Michel Gondry

He's made some great movies (Eternal Sunshine, Science of Sleep, Block Party), and Be Kind Rewind is pretty good, too. He's also a doodler. Funny stuff.

What's the most sustainable way to grow enough food?

Interesting story about the failing of the Green Revolution in India. Makes me hopeful.

More Cookbooks

Good segment on new cookbooks, the tacos one sounds interesting.

A Good Weekend for NPR

The 3 money shows were all great this week. The 'Bluff the Listener' segment in Wait Wait was genius. I knew the answer, heard the real news story, but the fake ones were hilarious. Tour de Felon, wastewater recycling, the string of ducks!!!!!!

The Lake Wobegon was particularly good. Lutheran bike ride... Virgin Marys on old Norwegian tombstones... And then the pilot light bit. I haven't been to church in a long time, but man his Lutheran humor just kills me sometimes, and this was one of those times.

The theme on TAL was stories from the classifieds section. I waited out the 'Isis' story, and got the payoff I was hoping for. The musicians bit and the getting a dog after getting divorced story were great. A particularly solid episode.

NPR Musical Interludes

They played Kings of Convenience between stories last night, and then Regina Spektor this morning. Nice. I hear Feist every-one-in-a-while, too.

Miracle Fruit II

So we did it again. Keely, Kyle, me, Michael, Mike, Sara. The spread was bigger this time, although I was drunk off of the peach-pit-cello and a Black Butte Porter, which affected the effect it had on me. But everyone else seemed happy. The other funny thing was I had Le Loup playing, and periodically someone would bump into the stereo, and we restarted it, playing it on a loop, so to speak.
We tried the following things, with Keely's ranking from 1 (low) to 3 (high) in parenthesis: strawberries(2), lemons(3), limes(3), grapefruit(2), raspberries(1), rhubarb(3), apples(1), mystery cherries from the garden(1); 3 kombuchas {Hibiscus(3), Guava(2), #7(2)}, wine, tea, chelada(1), Valentina hot sauce(3); salt-n-vinegar potato chips(3), dark chocolate(1), umeboshi(2), pickled mushrooms(1), pickled veggies(2), pickled onions(3), olives(3), jelly beans(2).
Chocolate & raspberries were particularly disappointing to me. Best stuff was lemons, limes, rhubarb, strawberries, salt-n-vinegar chips.

The drug deal.

MF 1
MF Research

Update: To make up for thursday night I did it again last night, solo & sober. Had a good 30 minutes of eating leftover citrus and sharp cheddar cheese, it started to fade, but kept going reasonably well for another hour. Was drinking cheap wine just because I could. Also yogurt and strawberries, even though I wasn't really hungry, because it's interesting what miracle fruit does to yogurt. Good Times.

How Low Can You Go?

No, not an obscure Hot to Trot reference (how low can you go, Indio Oats?), but an NPR series from late April about making family dinners for under 10$. The first entry is a chickpea stew that sounded pretty good to me. 2nd was Ming Tsai doing chicken-and-corn fried rice. 3rd was alot of stuff: gnocchi, skate, and cream of asparagus soup. He did the gnocchi with baked potatoes, which was interesting, and a good idea. The 4th entry has gluten, dairy, and swine, so I won't be making it for Clare any time soon...

In a similar vein, Slate has a nice article on what things are better to make and what are better to buy. It covers bagels, cream cheese, yogurt, jam, crackers, and granola. Her granola recipe was from Alton Brown, so you know she is an edumacated cook. Good find, Eliza.

Update: they ran a listener recipe, a lentil dish, by an american living in Pichilemu, Chile, one of the great surf towns of the world.

Roberto Begnini/OnionAV

Wonderful interview. He IS good in the Jarmusch movies.

Hot Rod

This is a pretty funny movie, and a pretty good article about it. BUT, there's also video of a Natalie Portman SNL skit in the write up, and THAT is golden.

ManU vs. Barcelona

Played soccer for 7 years as a kid. Watch european club soccer obsessively when I have cable tv, and the world cup, too. But haven't followed things much lately. Though the world cup in SA next year will be fun. Anyway. ManU are basically the NY Yankees of soccer, but I still like them for some reason. I think it was the mythology of Beckham, how he was so good at such a young age. Having the flamboyant french keeper, Fabien Barthez, helped, too.

ManU had a couple of scoring opportunities in the first 10 minutes, and then Barcelona scored out of nowhere, and the rest of the first half was largely possession soccer, kinda meh. Nothing really quotable either. It's sad. Though Thierry Henry plays for Barcelona now, so there is hope for some excitement.

2nd half, better soccer:
"All he had to do was blow on it and we did have put it in the net" {Messi of Barcelona missed a cross}
Xavi of Barcelona hit the post
Messi got a beautiful goal off of a header of a Xavi cross: "he did it with style"
Lots of opportunities each way.
Ronaldo with a cheap shot on Puyol, yellow card
"Time is certainly not on their side, and the way they have played hasn't helped, either"
Barcelona is playing beautiful soccer, they aren't sitting on their lead
Barcelona wins 2-nill. Barcelona is good.
"as we speak, Rome is burning, it has been set ablaze by the Catalan conquerors"

BTW, Vicky Cristina Barcelona is a good movie.

