For some odd reason, I have this song stuck in my head. And I don’t even like it that much. So I’m going to make you guys suffer along with me.
Suffering.
February 2nd, 2011“The Leonard Cohen of drinks”?
February 2nd, 2011That’s the NYT‘s description of sake: “passionately adored by a small cadre of loyalists, but relegated to the category of ‘mysterious obscurity’ among the masses.”
In spite of this unfortunate metaphor, the actual article, about Japanese restaurants in Las Vegas that serve very high end sake, contains some interesting bits. For example, there’s Frozen Beauty sake, aged for 12 years in cold storage and selling for a mere $2,388 per (720 ml) bottle.
And let us not overlook Divine Droplets, “made by hanging canvas bags of fermenting mash in a handmade ice dome, during the frigid winter in the Hokkaido Prefecture, and patiently letting the sake filter out in a slow, pure drip.” That’s a mere $72 a bottle. (I am assuming that all of these bottles are 720 ml, but I’m not sure; the NYT annoyingly doesn’t specify.)
TMQ watch: February 1, 2011.
February 1st, 2011And so we slog ever closer to the end of another TMQ season. What does Gregg Easterbrook bring us in this, the off week before the Super Bowl? Let’s open up this week’s column and find out after the jump…
Yahoo Serious Film Festival.
February 1st, 2011Okay, not really. But Insta had a link up to a list of “memorable movie hitmen“, and that list prompted some discussion with Lawrence.
I’d never heard of “Charley Varrick
Anyway, that got us talking about a potential lineup for a “70s Crime Film Fest”. My rules for this were:
- I wanted to pick somewhat less celebrated films. “The French Connection
” and the two “Godfather” movies are wonderful, I’m sure, but I was looking for stuff people hadn’t seen before.
- One film per director.
Here’s a tentative list we came up with:
- “Prime Cut
“: Gene Hackman? Lee Marvin? Michael Ritchie? I’ve heard good things about this one.
- “The Friends of Eddie Coyle
“: now available from the Criterion Collection, no less.
- “A New Leaf”: the availability of this on DVD seems somewhat iffy, but I’d like to see it if we could find it. Walter Matthau again, directed by Elaine “Ishtar” May, in an adaptation of a short story by the great mystery writer Jack Ritchie. (If you’ve never heard of Jack Ritchie, well, one, you’re unfortunate, and two, he was basically the Howard Waldrop of mystery writing.) I’m thinking this would be a nice, light, funny film; sort of a sorbet to clean the palate.
- “Mean Streets
“: neither one of us has seen this, and the reasons for including it should be obvious.
- “Thunderbolt and Lightfoot
“: Clint Eastwood! The Dude! Michael Cimino before “Heaven’s Gate
“!
- “The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
“: the original one, not the crappy remake. Matthau again; I’m worried this list might have too much Matthau.
- “The Laughing Policeman
“: especially if I include this one, which is a bizarre adaptation of one of Sjöwall and Wahlöö’s Swedish police procedurals
, moved to San Francisco.
- “Family Plot
” or “Frenzy
“: I bow to nobody in my love for Hitchcock, but I’d always heard “Family Plot” was…well…not good. Lawrence informs me, however, that Roger Ebert gave it three stars. So how bad could it really be? “Frenzy”, on the other hand, gets four stars from Roger. Plus violence and nudity! But “Family Plot” has Karen Black! Decisions, decisions…
Something I stumbled across while researching this list, and feel a need to mention here, is “Made in U.S.A.
This movie prompted me to ask the question: “What the f–k was Godard smoking?” However, as a 1966 film, it falls outside the scope of our planned 70s crime film festival.
Anyone got any other suggestions for 70s crime films I missed? Leave them in the comments. Those of you who are local and who we know personally, we’ll let you know if we pull this together as a real event.
Edited to add: Lawrence pointed out that I forgot the original “Get Carter
Edited to add 2: I think it is required by the Internet police that any reference to Karen Black has to include a link to The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black.
The Flying Dutchman and the Sisters.
February 1st, 2011Today is cold and wet and gloomy, and I’m pulling a long shift.
So here’s a little story that might brighten your day. Last year, a former employee of Ford passed away. He had no children and no wife, so he left his entire estate to the organization his sister belonged to: the School Sisters of Notre Dame. (The gentleman’s sister was a member of the order; she preceded him in death.)
The heartwarming part of the story is that his estate is estimated to be worth more than $1 million dollars, which will go a long way towards helping the work of the sisters.
But here’s the best part of the story: that estate included an original T206 series Honus Wagner baseball card, which was recently sold for $220,000. (If that seems low for a T206 card, you’re probably right; this one was not in mint condition.)
