, “Bob” (thanks, “Bob”) posted in this thread and provided a link with some new information about our good friend, the spamming scumbag Sven Alstrom. That link, in turn, led us to this one, which also has some good stuff about Sven. We were particularly amused by these two comments from LJWorld staff members:

…we restored Mr. Alstrom’s access to our website, despite having banned him more than a half dozen times previously.

and:

Should Sven Alstrom not be elected to the Lawrence City Commission, his current account will be banned.

Sven makes friends everywhere he goes, doesn’t he?

Posted in Art, Cars, Clippings, Food, Music, Politics, School, Theatre | Comments Closed

Y’all say what?

March 4th, 2011

The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo is getting underway again this year.

But there’s been a change: the rodeo is no longer a Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association sanctioned rodeo. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a professional rodeo, or that there’s not money on the table ($1.75 million, according to the HouChron), just that winnings in the Houston rodeo aren’t officially counted by the PRCA, and don’t impact PRCA standings.

If I understand the story correctly, this doesn’t make Houston unique; some of the larger Canadian rodeos aren’t PRCA sanctioned, either, and it sounds like Houston may be trying to start up a competing rodeo circuit:

It already has signed a deal with Fox Sports to air the Super Series finals and Super Shootout, whereas past finals were aired only through the PRCA on pay-per-view. And bigger plans are in the works.

The goal is to become the top international invitational championship in the world.

It isn’t that I’m a huge rodeo fan (I’m not), but the situation is interesting. Lawrence made a good analogy to the whole CART/Indycar situation, which (as I see it) seriously damaged open wheel racing in the United States.

Posted in Clippings, Sports | Comments Closed

Truffle trouble.

March 4th, 2011

It would fill my heart with delight if someone managed to grow truffles reliably in the United States.

I know there are many people working on the problem (supposedly including one person out near Dripping Springs; this article is from 1984, and I haven’t been able to find anything more recent in Google) but it seems that the growing of truffles is more difficult than you might expect for something that’s basically a fungus.

All of this is by way of introducing today’s NYT article about two truffle growers in North Carolina who’ve been engaged in a lengthy legal battle.

Important safety tip:

Local chefs give North Carolina mixed reviews.

“They don’t seem to have a lot of quality control,” said Andrea Reusing, chef and owner of the Lantern restaurant in Chapel Hill. And actually getting them can be maddening.

“We need to start calling them wacky truffles on the menu,” she said. “There is a certain kind of spaciness to whole thing.”

Posted in Clippings, Food | Comments Closed

Musical beg.

March 3rd, 2011

Does anybody have a digital version, or a pointer to one, of “Throw Him Down, McCloskey”?

I can find the lyrics and even the sheet music online, but I’ve been unable to find a recording of someone actually performing the song. I will be happy to pay money for a recording, but I’ve been unable to find one in either the iTunes or Amazon stores.

Posted in Lazyweb, Music | Comments Closed

The lunatics are on the grass.

March 3rd, 2011

Two things that made me chuckle, and one that didn’t.

Goodnight Dune, the children’s book.

Goodnight Keith Moon, which is probably not for children.

(Hattip: Robb Allen.)

This is an old story, but I don’t think I’ve linked it before: Margaret Wise Brown left the rights and royalties from her books to her neighbor Albert Clarke. Clarke was nine years old when she died in 1952. So what’s happened since then? (I know this was published in 2000. I haven’t been able to turn up anything more recent on Albert Clarke, except a rather mean article on an obscure website calling him a drug addict and suggesting that nobody should ever buy a new copy of Goodnight Moon.)

Posted in Books, Clippings | Comments Closed

Random notes: March 3, 2011.

March 3rd, 2011

I went to the fights last night, and a case of chronic traumatic encephalopathy broke out.

Sirhan Sirhan has been turned down for parole for the 13th time. What’s interesting about this article is that it focuses almost as much on Sirhan’s lawyer, William F. Pepper, and Pepper’s previous efforts:

Pepper says [James Earl] Ray, who was convicted of killing King two months before Kennedy was slain, was framed by the federal government and that King was killed in a conspiracy involving the FBI, the CIA, the military, the Memphis police and organized crime figures from New Orleans and Memphis.

This gives me an excuse to plug Hampton Sides’ excellent (and Edgar-nominated) book Hellhound on His Trail: The Electrifying Account of the Largest Manhunt In American History, about the killing of King and the manhunt for Ray. I picked it up about two weeks ago, and read the first 300 pages in one night. The only reason I stopped there was because I was dozing off. Sides’ book has an amazingly strong narrative drive for a true crime work; it reads very much like a good novel.

