and the insane clown
Fred and I went to see the new Batman movie on Sunday.
Two thumbs up. Dark, scary, freaky, explodey. Everything we wanted from a Summer movie.
Damn, but Heath Ledger did a crazy good job as the Joker. Batshit insane good. And Aaron Eckhart did just as good a job as Harvey Dent, especially in the last third of the movie.
Super awesome fun time happy Summer movie. I LOVE popcorn movies.
Prepare to evacuate.
I made Red Beans and Rice today. Rather good job, if I say so myself. And seeing that there’s no one else posting here, it’s pretty much only me that CAN say so. So there.
The basic gist of Red Beans and Rice is this: boil kidney beans all day with chopped up onion, bell pepper, celery, a ham hock, and a bunch of spices. Serve over rice with liberal dashes of hot sauce. Wait for the explosive aftereffects to hit sometime in the night.
It’s rather an all-day job making it, but as all-day jobs go it’s pretty painless. Most of it involves wandering into the kitchen periodically, stirring the big bubbling mess, and thinking, “hey, this is still pretty soupy.” Patience will be rewarded with a thick red gravy made primarily of bean mash and dissolved onion.
I hate onion. But I really like this.
If you want to try it yourself, use this recipe. Note that it’s a vegan recipe. If you’re a vegan/vegetarian, this is probably right up your alley. If you’re not, feel free to toss in a ham hock or two like I did. Hopefully the blog owner won’t be too horrified that I chucked pork bones into her recipe. I also toned down the heat so that Fred’s head wouldn’t asplode. Hence the bottle of Crystal Hot Sauce next to my plate during dinner.
Those of you of southern extraction will probably complain that I used kidney beans instead of small red beans, or that I used inferior brands of kidney beans. Tough hop. I works with what I can gets at the local store. I’m not going to find Camellia Brand Beans in Minnesota, so I used Market Pantry (Target store brand) dried kidney beans. Quelle horreur.
Other southerners will instead complain that I’m a yankee and have no business cooking something distinctly southern, and know about as much about good food as I do about catfish noodling. To which I invite them to come up here and show me what I’m missing. In January. When we’re grilling beer brats outside.
Candy asses.
The big flickery thing with the ushers and the popcorn.
Today’s movie was Hellboy 2: The Golden Army. Big crunchy visual feast with a slightly convoluted plot, some poorly thought-out plot points, and lots of fighty-explody stuff.
I loved it.
It’s a Guillermo Del Toro movie, which means freakish creatures and lots of grimy texture. I love that. I am a big fan of Pan’s Labyrinth, despite the rather depressing story. I’m not a fan of emotional pain and suffering in movies, so I’m not current with quite a number of the more serious films of the past decade or so. (Haven’t seen Schindler’s List, or Saving Private Ryan, for instance.) But the visuals and the freak factor are so high in Pan’s Labyrinth that I fell in love with it.
Hellboy 2 is heavy on the visuals and the freak factor, without all the agony of his previous film. I appreciate that a lot. This had lots of oddball characters, big clockwork machinery, messy organic stuff, and some nice fight scenes. The opening is in the form of a story told to the young Hellboy, and is performed by animated wooden dolls. Absolutely beautiful work.
The rest of the film is a bit of a chaotic mess, and I don’t care. It’s so much fun to watch that I didn’t really give a damn about the story or the character interactions. Hellboy (usually called “Red”) is a great character, and is played perfectly by Ron Perlman.
Don’t see this for grand acting or comprehensible plot. See it for great fights and awesome spectacle.
Actual personality.
Fred and I discovered a couple of things on the 4th of July.
1) The 4th of July is a great time to go to the movies, because there’s no-one there. Everyone else is out having picnics.
2) WALL-E is a wonderful movie.
I am a genuine sucker for Pixar films. I love all of them, even the ones that are generally considered as the weakest efforts. (Cars and A Bug’s Life are usually singled out for this.)
