No blogging for the next two weeks since I will be exploring Beijing and Shanghai. I'm excited to take a ton of pictures with my new camera, eat a lot of new cuisine, and just take in the sights and sounds with a few buddies.
Watch: Summary of the show Lost. Series finale is on Sunday, while I am in China. It's going to be hard not to let someone spoil it for me before I get a chance to watch it when I get back.
What?: Nicolas Cage on How He Chooses What to Eat: "I actually choose the way I eat according to the way animals have sex. I think fish are very dignified with sex. So are birds. But pigs, not so much. So I don't eat pig meat or things like that. I eat fish and fowl."
Watch: My New Favorite Web Series "Munchies." Watch chefs get drunk or high and take you on a tasting tour. Episodes include David Chang of Momofuku and the chefs of Animal (cameo's of people like Aziz Ansari)
Watch: The best commercial I've seen in a long time
Read: Haute Stoner Cuisine (NYT) "Roy Choi, who owns the fleet of Kogi Korean taco trucks in Los Angeles, likens the culinary culture that has grown up around marijuana to the one that rose up around theGrateful Dead years ago. Then, people who attended the band’s shows got high and shared live music. Now, people get high and share delicious, inventive and accessible food."
So True: "Not Very Good Album Takes A Little While To Get Into" (The Onion)
"After a number of close listenings, local resident Brian Mott was finally able to get into a music album that is really not very good at all, sources reported Tuesday. "At first, it was kind of hard to penetrate, but now that I've heard the whole thing like six or seven times, I'm really starting to dig it," said Mott, who decided to stick with the utterly unimpressive record, and not be put off by the fact that it was, by any account, underwhelming at best. "It's definitely not for everyone, that's for sure." According to sources, Mott then went back to enjoying the overall crappy album by staring straight ahead for 43 minutes and furrowing his brow in intense concentration."
Read: "This leads to a tendency to under-acknowledge when politicians are doing a reasonably good job. To be clearer: I think at the moment I and other bloggers are failing to credit politicians for paying a fair amount of attention to the issues that are, in fact, the most pressing ones of our times. If you look back to the 1990s or the 1980s, you'll find the nation's agenda was clogged up with a lot of rather ridiculous fluff. We had constitutional amendments to ban flag-burning. We had lawyers parsing the gender-harassment implications of jokes about pubic hairs on Cokes. (Yes, in retrospect I'm afraid that all seems a bit silly now. Sorry, Anita.) In legislative terms, the second presidential terms of both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were essentially dead-in-the-water partisan standoffs, with public discourse channeled into scandals and distractions.
In contrast, take a look at what's on the congressional agenda this term. Universal health-care coverage. Systemic financial reform to prevent the recurrence of a global meltdown. Climate-change legislation. You may not like the solutions Congress is coming up with on any of these issues, but you have to concede that these are the great issues of our time. They were the great issues of our time five years ago, too, but we weren't doing anything about them. Now we are. To a large extent, that's because looming disaster has forced them onto the agenda; America could afford to dither in the 1990s because things were going pretty well. But I think it's worth acknowledging that our political system is not entirely screwed up at the moment. Congress may or may not be doing a good job of solving the great problems facing our nation, but at least it's paying attention." (Economist)
Watch: "The charming short film "Pixels," in which various classic arcade game characters destroy New York City, has been picked up by Adam Sandler's company for a full-length version—a "'Ghostbusters'-style action comedy." (Awl)
Watch: "Gorgeous timelapse video of Eyjafjallajökull set to the music of Sigur Rós vocalist jónsi. By Sean Stiegemeier." (Via)
Did You Know: Supreme Court Justices:
If Elana Kagan is confirmed,
1. All 9 justices will have studied law at either Harvard or Yale
2. There will be six Catholics and two Jews, and zero Protestants
3. 4 of the 5 Burroughs of New York will be represented
Also:
4. "Justice Stephen Breyer recused himself from the [Monsanto GMO] case because Charles Breyer, the lower court judge, is his brother. Notably, Justice Clarence Thomas, who was once a lawyer for Monsanto, did not recuse himself."
Analysis: Great take on the Hyundai car ads that attack young drivers.
List: Artists that are technically one-hit wonders. Examples:
Weezer - "Beverly Hills"
Jimi Hendrix - "All Along the Watchtower"
Blink 182 - "All the Small Things" (my least fav. Blink song)
White Stripes - "Icky Thump"
Garth Brooks - "Lost in You"
More including: Ben Folds Five, Beck, Janis Joplin, Public Enemy, Iggy Pop, Rush, Norah Jones, Grateful Dead, etc...
Grill: 5 Grilling Tips from Chef de Cuisine at Wolfgang's Cut:
Light the briquettes at least one hour before you expect to grill.
Season meat at least one hour ahead of cooking.
Allow the meat to come to room temperature before cooking.
Before you start cooking, make sure that you have a gradient of heat, Start cooking the food that will take the longest first, Start cooking your meat on high heat first
Allow the meat to rest for at least 10 minutes after you pull it off of the grill
Politics: Read about the young staffers in the West Wing. "The Obama campaign, one young West Wing staff member said, was a romantic 'crush' full of jitters, firsts and ups and downs. Governing, on the other hand, 'is like the way you love your girlfriend' — meaningful, but often more taxing and frustrating."
