Friday, July 28, 2006

The Black Dahlia


The trailer for Brian DePalma's adaption of James Ellroy's The Black Dahlia (which we previously discussed here) is available. It looks pretty cool, though I have to agree with the Fiddler that Josh Hartnett doesn't seem to have a great deal off range ("squinty to squinty" is the way he puts it).

Posted by jwb at 1:00 PM  · 5 Comments   

Thursday, July 27, 2006

Will Ferrell

We here at jwbblog think Will Ferrell is very funny (though we disagree about how to pronounce his name--there are no a's in Ferrell, unless I am mistaken). He could read the phone book and it would be funnier than most of the swill pumped out of Hollywood these days. Here's the trailer for his new movie, Stranger than Fiction.

Posted by jwb at 11:21 AM  · 1 Comments   

Floyd

Argh!!!!!!!!!!

What is up with the sporting gods this year? First Zidane, now this. I can't take it anymore!

On a lighter note, Popbitch, our source for dubious statistics, reports the following: "This year's World Cup audience was the equivalent of 64 Superbowls." Puts things in perspective, no?

Posted by jwb at 10:40 AM  · 0 Comments   

Wednesday, July 26, 2006

The Messenger


Turning to one of our other obsessions, we've had occasion to mention Daniel Silva before. His series of books about Mossad agent Gabriel Allon are incredible. Silva's new one--The Messenger--arrived from Amazon today. I intend to read it forthwith*, and suggest that you do the same.

* Meaning just as soon as I finish The Omnivore's Dilemma--a brilliant and absolutely terrifying book--but more on that later.

Posted by jwb at 2:16 PM  · 0 Comments   

Tacos


Since we're talking about food, the New York Times food section has a piece today about tacos, just in case you were unclear about the concept.

Posted by jwb at 8:47 AM  · 0 Comments   

Tuesday, July 25, 2006

A recipe


One of the most famous dishes at Nobu is Black Cod with Miso. We tried it at the Nobu in Vegas in March and it was incredibly delicious. (It's so good that you want to have another one for desert.) My friend Jen Kelly saw Nobu prepare it on one of Martha Stewart's programs a few months ago and passed the recipe along to me. Since then, we've had it made it half a dozen times at home. It is both astonishingly delicious and astonishingly easy to prepare. Why fork over vast sums of your hard earned money so that Nobu can open 27 more Nobus when you can get essentially the same result in the comfort of your own home. Here's the recipe as he prepared it for Martha, with some notes based on my experience.

Nobu’s Black Cod with Miso

3/4 cup white miso
2/3 cup sugar
1/2 cup mirin
1/2 cup sake
Four (6 ounce) black cod or sea bass fillets, cut about 3/4 –inch thick

1. In a saucepan, whisk together miso, sugar, mirin, and sake. Cook until thick enough to coat the back of a spoon, about 10 minutes. Transfer to a shallow baking dish. Add fish, turning to coat. Cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 3 days.

2. Preheat broiler to high. Remove fish from marinade, and place on a baking sheet, skin-side down. Broil until caramelized, about 3 minutes. Using a flat spatula, gently turn fish, and broil until just opaque in center, about 3 minutes more. Serve immediately.

Some notes:

1. There seem to be a number of different versions of this recipe floating around the internerds. Wolfgang Puck’s version has somewhat different amounts of the same ingredients—3/4 cup mirin, 1/2 cup sake, 2 cups white miso, and 1 cup sugar.

2. Jen Kelly—who, unlike Wolfgang Puck, is not a famous chef—has tried it while cutting back on the sugar and reports perfectly satisfactory results.

3. Mirin is Japanese rice wine. You can find it at Holy Foods as well as at Asian markets. The only place I’ve been able to find white miso is at an Asian market. I recall reading somewhere that this recipe is also good with red miso (which is aged a bit more).

4. Puck suggests that you start with the mirin and sake in the pan and let it boil for about 20 seconds to cook off some of the alcohol. He also suggests that you let the mixture cool before you put it onto the fish. We haven’t done either, with perfectly fine results. He also suggests you save a little of the miso mixture to put on the plate before you serve it, which is a smashing idea.

5. In Boston, black cod and sea bass aren’t that easy to find. (Holy Foods sometimes has black cod, but don’t count on it.) We’ve done the same recipe with Atlantic cod and hake, with perfectly delicious results.

6. Nobu must get his fish right off the boat. I’m not so sure about ours. Hence, I’ve been a little reluctant to let it marinate for the three days he suggests. We’ve done it for as many as two days and for as little as three hours, with—once again—perfectly delicious results—though, in general, the more time in the marinade, the more delicious it will be.

7. I suspect our broiler doesn’t get quite as hot as Nobu’s, so I recommend that you let it go for about four minutes on each side. You want it to develop quite a bit of carmelization on both sides.