Hank Williams/OnionAV

Yet another interesting read in the Nashville or bust series. He probably should have been the first entry... The story associated with "Your Cheatin' Heart" is interesting. The songs are great, no surprise, but I learned quite a bit, too. Good read.

The King of Kong

This is a documentary about the quest to have the highest score in Donkey Kong. It's been out for a while, finally got around to watching it, instant viewer style on netflix. The 1st of 5 OnionAV articles about it, the review, provides a general overview without giving any spoilers { II, III, IV, V }. You might surmise that 5 mentions in onionav for one silly movie about Donkey Kong means that it actually isn't that silly, and you would be correct. It's no Cool Hand Luke, but it is interesting.

Note: I wrote this post on 25 May 2009, Geek Pride Day.

Sunday Dinner

Fried ricotta with a pepper from the garden, really really cooked down red sauce, and post-apartheid South Africa rice w/ black quinoa, too. Natural lighting, so a decent, non-yellow, picture.

All the Real Girls

This is the 2nd movie by David Gordon Green, his first was George Washington, which I loved. All... has a pretty simple plot, boy meets girl, etc. but the execution is great. I don't know if it's the film stock he uses or filters or what, but the colours in his movies are very cool and distinctive. There are also some interesting insert shots of natural scenes and decayed southern towns. It's a very honest, un-Hollywood depiction of life in small town America. And aside from that, one of the great indie actresses, Zooey Deschanel, is the female lead, and she is wonderful. 

The commentary track is one of the best I've heard. They explained how the actors dealt with certain situations: one guy stayed up for 2 days and got drunk to do a scene where he had to look all haggard, one guy who had quit drinking in real life got super drunk to do a scene in a bar, Zooey got her haircut instead of wearing a wig when her character got her haircut. In writing that last sentence, I realize those things might sound trivial, but actors never actually do those things, it is always fake. Acting as it were. The movie was written by the director and the male lead. They had written the female lead, but they cast Zooey because she had all sorts of ideas for the part. So the movie felt very real, the guys wrote the guy parts and she did the girl part. Finally, there was just a ton of name checking of influences, and hearing the list made me realize why I like the movie so much: Sigur Ros; Neil Young; Werner Hertzog; Thunderbolt and Lightfoot; Dutch Harbor, Alaska; the Last Picture Show; Time Bandits; and Quick Change, specifically the "crying on the inside" clown bit. Highly Recommended.   

Diners, Drive-Ins, Dives/Food Network

I'm catsitting once again, which means two things: weekend internet access, and food network. Watched 'Diners, Drive-Ins, Dives' just now for the first time. Really enjoyed the episode featuring a french place in Sacramento and a basque place in Boise, Idaho. There's a basque chicken recipe in Bistro Cooking by Patricia Wells that my dad made pretty often when I was young. Mmmm, might have to do something basque-style soon.

John Doe + Sadies/Fresh Air

I really enjoyed this interview with John Doe and a couple of the Sadies. But I'm also using it as an excuse to plug the Sadies. I learned about them because they have a great relationship with Neko Case. Their live album {In Concert, Vol. 1} is wonderful; first disc is just them, second disc is them plus singers they have worked with, including Neko.

TAL, Little Saigon

This week's TAL began with a bit about Little Saigon in Orange County, CA, which got me thinking of the Little Saigon Cookbook by Ann Le. It's a wonderful cookbook, vietnamese food obviously. I've only made one dish out of it, 'crisy coconut and turmeric crepes' with a salad platter, fish sauce/lime juice dipping sauce, and I think some wild salmon. Wonderful. The book is well written, not americanized, but it is approachable.  

Int'l Beard and Mustache Comp

Nice story about the 2009 version, which is in Anchorage. Ryan competed in the 2004 in Berlin.

Ice Cream & Sorbet

Green & Black's organic chocolate ice cream plus homemade blood orange sorbet. Pretty damn tasty. Pretty, too.

Peter Matthiessen

Heard on Writer's Almanac that today is Peter Matthiessen's birthday. He's a wonderful writer. There isn't an allmusic/allmovie/imdb for books, I don't think, but there is wikipedia. Everything I've read I've enjoyed, although looking at the list, I need to read more. Anyway, these are all great:

• At Play in the Fields of the Lord (1965) {missionaries in the amazon}
• Killing Mister Watson (1990) {trilogy about life in the everglades}
  
• Lost Man's River (1997)
• Bone by Bone (1999)

• Sal Si Puedes: Cesar Chavez and the New American Revolution (1969)
• The Tree Where Man Was Born (1972) {travel through africa}
  
• The Snow Leopard (1978) {travel through the himalaya}
  
• In the Spirit of Crazy Horse (1983)
  
• Indian Country (1984)