Lights Out! Cammila Radio!

But it turned out the repairs were just a hair under, so my insurance paid to get my baby back in running order. I thus decided it would be wrong to continue on without immortalizing her.

I didn't have any love for Kathy Griffin for the longest time. I'd never sat down and watched her act, but her whole personna seemed so annoying and schticky. But then one fine day, I left one of her stand-up performances on TV after some other show on Bravo had ended, and was soon laughing my ass off. That woman's stories are hilarious! I don't know how anybody into pop culture couldn't find that shit hysterical.

I did, however, like Margaret Cho. Or at least I thought I did -- she's fearless and bitchy and queer and I've read a lot of biting observations from her. But sadly, after watching one of her stand-up performances tonight, she's the one who seems too schticky. She did have some great commentary, and I think she's a kick ass lady, but her act was so heavy on mugging and rim-shot punchlines, I was kind of cringing.

Though to her credit, she did offer this:

"... And I noticed that people in S&M are usually really into Star Trek. Like there's this creepy connection between leather sex, Star Trek and the Renaissance Faire."

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1. I got in a car accident last week, smooshing my little rock wagon pretty good. Offhand, the body shop guy thought she looked totaled, but estimates reveal that it's too close to call, so I await the insurance company's decision. In the meantime, Rob and I are carpooling with the eco-destroyer.

2. I joined forces with Ryan (who you may remember from my band, my living room, or his photoblog Breathe in Digital) for a kickass post on my style blog. It's basically: one 50's prom dress, one dark apartment courtyard, and one sweet, new off-camera lighting set-up .

3. Our cat Tesla likes to lay in a C curve. It doesn't look comfortable but he's clearly happy with it.

Thank you, Andrew.

Condoleezza Rice, in a recent Q&A session with Stanford students on the illegal use of torture during the Bush admin:

"...by definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Convention Against Torture."

I know it's a little passe for once busy denizens of the internet to keep right on guffawing about the Bush administration, stuck in a feedback loop of indignant bitching, like the zombies in Dawn of the Dead staggering back to the mall just because they don't know what else to do. But I swear, my aghastness here isn't self righteous -- my beef is rhetorical, and in a Realy!? With Seth and Amy kind of way, I'm actually sort of amazed.

She's well-schooled and experienced  in the realm of providing public statements, and she's proven to be more than proficient at excising content for those purposes. Plus, I don't know for certain, but I'm pretty sure she's not autistic, and has a reasonable level of awareness that when she speaks in front of audiences and cameras, her words are in turn, perceived by other humans. And you've gotta think she knew somebody was going to ask for her take on the legality of water boarding -- if not here, then somewhere else, tomorrow or probably yesterday.

I mean, she clearly had mentally prepped some ingredients for extemporaneous discussion on the matter, with reference to the Convention Against Torture, and yet it never occurred to her to make sure that, in all of this, she didn't end up kind of quoting Nixon? And not just something said by Nixon, but a fairly infamous sound byte -- one that had been been turned up to 11 on the drama-meter this very year in the most climactic moment of a critically acclaimed Oscar-heavyweight major motion picture?

Apparently, not too many agree with the extent of my amazement, since I don't exactly see this story getting bandied about by many outside the inflammatory douchebag set. I guess there have been people in the hot seat over enhanced interrogation for years now pleading "just following orders," so opening oneself up for a Nixon comparison is tame at this point.

I guess maybe not (Hipster Olympics was a long time ago). Oh well, that's okay, I'm totally posting this link to lookatthisfuckinghipster ironically. I like, don't really care about the standards of, you know, like, society and shit....

You may recall some time ago when I posted about the first-run syndicated fantasy series Legend of the Seeker, concluding the post with a sarcastic declaration that this was going to become my new favorite show. Well after making this highly ironic and mean-spirited statement, the craziest thing happened. In conjunction with my mocking plan, the show and I started spending time together, and I began getting to know the show as a person. Soon, I was honestly falling in love with the show, but the longer we stayed together under the secret pretext of me making fun of it behind its back to my friends, the more impossible it became to tell the show the truth about why I began our relationship!

I thought maybe I could just leave the awful truth to be buried by time, but just when things were looking really great for our future together, I arrived at the locale for our big date only to discover that one of my spiteful ex-best-friends had just told the show my secret, probably out of bitterness and jealousy over how in love I was with a show that we used to ridicule together! I hadn't been there to explain to the show how, even though I'd started spending time with it as a joke, I'd grown to genuinely know and understand and yes, love it, so the show ran out before I could say anything! Luckily, I caught up with it later and explained everything, telling the show that while I was so sorry for hurting it, I could never really feel completely sorry for agreeing to the plan in the first place, because otherwise I would never have gotten to know what a truly amazing person it is. The show instantly understood and forgave me, and we demurely made out, in symbolic establishment of our new, ever strengthened bond together.