I’m not going to say it deserves the Edgar;  I haven’t read any of the other nominated books (I did pick up The Killer of Little Shepherds: A True Crime Story and the Birth of Forensic Science last weekend, but haven’t had a chance to read it yet.) but I do commend Hellhound to your attention.

This is not a strategy I had considered for driving up page views, but good for the Austin Bulldog.

Edited to add: This is the closest thing I’ve found to a discussion of food items at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo this year. No photos. I’d apologize, but I don’t want a photo of the “Pulled Pork Sundae”, which frankly sounds disgusting.

Posted in Books, California Über Alles, Clippings, Food, Law, Neuroscience, Politics, Sports | 1 Comment »

For you see I’m on the legal beat…

March 2nd, 2011

I love a good heist. But it has to be a good one; that is, there has to be an element of panache to it, not just a random smash and grab. Something like this:

Los Angeles police detectives sought help from the public Tuesday to identify two armed burglars who stole several million of dollars in jewels after tunneling into a downtown jewelry store.

From a second LAT article about the heist:

Investigators said the burglars dug the tunnel at a key point that avoided structural obstacles, allowing them to get in and out quickly.

I’ve previously mentioned Where the Money Is: True Tales from the Bank Robbery Capital of the World in this space. Chapter four, “The Hole in the Ground Gang” discusses a group of bank robbers who pulled off a series of robberies by digging tunnels from the sewer system under and into bank vaults. That group was never caught, and apparently retired from the business. I wonder, though…

A nearly unanimous Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that the First Amendment protects even hurtful speech about public issues and upheld the right of a fringe church to protest near military funerals.

Right decision. Westboro is still a bunch of jackasses.

This decision got a lot of press yesterday. I’m kind of hoping one of my legal readers can explain why:

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a shooting victim’s statement to the police at a crime scene can be used in court, even if the victim later dies and cannot testify at a trial.

I’m confused because I’ve always understood “dying words” to be an exception to the hearsay rule. (Wikipedia is not a lawyer. Wikipedia is not your lawyer. Neither am I. Contents may settle in shipping.) What exactly does this decision change?

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, IANAL, Law | 2 Comments »

Quote of the day.

March 1st, 2011

“This is a substantial amount of iguana meat, well beyond what would be considered as personal use, it lacked the necessary permits for lawful importation and further it was found hidden in masa,” said Joe Uribe, Acting CBP Port Director in Laredo.

I think the lessons here are:

  1. Always make sure you have the proper permits for your iguana meat.
  2. If you have the proper permits, you don’t need to hide your iguana meat in masa. Or anything else for that matter.
  3. Small amounts of iguana meat for “personal use” are apparently okay with Customs.
  4. You can find recipes for iguana online.
  5. At the moment, I very much wish that I was in Tijuana.

Posted in Clippings, Food, Lizards, Music, Radio, Reptiles | 3 Comments »

Here. Have some crap.

March 1st, 2011

Sorry. I’ve been a little tied up, and there hasn’t been much to write about. Frank Buckles pretty much got covered everywhere in the known universe, and I don’t have terribly much to say about Jane Russell (well, not here anyway).

Part of what’s been tying me up is the “Introduction to Literary Studies” class I’ve been taking. This weekend was crunch time, with revisions to one essay and a second essay due. So for filler purposes, and to let you all laugh at me, I’ve decided to throw up essay two and essay three.

I wanted to post essay two in particular because Andrew “Shut. Down. Everything.” Wimsatt and I were talking about it one recent Sunday afternoon on our way to Momji; I was describing the subject of this essay to Andrew, and he was laughing hysterically as I talked about rotting buffalo and the cry of the whippoorwill. I don’t think the story is all that amusing, but reasonable people can differ…

The Chief Seattle Problem.

Here’s essay three. I doubt that Andrew will find it quite as funny as the other one, but you never know.

Orwell’s 1984 and the “Elephant” In the Room.

Both of these have been graded, so do your worst in the comments. And remember, St. Edward’s uses TurnItIn; plagiarists will be caught.

Posted in Clippings, School | Comments Closed

The Great Gun Buyback of 2011.

February 27th, 2011

Apparently, it went well for the Greater Austin Crime Commission and the Jastrow Family Foundation.

By 11 a.m. Saturday, police had collected about 400 guns and expected to give away $40,000 worth of gift cards, said Richard Hill, president of the Greater Austin Crime Commission .

