grab bag

I am about to make chili con back-of-the-freezer-carne surprise. I took out all my frozen blocks of (pardon me) cow, except for a flank steak--wodges of organic ground beef, a steak or two, some chuck, I think--and am thawing it. Will heave it all into the pot with Carroll Shelby's chili spices and additional cumin/oregano and some chicken stock. Things can stay in the freezer too long. Let's get them out and participating in life.

Check out this restaurant that just opened in Nuremberg (website in German; in English). All my automat/Rube Goldberg/Chitty-Chitty dreams come true: everything automated. (What a horrid name, though, eh. 's Baggers. Ick.) "We have reinvented the Restaurant…and overtaken the restaurants of the first and second dimension (i.e. service and self-service restaurants). All good things come from above: freshly prepared, delicious meals and drinks ordered per touch screen are transported on metallic tracks directly to your table..."

What should the penalty be for broad-scale "Nessun dorma" abuse? I'm getting REALLY TIRED of being challenged as a snob because I can't get with Michael Bolton's constitutional right to mangle this aria. Classic rock fans griping about Puffy's use of "Kashmir" or Sheryl Crow singing "Sweet Child o Mine" in just the same way get more pop, since it's seen as an okay kinda snobbery. I know it's just life, a pretty song has a life of its own, but what can I say, I long for this aria done well and love it in context, where the person who made it put it. I have the same problem with "Send in the Clowns." I am settin myself up for a lifetime of heartache I know. But blech.

These are the BEST cookies. Back to Nature, swirls of choccy and mint cream twixt the cookies. Highly recommended.

An undifferentiated rant to the officious Miss Doggetts of the world: No one asked you to be Julie (or Cap'n Stubing or even Isaac). There is no need for a cruise director. This boat is way bigger than you know and you are trying to cruise direct, take photos and be in the photos, all at the same time. None of these are your job. Actually, you are a character in a mystery novel--an Agatha Christie on a boat--gunning for the starring role. Your largesse is not altruism; it's that you--not only want to be in the center of things--you want information. And that will get you in trouble. If you really want to be Lauren Tewes, put on some individuals, grow a Hamill mushroom, and work on a bad coke habit. Ahhh...I love sounding insane in all sorts of ranty/vague ways.

My membership as part of the female bourgeoisie is official: I reallllly want a Dyson Ball. ZOOOOOOOOM. Zoom.

Food Network rebroadcasting a lot of "Chefography" last week. Most notable? The cleaning-up of the R. Ray documentary. No relationship with older local newsanchor and no RR-haters (that I saw). Those programs are alarmingly press release-y in any ol case, but still. That station. For a station that is wholesale committed to the real, the tactile--FOOD, for christ's sake--it's really cagey about absolutely everything. It's very not real.

This is a photo of Doris Day wearing glasses!! Never ever seen one. Pretty cool, eh? (promo pic)

I watched Flushed Away the other day...quite liked it (I am pretty much an Aardman mark). 1) The use of Impact (? close--similar), plain white Impact, as credit sequence lettering, was really effective against the intense color palate of the animation--very pretty; 2) My fav, the hilariously French Le Frog: "Henchmen! We have a mission. Let nothing stand in our way. We leave immediately!" "But what about dinner?" "We leave...in five hours!"

That mean boot-sargeant guy on the Shaming Fat Celebrities Into a Temporarily Smaller Shape program--whatever it is called--might be going to hell, I think. I just can't support his right to harrass people like that, as though he's the hammer of God with right on his side.