Holy Crap!!! Alton Brown has a new show starting on September 7th called Feasting on Waves which follows his trip around the Caribbean investigating island foods.
I know what I’ll be watching on Sunday nights (10pm!) for four weeks 
Archive for July, 2008
Feasting on Waves
Thursday, July 31st, 2008A Heart For Cooking
Thursday, July 31st, 2008Michael Ruhlman recounts, in entertaining style, a day of cooking and eating with his former cooking instructor Michael Pardus. The dual sense of serendipity and devotion to a craft make me want to spend a day like theirs…perhaps with some slightly less daring cuts of meat
For the Thrill of It
Thursday, July 31st, 2008Smithsonian Magazine has a fascinating (if not slightly morbid) article about a 1924 kidnap and murder of a 14-year-old boy in Chicago by two young, wealthy, and deranged men. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb botched a scheme to kidnap and murder one of Loeb’s cousins while extorting ransom money from the boy’s father, and their trial gripped the city – indeed, the country – while a prominent prosecutor of the day battled with attorney Clarance Darrow between the death penalty and life imprisonment.
The article gave the impression that Darrow fought more for preventing another execution than for the defense of his clients, and his quote after the trial seems to feign disappointment at the “loss” of his case:
Well, it’s just what we asked for but…it’s pretty tough….It was more of a punishment than death would have been.
While the piece has been unfortunately paginated its window into early 20th century culture is worth the read.
Do you believe the limits of reality are finite?
Wednesday, July 30th, 2008Who needs burritos when you have magic pants?
(via waxy)
Animation by Eran Hilleli
Wednesday, July 30th, 2008
we used to call people late at night from eran hilleli on Vimeo.
Eran Hilleli is a student at Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, and each one of his shorts on Vimeo is a joy to watch, whether it’s stop-motion, traditional animation, or a blend of motion graphics generated by a computer.
“we used to call people late at night” – the video above – is my favorite so far. It’s creepy to me, perhaps because it feels both real and frighteningly fantastical at the same time.
Down the Tubes
Tuesday, July 29th, 2008Looks like Ted “Bridge-to-Nowhere” or “The-Internet-is-a-series-of-tubes” Stevens won’t be in the Senate much longer.
The NY Times reports that investigations have led to an indictment and corruption charges for the senior senator from Alaska. Even if he survives the legal proceedings, I have a feeling there will be calls to step down to prevent further tarnishing of an already abysmal scene for Congressional Republicans over the past couple of years.
This certainly shouldn’t help the impression of Congress on the whole for Americans who apparently approve of the legislature by less than 10%.
Blogging the Class: Week 9
Monday, July 28th, 2008In tonight’s penultimate class we replayed, for the most part, the last several weeks. There were two major differences, however.
First, I had the negatives from my medium format test roll, and as such, I could make prints of my new square delights. I had to swap out the 50 mm condenser lens for an 80 mm and use a larger negative carrier, but the process was otherwise the same. The results were decidedly different; never have I seen such clear and richly-detailed prints from 400-speed film! There was almost no discernible loss of information on a 7.5 by 7.5 print.
Second, because the teacher was heading up to the roof of the building to take a pinhole camera shot, he asked us if we wanted to join him. He didn’t really have anything to tell us or show us (he just sort of took his pinhole picture while we played around), but I had my Yashica with me, and an unused roll of Provia color slide film. I shot almost the entire roll on the roof, and polished off the last four in the class room at the end of the evening. My meter was at home so I’m not really sure how they’ll turn out, but I’m still looking forward to the results.
That’s that – no assignments, nothing different to expect for the last class next week, and no instruction. I guess we’ll have more time for printing while we wrap things up…
We’ll see! One week left.
Verizon FiOS Rollout Schedule
Monday, July 28th, 2008If you, like me, live in a part of the City of Richmond (or anywhere, really) that has yet to see fiber optic internet connectivity in your neighborhood, there’s a simple way to check if it’s coming soon:
Verizon’s Virginia Community Page contains a link to a PDF-format schedule of their construction plans for FiOS. I’ve not linked to the schedule directly because it’s typically bi-monthly. It looks like they’re finally getting close to my humble Seminary Avenue, but I can’t help feeling like they’ll have something newer and better by the time they finally get to my block.
