Foma*

Night At The Newseum

2009-11-18T18:41:00.005-05:00

This post includes spoilers for tonight's Newseum episode of Dinner Impossible.

About two months ago, as members of the Newseum in Washington, we received notice that there was going to be a Food Network event with a special mystery chef. Other than that, we had no idea what to expect. At 6:30 they let people in to see the giant big screen in the lobby showing a Dinner Impossible logo.

I was unfamiliar with the show's format, but I quickly caught on. Each week they take hunky chef Robert Irvine to a different location and make him cook for a big group of people around some sort of theme.

At just a little past 7, Robert Irvine came out to announce that the mission was accomplished "just barely." He then quickly ducked out to never be seen again, but that meant it was time for the eating.

There were four stations with the two closest to us representing television dinners and Julia Childs respectively. We divided and conquered and we each got one entree from each line. The TV dinner came in a little aluminum tray with a Dinner Impossible logo on the cardboard lid. This was no tinny tasting reheated processed food. Each little item was delicious and the brown betty was best of all.

The Julia Childs food line had all sorts of French food right out of Julie and Julia. As we were eating, a film crew was coming around filming reaction shots to the food. My wife loved it, but they made her do her blurb a couple of times for the right amount of enthusiasm. We had to sign releases, but that is no guarantee or bits will make the final cut.

We went back to the final two stations. One was based on World War One vegetarian dishes and the other was the first Thanksgiving. By the time we made it around, the venison was gone but there plenty of other things left. The vegetarian dishes were interesting, but not as good as the stuff we had already eaten.

As the crowds were dwindling we saw the film units going around and setting up the glamour shots of each of the dishes. A couple of hours after we showed up we left feeling like a part of history. Mission Delicious.

Best Of The Palin Live Blogs

2009-11-16T22:16:00.003-05:00

If you were a REAL blogger (unlike one that takes a week or two off at a time **cough**yours truly**cough**), you were live blogging today's interview between Oprah and Palin (which sounds like a failed Letterman bit but isn't). So in atonement, here are some highlights from those that took one for the team and watched the trainwreck in real time.

Andrew Sullivan:

4.18 pm. So far, most of Oprah's questions can be summarized as: "Isn't it weird how great you are?" In the last segment, Palin was actually forced to be more critical of her campaign than Oprah is. One wonders: is Oprah this desperate to boost her ratings? Is anyone on TV actually interested in finding out the truth?

4.21 pm. Oprah gives the game away: "This was in the book so I assume it was fair game." Oprah clearly agreed in advance only to ask questions from the book's own narrative.This is not journalism; it's celebrity puffery. Of course, it's Oprah.

Wonkette:

4:24 — Oprah: Obviously you’ve read newspapers and magazines, why didn’t you name any? Sarah: I love all of those things, yes, and I could have named every newspaper and magazine for the last 300 years, but I felt condescended to, so fuck her question right? I don’t like to play the victim card, but I was totally the victim here, and the entire concept of “news media” is flawed because I flubbed this question.

Gawker:

4:25 Oh, good, Oprah is actually playing a clip of the interview. Let's see how Sarah does when challenged with reality! Remember how she couldn't remember a magazine or newspaper? Oprah: "Obviously you've read books and magazines. Why didn't you just name any books and magazines?" SP: "Obviously, I have been a lover of books, all my life." Conspicuously she still has not named a book or magazine that she has read.

The Awl:

4:26 Chris Lehmann: Wasn't SP really just threatened by Couric because she KNEW that she would out-PERK her?

4:26 Chris Lehmann: Wow. The pot just called the kettle perky

The Washington Post's Lisa des Moraes:

4:28:The Baby

Oprah and Palin talk at length about Trig, Palin's youngest child, who has Down Syndrome. Weirdly, neither of them ever calls Trig by name.

And who are the livebloggers thinking of?

Gawker:

4:56 Now Palin is sucking up to Oprah, who she used to watch, back when she was a stay-at-home mom (Sullivan you should probably fact-check this).

The Awl:

4:14 I DON'T LIKE TO SHOP. Add to Andrew Sullivan's lie list!!!

Wonkette:

4:08 BARACK OBAMA’S CHILDREN GOT LEFT ALONE! WHY WEREN’T MINE. WHY WEREN’T MY MALIAS AND SASHA’S LEFT ALONE. Probably because he didn’t wear them as a cape every time he appeared in public? Or maybe because he said other things besides “MY KIDS MY KIDS MY KIDS” when explaining his qualifications for president? Meh, let’s just blame Andrew Sullivan.

And some final words:

Wonkette:

4:57 — One last question: are you going to have a talk show?
4:57 — Sarah: HAHAHAHAHA THAT IS THE FUNNIEST COMMENT I HAVE EVER HEARD OPRAH AHAHHAHA, but maybe. I love what you do for women, Oprah!

Lisa des Moraes:

It's official. They are in love.

Andrew Sullivan:

4.57 pm. Now it's a love-fest between two celebrities with talk-shows.

The only thing I can imagine worse than sitting through an interview with Sarah Palin would be to have to actually read her book. I doubt even she has bothered doing that.

Tennis Night

2009-11-15T21:20:00.002-05:00

I don't watch pro football, but this sure looks like a dead-on parody.

Video Recaps | Full Episodes | Webisodes

Compare it to the real thing:

I think I like Jenna Maroney's version better.

BooksFirst - October 2009

2009-11-02T20:58:00.004-05:00

Books Bought
none

Books Read
Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon

Comments

Thomas Pynchon is one of the great enigmatic writers of the modern era. While I made it through V many years ago, Gravity's Rainbow has always been too much to complete. His more recent work like Mason and Dixon have been even less accessible. When I heard that his latest novel, Inherent Vice (some sort of legal pun) was a straight forward mystery, I was all for it.