WALL-E is a marvelous piece of work, even against the rest of their films. It is breathtaking how much personality can be displayed by a rusty little trash compactor. Or a cockroach, for that matter.
The first half of the movie has little dialog. It’s almost entirely driven by visuals, punctuated with appropriate sounds and the occasional pronunciation of the characters’ names. It’s beautiful, and silly, and terrifying, and genuine. So genuine that I rapidly forgot that I was watching an animated movie. The characters seem filmed rather than animated. As much as I love Toy Story, it’s pretty hard to forget that it’s an animated movie. Everything is glossy and plastic, and simple. Here, the world is complex, rusted, dirty, and very lived-in. It leaves a taste in your mouth. You can almost smell the dust and steel.
It’s a glorious film, and another reason why Pixar is my favorite film company.
Holy Hannah.
I made this Chocolate Eclair dessert this weekend. Super easy, super trashy, super delicious. The original recipe calls for french vanilla instant pudding, so of course I screwed around and used chocolate instead.
The simplicity of the recipe belies its awesome power to overwhelm one’s sense of restraint. I won’t be making it often, out of sheer self-defense. This is NOT the kind of dessert you want lingering in the house.
Here’s the recipe. Try not to die from the incredibly difficult instructions. Oh, and it’s at its best after about 12 hours in the fridge. If you can wait that long. Fat chance.
Trapped in a Wikipedia Singularity
The rapacious Kevin Parrott has tagged me with an Intarweb meme, because he’s that kind of guy. So who am I to deny my destiny?
I will be putting together a cd of 19 of my favorite songs, any style, any era. Once I get that compiled, I’ll be poking at a list of you other bloggers out there, and will send you a copy. You’ll spread the love with your own disk, and so on.
More details later, once I get the actual disk set up.
I throw you the Geritol.
Fred picked me up from work, and we went straight to the theater for today’s last matinee showing of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Verdict: Fun. Hokey, silly fun. Anyone who goes to an Indy Jones movie expecting rich compelling plots and believable action might as well just stay home and rent Merchant & Ivory movies. ‘Cause with Indy, shit is going to crash and explode and burn and brawl and fall.
He’s old. He’s mellowed. And he’s still a helluva lot of fun, even twenty years after the last adventure.
Shia LeBouf is fine in it. Does a good job. So does Karen Allen, Ray Winstone, Jim Broadbent, and especially Cate Blanchett.
We ate popcorn. We rolled our eyes. We laughed. And we squirmed.
I love Summer movies.
I’ve never seen the movie.
I’m participating in a little exercise in sharing and kindness, started by some folks on Ravelry. Would you like to join in? Do you have a blog?
Here’s how it works: I will make and send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a comment to this post on my blog requesting to join this PIF exchange. I do not know what that gift will be yet, and it won’t be sent this month, probably not next month, but it will be sent (within 6 months) and that’s a promise! What YOU have to do in return, then, is pay it forward by making the same promise on your blog.
I will now Pay It Forward to you THREE, I wonder who you will be?! Please, be a PIF! You will enjoy it just as much as we do!
And, remember…you have 6 months to get your gifts done! Come on, you know you would love to be one of my angels. Then, one day, when you least expect it, you will get a gift that I have made especially for YOU!
Please remember, you don’t have to knit or crochet to participate, anyone who can make a nice handmade gift is welcome to join.
So if you’d like to participate, let me know in the comments.
A voice like brown silk.
Fred found me another Joan Osborne album, one that I inexplicably had purchased two songs from without getting the rest of the album.
OH MY GOD.
The album is called How Sweet It Is. And it is. It’s all covers, classic stuff like Only You Know and I Know, I’ll Be Around, Everybody is a Star, and The Weight.
Joan Osborne is easily the most underrated singer out there. Her voice is extraordinary, and all anyone knows about her is that damned One of Us song, which is totally out of character with the rest of her work.