There are pages for states other than Virginia as well. It’s a shame you can’t get to these pages more directly or common-sense-like. When you check for FiOS availability in your area and there is none, all they do is try to hawk their DSL service instead.
Don’t you forget about me.
Saturday, July 26th, 2008When I hear Simple Minds‘ iconic 80’s anthem, “Don’t You (Forget About Me),” I’m filled with a semi-false nostalgia that tricks me into reminiscing about my mostly crappy high school years…
It was December of my senior year at Central Senior High School in the depressed rural county of Lunenburg, Virginia, and I was preparing for a concert on Saturday, the 19th. I was in this concert, playing bass guitar for a band with Mugs and Lucas called Uprooted, and we were getting ready for a six-band show in the improvised back room club at the Mean Bean coffee shop in Clarksville. We’d drawn the third slot out of a hat and had a 45-minute set to rehearse consisting of songs written almost entirely by Mugs.
Some of the tunes were decent, some of them were crappy (in retrospect), but nearly all of them reflected some romantic angst between Mugs and an unnamed gal from our school, and for whatever reason, the songs enjoyed a growing popularity in our area. By the week before the gig, word had spread around our school of the upcoming show and we were expecting a fair portion of concert attendees in support of our fledgling act.
The night of the show came, and while the two bands before us had disappointingly short sets we were more than ready to take the stage. As we stood on the riser, instruments in hands and stage lights coaxing the sweat to surface before we even started playing, we looked out over a steadily building crowd in this ersatz concert hall and kicked into what would be our last concert together. We played a varied set, sure to include some of our shorter instrumental pieces that grabbed the attention of the small town youth when Uprooted debuted at Autumn Days back in October. The room continued to fill until a girl, the object of Mugs’ lyrics, walked through the door. We scrapped our next song and substituted a straight blues rocker, “I Can’t Get You Off Of My Mind.” My brother wailed the lyrics in a scratchy baritone, all but singing to the unnamed show-goer in the front.
I remember stepping out of the lights with a high I’ve yet to experience again. I’ve never sought to draw attention to myself (honest!), but for the better part of an hour we were rock stars in our region. After unplugging our instruments we joined the crowd for the rest of Bean Fest ‘98 (seriously), receiving many a high-five and compliment as we mingled with the patrons. I remember enjoying the rest of the night, but I don’t remember the rest of the bands…
We packed up our gear from the back of the building in the van of our drummer’s father, and after the lights went up and concert-goers started to leave, we made our way to the curb in front of the coffee shop to meet up with our ride. Paulie, our step-dad, had pulled up in our ‘93 Dodge Intrepid with Farmville’s WXJK playing over the speakers.
When he stepped out of the car I could hear Simple Minds start to play over the radio, so I rolled down all the windows and cranked up the volume so we could bask in our short-lived teenage glory.
Will you recognise me?
Call my name or walk on by
Rain keeps falling, rain keeps falling
Down, down, down, down
Okay, so here’s some honesty: Memories are notoriously unreliable and murky, so I’m sure some of the events described herein aren’t completely accurate. I may have even exaggerated some of it for effect. What I know to be accurate for sure, though, is what I felt. What I still feel. Uprooted didn’t last much longer. The drummer and his father – our sort-of manager – wanted to avoid any more free gigs and start playing more clubs further around the state. Mugs wanted to focus on the music and was afraid of being too caught up with the money. We dissolved before Christmas.
We may have only lasted three months, but that band gave me some of the only good time I ever had in high school, capped-off and summed-up in the strains of “Don’t You (Forget About Me).”
Medium
Friday, July 25th, 2008
I’ve uploaded my entire test roll of medium format film to my Flickr page. Being a test roll, the shots are, consequently, not that interesting. But I think the detail and clarity of the film format is evident.