It's a mystery, but not a straight forward one. Set in 1970, it reads like The Big Sleep meets The Big Lebowski. Doc Sportello is a stoner private eye used to small fry domestic investigations who gets caught up in something bigger than him. Exactly what, I'm not sure. I've never been very good at following normal mysteries let alone ones involving vigilante cops, hallucinogenic dentists, and zombie surf rockers.

Nothing in a Pynchon book is exactly what it appears to be and there are multiple layers of symbols, motifs, and themes. Some of them include the Manson murders, a omnipresently named smuggling ring, and Nixonian currency. And then there is the dope. The entire book is shrouded in a hashish haze, taking the concept of unreliable narrator to new highs, so to speak. If you turned the book into a drinking game by taking a shot whenever somebody lights a doobie, you'd be on your third liver by the end of the book.

It's not many books that merit their own concordance or are promoted by a YouTube promotional video. But it is a deceptively breezy read that will leave you pondering long after you close the covers.

In the pantheon of Pynchon novels, Inherent Vice is not going to be judged a masterwork, but it is definitely intriguing. Scenes and incidents recur and echo. Characters turn out to be not what they seem to be. And somehow it all wraps together to be something more than a mystery. And that is part of the mystery.

Join The Parade

2009-11-01T19:10:00.003-05:00

On of the cool features of the Georgia Tech Homecoming is that they encourage alumni band members to come and play. They are the motley crew behind the main band.

Georgia Tech Marching Band Homecoming 2009 from yellojkt on Vimeo.

Look for my son. Hint: He's in the saxaphone section.

More Mystery

2009-10-29T05:57:00.003-04:00

It's not typical for me to be able to play Where Is Yellojkt Now? two weeks in a row, but I am on the road again. Her are more pictures and clues for where I am this week. To win you need to give the state, city and street where these pictures were taken.

It's not THE Capitol, but this capitol on Capitol Street sure looks familiar.

While not anywhere near the city limits, this street is a center for live music.

The bionic man doesn't live here, but another Steve, Stevie Ray Vaughn is a local hero. Blues is a popular format including J. T. Coldfire pictured here.

Rod Stewart may not play here, but Maggie Mae's is a local landmark. As is the Blind Pig Pub where Joe Vega plays every night except Monday's and alternate Thursdays.

I would be very impressed is somebody can solve this without Googling any of the bars or performers mentioned. Go ahead and leave your guesses in the comments or check out this Flickr set to more clues (as well as the answer).

Factory Tour

2009-10-20T21:24:00.009-04:00

I drew the short straw and got named as the company representative for a boring, overly technical factory tour. Fortunately the social part of the trip included a much more interesting factory tour. So it once again time to play "Where Is Yellojkt Now?" Check out the hints and pictures (I apologize for the fuzzy quality of my sad Palm Treo lens) below to see if you can name the state, city, and company that I was at tonight.

This fiberglass horse is overlooking a fine mountain stream running through the woods. If you ford the stream, you'd find plenty of real horses.

We do the mash, the sour mash. Sorry, that was really corny.

That is a fine kettle of, well, not fish you've got me in. In fact, I am really steamed.

I don't know jack about barrels but these are in high spirits. Those aren't concord grapes in those casks.

Roll out the barrel and let's have a barrel of fun. The proof is in the sipping. 90.4 proof that is. Reserve me a bottle.

I just wish that I could fit a fifth or two in my carry-on bag for the flight back.

Separated At Photoshop

2009-10-19T18:23:00.000-04:00

Boing Boing recently featured a Ralph Lauren ad that had a scarily photoshopped model. Flirting with the Streisand Effect, Ralph Lauren bullied Blogger into a take down notice on the original Photoshop Disasters post. While the RL PR minions eventually expressed shock, shock that excessive photoshopping was going on, I have a different theory. I think they were letting John Currin do their art direction.

Air Blogging

2009-10-18T17:01:00.005-04:00

I am currently at 34,000 feet using my AirTran GoGo WiFi free trial. It would be more useful if the airplane seats were wide enough to touch type instead of hunt and pecking to avoid jabbing the people next to me with my elbows.

We were in Atlanta for the Georgia Tech homecoming. The Yellow Jackets defeated #4 Virginia Tech 28-23 in a game where GT led the entire second half but could never quite put the game away until they caught the desperation onsides kick with less than two minutes to go.

While in Atlanta we ate at two more Top Chef cheftestant restaurants. That is us posing with Chef Eli as he prowls the dining room at the end of the evening. Look for those reviews in future posts. Hint: Don't knock fois gras as a dessert until you try it.

I also took tons of pictures of the Rambling Wreck parade which is always a hoot. Few of the really daring entries really work well, but that they work at all is amazing. In a way that makes them like blogging from the center seat in coach on an airplane. The novelty that it can be done at all is what makes it interesting.

Deconstructing Guy Fieri

2009-10-14T19:58:00.000-04:00

There are two types of hosts on cooking shows, chefs and personalities. Anthony Bourdain is a chef. He went to the Culinary Institute of America. He rose through the ranks of the sweaty kitchens, wrote a bestseller and now makes most of him money doing personal appearances. Rachel Ray is a personality. She's cute and perky and has introduced more than one annoying catch phrase into the vernacular. But she has never run a restaurant.

Guy Fieri has some cooking chops but he definitely falls on the personality side of the scale. At the Anthony Bourdain and David Chang "I Call Bullshit" show I saw recently, Chang, who runs the hottest restaurant in New York was quoted in Grub Street as saying cooking is not about “fuckin’ sunglasses and that stupid fuckin’ armband.” He then made Bourdain swear to push him down the stairs if he started dressing that way.

Bourdain as a TV chef himself had some more sympathy. He said that the price of being Guy Fieri is that every day you have to wake up and be Guy Fieri. As fate would have it, as I was returning to my hotel Sunday morning, Guy and his entourage stepped out of the elevator. I followed them out to the front of the hotel and took some pictures. Guy saw my workout clothes and asked me if I had been running. I said I had jogged up from the World Trade Center site and he seemed politely impressed (I later checked, it was two miles away). So if Guy is a jerk, he wasn't one to me.

