How are you gonna spend your Christmas?

It's that time of year again

[Edit: I liked it so much that it's now the blog header]
Beebo and I still haven't bought any Xmas cards to send out yet.  But we're eying a few candidates.  You want to get these things just right.  here's one I'm thinking of-what do you think?

Today's question

Now that my neighborhood (Capitol Hill, Seattle, USA) has one bar that serves that Quebecois delicacy, poutine, and will soon get a "Montreal-style" bagelry, the burning question is: When do we get a deli with smoked meat sandwiches??? Duddy Kravitz wants to know!

In your grill

I was lying on the floor trying to take a picture of Deebo across the room playing with one of his toys.  Then he got curious about what I was doing and walked right up to the camera, so I got this shot.

Potlucks and Me

You may think it un-American of me, but I really don't like potluck dinners or parties.  We're now in the holiday potluck season, and I'm doing my best to dodge attending any.

Here's why I avoid them:

• I don't want to eat food that other people have made, unless I know it's going to be good.  I have friends who are good cooks, and I'm very happy to eat anything they will give me.  I like anything that Beebo prepares, and I like food that I (rarely) cook.  I really like eating at restaurants and taverns.  But I don't really like eating food that someone in the office made.  Baked goods are fine, but I don't want any casserole or anyone's 'great tabbouleh'.   There's something kind of icky about it for me, since I'm a picky eater.
• I don't like eating at parties, sitting on a couch or standing with a paper plate in my hand.  Eating and hobnobbing don't mix for me.  
• I don't like being expected to provide food for a work party.  I think it's weird that non-private sector employers feel comfortable expecting employees to provide for food for a a party that's supposed to be a treat for them (it's usually a different story if you work for some commercial enterprise).  Especially if it's a party that happens after work hours!  I appreciate that there's not really free money floating around when you work for a non-profit or a university/state office, but it kind of sucks the fun out of it.  Even worse is if you work in an office that expects you to pony up money for a work party (it happens)!
• In general, I think that if you send out a party invitation, the invitee should be welcome to show up empty-handed without fear of judgment.  I think bringing a bottle of wine or some special thing you've whipped up or purchased is a cool and appropriate reaction, but if there's a price of admission...it's not really a party. [Exception: parties given by young, poor people are always BYOB]
• Since I don't drive, it's a pain to schlep food to a party.  Pot lucks are for people who have cars!  And after the party, you always have to schlep some crusty serving dish home.  Ecch!  Worse, there's often pressure to help clean up after the 'party', so you have to deal with all the dishes you didn't want to eat in the first place.

Summary (for people in a hurry): 1. I don't like potluck food 2. I think cheap-o office parties are lame.

Christmas on the Beeb 1979!

It's that time of year!

 

 

 

Guy Foulard, Christmas-Style

 

 

Yep, I still hate him

VH1 TV Shows | Music Videos | Celebrity Photos | News & Gossip

Ebay must-have alert

Are you a fan of the sketch "Low Budget Tales of Cliched Horror" from the Ben Stiller Show (1992)?


Well, here's your chance to own a piece of it:

"This is a pair of latex gloves made for the BEN STILLER SHOW. The show ran from 1992-1993 and was a comedy TV show starring Ben Stiller and Andy Dick. These gloves are a one of a kind pair sculpted and made for Ben Stiller to wear in a skit in the show. There was only one pair made and the mold was destroyed. There will never be another set. They are in used/unaltered condition. Would be a great addition to your TV / Ben Stiller memorabilia. Comes with a certificate of authenticity."

 Starting bid $79.99!

What every adult man needs

A pocket square rack--gives your dresser that 'my bedroom is a department store' look.  Only $65.

I once passed on the opportunity to buy a vintage rooster™ ties store display somewhat like the rack above, but with a plastic rooster head at the top. In a rare moment of practicality, I decided it would be too expensive and difficult to fly it home (I was in Indiana at the time).

Green-o

Isn't this a lovely tie?  It's a mid-sixties Brooks Brothers green paisley number just under 3 inches in width.  I've been on a paisley kick lately, so I've been picking them up cheap on Ebay.  Green is one of the most elusive tie colors, which makes this one extra-interesting.  I haven't bid on this one, since it's above my target price (which is around ten bucks).  For some reason, the seller has categorized it as "1950 50S Rockabilly Skinny", which is not accurate.

Visually, it speaks to me of an era where a guy would naturally wear a tie on ordinary occasions, but wants to show that he's a hip dude, so it's an unusually-colored groovy pattern.  This same guy might also be sporting some modest sideburns to show that he's not uptight (even if he is).  It's a perfect moment in time--attuned to cultural changes, but not fully given in to the slobby excess of the seventies.

