Ploafmaster General

Things could be slow this week, folks...

Between a crazy busy work week and crap-loads of work around the house, my mind isn't all there lately.

But I did get something nifty, recently :-)

I don't know how long it'll be until it's little more than crappy reality TV shows, but MTV has returned to music...online.

MTV Music is a joy to my music-loving heart. The interface is - so far - fairly uncluttered. The search engine is quick to dig through the 22,000+ videos. In addition to a simple but fast-loading player you have sparse but useful information such as the director (linking to other videos by the same person!). As a fitting test, here's the video to one of my favorite songs by the sadly-no-more Big Wreck:

http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:uma:video:mtvmusic.com:46306

And as a bonus here's Stars by Hum:

http://media.mtvnservices.com/mgid:uma:video:mtvmusic.com:55357

The Virginia Center for Architecture is hosting an exhibit on Eero Saarinen's furniture through January 25th of '09. While the VCA has a tragically small exhibition space, the furniture selections are decent and the detailed time line in the main hallway is thoroughly informative.

The exhibit is free, so if you want some culture on the cheap (though anything but cheap culture), check it out.

I don't see how you could get any weirder/funnier than Robocop on a Unicorn.

(via Andrew Sullivan)

Okay, you know I'm a fan of the digital galleries curated by folks at The Morning News.

Well this week's offering is simultaneously nerdy, surreal, and beautiful. Rosecrans Baldwin interviews Cornelia Hesse-Honegger about her strangely pretty watercolors of insects affected by low-level radiation.

This morning my RSS reader had an exciting entry. The Fan District Hub pointed me to Melissa Ruggieri's review of a nascent bagel joint smack in the heart of VCU's Monroe Park campus. This was awesome - something closer than Cupertino's but serving their bagels. Even if the Bagel Czar didn't make their own (unfortunate, but not the end of the world) at least they sourced them wisely.

Now I care far less than Ruggieri about the decor of my bagel purveyors. I'm not sure what background (and I don't mean to doubt it) makes her a "bagel snob" and I don't want to sound contrarian, but nearly every worthy bagel shop I've entered from Delaware to Manhattan is a little on the plain and utilitarian side. Sometimes even hole-in-the-wall. What matters is the bagels, and here's where things started to disappoint.

Having tasted Cupertino's wares a number of times, I'm doubtful these bagels were their work. While the West End deli and bagel shop isn't quite like the Tri-State area, they at least have that slightly crispy skin on the outside with a slightly chewy interior. The Bagel Czar, on the other hand, was a bit too chewy for my taste the whole way through. It's not simply the subjective evidence that makes me question the origin of these bagels, though. Their own website has the following message in the title bar of the browser: "Bagel Czar: serving authentic NY H&H bagels to the greater Richmond community." So I asked the gent behind the bar this morning where they procured their dough and he told me that it's not even H&H anymore. The bagels were apparently too small and - surprise - couldn't stay fresh that long coming all the way from NYC. So they switched to some distributor whose name he couldn't quite recall for sure; either "Walther" or "Walter" or some such place, and he didn't know where they were located.

Is it possible that at 7:30 AM the wage employee didn't really know who dropped off the food? Sure. Is it possible Cupertino's owns a truck with some other name on the side? Sure. But if these are indeed their bagels, then I have greater cause for disappointment since it would mean the quality is slipping.

Granted, the bagel I had wasn't terrible. I like to test a new place by trying a plain bagel with butter (or an egg bagel if they make them - sadly, not at the Bagel Czar, but available at Cupertino's), and this was decent. Look, if you're a student who can't hoof it out to Cox Road for a worthwhile bagel, this place beats the crap out of whatever Kroger has to offer. But if you can and are willing to drive a little, the Bagel Czar isn't worth your time.

UPDATE: The proprietor of Cupertino's told me that the Bagel Czar does, indeed, carry his bagels. I dunno if perhaps they don't always have fresh stock (and I haven't exactly returned), but unless I'm desperate for time, I'd rather make the trek to the Far West End and get them from the man himself.

What should I take a picture of?

It could be anything...conventional, strange, pastoral or portrait. I want suggestions in the comments, and they can be as simple as "dogs" or something complex with specific direction (like angles, time of day, et cetera). I'll pick something by Friday afternoon. I'll shoot the crap out of that subject/theme (hopefully this weekend) and post the results as soon as the film can be developed/scanned.

Ever since I was at VCU I always noticed the Red Bull vehicles driving around campus, or their less fortunate employees hoofing it around the student commons with cases of the energy drink. It was a free can from one such over-enthusiastic Red Buller that introduced me to what I consider a putrid beverage. I think I've had one more can since as a test to see whether the first was a fluke. It wasn't - it tastes as if somebody crushed up a bottle of Flintstones vitamins in some Kool-Aid and threw in a splash of club soda for carbonation.