Still, Fieri was in his full Poochie-becomes-a-Juggalo costume. So like a master chef does to a fine meal, lets deconstruct what it takes to be Guy Fieri.

Frosted tips. It takes more product to keep that bleached Sonic the Hedgehog look going that most guys ever own. The spiked hair must take an hour every day all by itself.

Sunglasses. It's not enough to be wearing wrap-around sunglasses at nine in the morning, they have to be logo-ed in silver.

Earring. Like a goatee (which Guy also sports), I thought the guy-lobe had gone by the wayside, but they live on. I just hope he has the correct ear in case he goes cruising in Chelsea.

Necklace. Only Mr. T wears more metal around his neck than this silver monstrosity that screams Intercontinental Belt Champion. Somewhere a Navajo jeweler is counting his coins.

Embroidered Bowling Shirt. Just how much needlepoint does it take before a Tony Soprano shirt qualifies for its own Pride Day Parade? I'm not sure Dolly Parton owns that many rhinestones.

Armband. The most perplexing signature piece of the ensemble is the wrist band pushed up onto the forearm. While Wikipedia has an explanation, it still seems just a mite ridiculous.

Bracelet. And since the wristband is not in the traditional spot on the wrist, that frees up some space for some more bling.

Watch. Guy has a busy schedule. He's about to go on a 22 city tour so he needs to know what time it is.

Thumb Ring. Just so that the left hand doesn't feel jealous, the sinister digits get some bling as well.

Cargo Shorts. The only celebrity that can carry off the halfway between the knee and the ankle hem line is Kevin Smith and that is because he is going for Cinematic Slob rather than Redneck Restaurateur.

Logo Patch. When it comes to branding, Guy has his logo on him more places than Tiger Woods has swooshes on the 18th hole of Augusta. You're Guy Fieri. We get it. Just how many subliminal Knuckle Sandwich shots do we need?

Black Socks. (not pictured) The bad boy image just doesn't work if you are wearing white anklets. The black crew socks go with the sneakers like mustard on a hot dog.

It IS a full time job being Guy Fieri. Elton John doesn't get this dolled up to make a public appearance. As Anthony Bourdain sighs with resignation, "It's a Food Network world." We just live in it. And Guy Fieri plays the part of the court jester, costume and all.

Food Festival Fanaticism

2009-10-13T21:12:00.003-04:00

We went up to New York for the second time this October. This time, rather than stalk hunks in Broadway shows, we went to stalk celebrity chefs. The 2nd Annual New York Food and Wine was taking place in and around the Meatpacking District. The events themselves were kinda pricey, particularly if they involved actual food or wine. Instead we just signed up for talks and demos by our favorite TV chefs.

We like Anthony Bourdain of Kitchen Confidential and No Reservations so much we saw him twice. The first talk was with David Chang, the hyper-popular and rather profane chef of the suspiciously named Momofuku restaurants. The talk was called "I Call Bullshit" and that was probably the most family friendly sentence in the entire hour. Among the things they called bullshit on were cupcakes, pork bellies with foam, Krispy Kreme cheeseburgers, and Guy Fieri.

The next night on the other end of town Bourdain was interviewed by Frank Bruni, former restaurant critic of the New York Times, where he laid into some of the same topics. In particular he singled out Alice Waters as an overly militant food zealot. He made a particular point that he didn't disagree with her, he just hated her tone and patronizing manner, calling her Pol Pot in a muumuu. He accused her of burning six cords of wood to cook Leslie Stahl one egg. He was pretty close, as this video proves:

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Less potty-mouthed but just as entertaining was Alton Brown the food scientist. Rather than give a demonstration, he presented the ten things he was pretty certain he knew about food. Item 2 was that chicken do NOT have fingers.

He gave a lot of practical reasoned advice. For example he said that 'organic' is a meaningless marketing term that has been sapped of any meaning it might have ever had. However, 'local' was a word he could understand. Get a map and draw a circle and you can understand what qualifies as locally grown. He said that if you wanted strawberries out of season, buy a bunch in season and freeze them. That advice gave me bad high school flashbacks of being pressed into the you-pick strawberry fields every March to fill the freezer with the tail end of the Florida strawberry crop.

There were a lot of other chefs and food personalities and the easiest way to catch them was at their book signings. For example, the Giada De Laurentiis signing was entirely full, so we snagged Tyler Florence's book since he was signing right next to her and had a much shorter line. Twofer.

Ironically, we were so busy running around to events that we had a hard time slicing out time to actually eat. We just happened to stumble on some great places in the Meatpacking District including Asian seafood place cum nightclub Sea, replica French brasserie Pastis, and BLT Burger, master chef Laurent Tourondel's foray into cheap eats.

And speaking of meatpacking (and I would make some sort of Chelsea joke here but I'm bigger than that), right next to our hotel was one of the last remaining real meatpacking plants left in the increasingly inaccurately named neighborhood. But this was a rather upscale butcher. They receive already slaughter meat and then dry age and trim it for the high end New York steak places like craftsteak up the street. I was tempted to smuggle one out in the butcher coat they made us wear.

All-in-all we had a blast and would do it again in a heartbeat. You can check out more pictures in the Flickr set which includes the model shoot we stumbled on in the middle of Ninth Avenue.

If I Were Gay

2009-10-11T22:19:00.004-04:00

Today is National Coming Out Day and while I have nothing to announce, I just want to share this video clip which is Bert and Ernie mashed up with my fourth favorite Avenue Q song.

My absolute favorite Avenue Q song is still "The Internet Is For Porn" in its many incarnations. Coming in second and third respectively are "Everybody's A Little Bit Racist" and "You Can Be as Loud as the Hell You Want (When You're Makin' Love)". Now ranking your favorite Avenue Q songs could be considered a little bit gay, but not nearly as gay as Noel Fielding from the Britcom "Mighty Boosh".