8. Be sure to spray the pan with some cooking spray or you’ll never—and I mean never—get it clean.

9. Finally, serve with sushi rice.

Posted by jwb at 10:15 AM  · 1 Comments   

Friday, July 21, 2006

DVDs I will not be buying

From I Watch Stuff!, on the new Friends box set:

If you're sick of having to flip between channels to catch every Friends episode in a day, and don't want to bother pulling out your current complete box set, let me suggest purchasing the new complete series box set. On just 40 discs you get every episode, plus a 60-page commemorative book that I guarantee will not appreciate in value. If you already own the previous box set and wish to purchase this one for the booklet and new packaging, you can use the first box to hold your dignity. You won't be needing it anymore.

Posted by jwb at 6:36 AM  · 1 Comments   

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Blogs

From the immortal Popbitch:

Of the 147 million Americans on the Internet, 12 million have blogs.


Discuss amongst yourselves.

Posted by jwb at 10:36 AM  · 0 Comments   

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

Cancer bleg*

I was surfing through the archives for some reason (narcissism?) and came across this post from a few months ago:

A Brief Cancer Bleg

Via the Krusser, please take a moment--it's quick, easy, and (unlike cancer) painless--to click though to this site and then click on the "fund free mammograms" button. This organization provides funds so that poor women are able to get free mammograms. DO IT!


If you have a moment, click the link. It's for a good cause. Thanks.

Also, as far as I know, the Krusser still does not have a blog.

* A bleg, I gather, is blogger terminology for a blog post that requests that you do something. Yeah, I know. There's something about blogging that causes people to coin really hideous words. (The worst of them all, of course, is "blogosphere". Ugh!)

Posted by jwb at 10:29 PM  · 0 Comments   

25 Biggest Wusses

We blogged a lot about some very silly topics (hot chicks, the Bush Administration, that kind of thing) in the early days of this blog.* In that spirit, via Stereogum, Blender is working on a list of the 25 Biggest Wusses in music. They'll unveil the rest later. I don't know why, but I found this very amusing:

25. Robert Smith
24. Donovan
23. Everyone in ’N Sync (Except Justin Timberlake)
22. Natalie Merchant
21. Pat Boone
20. Garth Brooks
19. Bread
18. Common
17. Metallica
16. Paul McCartney
15. Christopher Cross

* Some, no doubt, would say that things haven't changed very much.

Posted by jwb at 4:30 PM  · 3 Comments   

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

The Spectors


In other news, Brian Spector and Steph Weston got married last weekend in Stowe, Vermont. A good time was had by all--I had a good time, anyway. Here are some pics of the wedding for those who are interested. The Spectors left on Friday for a five-month honeymoon that will take them a good way around the globe. They arrived on Sunday in Belize (wherever that is). They'll be keeping us updated on their travels--with lots of pictures--on their blog.

Posted by jwb at 9:35 AM  · 1 Comments   

Monday, July 10, 2006

France-Italy


Note to our readers: If you're not into incoherent ranting about soccer, you might want to skip to the next item.

Bastardes!

That didn’t really end very well now, did it? Very disappointing.

The prima donnas in the New York Times and the Guardian, amongst other places, are very disappointed in Zidane, and I suppose they are right to be. He screwed up. He lost his composure. That’s all very clear. I somehow doubt, however, that this will be all that he is remembered for. (For some classic Zidane magic, check out this very cool video on You-tube.) And perhaps it’s only me, but it would be nice to know what Materazzi actually said to him. Materazzi’s a famously scummy player. (Click here for some of his greatest hits, so to speak. Warning: there’s some NSFW rap music in the background.) Zidane’s parents are Algerian and he grew up in a housing project on the outskirts of Marseille, and, despite his success and fame, I gather that he is more than a little sensitive about it. It would not be surprising if the Italians thought it was good tactics to needle him for the entire game, hoping he would snap. This would fit with the Machiavellian fashion in which the Italians approach the game, in which it doesn’t really matter how you got there so long as the result is in your favor. Amongst other things, this helps explain the Italian penchant for Oscar caliber acting—simulation, as Fifa calls it, or cheating, as I—and Franz Beckenbauer—would prefer to call it. (Click here for the famous “Italian Training Video”—it’s fake, of course, but it’s funny because it expresses something that everyone knows is essentially true.) Speaking of which, was it just me, or did Materazzi look like he’s been shot with a high-powered rifle? More acting?

At the end of the day, what is most disappointing for me is that Italy seems to have won one more game that they did not deserve to win—in which they were outplayed and basically got lucky. (See Italy v. Australia and Italy v. U.S. if you’re not sure what I am talking about.) If Italy was the better team last night, perhaps this would be easier to accept. But France dominated, particularly in the second half, and Italy, unable to generate any offense, seemed to be running out the clock, playing for penalty kicks, which, Lippi acknowledged, are like buying a lottery ticket. This was a deeply unsatisfying way to end what had been, in most respects, a very exciting tournament.