I don't know why, then, I paused in the 7-11 this afternoon when I saw a can of Red Bull Cola.



I suppose it was curiosity to see whether they made some "energy cola" to supplement their product line. Seeing the "natural" tag on several parts of the can made me chuckle considering the somewhat engineered flavor of their flagship beverage, so I had to glance at the ingredients. Here I was surprised to find real sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup (like nearly every other cola in the USA) and a lack of high-wattage extracts. What, not an energy drink? So I decided it was at least worth trying a new cola.

Cracking open the can I could already smell the difference - this was definitely a cola, but not your average Pepsi or Coke product. There was a real fragrance that smelled like something mixed up fresh. Tasting the drink confirmed what my nose suspected - there were hints of citrus, licorice, and some spices on which I couldn't put my finger - so I had to take a closer look at the ingredients. Sure enough, there were extracts of lime, licorice, vanilla, lemon juice concentrate, ginger, cinnamon, cacao, and a host of others. Heck, they even get the caffeine from coffee beans!

I don't think I ever expected a can of cola with this complex a flavor...now I want more.

So tonight I'm planning to attend an information session about VCU's MBA program. I'm hoping to learn more details, particularly, about the part-time option. Afterward I intend to pick up a study guide for the GMAT, and we'll see what happens...

The phrase which gives us the title of this blog post is bandied about colloquially to indicate meat with a mild and generic flavor. Flaky whitefish? Tastes like chicken. Light chunk tuna? Tastes like chicken. Alligator? You know where this is going.

It's my experience that the majority of factory-farmed poultry in our country today tastes very little like anything at all. There's a vague, savory meatiness, sure. But a distinctive flavor? It seems to me the only flavor you get out of your average grocery store chicken is what you put in to it, like a heavy marinade and lots of salt, and hopefully a really good sear on the outside to get the tasty crispy crust. This is made worse by the typical American's fat phobia driving the purchase of skinless chicken (where much of any chicken's flavor resides).

Well as many of you know, I don't really buy meat from the grocery store anymore. I get my cuts from the butcher, and I've found that even their skinless chicken thighs have a distinctive flavor that I don't recall from my childhood. Last night I cooked up a fairly quick and easy dinner: I chopped up four slices of hand-crafted peppercorn maple bacon (also from the butcher) and fried the bits until crispy. Reserving the bacon and draining most (but not all) of the grease, I seared the salted thighs on both sides cooking them all the way through. I cooked up some cheese tortellini (some new brand imported from Italy, the name escapes me, but they're GREAT), and threw them, the bacon, and the chicken (now chopped up) into the frying pan to stir together with roasted garlic Alfredo sauce. I freshly grated some Parmigiana over the whole thing to finish.

There are several strong flavors in that dish when you think about it - garlic, salty bacon, a sharp grated cheese - but the chicken stood out. I noticed a flavor and aroma which reminded me of good scrambled eggs. Through the many components of my dish - some which might threaten to dominate the palette - the poultry could not be ignored.

And do you know what? It tasted like chicken.

Check out the BBC's article about the Belgian political situation. I never would have guessed that a modern Western European nation would have such divisions with the real (though not likely) chance of a split. The article was a fascinating read (since I knew very little of the small country), and packed quite a bit of information into the short space. I'm reminded of my need to pay attention to the world outside of United States borders, even (if not especially) during our intense election cycle.

You might need to change your undies after laughing your bowels out at this one:

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XAg5KjnAhuU&hl=en&fs=1&w=580&h=470]

(via that font of Friday fun, yewknee)

I just posted four frames of Moshe Safdie's Jepson Center for the Arts in Savannah, GA.

The website for Moshe Safdie and Associates is tragically Flash-tastic, but if you have the patience I recommend checking out some of his other work.

There's a few more snaps on my photostream. Maybe I'll have the color film ready tomorrow...

Malcolm Gladwell's recent New Yorker Article, "Late Bloomers," has already been linked around the internet, but I can't help chiming in having read the piece. Whether or not you or me or anybody else is destined to reach "genius" status, it's encouraging to understand that not all brilliance manifests itself at an early age. Additionally, I loved the notion that late-blooming talent is often aided by outside forces:

Sharie was Ben’s wife. But she was also—to borrow a term from long ago—his patron. That word has a condescending edge to it today, because we think it far more appropriate for artists (and everyone else for that matter) to be supported by the marketplace. But the marketplace works only for people like Jonathan Safran Foer, whose art emerges, fully realized, at the beginning of their career, or Picasso, whose talent was so blindingly obvious that an art dealer offered him a hundred-and-fifty-franc-a-month stipend the minute he got to Paris, at age twenty. If you are the type of creative mind that starts without a plan, and has to experiment and learn by doing, you need someone to see you through the long and difficult time it takes for your art to reach its true level.