How cliche is that.

It's kind of amazing that it took a band this long to use this as the name for a live recording:  

 

If you missed the pop culture train on this reference, it's from an infamous clip of Bill O'Reilly during his Inside Edition days, completely losing his shit over some problem with the teleprompter.  

 
This clip is also the source material if you say something stupid or inarticulate and Rob says to you "There's no WORDS there!"  

And as long as I'm at it: I'm really weirdly tickled by this video of a costume shop owner behaving insanely while a local news anchor completely fails at trying to interview her. At one point, she's wearing a mask underneath another mask.

 
I think one of the reasons I find it so delightful is that, despite the fact that she is clearly crazy (especially if you look at the actual news story this dumbass reporter was pursuing), the desperately humorless journalist completely loses control of the situation while she dances in a fucking bunny suit.  

Okay and if you're really, really desperate for further entertainment, try and come up with a caption for this picture of Heidi Montag from Jezebel. So many joke possibilities! She looks like she's pooping! She's wearing sneaker wedge highheels!(?)  



Thanks scorseseisgod for the sweet hookup.

Rob and I celebrated our anniversary on Saturday, and while I didn't think to get a picture of us while we were busy having a grand old time, I did remember to immortalize the fact that we made mini donuts. So anyway, here's one of my favorite pictures of us, taken in '04 on the way to a butt metal festival in Atlanta where our favorite Swedish prog band was playing.

An oldie but a goodie.

The food processor, the hand mixer, and the blender: all die within 12 hours.

The processor was cheap, the little off-brand kind where you hold down one little button to make it go. I use it 4-5 times a week to make tofu omelets, hummus, that kind of thing, so it probably lasted about as long as you could expect.

The blender was a kickass vintage avocado green Oster that Rob's parents gave us. It was purchased sometime in the early 80's, but was rarely ever used. It was a really nice, high powered immersion model that could handle making my green smoothie every morning, which is always smooth and delicious (I have a lot of friends who complain that trying to process greens in an average, inexpensive  blender tends to result in drinkable tabouli. Eew.)

The mixer was just a crappy 10 dollar hand mixer that I grabbed at Kroger with some groceries because I can cream shortening and sugar by hand, but I don't have the arm power to make buttercream frosting without an electric mixer. On an awesome note, the mixer didn't die by the motor getting groggy and the unit smelling of noxious burnt materials (like the other 2), the mechanism that held the beaters parallel and in place just randomly gave way and they instantly twisted into each other and became frozen, like a malfunction with the transporter on Star Trek. Clearly this indicates that the mixer's problem was in the Heisenberg Compensator.

So now we need to figure out how we want to proceed on the matter. Ordinarily, one would hope that all these things don't die at once, so investing in a nice Cuisinart, Kitchen-Aid mixer, and kickass blender of some kind doesn't mean buying all that shit at once. But perhaps more pertinent is the fact that literally any and all sources I look to for advice on a blender that can handle chewing down a tall glass of collard greens and rock hard frozen fruit every single day hysterically advocates something from Vita-Mix or Blendtec. There's no undercurrent of unimpressed cynics who insist that it's all just hype and you're just as well off with even a different high-end model from another company -- there is evidently nothing that compares to the power of the Vita-Mix (or Blendtec. Fewer people seem to have tried it, but it gets the same proportion of excited praise from those who have.)

The thing is, a Vita-Mix/Blendtec blender is like $400, and the newest swankiest models are even more nuts. It's like getting a Kirby vacuum, except it's not a scam being sold to you by a door-to-door guy with big, gold, guido jewelry. However, there are additional factors. The Vita-Mix/Blendtec are roundly praised for doing all the pureeing jobs of a food processor, so investing in one could eliminate the need for the other. Additionally, as much as I might like to do my awesomest pastry jobs with the help of a high end stand mixer, I just plain don't think I'd want to have one while we're in this particular kitchen. They're heavy as fuck, and lord knows we don't have the extra counter space to just leave it sitting out.

However, Blendtec makes  a blender/stand mixer, where both devices live in the same base. I'm intrigued. The only trouble is that the combo unit seems to offer slightly less power (the normal blender is 13 amp/1500 watts, the combo unit is 10 amp/ 1000 watts).  I can't tell if this is a big enough difference to matter. Though it's probably more notable that the mixing bowl adds to the footprint, taking up more of that aforementioned limited counter space, when I might be just as happy to use another crappy hand mixer for the time being.