Now a good blogfriend insists that Noel is straight and I have no reason to doubt it. After all, I also indulge in activities that make people suspect my orientation. On a recent trip to New York I did all of the following things in a single twelve hour period:

Had brunch in Chelsea.
Saw Next To Normal, which is not gay in and of itself but hanging around the stage door afterwards for autographs is a little suspicious.
Went to a cabaret show at Don't Tell Mama. This could have been a lot gayer since our perform was an ostensibly straight Latina. While waiting at the bar we did see the Judy Garland performer come in sans drag.
Ogled Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig in a show with aforementioned post-show stalking.
Staked out Jude Law leaving his performance just because we were there.

Throw in my love for Glee and my nearly complete lack of interest in professional sports and the case against me grows. But it's not like I'm Lyle The Effeminate Heterosexual. But then it's not like most of the gay men I know are particularly swishy. There were two gay guys in my wedding party, The Greatest Roommate Ever and The World's Biggest Cher Fan (who saw her 'farewell' tour three times, which even he admits is pretty gay). For those long-time readers of this blog, through the miracle of Facebook, my wife has hunted down WBCF who is living in New York. On the day after my Big Gay Day described above, we met for brunch in the East Village (which is hardly gay at all any more) to catch up.

Since we last saw him twenty years ago, he has bounced around in a few careers and then learned he had leukemia while uninsured. He seems to have licked it but it took three years of his life and all his life savings to do so. He is now couch surfing in Brooklyn while training to become a social worker.

And here is where the Very Special part of this post comes in. There is much more to life than sexual orientation. Health and friends and self-worth are much more important than who you want to sleep with. Someday I hope there is no need for a Coming Out Day. We should all be appreciated for who we are and not who we like.

And just to mellow out, let's have one more YouTube clip. And this time let's all sing it with the kick-steps.

Ride Samaritans

2009-10-08T17:48:00.001-04:00

Being the masochist that I am, I signed up for the Tour Du Port bike ride this year and decided to do the 50 mile route. I do about one of these charity rides a year. Last year it was the Tour Dem Parks on the hottest day of the year. With the Du Port being in October I expected better weather and I got it. Setting off at 7:30 sharp, the first leg went from the Canton waterfront across upper Fells Point, around the Inner Harbor, through Federal Hill and back to the National Aquarium on the waterfront. There I got my chain lubed {insert Bevis and Butthead snickering here} and grabbed some snackage.

According to the cue sheet, the next rest stop was in another 23 miles which took me through some of the rusty parts of decaying Baltimore, past lots of barking dogs in greater Dundalk (and I haven't lived in Baltimore long enough to make Dundalk and Essex jokes), and finally along long stretches of marshland to North Point Park.

There I carb loaded once again as I reflected on the advantages of bicycling over running. Primarily that stopping for a food break is not frowned upon. North Point Park was quite large and rather scenic as well as being the general area of the Battle of Baltimore where the British were beaten in the under-heralded War of 1812.

It was those last twenty miles that proved to be the test of my mettle. The clips on my biking shoes had gotten rather worn from using them as brakes on the Bike NYC ride earlier this year and now the left foot wasn't clipping in right. And then I started passing a series of people fixing flats. I was counting my blessings until I heard an all too familiar hissing off my bike.

In one of Murphy's corollaries, I only get flats on the rear tire which means having to wrestle with the chain and gears to put it on and off. I waved off several concerned passers-by as I changed the tube, but when it came time to get the wheel back on, I finally accepted the assistance of two guys that asked if I needed help. Which I am glad I did since it took all three of us to figure out the CO2 cartridge.

After an earlier flat I learned the hard way that my frame mounted pump was more decorative than useful. I had bought the cartridge gizmo in hopes that I would never have to use it, but to my surprise, it worked perfectly. The tires ballooned up to a road worthy 65 psi in an instant.

I finished the last ten miles against a strong headwind and a suspicious number hills. I collected my tee shirt and burrito and hoped I had sufficiently thanked the good Samaritans that had helped me in my moment of need. Now when I pass stranded bikers I will make more than a token effort to check if they need help. And I will keep two CO2 cartridges in my bag, one to use and one to share.

Top Chef Brunch-Off

2009-10-07T06:23:00.001-04:00

Indulging my new-found celebrity chef stalking obsession, we found ourselves the past couple of weekends near restaurants run by current Top Chef contestants. While brunch is not the ideal meal to judge a restaurant by, these were perhaps our only chances to eat at these places to see how the actual eatery compared to the personality of the contestant.

Restaurant	10 Arts Philadelphia	Trestle On Tenth New York
Chef	Jennifer Carroll	Ash Fulk
Cuisine	Modern American	Swiss Bistro
Top Chef Reputation	She garnered a reputation in the first episode for mispronouncing ceviche. Intense and focused, she is considered one of the front runners.	Skating on the bubble, Ash has a propensity for not quite being able to finish a dish in time.
Atmosphere	The restaurant is one side of the lobby of the Ritz Carlton in downtown Philadelphia. The hotel is a repurposed bank with a monstrous lobby full of marble and grandeur. Neon lights have been spread around the lobby to give the place a glowing hipster vibe.	Located on the corner of Tenth Avenue and 24th Street in Chelsea, the brick walls and dark wood gives trestle a warm comfortable feel. A small bar at the entrance gives it neigborhood sense. Doubling the seating area is a garden area out back enclosed by a small fence.
Food	For the novelty of it, I ordered an egg-white spinach omelette with goat cheese. The goat cheese was a perfect match for the lighter taste of the egg-white. The other dish we got was buttermilk pancakes which were amazingly fluffy and absolutely perfect. For sides we got both bacon and sausage but either one would have been enough for two people. Of the two, the sausage was much better with a rich maple taste.	The gratinéed pizokel were little schnitzel-like dumplings and the open face pork sandwich had tangy sauerkraut with a thick topping of fontina cheese. The omelette was billed as goat cheese and herbs. Rather than being in the omelette, the goat cheese was just a light topping on the top. And the definition of herbs included spinach, zucchini, and green beans. The vegetables overpowered the egg. For dessert, a delicious walnut torte had a thick butter crust was topped with rich ice cream and whipped cream.
Chef Sighting	On a Saturday morning we had no expectations of the chief chef being around. However, there were several signs in the lobby touting Jennifer as a Top Chef 'cheftestant' and promoting their Wednesday viewing parties.	Ash is listed on the show as the restaurants sous chef but none of the owners or chefs are touted anywhere on the menu or the restaurant website.
Verdict	One of the best breakfasts I have ever had. Everything was cooked to perfection and then some. However, the dining room was nearly empty on a Saturday morning and seemed to be catering to the captive hotel crowd. Unless you are in Philly on business you are unlikely to stumble upon this downtown gem because parking is difficult and expensive. I imagine the evening scene is much wilder when all the glowing neon plays up the decor.	This neighborhood place has both good food and is located in a great funky New York neigborhood. The people next to us were a professional photographer and his aging hipster friends. By noon the place was full of regulars. If I were a local, I could see myself paying a few bucks more compared to some other brunch places in New York to come back again and again.

