Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Monthly Archives: September 2010
A music contest!
Driving home from the gym today, it struck me, I love this CD so much I wish everyone could listen to it. That CD? Jonathan Coulton’s Best. Concert. Ever.
No, really. It is.
And then it occurred to me that I bet you all have stuff you wish the rest of us could listen to.
Hence the contest.
Here’s the idea: think of a performer or band you dearly love, preferably someone a little bit off the beaten track. Post a link in the comments*. If I haven’t heard of the performer or the band or that particular song, then you have just submitted a valid contest entry. How about we limit two entries per person. At the end of some as-yet-to-be-specified time period, I’ll have a drawing of names (entered twice if you gave me two valid entries), and to the winner I’ll send a copy of Best. Concert. Ever. Because I know you’re going to love it.
If you already own Best. Concert. Ever, I’ll send you something else that’s off the beaten track that I think is awesome.
If you put in an entry I’ve heard before, say, something off Pink Floyd’s The Wall or Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven, then I’ll let you know in the comments that it’s not a valid entry, probably by sneering at you with a nasty, “What part of off the beaten track didn’t you understand?” But you’ll still be able to submit more entries until you reach your two.
And in the process of holding this contest, we’ll all (hopefully) get to hear a bunch of stuff we haven’t heard before — and maybe we’ll find something new and different and wonderful to listen to.
Questions? If not, let the contest begin.
D.
*The link must be to something with audio content — a YouTube video, or something with an audio sample from the song, for example; one particular song, please, not just a general link to the whole CD. Ideally, post a link to the song you really love by that performer, from that album, etc.
Funny how it all comes back to you
I guess the stereotypical situation is, Junior brings his Algebra homework home from school, and his parents groan about how much they hated their Algebra class, then die a little inside as they struggle to help him with his homework. But that’s not THIS family. Karen more or less minored in Mathematics at Berkeley, and I was no slouch myself (though nowhere near as proficient as she was).
Still, neither one of us has done much Calculus in the last thirty years, and hey, you forget stuff. You forget the chain rule and the product rule. I even forgot some simple things about taking derivatives. But you know what? It doesn’t take long to recover all those old skills.
I can even recapture some of the joy I derived from Calculus homework . . . the way each problem was a little puzzle, and how great it was to get the right answer in the most efficient manner possible. There’s a saying in science that a lazy scientist is a good scientist, and the same is true for math. If you’re working too hard at something, chances are you’re doing it wrong. Long division excepted: that’s always a bitch.
Is it like that in all disciplines, I wonder? Certainly must be true for programming. And writing, I suspect, since some of the best crafted novels seem so simple at their core. Although messy novels have their place, too.
I can’t wait until Jake gets to Integral Calculus. Now that’s entertainment.
D.
Jury duty
There must have been at least two hundred of us in the room. We were instructed to report to the courthouse at 8:15 AM, but they didn’t even get to the opening spiel until 9:30. The bailiff who gave the spiel fancied himself a stand-up, and really, he wasn’t half bad. But what are you going to do with 200+ people who aren’t really happy to be there?
At 10:00, he read off the randomly selected names in alphabetical order. Now, I think he should have read them in random order, just to heighten the torture. But the way he did it, those of us with 3rd grade or better education knew precisely when we were off the hook. The rest remained anxious to the end.
Interesting how some folks took it in stride while others cursed. Mostly I just waited, anxiously, until the bailiff had passed by us HOs. (And you know how much a HO likes being in a courthouse. Just sayin’.) Roughly forty of the two hundred of us marched off to face voir dire, while the rest were instructed to sit. And sit. And watch the news, or Rachael Rae, or (after lunch) Criminal Intent, or Family Feud.
I had a book. I brought Markos Moulitsas’s American Taliban, which is good, but I can’t get as absorbed in nonfiction as I do in fiction. So during our two-hour lunch break I drove home to pick up my eBook reader. I finished the second Hunger Games book today, and I must say, Collins managed to surprise me a few times. And it wasn’t as big a letdown as middle books in a trilogy generally are. And she only had one minor plot fuck-up toward the end. All in all, good work.
The funny bailiff read off another list of names at 2:30 PM, this one somewhat shorter, maybe 30 names. And he was back again at 3:20. We all cursed. We were so close — we knew we would be discharged, free as birds, at 4:00! But he only came back to tell us we were discharged a little earlier than planned. Free to go for another year.
So all in all not as much fun as I had the LAST time I was stuck in the juror pool. Followup to that old post: I found out that I was tossed because of my views on child endangerment. My patient, who was a friend of this judge, told me that by stating my views so forcefully, I had come close to disqualifying the entire juror pool!
That’ll teach ’em to bother a doctor.
Anyway, thank heavens they didn’t pick me today. Now I can go back to work and do what I do best: eat pork rinds for lunch while I speed-surf the ‘net.
D.
Not a bad birthday thus far
We went to a teppanyaki-sushi place. The chef made a cute little volcano out of an onion — leaving the rings intact, stacking them to make the cone, then dumping a little booze down the middle as fuel for the flames. Nice. And the food was good, too.
Forty-nine. A perfect square. I’ll have to make it to 64 to hit the next perfect square. And then I’ll be 1000000 in binary.
But for now, I’ll have to be content with 110001.
D.
Here’s an odd trope
Funny how you start noticing things.
I’m reading Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy, and am on book two at the moment. (Mild spoilers follow, if you care.) Interesting stuff, what with its hardboiled protagonist who is still so clueless at love, its curious mix of violence and romance. In book one, I thought I had it pegged as a romance variant of some sort, but then Collins trashed any chance at the HEA.