So go the inane struggles of my kitchen appliance woes. If you've somehow read this far, your input is appreciated.
 

If I posted pics of even half the treats I obsessive-compulsively bake up every week, I'd be spending a lot less time eating those treats. But I snapped some random selections over the past couple months, so let's take a look.



I like making mini layer cakes. This one was made with my 7" pans. I placed it next to some bananas and a scotch jug. You know, for reference.


For Ryan's birthday, I made him smore inspired cupcakes, and topped them with freaky little plastic cats that Margaret gave me for New Years last year. That one giant cathead in the middle is the king. Clearly.



I made another mini layer cake with the extra batter, this time using my little 4" pans. I topped that one with the little plastic tree that inexplicably came with the package of plastic cats.


Remembering my affection for making tiny sweets, Rob got me a heart shaped baking tin for Valentine's day. I Christened it with some little vegan cheesecakes.


I topped them with cherry preserves, but that part looks kind of black and mysterious in photographs. In fairness, it was quite tart.

I got to review Watchmen.

Other things I reviewed recently. Post Oscar season is otherwise pretty bleak.

Friday the 13th
The International
Push
Madea Goes to Jail

The latest and most entertaining use of avatar-likeness skills: The Hero Factory.

Here's mine:



You don't get to pick your Superhero name. But you do get to try to approximate your face with a limited selection of features. I made one for Rob too.



I had to specifically not select pants for him, so it would look like he's wearing his cycling outfit. That apparent lack of pants, by the way, is not far from how this outfit looks in real life.

Tonight, while Rob and Ryan and I were having our usual Friday night of baking, beers, and Battlestar Galactica, Rob got a phone call from a blocked number. It was a disgruntled man yelling at Rob for for stealing his newspaper(?), and threatening to come over and kick his ass. Rob blithely told him "Sorry bro, I get my news from the internet," but even after he hung up, the guy called back.

Having had a moment to collect himself, and to discern that the guy was either a crazy person dialing the wrong number or a prankster (but certainly not a real neighbor -- from the volume of his voice over the phone, we'd have been able to hear him in the building), Rob put the incoming call on speaker, and answered the phone in the guise of Les Grossman (Forward to the 45 sec. mark), in a full-on screaming rage. A small excerpt from the conversation (which lasted about 5 minutes) appears below:

Rob: Who is this?
Guy: You need to stop disrespecting my-(!)
Rob: WHO THE FUCK IS THIS?!?
Guy: What? Who are you? Stop stealing my fucking paper!
Rob: LISTEN ASSHOLE, I WILL RAIN DOWN AN UNGODLY FUCKING FIRESTORM UPON YOU!
Guy: Don't you talk to me that way!
Rob: I AM TALKING SCORCHED EARTH, MOTHERFUCKER!!!
Guy: (!!)

This went on for a while, with the guy kind of weakly inserting generic bar fight type comebacks, sporadically going silent, having clearly lost control of the call. Then, there was this:

Guy: You don't talk to me like that!
Rob: Okay, okay, this kind of got out of hand.
Guy: I will be over there in two seconds!
Rob: Alright listen, let's just take it down a notch.
Guy: This is...you don't...
Rob: Come on bro, let's just calm down.
Guy: ....
Rob: Okay, now I want you to take a big step back, and literally FUCK YOUR OWN FACE!!!

Rob lost interest shortly afterward. The guy didn't call back.

While there exists the minor possibility that a totally insane guy completely believed that his thieving neighbor was challenging him to a rage cage smackdown, it seems pretty clear that it was just a prank. Every time Rob asked a question, the dude clumsily avoided it. Also, he didn't show the kind of bellowing, belligerent, blind rage of a guy who's actually ready to fight. Even still, I made Rob file a police report, in the interest of not tempting fate. Or insane people. Or whatever.

What's great is that Rob's response was a win-win. This is an ideal reaction for a prank caller, and the bonus is if the guy started his crank calling after smoking a bowl, he might have been just stoned enough to get a little freaked out about it.

Recently, I was wasting lots of time on the internet researching a post I wrote for the AllMovie blog about TVTropes.org, when I ended up in a vortex of ideas about modern hero archetypes in movies, and whether the idea of coolness is as ancient as anything or, in fact, approximately no centuries old. See if you can follow me on this one.