It looks like it went well for some other people, too:

Pro-gun activists with Texans for Accountable Government protested the program by advertising a counter Guns for Cash program to people who showed up to trade their guns. Outside the church parking lot, they offered 10 percent more than the value of the gift cards.

The Statesman doesn’t tell us (or perhaps TAG didn’t want to discuss with the Statesman) exactly how many guns were bought for cash. Robb Allen also has a post up on the subject: based on his summary and the linked article, it appears TAG was only purchasing functional guns, so the APD ended up with lots of non-functional clunkers. This fits in with what  I saw on the local news last night; it looks like there were a lot of old .22 rifles, some muzzleloaders (!), and not a whole lot of really good stuff.

Keith Bradley is a local gun collector. He and a few others were looking to buy guns Saturday but say in situations where people are giving away their guns voluntarily, the quality of guns isn’t good.

“You’re going to find 80 percent of the weapons being turned in today are non functional. They’re rusted out, they’re garbage,” said Bradley.

Posted in Clippings, Guns | Comments Closed

“Holly did not go lightly.”

February 25th, 2011

There’s a mildly funny piece in today’s NYT about Joe Allen Restaurant, specifically about the restaurant’s eastern wall…

Covering its eastern wall are posters for old Broadway shows, about 50 of them, from the mid-1960s on. Their titles will ring few bells except among the most knowledgeable of theater buffs. There is a reason. Each was a notorious flop.

Included are posters for such notorious works as “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (closed in previews), the legendary “Kelly” (Lewis Lapham was invited to document the production of “Kelly” from start to finish; “Kelly” closed after one performance. Lapham’s story was reprinted in a wonderful book called Second Act Trouble: Behind the Scenes at Broadway’s Big Musical Bombs.) and “Moose Murders” (closed after one performance: NYT review).

If I ever make it back to NYC, I think I’m going to make it a point to stop by Joe Allen’s place.

Posted in Clippings, Loser, Theatre | 5 Comments »

Obit watch: February 24, 2011.

February 24th, 2011

Sometimes there’s just nothing you can say.

Austin restaurant owners Michael and Yoli Amr were found dead Wednesday morning.

The Statesman touches a little on the history of the Amr restaruants. We (and by “we” in this case I mean the regular Saturday Dining Conspiracy group, as well as pretty much everyone else I know) were big fans of the original Gumbo’s on Bratton Lane, and followed them to the Gumbo’s in Round Rock, Yoli’s Jambalaya, and then Mama Roux, which we thought was a swell eatery. Actually, they were all fine places to eat.

I can’t wrap my mind around this. It looks like they may have had financial problems; I’m sure the economy and the Gulf oil spill hurt them some. But this? It doesn’t make sense. I know things like this aren’t supposed to, and I know we don’t know everything that was going on. But…

Commentary from Rob Balon. Commentary from Statesman restaurant reviewer Mike Sutter.

Edited to add: Lawrence, who was an even bigger fan of the Amr restaurants than I was, adds his commentary here.

Posted in Clippings, Food, Obits | Comments Closed

Leadership Secrets of Non-Fictional Characters (part 6 of a series).

February 22nd, 2011

There is no way that I can, in good conscience, continue to do this series and not call out Ambulance Driver’s essay “On Teaching, Mentoring, and Stewardship“.

Academics in all disciplines struggle with teaching attitudes and behavior, and few succeed at it. Those that do are easy to spot. Chances are, you’ve seen them yourself. If you think back on all the teachers you’ve had in your life, I’ll bet you could pick out one or two that had the most positive influence.

In your moments of greatest stress and indecision, whose advice do you crave? Who do you first think of when you want to share the elation of a professional triumph? When you feel beaten and discouraged, whose voice whispers your mental pep talk? Who plants the metaphorical foot in your ass when you need the motivation?

Right now, you’re probably smiling, thinking of just such a person.

Your mentor.

Please go read the whole thing. Yes, AD is writing from the perspective of an EMS professional, and there are EMS specific references scattered throughout. But, just as I do with every other “Leadership Secrets” entry, I trust my readers to be able to analyze, synthesize, and apply what’s applicable to their own situation.

The only complaint I feel like I can make about AD’s essay is that he didn’t write it 15 years ago, when I really needed to hear it. Then again, “when the student is ready, the teacher appears”, and I doubt I was ready 15 years ago.

Posted in Clippings, Leadership | Comments Closed

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »