toastykitten

Halloumi, the grillable cheese. It's yummy, especially grilled. It's too salty by itself, but Mark tells me you generally eat it with other stuff anyway, like with tomato and pita bread, which soaks up some of the saltiness.

I am still sick and was diagnosed with bronchitis. Yuck. Anyway, I hate our health care system, but what else is new?

I have been busy sleeping and watching tv and re-reading Bloom County, which despite its goodness really, really depresses me based on its all-too-familiar relevance. I mean, the last cartoons I just read were going on about Falwell and homophobia! (Did we even get anywhere?)

Anyway, this is what I have been watching these past few days:

Rome, Season Two: HBO rules. Sex, violence, corruption, and the Republic! What's not to love? The writers take a lot of freedom with historical accuracy, but the important points - Caesar's death, Octavian's rise are all done pretty well.

Heroes, episode before the finale: Ando better not die. That is all. I find Jessica/Niki's split personality plot too stupid for words, and if Tim Kring says that her superpower is being "superstrong", why not just let her be superstrong without being crazy? That would make so much more sense than the stupid changes in personality.

Bill Moyers Journal: Everyone's probably forgotten about the "Buying the War" episode by now, but the ones after it are also equally good, if not better than the first episode. This last one I watched interviewed a female black Princeton professor about race, in which she also pointedly made the case that she can converse on other topics besides race, a gay Christian man who goes to Europe only to be confronted with Islamic fundamentalism (I didn't like this segment that much because I think his assumptions were flawed), and an interview with Harpers' magazine president on the Free Trade agreement.

Crunchy Roll - full length episodes of various Asian (Japanese, Korean, Chinese) TV shows. Some subtitled, some not. Works are streaming; I think you have to donate to download episodes. Also, you have to be a member to actually view. Hmm. DotSub - tool for subtitling stuff.

William Blake archive. Video short (warning: .mov file) based on Blake's The Tyger that is pretty neat. I linked to the .mov instead of the actual site because the way the site is set up pisses me off. I mean, really, did all the arty website designers just forget about the rule about keeping it simple? I know, I know, they don't want anyone to steal their work. Except they are offering shorts for download. *sigh*

You know what would be awesome? Maybe when they fix the Maze, it will no longer be a MAZE.

Did Heroes just turn into an episode of Dragonball Z?

Stat I just learned: San Francisco has the highest number of people aged 100 and over - about 60 of them. I think one of them is my aunt.

Am home sick today, but I can't sleep, so I give you links!

• Latest issue of Jump Cut - this month's theme is China and China diaspora film. I have not read this yet, but it seems interesting, and an academic dissection of Kung Fu Hustle sounds like fun.
  
• GreenCine interview with the stars of Hot Fuzz. I can't wait to see this movie.
• Mike Daisey talks to the guy who dumped water on his notes. I really admire Mike Daisey's approach to how he handled this. Plus his act was really funny and it's stupid that he got so rudely interrupted like that.
• I usually like 60 Minutes, and I'll even concede Anderson Cooper can be pretty. But I hated his "Stop Snitching" segment, in which he blames hip hop for being the cause of black people not talking to police. I mean, really, it wasn't maybe Rodney King or Amadou Diallo? Or even just the collective and justified distrust of police that police have done nothing to mitigate? Hip hop is not just Cam'ron, okay? I wouldn't talk to the police, either, unless I absolutely had to. I have no street cred to protect, but where I come from I've yet to see the police live up to their actual job descriptions. It was overall just lazy, lazy journalism. I'd go on but I think I would explode.

I watched Brokeback Mountain last night, and surprisingly, I didn't cry. I think I was distracted by all the hype (even though I don't think it was undeserved) and I kept waiting for certain moments that I got impatient and underwhelmed when they did arrive. Heath Ledger was excellent. A lot of it reminded me of what Ang Lee tried to do in Hulk, in using quiet space to enhance the emotional aspects of particular scenes - but that doesn't work in a comic book world.

Also, the love scenes were totally worth the price of admission.

Project Runway 2 - Daniel V. and Andrae win the Banana Republic challenge, with a dress I could see myself wearing. However, knowing Banana Republic, they will charge $250 for it when it probably only costs $45 to produce, if that. (It will eventually go on sale.) Santino insults the people who are judging his work, and finds himself on the same chopping block as Diana and Marla. How many eye-rolls did you count? I won't miss Marla, but I liked Diana, nerd-girl, and I think she was probably just way too young for the show and in over her head.

For once, the Asians on reality show have not embarrassed me in any way. How is that possible? Chloe's outfit was actually interesting this time, but I hated the fabric she chose for the reversible jacket. And how cute is it whenever she talks about how she's trying to make the cheap fabric look expensive? The girl has seven sisters (ha! she beat my family); she knows how to be resourceful. And because I would totally do that.

Scrubs - my favorite fucking sitcom ever has returned, and there are two episodes each week. Yay! It seems like they went all out this season, as we have a Bruce Lee parody scene where surgeons wear their masks like ninjas with Kung Fu Fighting as the soundtrack. I was laughing my ass off, as they nailed all the cliches perfectly. This is my second favorite episode after the one with Brendan Fraser.

Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen - I've been reading this on the train ride to and from work, and it's pissing me off that it took me an entire week to finish this book. Mostly because I expect that short a novel to only take me a day or two to finish. Anyway, I really liked this book, but wow, did I hate the protagonist, Fanny Price, that I was supposed to be rooting for.

Fanny Price has no faults, other than being too gentle. She's moral and easily fatigued and has a lot of passion that is apparent to everyone and that's what they fall in love with - the fact that she feels things exquisitely and she's so damn moral. She's a total Mary Sue and I generally expect better from Austen. Fanny Price gets what she wants in the end, but not because of any real action on her part - it's mostly because everyone else flames out spectacularly that changes other people's mind about Fanny. If we are to believe that Fanny is such a perfect person, then the guy she does wind up with doesn't even really deserve her, as he's a dumbass. Upright, moral, but still a dumbass easily fooled by flirting.

I loved Mary Crawford's character, as she is everything that Fanny Price is not. She becomes a two-dimensional caricature at the end, but for most of the novel, she's charming, manipulative, smart, perceptive, and calculating. She seems to be genuinely nice to Fanny, and thus have a trace of humanity within her, and to care for her suitor, but have a difficult time deciding whether her love or her quest for comfort comes first.

Next up for reading is Sense and Sensibility, which, incidentally, is another Ang Lee movie. Hmm. I think Ang Lee needs to do more Chinese movies. I miss them.

This review of A Million Little Pieces, stolen from Long Story, Short Pier sums up my thoughts on Frey exactly and saves me the trouble of actually reading the damn book:

Frey sums up his entire life in one sentence from p. 351 of this 382-page memoir: "I took money from my parents and I spent it on drugs." Given the simplicity and familiarity of the story, you might wonder what Frey does in the other 381 pages. The story itself is simple: he goes through rehab at an expensive private clinic, with his parents footing the bill. That's it. 400 pages of hanging around a rehab clinic.

...

There they are, the most childish dreams of every little rich white boy: being down with the brothers and the Mafia. The tough guys. The Jazzmen. Having friends with connections in those two equally artificial cities, Vegas and New Orleans.

There, now you know why he couldn't get his book sold as fiction.

I have to go to the dentist in a few minutes. Having to use money for essentials hurts.

I caught up on Project Runway last night. During the first season, I didn't really get why everyone was so picky about their models - I mean, all they had to do was look pretty and walk down a runway for about 30 seconds. How could you possibly fuck up walking?

Then Season 2 happened. Last season's models had personalities in addition to their walks; this season, they all seem sedated. I can't tell you which ones made an impression on me or who I liked, because I didn't really see anyone that was that special. And several of them made the designers' clothes look worse, especially Marla's model. Marla already had a bad design, but her model did it no favors.

Anyway, I think Daniel V. was robbed. The dress he made with the sixties-ish print was beautiful. It gave his model an hour-glass figure. Santino shouldn't be so smug about winning the challenges, because Jay won exactly 0 challenges and went on to win the entire competition. There's no versatality to his "vision", and his one trick seems to be to find a beautiful fabric and throw shit at it until it sticks. Nick's dress was far more gorgeous and flattering than his was.

Chloe's dress was boring.

Funny highlights:

Nicky Hilton: "My standards are high and my taste is exquisite." Ha!

Chloe, to Diana: "That looks like something Stevie Nicks would wear."
Diana: "Who's Stevie Nick?"

Lupe, to Tim Gunn: "It looks like crap."
Tim: "I'm not going to debate that."

So we didn't actually end up at H&M. Jess got there first and it turns out there was a two-hour wait to just get into the store. We ended up shopping in Macy's and Urban Outfitters instead. And my shopping urge is still not quenched. Grr. Later we found out from a more fashion-informed friend that there will be a third H&M opening right next to the H&M on Powell, and one in Sun Valley Mall, so Jess, you won't have to BART over to SF for that!

This is my stash: A pair of pants and and a shirt from Macy's. I think I should just get a Macy's card, so I can get the coupons and additional discounts. If anyone needs cookware, their pots and pans are 40% off the lowest price right now. Tim Biskup and Pete Fowler coasters for 2 bucks each for a set of four, and the Lewis Black book, hardcover, for $5 from Urban Outfitters. The set of coasters I really want, though, is the Junko Mizuno ones, which I haven't been able to find anywhere. I love the Urban Outfitters sale section. There's always some good stuff there amidst all the junk.

Later Mark and I watched a movie with some friends. It was called Exit to Eden, and is based on an Anne Rice novel, stars Rosie O'Donnell and Dan Aykroyd. That is all you need to know. Anyway, it's funny, and weirdly dated. Mark mentioned that all the women had "eighties' asses". Ok, I'd never heard of that, so I asked him what that was. He said, "Long, flat asses." Apparently asses come and go in style - the trend right now is "bubble butts". What I don't understand is how one would be able to shape an ass into a particular style. Maybe women did different workouts back then?

Spelling errors are my pet peeve, especially glaring ones that any educated adult should be able to catch. I caught a few this weekend:

TiVo's new download service (for series2 owners) includes CNet's reviews of current gadgets. (Let's just say CNet editors are not necessarily TV people.) In this segment, someone held up a sign that misspelled "capacity". Seriously, shouldn't someone have caught that?

In Firefly, on the last disc, there are a few really sweet special features. On one of them, they talk about Serenity, the ship, and its role as its own character. Someone holds up a blueprint of the ship, and on it, the dining room was misspelled as the "dinning room". Apparently in the future, we no longer dine, we din.

On Wednesday we went to Bistro Elan to celebrate our anniversary. I requested French food because we rarely have it, and the few times that we do it's been excellent. It's a small bistro on California Street (near Stanford University); the entrance is almost obscured by all the foliage around it. Once we entered, it was really warm and had a sweet atmosphere.

Our waitress was French and awesome. I loved her accent; it was so adorable. She recommended a really good wine, and we ended up ordering two appetizers - foie gras and smoked salmon. It was the first time both of us tried foie gras. She assured us that many people came to their restaurant "just for the foie gras, and many think it is better than France". The foie gras came seared and soaked in a buttery pan sauce with some accompanying vegetables. Now, I generally do not like organs; for all my Chinese pride in chicken feet, it ends with pig intestines. But this fatty duck liver was exquisite. The texture was a little gelatinous and it was pleasantly warm inside, and tasted sweet and buttery.

The smoked salmon was also delicious, and was brought on a bed of some puff pastry, also very yummy, and covered with caviar, which was surprisingly flavorless. I guessed that the smokiness of the salmon probably overwhelmed whatever flavor the caviar had. It didn't feel decadent or anything.

Mark ordered the John Dory fish, which tastes definitely better than it looks. Our waitress described it as "sort of like swordfish", and it was very similar.

I ordered "Massachusetts scallops". Now, scallops are my favorite seafood, so I had high hopes for this one. They were perfectly cooked (which is a very rare occurence), not too tough or spongy, and was flavored with a pan sauce and accompanied by some Yukon gold potatoes and chanterelle mushrooms, all of which were very delicious.

I want to go again.

Other things that amused me:

The pop star Robbie Williams yesterday accused the British media of hypocritical attitudes towards drugs, claiming that he had taken cocaine with the same journalists who were now "devouring" Kate Moss for her well-publicised habit.

I heart Joss Whedon more. The key to the story is that Whedon has made a big budget sci-fi film for the comparatively low price of $50 million -- a requirement for him to revive his baby. How'd he do it? Not by running overseas to some low-wage location but by sticking at home in high-wage unionized Hollywood.

The British Library has original sketches by Leonardo, Jane Austen's early work, and Lewis Carroll's Alice drawings.

Penguin Poo Paper Wins Ig Nobel Prize - download the PDF - it's got a really amusing diagram.

A piece on the actor who plays young Chris Rock - Everybody Hates Chris is one of my favorite new shows of the season. It's so damn funny and sweet.

Don Adams of "Get Smart" and "Inspector Gadget" passed away.

Those were two of my favorite shows.

Folsom was fun. After a while all the assless chaps just sort of blend together. There was a lot of flogging and spanking. And lots of lube samples. I learned a lot more about "hankie codes". I had no idea you could advertise so much with them. I tried to run after the penis but he got away and I couldn't get a picture with him. Couldn't find the syphilis sore. Mark overheard an Arab dude asking another guy "How are you doing, pretty boy?" There seemed to be more people this year than the last time I went, which also made for much sweatier groups of naked people. Since I am about the height of everyone else's armpits, this was not especially pleasant for me.

There was an old Asian man and woman who were there. They looked very lost. I don't know if they knew what kind of fair they were paying for. Or maybe they did.

I told my supervisor, too, that I went. (And this is why I love where I work.) She said that she used to go every year.

I bought my futon! It's coming this Saturday. The Aruba, if you're wondering.

The Korean Jersey girl on Anthony Bordain's No Reservations was awesome. That is all.