The article is a lengthy one, but certainly worth a read. It makes me (and hopefully others who pursue good artistic output of any kind) relax a little bit about my own creativity and dulls the false sense of urgency to do something significant before I age "too much." The article also seems to celebrate the pursuit - the research and preparation as a component of the art itself. And that, I can appreciate.

This is probably the most brilliant non-gaming application of the Wiimote I've yet seen, and makes me wonder what other excellent possibilities await the patient tinkerer (maybe moving the guitar adjusts delay repeat frequency? Please?).

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmuggHx_H5Y&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&fs=1&w=580&h=470]
(via Engadget)

Five new shots from a roll of Fuji Neopan 1600 on my Flickr stream. I hope to have some medium format goodness up tomorrow evening.

Buh-BWAM:



Today Apple just dropped a designer high-definition display on us. And it's smokin'.

There seems to be a fair amount of letterpress type to be had on eBay, and much of it seems to be in gloriously good shape, such as this example from Flickr user h. wren:



I think I'd have a hard time justifying the purchase of letterpress type to Valerie, even if it is one of my favorites :-)
(That would be Gill Sans, in case somebody looks at this page long after the eBay auction is gone.)

Check it:



This device, striking in its simplicity of function, is one of the coolest ideas I've seen an a long time. Bushnell's BackTrack GPS device is cheap ($60 on Amazon) and basic, functioning much like a stop watch for your location. You press a button to mark your location, and you press a button again to start pointing you back to that location. I'd like to see something like this get cheaper and ubiquitous allowing, for example, parents to give one to each child, or travelers on a budget to find their way back to a key location.

This is a very clever innovation in what's fast becoming a crowded GPS market.

For that tasty mix of irony and awesome, you really ought to consider a tray that makes bullet-shaped ice.

So I'm back in Richmond as of last night, but posting is likely to remain sparse today and tomorrow while I attend a conference for VOUG - the Virginia Oracle Users Group. The pluses, other than the intense and educational sessions I'm sure to encounter? Plenty of catered food included, carpooling with my wife (she works five blocks from the Omni downtown where the conference will be held), and not having to go back to the office until Monday.

I may post some updates during the breaks, but if I do they're likely to be saturated with nerd-speak.

Valerie and I just finished dining at Tapas Restaurant on Hilton Head Island. As the name indicates, the menu consisted of small plates, but the flavors and preparations circled the culinary world (leaning heavily toward French Cuisine). Between the two of us we sampled 8 different dishes - sharing with each other, of course.

We started off with appetizers which may as well have been tapas items themselves. Valerie's Crab Rangoon with cherry-plum sauce was tasty (though not my preference), but the real star here was the Lobster Ravioli in lemon burre-blanc sauce. Now burre-blanc is one of the "mother sauces" of French cuisine, and arguably one of the more difficult to produce, but self-trained chef Ardis Matthews showed herself to be worthy of her kitchen with this entry. The only shame was that this was my first course and easily my best of the night. I wiped up as much of the remaining sauce as possible with the bread (which was fresh and delicious)...

Sticking with seafood, Valerie ordered the Shrimp Parthenon, which consisted of sauteed shrimp with feta and oregano in an amazing tomato bisque. There was even a little puff-pastry fish in the bowl! I, on the other hand, opted for the Shrimp and Scallops Ardis, deciding that if the chef was willing to put her name on the dish it must be worth a try. I wasn't disappointed - the shrimp were delicious, the scallops perfectly tender, and the lobster cream sauce poured over the top was subtle but spectacular. I went for another seafood round while Valerie digested a bit, choosing the Grilled Pesto Salmon. There's not much to explain, given the name of the dish, but the fish was grilled just right and went better with pesto than I'd have imagined.

My wife's next choice was the Grand Marnier Duck - a thin slice of duck breast sauteed with grapes and pears in a sauce which gave the dish its name. Very flavorful, very tender, and very creative. I went for the Tornado Vernoff - a slice of beef tenderloin sitting in a sauce consisting of Madeira and demi-glace - and what a sauce! My last dinner selection was the Venison au Poivre, a tasty rendition of the steak classic with the stronger flavor of deer.

Beyond belief, we still had dessert! Valerie's creme brulee was one of the lightest I've had, and they broiled brown sugar instead of granulated on top which added a nice change. My "chocolate decadence" (oh what a lousy name) was incredible. It was as dense as a brownie and layered with caramel and toffee bits.

We will return on Tuesday when Val's mom, accompanied by two friends, join us on the island. What a dining experience.

The A.V. Club's Nathan Rabin interviews British actor Simon Pegg. I'm already a huge fan of Pegg's work in Shawn of the Dead and Hot Fuzz, but this interview sheds some light on his wit and intelligence as well.