Here’s a nice bit of detail from the NYT story:
My opinion of baseball is well known, but God bless you, Sister Mary. And God bless Cal Ripken, the School Sisters of Notre Dame, and the gentleman in question (who is not named in the NYT article).
If you are confused, check with the sun.
January 31st, 2011I’ve kind of wanted to pick up the DVD sets of “Get A Life”
But cheese louise! $81.59?! $124.99?! For DVD sets of four freaking episodes? This is the kind of thing that drives people to piracy. (Not that I condone piracy, but…)
Actually, that was mostly a transparent excuse to link to this NYT article, which brings us the happy news that Chris Elliot is…working! Also, apparently, the NYT has decided that “filthy whore” is acceptable usage in the Grey Lady. That is, as long as you’re discussing a fishing boat, or a Chris Elliott movie.
Confucius say, “We’ve lost our lease! Everything must go!”
January 31st, 2011The Forbidden Gardens in Katy are closing.
Yes, I know. “The what?”
Lisa Gray in the HouChron has a pretty good piece that covers the closing, the history of the Forbidden Gardens, and what little she could find out about Ira Poon, the shadowy millionaire who’s supposedly behind the attraction.
Based on the Chron’s story, I wouldn’t be shocked if they start digging for the Grand Parkway expansion and find a gargantuan underground lair beneath the Forbidden Gardens, complete with death ray and shark tank.
Important safety tip. (#3 in a series)
January 31st, 2011This has been said many times, in many places, but I think it bears repeating for reasons that I’ll illustrate shortly:
GPS systems are a guide and a tool. They are not absolutely perfect. They are human designed systems that can fail.
Also, no matter how insistent that voice is, and no matter how often it says “Recalculating”, your GPS system is not the boss of you. You are the person in control of the vehicle; you have the option to ignore it, mute it, or even throw it out the window. (I even know one person who took a perverse enjoyment in tormenting their car’s GPS system by driving in circles.)
Several things bring this to mind. Some folks who were attending Saturday’s SDC found that their GPS systems were showing a location for Korean Grill that was quite a bit off from the actual location. (By the way, Korean Grill is a pretty darn spiffy place; I recommend giving it a shot.) On Sunday, we had a similar experience trying to find the Gruene Door; somehow, we ended up in a residential area several hundred feet behind the Gruene Door, and more or less stumbled on the restaurant through pure luck. (Also: the Gruene Door was fantastic. I’d like to go back sometime soon.)
And then there’s this story from the Sacramento Bee:
And then they get stuck in the middle of nowhere in 120 degree heat where there’s no cell phone service and wind up drinking their own urine to survive. Or just simply vanish until someone stumbles across their remains in the desert.
It does seem like there may be a little more to this than just GPS failures. (Why aren’t closed roads better marked? Perhaps with a big sign: “ROAD CLOSED. IF YOU GO PAST THIS POINT YOU WILL DIE.“) But the main problem still seems to be blind trust in a technology that can fail.
(Unfortunately, I can’t find a YouTube clip of the Hill Street Blues episode where Joyce Davenport lectures one of her clients on desert survival techniques. Too bad, because she’s actually got some pretty sound advice to offer.)
Obit watch: “Who Cares If You Listen?”
January 30th, 2011Radio, radio.
January 28th, 2011Dashed off in great haste: this appears to be a good current schedule for Radio Cairo on shortwave.
I still have my shortwave gear, but I haven’t fired it up in a long time and I’m not sure how well it still works. If any of my readers are shortwave listeners and have other schedules from the Middle East, or reception reports on Radio Cairo, I welcome those here.
“Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism.”
January 28th, 2011I have a friend who hates blogs.
(That’s not the only thing he hates. Lawrence and I have been discussing the construction of a sentence designed to make his head explode. So far, we’ve got “Prominent blogger Cory Doctrow really likes Quentin Tarantino’s new movie, especially since he released it under a Creative Commons license without DRM.” I think we’re almost there, but we need to work “Rob Enderle” in somehow.)
I don’t want to go into all the reasons my friend hates blogs; I’m not even sure he knows all the reasons himself, or that his reasons are even rational. But one of his major complaints is that blogs don’t do any original reporting; they just link to other people’s work. His question is, “What will the blogs do when they kill off the newspapers, as they keep saying they want to do?”
This certainly is true of some blogs, of course. I’ve pointed out the existence of counter-examples, such as Michael Yon, but my friend really isn’t interested in Yon’s reporting; and, to some extent, his attitude is “If I’m not interested in it, it doesn’t exist, or isn’t worthy of consideration.”