Speaking of PKs, in today’s Times, George Vecsey lectures people who don’t like PKs to get over themselves: “There was no way anything epic was going to happen at this late hour, which is why soccer has this artificial and imperfect but necessary way to end matches when a winner must be produced. You cannot make championship athletes run around a field all night…. Shootouts are a part of the game; deal with it.” It’s hard for me to think of something polite to say about that, though one wonders what he’d have to say about the epic Sox v. Sox game from Sunday night that went over six hours/19 innings. How about a home run derby after 12 innings? Wouldn’t want them to get tired or anything. Idiot!

End of rant. I just needed to get that out of my system.

Congratulations to Carson and Susan for giving good interview on CBS 4. We watched the game at Brasserie Joe in Boston with a lot of disappointed Frenchies. One of the local news stations dropped by and interviewed some of us. When the report ran, the Italian fans going nuts in the North End naturally got most of the attention, but there was a nice little piece about those of us rooting for France. You could see my red shirt in the background of a couple of shots.

No more soccer blogging for a while. I promise.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

UPDATE: The soccer gods are very cruel. Zidane wins the Golden Ball as best player of the tournament. Apparently, the voting was done at half-time, before the head-butt heard 'round the world.

ANOTHER UPDATE: David Hirshey discusses all of this with considerable more humor than I have been able to conjure up over at Deadpsin.

It apears that Materazzi said something extraordinarily impolite about Zidane's father. Here's Richard Brown on Goal Post: "Rumor has it that Materazzi called Zidane's father a 'harki' - the Arabic term for Algerians who fought for France against Algeria during the occupation. It's beyond all insults, the ultimate traitor. If this is true it means that they did their research - Le Pen suggested the same thing 9 years ago and in the next game Zidane stomped on a Saudi player who repeated it."

Also, more thuggish behavior from Materazzi here.

ANOTHER STUPID UPDATE: Zidane seems to have been in a good mood at a meeting this morning with Chirac, who spoke to him: "Dear Zinedine, in such a hard and intense moment for you, I would like to express the whole nation's affection and admiration for you. You are a virtuoso, a genius of football and an exceptional human being. That is why France admires you." Nicely done Jacques. Good BBC story here, with a nice pic of Chirac and Zidane smiling.

Posted by jwb at 8:01 AM  · 1 Comments   

Friday, July 07, 2006

French or Italian?


Alright, one last World Cup post before the weekend--from Zachary Roth on The New Republic's excellent WC blog, Goal Post. I suspect Raphael won't react too well to this, but I thought it was well done. It nicely captures the virtues of good blogging--short, pithy, moderately well-informed, and kind of funny (if not in a laugh-out-loud kind of way). However, I hope he's wrong about the game. I think the Space Cowboys are going to bring it:

I WILL NOW IGNORANTLY REDUCE TWO RICH CULTURES TO A THREE PARAGRAPH-LONG BLOG POST:
When my family gets together we sometimes play a game called Beach or Mountains, which involves naming two things that are pretty much comparable and then saying which is better. So like Beatles or Stones. Or vodka or gin. Or buttocks or armpits. The skill of the game--and what a skill it is--lies mostly in coming up with the pairings.

One pairing that came up last time we played was France or Italy. I think we all agreed France was better. History-wise, the French Revolution was at least a good idea in theory. Neither of them came out of the war with much glory, but at least the French pretended to be on the right side for a bit. And they were good in the first one, while the Italians were characteristically playing the field. Plus, no one enjoys a good spaghetti carbonara more than I do, but French cuisine is clearly more varied and sophisticated than Italian. In fact, don't people say that French and Chinese cuisine form the basis of pretty much all modern cooking? I think they do. In the visual arts, it seems like French painting surpassed Italian somewhere around the late 18th century with David et al. (how's this for complete awesomeness, painting-wise?) and never looked back. Matisse vs. those Mussolini-worshipping Futurists isn't even a fair fight. In terms of movies, La Dolce Vita is pretty cool, if sort of pointless, but as for more recent fare, La Haine kicks Roberto Benigni's narcissistic arse. Also, people: One of my best friends is French, and he's great, and plus I have these French cousins who are very nice too. And I had an Italian girlfriend once when I was in school but she turned out to be kind of unstable and ended up getting drunk and breaking her nose by walking into a glass door the last time I saw her. So.


But football's a different story. I don't think Italy has ever produced players as good as Platini or Zidane, but its historical record of success is obviously far better than France's. And this year, there's no denying that, on balance, they've looked the better team so far, mainly thanks to Cannavaro and Buffon. So I expect they'll win, but I hope the French do, because of what Frank calls "the whole space cowboy trope," for which I too am a sucker.

Posted by jwb at 12:27 PM  · 2 Comments   

Thursday, July 06, 2006

Blogety blog blog blog


Sorry for the lack of posting lately. In what free time I've had of late, I've been obsessing about the World Cup, which, I am sad to say, comes to an end on Sunday afternoon. I'd babble on a bit about it, but my sense is that our regular readers don't give a fig about international soccer.

Anyway, Allez les Bleus!

Posted by jwb at 2:57 PM  · 2 Comments