Do yourself a favor, and look for her cds. Joan’s voice deserves to be heard. And if you don’t believe me, check this out. This is from Standing in the Shadows of Motown, a documentary film about The Funk Brothers, the session band for pretty much every hit from Motown. She fits right in.
Get thee to a theater, Sirrah.
Fred and I saw Iron Man this afternoon. Awesome fun. Tony Stark, millionaire genius, arms dealer, playboy. Builds an armored exoskeleton and flies around. Lots of snarky dialogue, and explosions.
Recommended. One of the best superhero movies you’ll ever see.
Keeping you updated with my ephemeral life.
Item: The sump is doing a good job. We’re not finished with it, but it’s functional and doing its job. This weekend will probably be a good test if we get the rain we’re supposed to have.
Item: That had better be it for the goddamn snow.
Item: Knit night last night. I’m part of a group that meets monthly to sit and knit. Or, as some say, stitch and bitch. We had about 12 people show up. I was of course the only male. We had a great time. There were cupcakes, which raises the awesome level by two points.
Item: Iron Man this weekend. Boo yah!
Item: Just over a month ’till my nephew Nick graduates from High School. That’s three down and one to go for my sister.
Heading to China.
In an effort to stem the usual Spring tides in our basement, we’re installing a sump pump. Naturally, we’ve put it off until the last possible minute.
The afternoon was spent with a large Bosch Roto-hammer, a strange drill/jackhammer hybrid. Lots of sweating, some significant swearing, and a multitude of angry muscles. We’re both going to be sore tomorrow.
But we’re through the concrete, and down to soil. If you look at the photo closely, you might be able to see the groundwater at the edges. Oh, yeah, baby. Get ready to get pumped out of our basement.
We’ve got digging to do, followed by sump placement and backfilling. But the real back-breaker is done. Oh, and bless you, those who poured the original slab. No rebar, just wire mesh. Thank goodness. But then screw you, too. Rocks. Lots of rocks.
Like every other inch of land on this lot. Damn it.
But not surefooted.
What you see here is Fred’s first attempt at making me a swift. (It’s the white platter at top left, with the wire hangers sticking out all around. The thing at bottom right is a yarn winder.) A swift is a mechanism for holding a hank of yarn (a large circle of yarn; think of a coiled garden hose,) for winding. Ever seen a person holding yarn stretched between their two hands, while another person winds the yarn into a ball? The holder was acting as a human swift.
Anyway, Fred’s swift (Mark I) worked, but was kinda wonky and hard to deal with. Hanks come in different sizes, and this one was a pain to adjust. A lot of bending of the hanger wire, and fidgeting. And sooner or later, it was guaranteed to break.
So we came up with a different plan; here’s Mark II.
It’s two of those expandable coffee mug racks, laying on a lazy susan. Total cost: $5. A new swift generally starts at about $60, so this is a significant savings. Happy day!
Yes, you ARE going to get more yarn blogging. Suffer.
Like a pub crawl, but with less inebriation.
Went yarn shopping today, and hit four yarn shops that I hadn’t visited before. Here’s my thoughts on the places. I don’t have a clear favorite, because they all had something to recommend them.
The Yarnery had the friendliest staff I’ve ever seen. Every now and then, one would ask if I needed help. It sounds intrusive, but it wasn’t. (And I’m the kind of person who prefers to be ignored by salespeople.) Quirky store in an old house. Close-out yarn in the kitchen! Nice selection.
Borealis was the opposite. No-one said boo to me until I came up to the register to pay for some sock yarn. (I’m fine with that, but I can see how it would be off-putting to others.) Kind of a lopsided inventory. Heavy on crazy Cherry Hill Farms yarn for some reason. Light on simple yarns. But the back room had some lovely sock yarn. Odd hippie vibe to the place.