(I know this makes my friend sound like a jerk. He’s really not; he’s a good guy who I’ve known since Jesus was a 2nd lieutenant. He just has very strong opinions.)
I come down more on the side of Clay Shirky. The title quote is from his excellent essay, “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable“, about the possible demise of the newspaper and what it means for society. Yes, there may not be many blogs doing original reporting right now, and it is legitimate to wonder what will happen to them when the last newspaper reporter is strangled with the entrails of the last newspaper editor, but…
When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.
Haiti started me thinking some more about what Shirky says here. (Yes, I’ve been working on this post for a long time.) It seems clear that we needed boots on the ground to cover that situation. Those boots needed infrastructure; they needed food and water and communications and power and security and living quarters. In a chaotic environment like Haiti, those things are nearly impossible to provide without a substantial investment of money.
Who has the resources to provide that? The NYT, the WP, the WSJ, and the TV networks. Who doesn’t have the resources to provide that? Individual bloggers.
And now Egypt is burning, and the Internet is cut off.
I think it’s very easy for Shirky to say that people who want to know “what’s next?” want to be lied to. But maybe that’s not the case. Maybe the people who want to know “what’s next?” think Haiti and Egypt and the next crisis after that are too important to be left to chance.
(Note: I’ve been working on this entry for a long, long time, and I’m still not 100% happy with the way it hangs together. But it seems like the the time to post is now, and I’m not sure picking at it much longer is going to make it any better.)
All the old paintings on the tombs, they do the sand dance, don’t you know…
January 28th, 2011Who says school is useless?
One of the things I picked up last semester in my Modern Revolutions class (this specifically comes from James DeFronzo’s Revolutions and Revolutionary Movements
- Frustration among the masses, resulting in unrest and uprisings in the cities or in rural areas. It sure seems to me like we’ve got that in Egypt.
- The presence of “elite” political movements in opposition to the ruling powers. By “elite” DeFronzo means that these movements have access to wealth, power, specialized skill sets, or higher levels of education than the average population. This is something I’m not so clear on; are there “elite” political movements in Egypt? If the coverage I’m seeing in places like the CSM is any guide (hattip: Battleswarm), the Egyptian government has been rigging elections; I can see that leading to pent up political opposition which finally has a chance to vent, but I’m not sure that meets DeFronzo’s criteria.
- Motivations that serve to unify major classes and that cut across class distinctions. Again, looking at the coverage in the CSM and other places, we’ve got that:
- Some sort of severe political situation that paralyzes the administrative authority of the state. Such a crisis allows the revolutionary movement to flourish, free of government repression. At this point, I’m not sure we have that; is the army going to continue to avoid confrontation? Or is cutting off the Internet and cellphones a prelude to Mubarak mobilizing forces and machine-gunning people in the streets? If he gives that order, will the army obey?
- The rest of the world has to, if not actively support the revolution, at least not interfere with it. DeFronzo calls this “a permissive or tolerant world context”. At this point, I don’t see the U.S., or the rest of the world, actively trying to interfere in an Egyptian revolution.
I’d welcome thoughts and responses in the comments below.
Edited to add: I think this post from Megan McArdle (obligatory: my favorite CNE) has some bearing here, too. Especially this part:
Edited to add 2: One thing that I should have mentioned, but forgot to, is that I’m not 100% sure DeFronzo’s criteria are sufficient for a successful revolution. In particular, I think DeFronzo and other revolutionary theorists underplay the role of a charismatic leader in the success of a revolution: Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Khomeini…
Edited to add 3: The Scalz doesn’t have much to say, but many of his commenters in this thread do.
And I rode away on the Tennessee stud…
January 27th, 2011Jeff Fisher out as coach of the Tennessee Titans. Well, that was somewhat unexpected. (Nashville Tennessean link.)
It will be interesting to see where, if anywhere, Fisher lands. He seems to have been a highly regarded NFL coach, but why?
147-126 is about a 54% winning percentage.
Things I have learned in the past 24 hours.
January 27th, 2011Something called Vladimir Putin Action Comics exists, and is funny. (I am particularly amused by this one.)
(Found by way of “Hipster Hitler“, which in turn I found by way of Borepatch.)
Ford produced “Bullitt” commemorative special edition Mustangs in 2001, and again in 2008/2009.
There is an “International Mustang Bullitt Owners Club“.
(The latter two facts were fallout from reading this WSJ article.)
Bad boys, bad boys…
January 27th, 2011…what you gonna do, what you gonna do when your city government runs out of money because corrupt city officials have been pillaging the treasury, and the city decides to disband the police department and outsource to the L.A. County Sherrif’s Department?
(Okay, so I need to work on the scansion a bit.)
Edited to add this bulletin from Captain Obvious: