→ February 9, 2008
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The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear.

Walter Moers’ The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear was described in a Washington Post review as “equal parts J.K. Rowling, Douglas Adams, and Shel Silverstein,” which isn’t too far off the mark. It’s a flight of fancy, a children’s book written for grown-ups, showcasing an amazingly creative mind, but a little light on storyline.

The book follows Captain Bluebear from his first memories as a tiny cub afloat on the ocean in a nutshell through his first thirteen and a half “lives” – a bluebear has twenty-seven, although these are lives in the sense of chapters of his life, rather than twenty-seven separate mortal coils – each of which is sort of a self-contained story. Most take the form of “Bluebear finds himself in a new environment, gets into trouble (generally not of his own making), and needs to escape.” There are recurring secondary characters through several of the stories, and Moers’ facility with creating both secondary characters and unusual places is incredible – for example, the Earspoonlets:

Even more innocuous and equally beneficial to society were the acoustic vampires popularly known as Earspoonlets, which lived on speech. They were little bigger than dachshunds but had hearing organs of which a young elephant need not have been ashamed. They spent most of their time lying around in public places and pricking up their ears – an extremely amusing sight. Earspoonlets were capable of storing up all they heard for months and regurgitating it before it was fully digested. Thus they were much in demand as itinerant purveyors of information of witnesses of arguments. You could easily annoy them by noiselessly opening and shutting your mouth as if talking. This made them bounce around like mad things, vainly trying to catch the words they thought they were missing.

The whole book is deliberately silly, and there’s little narrative greed to drive you towards the end – no big foozle to kill, no major question to answer, etc. It doesn’t have the relentless plot of the Harry Potter books or the cheerful nihilism of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but instead floats along on its own absurdity. It’s a bit like empty calories, but speaking as someone who loves a rich dessert, empty calories are a perfectly acceptable part of a balanced literary diet – as long as they’re worth it.

Next up: Ian McEwan’s Atonement.

Filed Under: Literature Tagged With: , , , ,
→ February 8, 2008
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I weep for our language (part 4)…

Well, either for our language or for our system of jurisprudence …

(Source)

In her opening statement last month, prosecutor Ama Dwimoh asked jurors to reject any attempt to demonize the girl, describing her as a defenseless, innocent child who weighed only 36 pounds at her death.

“He wasn’t no daddy,” Dwimoh said of Rodriguez. “Daddies don’t blame their child for their actions. Murderers do.”

Don’t you need a basic command of English to be a prosecutor in the country’s largest municipal DA office?

Filed Under: Grammar Tagged With: ,
→ February 7, 2008
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Hollywood eats.

Just a quick heads-up – no ESPN chat this week. I expect to do another one next week, on the 14th.

I had a short and uneventful trip to LA earlier this week, but I did manage to find one absolute gem of a restaurant, a sushi place in West Hollywood called Ajisai, right off of Santa Monica. It’s a tiny place, with maybe ten tables and a small sushi bar, but the fish is out of sight, to the point where I left thinking, “I wish I’d been hungrier, so I could have eaten more.” The salmon looked fabulous and was incredibly smooth and fresh. I tend to avoid fancy rolls, since they’re a bad value and inauthentic, but I was sucked in by the Dragon Roll, which was a shrimp tempura roll topped with spicy tuna and a bit of salmon roe. It turned out to be a great choice, at least taste-wise (as it wasn’t cheap at $14, and I’m sure it’s not an authentic dish), because the spicy tuna itself was just about perfect, with larger chunks of tuna than I’ve ever found in that dish, and sparing use of the very spicy sauce that let the texture and flavor of the fish come through. The only sour note was the unagi; one of the two pieces I ordered had a distinctly fishy taste.

Ajisai was a welcome improvement over the previous night’s sushi at Geisha House, on Hollywood Boulevard right in downtown Hollywood. It was late and I was exhausted, so I asked at the hotel about the nearest good sushi place, and of course, I was directed to a place that was pushing atmosphere over food and that probably has a deal with the hotel, since I was handed a preprinted card with directions. Geisha House’s sushi cost more and had far less flavor than Ajisai’s, and their special-roll menu was loaded with junk ingredients and ridiculous sauces. I ordered green tea when I sat down, and was brought a pot with fresh leaves in it, but when I took a sip of the brew, it was black tea that tasted of flowers. So when the bill came, and I saw $6 for “Kyoto Rice” (which, it turns out, was the tea), I pointed out that the tea wasn’t even what I’d ordered, saying, “I asked you for green tea.” Her response: “Oh, we don’t have green tea, we have other tea.” So if you’re in the mood for other tea, Geisha House is the place for you.

I had one other meal of note, at Lucky Devil’s, a high-end burger (and panini) place on Hollywood owned by Lucky Vanous, best known for his appearance in a Diet Coke commercial back when people actually watched commercials. The burgers are all made from Kobe beef, which is probably something of a waste. I ordered mine medium-well, which is also probably something of a waste, and it arrived well-done, which was definitely a waste, since the burger was dry. The potato roll it was served on was the star of the show, while the “crispy fries” were pre-cut and coated, which means I could have had better fries if I’d walked five minutes in the other direction and gone to In-n-Out. But I will say that a medium or medium-rare burger at Lucky Devil’s is probably a much better experience than what I had, since good-quality beef probably shouldn’t be cooked too much past medium.

Filed Under: Food Tagged With: , , ,
→ February 7, 2008
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Mansfield Park adaptation.

So we just finished the Masterpiece Theatre showing of the new adaptation of Mansfield Park, and it was enjoyable as a trifle of a movie, but dreadful as an adaptation. I simply could not get past Billie Piper, in the lead role of Fanny Price, as a brunette who dyed her hair blonde in the early 1800s … and then couldn’t be bothered to do her eyebrows!

Mansfield Park is easily my least favorite of Austen’s novels due to its wimpy protagonist, despite all of Fanny’s defender’s claims of her “quiet strength,” which is revisionist bullshit – she’s a damned wimp and even in the one time when she stands up for herself, she’s sorry to have made others around her upset. There’s nice, and then there’s doormat. Fanny Price is a doormat.

The adaptation has turned this somewhat dark novel into a paper-thin romantic intrigue. All of the tension of the novel is gone. Mrs. Norris (yes, like the cat in the Harry Potter series, although here she is a live person) spends the novel tormenting Fanny at every turn; she’s scarcely in the movie at all. In the novel, when Fanny rejects the advances of Henry Crawford, the entire family (she’s staying with her aunt and uncle) turns on her in a relentless attempt to persuade her to accept his proposal, ultimately sending her back to her own poor family as a punishment. Here, she’s not invited on a day trip, and before we know it, Henry has run off with her sister – an event which, by the way, is a total shock in the novel and yet is foreshadowed in the first twenty minutes of the film. And so on. There is no tension in the movie, yet the book is wracked with it. At worst, couldn’t the screenwriters have found some middle ground.

I’m not the only Janeite who thinks so, for what it’s worth – the second of those links focuses on yet more unladylike behavior, as we saw in the new take on Persuasion. I admit that it’s a hard novel to adapt because a faithful version would be oppressive and bleak, but let’s at least stay true to the time period.

The Complete Jane Austen series is continuing with the Colin Firth Pride and Prejudice shown in three parts, starting this Sunday; it is well worth watching in its own right, but also stands as perhaps the supreme literary adaptation, period. The series then breaks, resuming on March 23rd with another old edition, this time of Emma, starring Kate Beckinsale.

Filed Under: DVDs, Literature Tagged With: , , ,
→ February 6, 2008
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I have seen this movie before…

Presented without comment, some thoughts from Mike Wilner on a J.P. Ricciardi statement from the Blue Jays’ fanfest thingy:

The other confusing thing was another bit of revisionist history. In response to a fan’s statement that it would be crazy to even consider trading a talent like Alex Rios, and, in his estimation, they Jays would never have thought of dealing Rios for Giants’ righty Tim Lincecum, Ricciardi responded by saying the following:

“When we were presented with that, we thought long and hard and obviously we value Rios more than we valued the other guy and that’s why he’s still here.”

Excellent answer. Except that’s not what happened. According to Ricciardi at the winter meetings in Nashville, the Rios-for-Lincecum offer was sitting on Brian Sabean’s desk waiting for the Giants’ GM to give the OK. According to Sabean in Nashville, he was considering doing Lincecum for Rios, but was really unsure about whether he should pull the trigger. He kept going back and forth on it for a week, and when the Giants signed Aaron Rowand to play centrefield, Sabean finally told the Jays the deal was a no-go.

I don’t understand why Ricciardi would have said that to the fans. Does it make him look good to the fans that he didn’t make a trade that they didn’t want him to make, even though he wanted to? Why give that answer when it’s obvious to anyone who turned on a radio, picked up a newspaper or looked online during the Winter Meetings that it’s simply not true? I just don’t get it.

Filed Under: Sports Tagged With: ,
→ February 3, 2008
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Super Bowl picks.

Throw your picks in below if you feel like it. As usual, bear in mind that I know little about football and don’t pay much attention to it until the playoffs.

My instinct is to take the Giants and the points, although I would still predict a Pats win. Double-digit spreads always feel like sucker bets to me. That said, in this case, I think there’s a decent chance the Patriots will try to run up the score, on top of the fact that they’ve already seen the best the Giants can throw at them and have now had two solid weeks to prepare for it. So I’ll say the Patriots win and beat the spread – say, 41-24.

One other thought on the game. I’m a casual Patriots’ fan, since they’re the local team and they hired Parcells around the time I settled up here – I have always loved that defense-first style of football – and now it’s just habit to root for them, but it doesn’t ruin my week when they lose. This time, though, I’ll be rooting hard for them for a reason unrelated to the franchise: I like history.

When I was a kid, I followed all sports. If Newsday printed standings for a league, I’d pick a favorite team and follow it. (I always rooted for the Denver team when there was one. I still don’t really know why.) And every year, I’d root for an NFL team to go undefeated. There was just something so appealing about that zero in the “L” column – it hadn’t been done since before I was born, and to a kid who liked math, there was something beautiful in the idea of a team going 16-0. (And, yes, in a team going 0-16, although now I have a harder time rooting for anyone to fail to that degree. Well, except the Cowboys.) And every year, I’d get my hopes up, and some time in November, the last undefeated team would fall, and I’d see those idiots from the ’72 Dolphins with their champagne, celebrating someone else’s defeat. So the Patriots going 16-0 this year fulfilled that little wish I had as a sports-nut kid, and I’d love to see them finish it off today with a victory – and, since they’re already on Mercury Morris’ front lawn, to see them urinate in his flower bed and take a dump in his fish tank while they’re at it. Celebrating someone else’s failure is bad enough, but the way the mainstream media celebrates these jackasses’ annual celebration really rubs me the wrong way.

So I’ll be rooting for New England today, despite my New York roots, because I like to watch history happen. The guacamole is made, I’ve got the materials to make tacos for our small crowd, and there’s a chocolate cake cooling on the counter, waiting to be sliced, filled, and frosted. It’s time for football.

EDIT: Jake’s post reminded me of one thing – Tom Brady’s the obvious pick for MVP, but if it’s not him, I’ll take Wes Welker.

Filed Under: Sports Tagged With:
→ February 3, 2008
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Once.

My wife and I just watched the most wonderful little film. It stars nobody. It earned under $10 million at the U.S. box office. Its director/writer said you could fit a summary of its plot on “a postage stamp.” It clocked in at 81 minutes before the credits rolled. And it was fantastic.

It’s called Once, and I can’t recommend it enough.

I don’t mean to oversell the film – it’s not Citizen Kane, or, more to the point, My Fair Lady – but it’s a very sweet and honest movie. The plot revolves around an Irish busker who meets a Czech immigrant woman on the street; over the next several days, they form a quick bond around music and end up forming an impromptu band and recording a demo of the busker’s own songs. Without giving away the ending, that’s about it for the plot. It’s much more about capturing little sentiments, often wordlessly, and other times via the movie’s original songs (the star and the director were both members of an Irish band called The Frames). Best of all, it avoids the forced plot twists that drive so many Hollywood films today, instead letting the characters drive the simple story.

You might have to like acoustic-based indie rock to fully get into the movie, but the songs themselves are deftly integrated into the storyline, and director John Carney manages to sneak in the occasional nod to music videos. Rent it or buy it, and then root for the song “Falling Slowly” at the Grammys and the Oscars over the next few weeks.

Filed Under: DVDs Tagged With: ,
→ February 2, 2008
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Salmon with tangerine beurre blanc.

I was asked for some advice on fish, so here goes.

Before I get to the recipe – a simple favorite of mine – some tips on buying and storing fish. You should always strive to buy fish the day you’re going to cook it, and no more than one day ahead. Buy it at a reputable store with good turnover, where the fish is stored in front of you on ice and where you don’t actually smell fish at the counter. Don’t be afraid to ask to smell a piece of fish before it’s cut or before you buy it – if fish smells fishy, it has already started to go bad. The color of farmed fish can be affected by its feed, so color isn’t a great guide for buying fish, but the flesh of the fish should look firm and not soft or mushy. When you get it home, stash it in the coldest part of your fridge – usually the bottom rack, towards the rear – and if it’s not wrapped tightly, transfer it to a sealed ziploc bag or container. I always store my wrapped fish in one of these flexible ice packs, which won’t freeze the fish but will keep it extra-cold.

When buying salmon, the tail end of the fish is not lower quality but the flesh can lose its texture more easily, and the last inch or so of the tail is useless. Tail pieces also cook more quickly because they’re thin. This recipe is designed for cuts from the center of the fish. Be sure to run a hand along the fish to check for pinbones, which can be removed with good tweezers or a pair of (CLEAN) needlenose pliers.

Salmon with Tangerine-Cilantro Beurre Blanc

6 Tbsp tangerine juice (roughly the juice of one tangerine)
1 Tbsp white wine vinegar (white balsamic worked)
1 Tbsp wine/cognac
1 small shallot, minced
2 tsp chopped fresh cilantro (or flat-leaf parsley)
4 Tbsp cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces
Salt & pepper to taste
1 lb salmon fillet, cut into individual servings (1/3 pound per serving is usually good)

Preheat the oven to 350.

1. In a saucier, combine the first four ingredients and simmer down until the liquid is almost gone. Add the cilantro and remove from the heat.
2. While the sauce is reducing, heat an ovenproof skillet over medium-high heat. Season the salmon’s flesh side with salt and freshly ground black pepper and sear it flesh side down in the pan in about 1 Tbsp of olive or any vegetable oil. After two to three minutes the flesh side should be nicely browned; flip it and sear two more minutes before transferring to the oven to finish cooking, about five more minutes, until the center of the fish is no longer translucent but is still paler and more shimmering than the exterior of the fish.
3. To finish the sauce, adding about 1 Tbsp at a time, whisk in the butter quickly, using the heat remaining in the pan to melt it. The goal is to create and maintain an emulsion, which will not be possible if the pan and sauce cool while you’re still mounting the butter. If the sauce becomes too cool, place it over another pan with an inch of simmering water in it to warm it slowly. Placing the saucier directly over a burner risks breaking the emulsion.
4. Season the sauce with salt/pepper and serve as soon as possible. You can keep the sauce for 10-15 minutes by sitting the pan over (but not touching) hot water.

Filed Under: Cooking, Food Tagged With: , , , ,
→ February 2, 2008
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The Mailbag of Malcontent, Vol. 5.

This guy has become a bit of a regular, even though he can’t figure out how to reply to an email (he just sends responses to my ESPN mailbag instead). He first popped up when I ripped the Mets’ side of the Milledge trade, being sort of obnoxious until I pointed out how specious his arguments were, then becoming, well, like this:

Frank D’Elia (REDACTED) 2008-02-02 10:43:00.0
Hey genius, what do you think about the Schneider deal now? You think perhaps a seasoned backstop would be perfect for Johann and a guy like Pelfrey? You are clueless. Perhaps that’s why Toronto let you go. I hear their mailroom is much more efficient. Btw, no need to respond. I won’t read it anyway. You’re a pompous ass.

Wow, he sure told me. Nothing like the false claim that I was let go by Toronto – or that I had a menial job – to boost an argument.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: ,
→ February 1, 2008
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Life imitates art.

U.S.: ‘Demonic’ militants sent women to bomb markets in Iraq:

Two mentally disabled women were strapped with explosives Friday and sent into busy Baghdad markets, where they were blown up by remote control, a top Iraqi government official said.

This bears a disturbing resemblance to the main plot point of Conrad’s The Secret Agent, except that in Conrad’s book, Verloc doesn’t necessarily intend for the mentally disabled character to die.

Filed Under: Literature Tagged With: ,