So Katniss, the protagonist, is torn between two guys: baker’s son Peeta, whom the fascistic Capital plans for her to marry, and Gale, the boy she has hunted with ever since her father died. Both are strong, noble, likable, yatta yatta. Both are nuts about her. I suspect Collins’s fans fight amongst themselves as to who Katniss’s true love should be.
Then I remembered Twilight‘s Bella, and how she is torn between the sparkly vampire guy and the werewolf guy. Choose the suave bloodsucker or the dog? Hmm. I suspect I’d go for the dog, especially since the bloodsucker can’t even bring himself to kiss her, for fear his idea of deep kissing might not be compatible with her survival.
And then I remembered Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum, who has her Italian Stallion Joseph Morelli, and strong-dark-quiet Ranger. And Princess Leia, torn between Han Solo and Luke, until they all discover that icky incest thing. But still.
It’s probably more widespread than that, but what I’m wondering is this: are their mirror image examples? Male protags with two equally hot and lovable women vying for their attention? Would romance readers even want to go there? How about gay romance, with characters struggling to determine who to do?
I think I’ll get the birthday girl over here to comment.
D.
Dr. Strangelove spanks the monkey?
From Indecision Forever, who are cool enough folks that they STILL have me on their blog roll even though I’m hardly funny anymore, here’s Sara Benincasa* doing (excuse me) Delaware Senatorial Candidate and all around blessing to comedians everywhere, Christine O’Donnell.
Hey! I’ve got jury duty on Monday! And in honor of this solemn civic responsibility, I have a question. What book should I bring, you know, to flash around, so that no lawyer in his right mind would allow me to pass voir dire?
Makes me regret that I donated 120 Days of Sodom to the local public library . . .
(Note to the local magistrates who work so hard to keep our courts clean and honest and oh so squeakily just: kidding. KIDDING! I would never try to swing things so that I’m kicked off a potential jury. Never never never! I believe in America. America has made my fortune. Often I say to my wife, “For justice, we must go to Don Corleone.” Oh — oops!)
D.
*Who I would so send mash notes to if I weren’t married.
Curses!
While surfing the cable’s channel guide, Karen paused over Kung Pow Enter the Fist. We both registered the 2.5 stars someone had assigned Kung Pow, and waited with trepidation for our son’s response.
You have to understand that for Jake, Kung Pow is sacred text, quotes from which can be recontextualized to suit any comic circumstance. You wouldn’t believe how many ways he can spin (or — I admit it — how many ways I can spin) “Let me know if you see a Radio Shack,” or “That’s a lot of nuts!” No one fucks with his Kung Pow.
“The guy who gave Kung Pow two and a half stars should die in a fire,” my son declared.
Which cracked me up. My son, whom no one would ever suppose had a Jewish father — I mean, aside from his Yiddishe kopf, what’s Jewish about the kid? Oh. He likes latkes — had just come precariously close to uttering a Jewish curse. Needs a little work, mind you. Like any first attempt, it’s unrefined. Lacks that certain zing.
From this curious site, here are a few good ones that have withstood the test of time.
May they find thousands of new cures for you each year.
May you grow so rich that your widow’s second husband
never has to worry about making a living.
You should be like a chandelier — you should hang and burn.
And the similarly themed
May the sun and the spring breeze warm you and caress you like an apple as you hang from a tree.
Yeah, Jake, dying in a fire can’t hold a candle to growing beets in your stomach and peeing borscht.
D.
Excuse me while I kiss this guy
Two very different music videos. What I want to know is, if you were stoned, would you be able to tell the difference?
And my favorite cover . . .
Better on the CD . . . but still good.
D.
Sweet potato pie (correction)
This blog is my spare memory. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve looked up one of my own recipes when I’d forgotten where I’d found the original, or if I was just too lazy to search through several dozen back issues of Cooks Illustrated. So . . . since I’ve hit upon a great recipe for sweet potato pie, I’m reprinting it here.
I think I have improved upon the original. Main differences: I believe in baking my sweet potatoes, since that leads to caramelization and greater depth of flavor. For similar reasons I prefer brown sugar to white, and to make sure we’re talking REALLY BROWN sugar, I added some molasses, too.
The result? Big hit.
1 pound of sweet potato pulp from thoroughly baked sweet potatoes*
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar**
1/2 cup milk***
2 eggs
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tablespoon black strap molasses
1 (9 inch) pie crust****
Mine is darker. And tastier.
*If you don’t have a kitchen scale, this is roughly equal to one very large sweet potato or two medium-sized potatoes.
**I didn’t make any effort to pack the brown sugar, just scooped it out of the bag.
***As tempting as it was to use all cream, I used a scant 1/2 cup of low fat milk that I topped off with cream.
****Marie Callendars. Guess I could have made my own, but I’ve never been too skilled at pastry.
The instructions are easy-peasy. Preheat oven to 350F (175C). Combine the sweet potato with the butter using an electric mixer. Add the rest of the ingredients and beat with the mixer until smooth. Pour into a pie shell that’s been sitting in the preheated oven for about five minutes. Bake 55 to 60 minutes.
The original recipe says to bake until a butter knife inserted into the center comes out clean. I think this would take longer than 60 min, maybe a lot longer, and I worry about overcooking my pie. I hardly ever wait until the knife comes out clean.
There you have it. Enjoy! This bugger kicks ass over pumpkin pie.
D.