Amazing Race Deja Vu

2009-10-04T21:39:00.007-04:00

It's hard to believe that it's been four years since we went to Vietnam. I wrote a blog called Asia Trip 2005 about that trip with 63 entries describing different aspects of the country. A few seasons ago on The Amazing Race, they visited Hanoi and Halong Bay which I posted about here. What I didn't talk about on that blog was that on our way back to the United States from Vietnam we spent three days in Japan.

So when the first three episodes of this season's Amazing Race took place in Tokyo and Vietnam, I got an extreme case of deja vu. So here are some of the places we saw that were also spots along the Amazing Race.

Tokyo Tower

One of the major landmarks in Tokyo is the Tokyo Tower, a full size replica of the Eiffel Tower. But in typical Japanese efficiency they made their version more slender and steamlined. It is also in a crowded neighborhood (as most Tokyo neighborhoods are) not an a broad plaza like the Eiffel Tower, so it is not nearly imposing as the original.

Mekong Delta

The racers first stop in Vietnam was to go to the Mekong Delta, about two hours from Saigon (I can't bring myself to call it Ho Chi Minh City). The Mekong is broad muddy river with all sorts of river traffic. The size of the boats on the river ranges from long barges and big ferries to small saipans barely out of the water. We were in a little boat with a skimpy roof when a major rainstorm hit and we spent nearly an hour bobbing on the river waiting for it to pass.

Traditional Music

While the Racers were herding ducks, in the background they had traditional Vietnamese musicians playing the oddly atonal stringed instruments and singing. We had gone to a restaurant in Hue that specializes in this music and the musicians used on The Amazing Race were every bit as good.

Fruit Garden

The Racers went to a fruit garden and had to muck mud to the trees. Tree groves in Vietnam are often on little patches of land only accessible by boat. It was a similar garden in Saigon where I finally got my first taste of durian.

Water Puppets

Water puppets are a native Vietnamese art form and a lot of fun to watch. We saw the original water puppets in Hanoi, but it seems that Saigon has a water puppet theater as well. One of the funniest bits on show was watching the contestants try to grab little ribbons out of the mouths of the furiously circling water puppet dragons.

Saigon Post Office

One of the clues took the teams to the gorgeous colonial era post office in the center of Saigon. While I don't have any pictures of it, it is a grand building full of wrought iron details reminiscent nineteenth century France.

Reunification Plaza

The pitstop for the third leg of the race was at the former presidential palace of South Vietnam. One of the iconic symbols of the war is of a North Vietnamese tank crashing the gate of the palace signaling the collapse of the South Vietnamese government. That particular tank is now in a museum in Hanoi, but other tanks that took part are still on the grounds.

This modernist building now serves as a museum to the corruption and extravagance of the old regime. Some people on the Television Without Pity message boards questioned the tastefulness of using this building and the memories it invokes as a pitstop. I thought the brief introduction Phil Keoghan gave was suitably somber, but history is written by the winners and, trust me, there are far more rub-your-nose-in-it places they could have gone. The building is one of the major landmarks in Saigon and not using it as a location would be shortchanging the viewers of essential experience.

I love The Amazing Race because of the vicarious thrill of visiting faraway remote places I may never get to. But even better is when they do visit places I've been to. Then I get to savor the recognition of familiar sights. In both Vietnam and in Tokyo the show did a fantastic job of capturing the chaos of the urban crowds as well as the simple but hard aspects of contemporary rural life in this country of amazing beauty.

BooksFirst - September 2009

2009-10-03T13:09:00.006-04:00

Books Bought
My Areas of Expertise by John Hodgman
Bonk by Mary Roach

Books Read
How I Became a Famous Novelist by Stephen Hely

Comments

I love metathematic books and How I Became A Famous Novelist is a delicious head trip by Steve Hely. In his first solo book, former Letterman writer Hely dissects the publishing world in a way that makes you wonder if he ever wants to publish a second book.

The premise is that the protagonist in a fit of revenge fueled jealousy over his old girlfriend getting married decides to emulate every bad cliche of fiction and write bestseller just to impress her. That he manages to do so, the write the best seller part, not necessarily the exact revenge on his ex- part, is part of the manic comic arc of this book. Along the way he interacts with many of the kitschy authors he is trying to emulate. And while the title of the book foreshadows the eventual outcome, it doesn't quite come about the way you'd expect.

Much of the greatness of the book are the phony excerpts that preface each chapter. Often in the style of thinly veiled best-selling authors, they are brilliant parodies. Part of the awkwardness is realizing that I am just familiar enough with most of these hacks to recognize them. I'm sure they are to, so I hope they all have a sense of humor as they pound out their trashy dreck all the way to the bank.

I only hope there is a sequel and a movie version starring John Cusack and a spin-off TV series.

And just in case you haven't been following my Twitter feed, I am now only 101 other patrons away from getting my own copy of The Lost Symbol from the library.

Hat tip to Sue T. for recommending this book to me.

Top Chef Masters Face Off

2009-09-29T20:36:00.004-04:00

When planning our trip to Chicago we knew we wanted to eat at some places frequented by President Obama. One of the tough tables is Table 52 run by Art Smith. Soon thereafter we started watching the end of the Masters edition of Top Chef. Art Smith made it to fourth place, being done in by not being able to make a vegan desert. The eventual winner was an affable mustachioed chef who was dedicated to preserving and spreading authentic Mexican cuisine.

So here is a side by side comparison of two top chefs in the Windy City.

Restaurant	Table 52	Frontera Grille
Chef	Art Smith	Rick Bayless
Cuisine	Southern	Mexican
Claim To Fame	A favorite of Oprah Winfrey, this is where Barack Obama took Michelle for Valentines Day.	Widely considered the best Mexican restaurant in the country, Bayless won the Top Chef Masters.
Atmosphere	The décor is made to resemble a genteel Southern home. With tables pressed close together, groups end up talking to each other. The service is very high end with all the waiters, servers and bussers working together seamlessly.	Typically Mexican with lots of bright colors and adobe textures. Seating is first come first serve, so the line starts forming about 45 minutes before opening. By the time the restaurant is open, the line is literally down the block.
Food	For entrees we had blackened sockeye salmon which came served with a great zucchini ‘peperdelle’ and some sea scallops. But the star of the meal was the three-cheese mac and cheese. I’m a serious macaroni and cheese fan and have eaten a lot of high end flavors but this was one of the best ones I have ever had. We pried out of the wait staff that it was a sharp white cheddar, a yellow cheddar and parmesan cheeses. For dessert we split the hummingbird cake and still couldn’t finish it.	Since it was brunch, most of the dishes had an egg component. The best choice we made was to get the appetizer sampler which included these tasty little Mexico City style quesadillas and Bayless’s signature guacamole. For entrees we had Cazuela de Borrego, a lamb dish, and steak and cheese enchiladas. Several of the deluxe margaritas are shaken at the table with a lime as the shaker top. Two of those will make any brunch go better.
Chef Sighting	Art Smith tours the dining room about once an hour chatting with guests, posing for pictures, and autographing cookbooks. He is friendly and gregarious.	We had seen Bayless at his quick service restaurant Xoco where he politely posed for a picture but quickly went back to managing the open kitchen. As we were seated right at the opening of Fontera Grille, we saw him in the back surveying the crowd being seated. He quietly went to the back, not to be seen again.
Verdict	Table 52 is a fine high end restaurant with good food but it just feels a little forced. It’s too busy to be intimate and too fancy to be casual.	The Bayless empire also includes the aforementioned Xoco and the higher end Topolobampo, but the flagship Frontera Grille lives up to its reputation as perhaps the best Mexican food to be found north of the Rio Grande.

Next To Next To Normal

2009-09-28T09:51:00.004-04:00

This post may contain minor spoilers for Next To Normal and A Steady Rain.

We spent yet another weekend in New York taking in shows, as we are wont to do. Since my wife's taste and mine differ, we sometimes compromise on what we want to see. My choice for the weekend was Next To Normal, a rock opera about a housewife with bipolar disorder. I’m such a sucker for those frothy feel-good shows. With the Tony Award-winning score written by Tom Kitt who also did the blink-and-you-missed-it High Fidelity, I knew to expect some energy.

What we didn’t expect was the emotion. Alice Ripley, who won a Tony for her starring role, turns on the waterworks several times in the show. Our seats were so close that we could see that the tears (and her ankle tattoo) were real. My wife was blubbering along most of the time. At one critical point in the show a prop gets smashed. A piece of it flew into my shoulder and I saved it as a souvenir.

But the show we were in New York to see was A Steady Rain (movie stars must like plays with ‘rain' in the title since we saw Julia Roberts in Three Days of Rain) starring Hugh Jackman (who we seen prance it up in The Boy From Oz) and Daniel Craig (James Bond and a Broadway novice). We didn’t even know what the play was called since we had just been referring to it as The Show With The Hunks. She was joking that if they did nothing but sit on the stage for an hour, it would be worth it.

She pretty much got her wish. The play is ninety minutes long without an intermission and the only props are two chairs. The two actors never leave the stage and give a Rashomon-like recounting of a series of increasingly brutal events that make Training Day seem like a episode of Adam-12. The two motor mouths have overlapping monologues as well as a few scenes between them. Only twice in the whole show did the two break character in the least when an unexpected audience laugh at one of the few jokes caught them off-guard.

As we like to do, we hung around outside the stage door in hopes of getting an autograph or a picture. Daniel Craig kind of zipped out of there, but I did manage to catch one brief shot. Hugh Jackman signed a few things and my wife got her Playbill passed up to the front while I managed to capture him about to duck into his SUV.

With the stars gone, we headed back to the Booth Theater where Next To Normal is playing right next door to A Steady Rain. When that show let out the cast graciously came out to sign autographs. We were stuck in gaggle of teenage girls hoping to see Aaron Tveit who does the recurring character of Tripp Vanderbilt on Gossip Girls. They went away disappointed because Aaron slipped away despite having signed autographs after the matinee.

When the rather lovely Alice Ripley came through the line, she was signing posters and playbills but holding off on posing for pictures. But when I showed her the piece of wood I got hit with, she remembered my wife crying and posed for a picture with her.

Bonus Celebrity Stalking: Right round the corner from these two shows, Jude Law is appearing in Hamlet to burnish his Serious Thespian credentials. As any high school English student will attest, that is a very long play and was about the last show to get out that evening. While I was getting some more pictures taken with my new best friend Alice Ripley, my wife positioned herself to see Jude leaving his show and she got this rather serendipitous shot.

My pictures from across the street take a little imagination and the visual clue of the giant poster in the background to make him out.

I always encourage people to see live theater if you can. Next To Normal is proof that you don't need singing mermaids or dancing tigers to do compelling mature-themed musicals with a contemporary sound. And while A Steady Rain is a celebrity-driven sell-out, the story was compelling. And it is conveniently right next to Next To Normal.

Glee-vangelical

2009-09-25T06:46:00.002-04:00

My reputation as a showkiller is well earned. Over the years, new television shows that I like are doomed to cancellation. The more enthusiastic I am about them, the quicker they plummet in the ratings. Lately, however, my touch has been slipping. The Big Bang Theory is now entering its third season despite my unbridled passion for it. My wife claims she doesn't need to watch it since she lives it, but when she does she laughs louder than me. It seems she has absorbed all the nerd-references by osmosis over the years.

My latest obsession is teen musical soap opera Glee. Each episode is a mini-Broadway production with elaborate dance numbers featuring classic rock or hip-hop songs performed by a cast astoundingly deep in triple threats. The female lead is Lea Michele as the Tracy Flick-ish (mandatory Election reference when discussing twisted high school tales of ambition) diva of the show choir.

Lea Michele has genuine Broadway DNA since she was the lead in the Broadway show Spring Awakening (which I also rave about). So when a picnic tableaux unfolds on the auditorium stage, 90% of the television audience is asking 'What the fuck?", while I and hundreds (well, perhaps dozens) of Broadway queens are doubled over laughing hilariously. That bit was an exact match of the seduction/rape scene in Spring Awakening that closes Act 1. I don't consider that a spoiler since that pose is one of the iconic Spring Awakening poster images.

Ultra-inside jokes like that are not an accident. This show is just bursting with pop cultural asides that take multiple viewings to catch. I have to apologize for the crappy quality of the screen captured video above but it is the best embeddable clip from the show, at least until the Fox legal department finds out about it. But all the episodes to date including the extended directors cut of the pilot are available on the official website as well as Hulu.

This show demands loyal viewing. A premature ejaculation joke in the third episode becomes a plot point in the fourth. And while the musical numbers are still the focus of the show, the storylines are getting sudsier.

Despite the full court publicity press from Fox and the critical enthusiasm, ratings are still below Jay Leno's nightly turd. Don't wait until you have to buy the DVD. Watch it now. And tell everybody you know to watch it. Become a Glee-vangelical like me.

Bruce Vs. Bono

2009-09-21T22:26:00.009-04:00

It's no secret to readers of this blog that I am a huge Bruce Springsteen fan. What is not as obvious is that my wife is an equally big fan of U2. She has been listening to Bono and the boys since 1983, long before their break-out Live Aid performance and the groundbreaking Joshua Tree album.

This year for our 23rd anniversary (traditional gift: rock) we went to Chicago to see U2 kick-off the North America leg of their 360 tour. Earlier in the year we had traveled not quite as far to see Bruce support his latest album. How do these two rock stars stack up? Let's look at the shows and compare.

Band	Bruce Springsteen Verizon Center May 18, 2009	U2 Soldier Stadium September 13, 2009
Blurry Overexposed Picture	More pictures	More pictures
Synopsis	Bruce is growing older but not up. He still sweats out every song.	U2 is the biggest rock band on the planet through shear perserverance.
Opening Act	The same act that has opened for Bruce for over three decades: 45 Minutes of Silence	Snow Patrol, a group of fresh-faced Irishmen that mug and flatter the audience endlessly. I wonder where they got that from.
Stage Presence	Bruce runs his shows like a revival preacher for the Church of Rock. He knows how and when to pick up and slow down the pace.	Bono is out to save the world one stadium at a time. Less loquacious than he's been in the past, he collects causes like other rockers pick up groupies.
Set List	Official Site Greasy Lake	Official Site
Stage Show	Same as it ever is. A bare black stage with the E Street Band scattered all over.	Redefining spectacle. The stage was a giant four-legged arachnid that looked like the set of Deep Space Nine had landed on the 30 yard line. I joked that it looked Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars were the real act.
Highlights	The midshow section where Bruce takes audience requests has metastasized into an entire schtick. The audience brings huge signs with clever pleas for their favorite songs. Bruce collects the signs he likes and then goes through them on stage before selecting a winner. This show's winner, a cover of 'Little Latin Lupe Lu' was obscure even by my standards. Later in the show he picked another one claiming to be a phone request by Obama for 'Rosalita'.	About half way through the show, the giant round video screen started doing its tricks. First it expanded into hexagons and extended to the entire height of the screen. That's tough to describe, but cool to watch. Then the screen lowers to floor level and starts spinning during 'Vertigo' inducing said feeling to the entire audience.
Amusing Anecdote	Not amusing as much as annoying. About three rows lower than us was a pair of guys with their own sign request that they kept holding up and blocking my view. They were clearly clueless that Bruce never picks requests from people in the middle balcony no matter how much they scream.	The guy next to us was telling us that he saw U2 in 1981 at bar. They got introduced as 'V2' which annoyed Bono. That guy was from Indiana. The couple on the other side of us had come from Cleveland. I'm not sure any actual Chicagoans were there.
Show Length	A little over two and a half hours.	Two hours to the second.
Audience	As much as I love Bruce, he does attract a certain obnoxious aging frat-boy crowd which is pretty varied in age but lily-white. About the only African-American there was playing saxophone.	Despite Bono's pan-global causes, there are more ethnically diverse Klan rallies. The only dark skinned person I saw was Desmond Tutu in a video bit during the pre-encore pause.
Noticeable Omissions	Bruce's body of work is too deep to please everybody but I have yet to see 'Hungry Heart' live.	While I can't point to any specific examples, they played seven cuts of the new album. I have to think there was some older stuff better than than a few of those cuts.
Proof I Was There
Other Reviews	Washington Post At 59, Springsteen remains one of the most potent live performers in popular music, largely because he's among its most committed practitioners. He drains every bit of his creative energy whenever he's onstage -- all in the service of proselytizing the power of rock-and-roll, in which his faith is unwavering.	Chicago Tribune The band was on its game. Not usually applauded for its sense of swing, U2 has shown an underappreciated affinity for getting down since "Mysterious Ways" belly-danced its way into discos during the early '90s. Because bassist Adam Clayton owns the best moments on "No Line on the Horizon," it was only fitting that the rhythm section ruled Saturday. Clayton and drummer Larry Mullen amped up the dance beats, and even Bono's vocals took on a more rhythmic sing-speak cadence.
Verdict	A show from The Boss is always a good time. He brings the bombast with a touch of genuine concern for the common man. A three-song nearly acoustic set in the middle of the show brought tears to the eyes, but by the closing notes of 'Rosalita' the whole house was rocking.	U2 knows how to do spectacle. The giant stage threatens to upstage the band at times but was underused in the second half of the show except as a billboard for Bono's increasingly busy bevy of causes which included Iranian protesters, a Burmese political prisoner, and impoverished Africans.