I was thinking about movies that are kind of trope-tributes, like Legends of the Fall. Opinions divide on its quality, but all I'm thinking about is how the story is intentionally made up entirely of themes lifted directly out of the Western Lit playbook, like Cain and Abel, the Prodigal Son and Tristan and Iseult. So details aside, the premise here is a premise you've seen many, many times.

The page from the playbook that got me going is the following. You have two brothers: one is the Awesome Brother, who is sometimes Prodigal, usually rebellious, and tends to be adored by everybody, even though as a matter of type, he rarely has his shit together. Then you have the other brother, who we'll call Not Awesome -- he's what TVTropes would call the Un Favorite, and he's often the victim of Parental Favoritism, even when he stays behind and acts as the Dutiful Son, taking care of the homestead while the Awesome Brother disappears to sew his oats or find himself or whatever.

What stands out about most modern tellings of this story is that even though Not Awesome is given every opportunity to earn our sympathy, even though he spends all his time accomplishing things, endeavoring to gain the approval of his father or girl, even though we know his low-ranking status in the family is totally unfair, he still seems kind of wormy and pathetic. Whereas the Awesome Brother (who TVTropes rightly points out is often Troubled But Cute, a type that also includes the Dylan McKays and Jordan Catalanos of the world) never tries to earn anybody's approval, and yet he oozes wonderfulness and charisma, beloved by both the characters and the audience, even though he's kind of a fuck up. And the lovable bad boy has the same MO in movies without the sibling element -- he doesn't identify with any of his responsibilities or obligations to anyone else and we love him for it.

It's one thing to buck the system like Robbin Hood or Zorro, running around with a cape and a sword, declaring your rapscallion ideals to the world and doing lots of hero-type-things, even though technically, you're on the other side of the law. But literarily speaking, it seems like quite another to buck the system without embracing another one, to endear yourself so effortlessly to the audience by not ascribing to things, by not trying hard or doing right. And then getting all down about it -- often tempering your dispassion towards the structures of the world with a streak of melancholy, and a painful self-awareness about the lack of meaning in everything.

Morose motherfuckers have appeared in plenty of stories, but even Hamlet doesn't elicit this kind of swooning, and his ennui was circumstantial anyway. I could be wrong, but it seems like Troubled But Cute is entirely an invention of the 20th century. Maybe I'm dumb or just reading it all wrong, but I can't think of a major example that predates Holden Caufield when it comes to a character evoking such gut admiration from the audience by way of smirking detachment, with underlying feelings of bitchy, existential angst. In fact, the whole idea of a hero struggling with his identity, rejecting society and somewhat aloofly embracing nothing at all, seems decidedly post Jazz Age American. When else did people have the time and money for this kind of thing?

I'm probably bound to eat my words, but I can't help drawing the ridiculously ambitious conclusion that the emergence of this concept in literature was more or less the invention of cool. James Dean cemented the rebellious but detached character type with East of Eden and Rebel Without a Cause, and the flame's been carried by everybody from Fonzie to the emo vampire leading guy from Twilight. Like with anything, the theme gets watered down with each incarnation, but the general sentiment persists that coolness equals not playing by the rules. And more importantly, that coolness doesn't come from what you are, but from what you aren't. It comes from not buying in, not caring, not trying. Cool is supposed to be effortless. It might be cool to have a motorcycle, but having a motorcycle really means not caring if your hair gets messed up or if it's cold out tonight or if you die in a firey Mac truck explosion running from the state cops.

That's why when you get a modern reading of all these tropes in a sort of visible-template type movie like Legends of the Fall, you end up with a story where Brad Pitt spends the whole movie following the whims of his wild, free spirit, fucking up who knows how many lives in the process, but somehow remaining the ooey gooey center of all the other characters' worlds and ours by simple virtue of not giving a shit (except about that third brother dying, but that's just that pesky melancholy streak). Meanwhile, his brother Aiden Quinn (the Not Awesome Un Favorite) spends the whole movie working diligently to make something of himself -- going to college, marrying the girl Brad ditched, getting elected to public office -- and just makes the audience cringe with every new accomplishment, earning only pity and disgust for so flagrantly giving a shit -- namely, about what other people think.

I guess you could easily interpret the Troubled But Cute Awesome Brother Rebel Bad Boy as just a popular, slightly warped manifestation of strength and confidence being rewarded while weakness and doubt aren't. Or even easier, it's just fantasy heroism for modern life, where this weird promise that the non-great could one day become great is just too much pressure, and the deep down, we'd all rather not care than entertain the excruciating hope. Or maybe I'm totally off, and the bad boy dates back as far as man's been able to keep his hair looking disheveled but sexy. You can still run from the state cops on horseback.