So, last night, Jenn used the same seasoning on our steaks that senior management at Hesperia city hall (Code Enforcement’s Tom Harp, as I recall) used at last week’s annual employee cookout (see the photos at the bottom of A3 in this week’s paper). The steak they cooked smelled so good, but I was ethically prohibited from having any that was offered.
The theory goes something like this:
I cover Candidate A’s fund-raiser and he’s serving something not-great. Let’s say Sbarro Pizza, which is possibly the worst pizza available in every mall on the planet.
A few days later, I cover Candidate B’s fund-raiser. (It’ll get like this later this summer.) Candidate B is serving steak. (In fact, two years ago, Councilman Dennis Nowicki had former Hesperia Chamber of Commerce President Mark Lawson making his tri-tip, which I know for a fact is fantastic, and my stomach growled so hard smelling it, I had to flee the area so I could concentrate on my job.)
The next week, I write an article about the election and supporters of Candidate A hate it. (Experience says that the supporters of Candidate B will also hate it, but that’s not important in this discussion.) They then decide I was unduly influenced by Candidate B’s steak.
Now, I know where to get steak. I can grill steak myself. (I did so last night.) If I could be influenced, it’d take a hell of a lot more than steak. But it’s not worth the headaches of getting slammed for bias when it’s something I can avoid by just not eating the steak. Or the Sbarro pizza, for that matter.
This has turned into a bit of a running joke with officials in Hesperia, who now like to taunt me with things like the steak at last week’s cookout, knowing I won’t eat it. But it’s just not worth the hassle of eating it.
(I notice that ethics don’t prevent me from ever doing anything unpleasant: “Well, Congressman, I’d love to clean out your gutters, but my ethics mean I have to reluctantly decline.”)
There is one exception to all of this: Since the Star is a member of the chamber of commerce, there’s no problem with me eating chamber food in my capacity as a chamber member. So Lawson, who’s having a mixer in July where he’s serving tri-tip again, I believe, will see me chowing down on his awesome tri-tip. But if there ever was a question as to how I was covering the chamber, and why, I’d cut that out, too.
Of course, there’s nothing stopping me from asking, say, Tom Harp as to what was done to prepare the steaks at the cookout and doing the same at home. (Nice thick steaks, McCormick’s Montreal Steak Seasoning, high heat, and turning the steak just once to sear it and seal in the juices.) And man, they were damn good.
Individually, the bits in Jesus is Magic might seem very provocative and funny, but taken as a whole, they remain on a very even pitch, never really hitting brilliance, and never really evoking more than a chuckle.
After a while, Sarah Silverman’s jokes begin to blur together — or they would, if they weren’t punctuated by somewhat mumbly and cute-at-best musical numbers and skits.
Sarah Silverman probably has a great concert movie in her, but this isn’t it.
Mildly recommended at best.
I first heard about it on NPR via podcast a few weeks ago: A UK scientist created the Mosquito tone as a form of teenager repellant. It’s an annoying high pitch whiiiiiiiiiine that age diminishes the ability for one to hear. (Truthfully, I can’t hear the one in the NPR story.)
While it serves that purpose, teenagers realized it also worked as a sound to signal things they wanted to hear (and for their peers to hear), but not adults. Say, as for the sound played by a cellphone when they received an instant message in class.
Well, it’s no longer cool, now that New York Times did a story on it today and practically every adult I know has been e-mailing each other high pitched MP3s, asking “can you hear this?” (Many, I suspect, don’t read the NYT — I know I don’t — but just are passing this around as an old folks meme, like a bootleg of REO Speedwagon or something else deeply depressing.)
So, naturally, I’m going to be using the tone for phone messages myself.
Sorry, kids. First snowboarding, and now this.
Well, Blizzard has done it again: They’re offering 10 day passes for new players to try out World of Warcraft. Each current subscriber gets five passes to send out. (In return, said subscribers get 30 days free play for each of the 10 day folks who ends up turning into a regular subscriber.)
If you have access to the disks — and with 6 million of them out there, you probably do — post your e-mail address here, and I’ll send you a pass. First come, first served.
I grew up on the original Battlestar Galactica, but even as a kid, I knew I was being pandered to with robot dogs and flying motorcycles and a cute kid hanging around on a military ship.
But the premise — robots all but wipe out humans elsewhere in the galaxy, and a ragtag fugitive fleet makes its way towards the semi-mythical Earth while pursued by the relentless Cylons — was sound.
Jump forward to 2004, and the new incarnation of the series. Most of the characters are reimagined, even if they fit into the same general niches — two of them are even women now — and the entire affair takes itself much more seriously. No robot dogs wrestling cute kids on the floor of a military cruiser here.
Likewise, the special effects are a major leap forward and the dogfights in space are shot in bar-raising documentary style fashion, making them feel much more immediate and dangerous.
The tweaks to the Cylons, both toasters and a new series that look like humans, make them much more interesting and frightening, and the changes to their human collaborator make him more than a joke. (Although Baltar is still a joke, much of the time.)
The acting, especially by Edward James Olmos and Grace Park, is also miles beyond the original cast (although the original Apollo has a recurring role in the new series, playing very much against type).
But …
(You knew there’d be a “but,” didn’t you?)
But the writing is sloppy at times to the point of carelessness. I’m not one to nitpick minor details like the names of characters’ never-seen parents or what have you (although it’d be nice if all the characters stopped calling the NCO “sir”), but major plot points appear and disappear out of the ether.
At the end of the miniseries (included in this DVD package), Commander Adama receives a note in his quarters stating that Cylons look like humans now, and noting how many models there are. Who left this note? How did they know the information and why share it with him? And, most importantly, why wasn’t this ever followed up on?
Likewise, the Cylon plot doesn’t appear to make much sense, nor does some unseen Cylon infiltrator placing a key clue on the bridge of the Galactica to be found make much sense either.
(I’m also not a fan of alien humans wearing neckties and a Caprica that looks an awful lot like contemporary America/Canada, but I get they had to save money somewhere in the production process.)
But the good outweighs the bad, and the whole affair is carried off with such style that it would be a huge shame for any space opera fan to not give it a try, just to see if a BSG without robot dogs is for them.
Strongly recommended to fans of the original and to those looking for a more gritty alternative to the relentlessly utopian Star Trek franchise.
|
|