There is really no losing with either of these artists. Both are journeyman rock stars that bring long lively performances full of anthemic hits even if they do have to have to play songs off their current albums. But as another aging rocker once said, "If you don't play the new stuff, you never have any more old stuff."

See either of these acts when they are in town and you won't be disappointed.

Racist or Crazy?

2009-09-18T22:45:00.003-04:00

I missed the Million Teabagger March in DC last week, but it has been all over the news. Part of the fun has been reading all the deranged signs various protesters brought with them. Ignited by Rep. Joe Wilson's outburst, some of the controversy has been over how much of the opposition to Obama has been motivated by racial animosity and how much is just genuine political difference.

Unlike Jimmy Carter, I'm willing to give most people the benefit of the doubt. My second favorite Avenue Q song is "We're All A Little Bit Racist". Nothing in American discourse is completely divorced from racial issues, but we can do our best to keep things in the background.

So I have come up with a new game. I'm going to show a bunch of photos from the 912 protest and you have to decide whether the sign holder is racist or just plain crazy. Again, I admit that these are taken wholly out of context and are probably not representative of most Americans or even the majority of Glenn Beck listeners.

1. Oprah The Puppet Master

2. African Lion:

4. Santa's Little Helper

4. Kenyan Birth Certificate

5. Trigger Happy

6. Spreading The Wealth

7. Unarmed and Dangerous

8. Strange Fruit and the Liberty Tree

9. Cap And Trade

10. Mr. President

11. Mein Fuhrer

12. Where's The Beef?

Hat tip to Malnurtured Snay who saw these guys on the Metro. Methinks they doth protest too much.

All photos are from this Flickr account and are copyrighted by the original photographer.

Thanks for playing our game at home and come again.

Bruce Sings The Clash

2009-09-17T22:58:00.001-04:00

My favorite singer performing a song by my favorite band. It doesn't get much better than this.

Flight 93 Remembered

2009-09-11T10:03:00.008-04:00

10:03 on a Tuesday morning
In the fall of an American dream
A man is doing what he knows is right
On Flight 93

Loved his mom and he loved his dad
Loved his home and he loved his man
But on that bloody Tuesday morning
He died an American
-Melissa Etheridge

Eight years ago, the fundamentalist Islamic enemies of Western civilization rolled out a new tactic designed to intimidate and terrorize the American people. Using hijacked planes as weapons, they committed suicide, taking with them thousands of innocent people in two proud American cities. They relied on our complacency and their knowledge of our procedures for hijacked planes aimed at saving as many civilian lives as possible.

That strategy worked for exactly forty minutes. When the passengers of Flight 93 heard of the atrocities performed by other hijackers, the stormed the cockpit causing the plane to crash in Pennsylvania rather than its intended target in Washington, DC.

If you take the back roads from Baltimore to Pittsburgh, a small easily missed sign points to the crash site. Across the road from the field where the inverted airplane smashed into the ground at 563 miles per hour is a makeshift memorial site anchored by a small National Park Service trailer. A gravel parking lot sits adjacent to a hodge podge of plaques and markers and memorials. A makeshift wall holds a few hundred of the thousands of articles left by mourners and pilgrims. A few rows of benches serve as an open air chapel for the volunteers that give an account of what we know happened that day on that flight.

Across the road is a barely visible American flag marking the location of the crash where a permanent memorial will be built. But memorials don't need granite or flags or rows of trees. They just need people to keep a memory alive. We will never know exactly what transpired on Flight 93, but it was a flight of heroes. Heroes that deserve to be remembered and honored.

I've backdated this post to the time that Flight 93 crashed. Let it always stand as notice that Americans will always fight back when attacked. More pictures of the temporary memorial are available on Flickr

Personal Responsiblity

2009-09-10T01:27:00.005-04:00

Barack Obama, September 8, 2009:

But at the end of the day, we can have the most dedicated teachers, the most supportive parents, the best schools in the world -- and none of it will make a difference, none of it will matter unless all of you fulfill your responsibilities, unless you show up to those schools, unless you pay attention to those teachers, unless you listen to your parents and grandparents and other adults and put in the hard work it takes to succeed. That's what I want to focus on today: the responsibility each of you has for your education.

I want to start with the responsibility you have to yourself. Every single one of you has something that you're good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That's the opportunity an education can provide.

Mallard Fillmore, September 10, 2009:

Somebody has been sleeping in class again.

Anniversary Weekend

2009-09-06T23:17:00.000-04:00

This is what my wife posted on her Facebook this morning:

Who knew that 30 years ago a red-headed guy in my 10th grade English class would end up having such a big impact on my life. Well, 23 years ago today, he continued to be my best friend and also became my husband. In the words of his favorite singer..., Bruce Springsteen, "Well brunettes are fine man and blondes are fun but ...I'll take a red headed ..man. Love you, Michael. Happy Anniversary!

Yes, it takes a red-headed man to get a dirty job done.

Unfortunately that performance was the show the day before I saw Bruce in DC on the Reunion Tour.

That was a very sweet message and I'm lucky to be as in love with my wife as the day I married her.