Crafty Planet was big and open, and not at all like any other yarn shop I’ve been in. Half devoted to odd vintage/reproduction fabric. The other half was full of really straightforward yarn, with LOTS of Brown Sheep, including some varieties I hadn’t seen before. I like that. I like Brown Sheep’s various products. Cool self-striping sock yarns from Cascade, I think. And lots of superwash, which makes me happy. Life’s too short to handwash all your socks.
Double Ewe was tiny, and tucked away in an odd zigzag shaped strip-mall, stuffed in the corner and almost impossible to see. Friendly people, and a fairly small inventory that seemed to be designed for me. Plenty of superwash, some really nice synthetics, and most of it at VERY reasonable prices.
Of the bunch, I would put Borealis at the bottom, because so much of their inventory is too specialized, and poorly organized. (And the lighting is terrible.) But they have a great selection of certain types, especially if you’re into socks and don’t mind handwashing.
Crafty Planet and Double Ewe would be “you like it or you don’t” shops. Either they hit your sweet spot, or they miss entirely. They don’t have enough variety to attract everyone. I’m fine with that. They attracted me.
The Yarnery seems like a great all-purpose yarn shop, and certainly pays attention to the clientele. The stock is nicely organized and kept filled, and clearly marked. They even had my Cascade Pastaza blue-black colorway that I like so much. Several skeins of Lambs Pride Kiwi, too! (Love that color.) Parking sucks, though, what with them being on Grand Avenue.
Your mileage and all that, of course.
Beaker has always been one of my favorites.
For an explanation of what just happened, go here. (Yes, I know I’m way behind the curve. I never claimed to be on the cutting edge. Hell, I still dress like I did in the Eighties.)
I’m knitting on the bus!
At the end of the experiment you will be…minced.
Just got done playing Portal. It’s a weird puzzle/first person shooter hybrid game from Valve, the makers of the incredible Half Life games. It’s based on the Half Life engine, and I think may have started out as a fan created project. (Update: It was actually a student project, according to the in-game commentary from Valve.)
At any rate, it’s a helluva lot of fun, albeit short. I completed the basic game in about three and a half hours. There are little hidden things, and some advanced maps, so I’ve still got some time to play. But even if there weren’t, I’d be plenty happy. Twenty bucks well spent.
You’re a test subject, forced to navigate through various rooms. The exit of each test chamber takes you to an elevator, which opens in the next chamber. The puzzles are built around the Portal mechanism, a gun which shoots ports into the walls and floors. There’s one blue portal, and one orange. If you go into the blue portal, you come out the orange, and vice versa.
It can be extremely disorienting, especially when you come out of a portal upside down. You can also have one portal on the ceiling, and the other on the floor beneath it, creating an infinite loop. So you keep falling and falling, getting faster and faster.
Fred watched briefly, and gave up in total confusion.
While you’re being tested, a rather psychotic computer voice eggs you on, promises cake at the end of testing, and says helpful things like, “I’m afraid this level is impossible.”
Strange, dark game with some really quirky humor. Highly recommended. PC only, though. I don’t believe there’s a Mac version.
Those jerks at Omega Tau are going down.
Looking for a good Fraternity project while going to school? How about building your own half-scale Panzer tank?
“I took it home, driving it around in this white picket fence neighborhood and one of the neighbors called the cops on us,” said Foster, a Kettering University student who began building the tank from scratch nearly two years ago.
“(Police) came and they just told us to head back home, but they were also laughing at it because they had never seen anything like that before.”
That’s officially awesome. Way better than sitting on a dilapidated couch on the front porch, shooting bottle rockets at traffic. He did a great job, too. It looks intimidating, and it even sounds like what you’d expect a tank to sound like.
Via Slashdot.
Straights beware.
This is the second-gayest music video I’ve ever seen.
Yes, he’s a former gay porn star. While he’s got a ways to go in shedding that past, he’s not afraid to work that angle getting attention.
And for those that are brave and curious, here’s the GAYEST MUSIC VIDEO EVER.