Starring Yaphet Kotto as Idi Amin

Over the weekend, I watched (via Netflix streaming) this well-made TV movie from 1977.  I remember hearing about it when it was originally on (5th grade), but didn't see it at the time.  And back then, you only got one chance!  I got interested because the hijacking and rescue was referenced in a circa 1980 British TV series I like, The Sandbaggers.  Raid on Entebbe does what I like a good political/action thriller to do--take its time to set up the story, keep the action grounded in real life, and have a high level of tension.*  Since I knew some details of the real-life story, I knew that it would have a fairly upbeat ending, so it wasn't really an unpleasant experience.  It's also got a great cast, with the great Martin Balsam, one of my favorite B-movie stars, John Saxon, and especially Yaphet Kotto in the choice role of General Idi Amin Dada, who he plays accurately as cuckoo, dangerous, and extremely annoying.  The film has great production values, and by virtue of being made contemporary to the actual event, is chock full of seventies verisimilitude.  It was much better than I expected it to be--highly recommended to those who like that kind of thing.

*The first two of these qualifications are largely lost today, due to the need to keep everything on a video game level of excitement and physical implausibility.  The third qualification (high level of tension) is often killed by movies failing to take some time to breathe and let the audience build up a feeling of dread.

MC, SC, RB

I totally got this off of Best Week Ever, but have to post it, since I love Michael Caine, Steve Coogan, and Rob Brydon...and these impersonations are great.

Foulard's Technology Yeses and Noses

I'm a habitual reader of the blog Unplggd, which is a tech-related offshoot of the Apartment Therapy blog.  Like many "professional" blogs, it's basically about shopping, and like many Americans, I get a thrill out of clever little techy gadgets.  It's interesting to get a picture of the world its editors and contributors live in:  Everyone is a professional urbanite, with dough to toss around on nifty little must-haves.  Of course it's 99.99% Mac-centric, because of the cool factor involved there--owning a PC has as much caché as being a regular churchgoer or a member of the military in a large city.

Also, oddly to me, owning a laptop computer is de rigeur--apparently everyone in Uplggd-land is a free-lancer who travels a lot and spends hours doing their biz in coffee shops.  In my world, I spend 40 hours a week sitting at a desk in an office, and then I walk home and wake the home PC up and turn it off when I go to bed, then wake it up again at 6:15 am for an hour or so.  But I never feel the need to have a computer between work and home, because I'm either walking, shopping, eating, or meeting friends for beer/cocktails.  It would be weird/awkward to whip it out to check my email or browse to keep myself amused.

Anyway (Part 2 of this post begins here), I have discovered that I'm out of step with what I'm supposed to be doing, cutting-edge-wise, even though I'm not a luddite at all (and only superficially 'off the grid').  So here's a list:

Foulard Eschews:
Laptop computers (except for the mini one we have for occasional vacations, which I enjoyed having in Waikiki last week).
Facebook--feels like the internet equivalent of going back to high school combined with living in a basement apartment with no curtains and walking around naked all the time. Completely horrifying to me.
Twitter--I can't even figure out how to read these.  Definitely too old for this!
Streaming movies and TV shows instead of watching them on  DVD--am I the only one who doesn't think the picture looks good enough most of the time?  That's really the #1 thing for me when I watch.  I can only do the streaming thing when I don't care, or it's allegedly hi-def.
Cell Phones--this is the biggy, and the one that inspired this post.  I have occasionally felt pleasure at having mine in certain rare circumstances, but basically, it's just a bill I hate paying.  My usage level is the equivalent of buying a large pizza and eating half a slice. I'm planning to downgrade as soon as my contract expires. 
Paying money to download individual media (video and music)--I just feel ripped off doing this.  It bothers me more than paying three bucks at the video store to rent a crappy VHS did in the dark ages.
Kindle (for now)--I really like physical books, but I don't mind the idea of an e-reader.  However, I don't want to pay as much or more to read a book on it--which is the way it seems to be going.  Along with the previous topic, it just feels like a scheme cooked up to charge physical content prices for an intangible.  Why pay Amazon for something they don't have to keep in a warehouse and mail to me?

Foulard Embraces:
Super-High Speed Internet--Boy, do I love it.  I like running the speed test to see just how fast it is, and get grumpy if it doesn't read out as 'Excellent'.
High-Def cable TV with hundreds of channels--I keep reading on line about 'I canceled my cable--now we just stream everything through my [laptop or streaming device]', but I think it's fun just to have all the channels and stuff there all the time, in the old-school manner.
Free downloads--I LOVE downloading old, out-of-print music online for free.  I can be as obscure in my tastes as I want, without having to act like a dumb consumer (how commercial downloading makes me feel).  I have thousands of hours of music on my PC--music that's only interesting to a tiny handful of people.
Big flat-screen TV, DVDs, Blu-Ray, etc.--As a visual person, I get really fixated on detail and clarity (and proper aspect ratios, of course), and these things allow me to enjoy movies and old TV shows in the most perfect possible manner.  I have no nostalgia for old CRT TVs with their 480i  resolutions, and clunky, fuzzy videotapes. See also this post.
Writing a blog -- at least when I'm in the mood. [insert wry emoticon here]

I'm leaving out all the middle-american technology I don't engage with: cars, microwave ovens, clothes made of 'fleece'.  This list is just my answer to trendy-style rhetorical questions like 'Does anyone use a PC/Desktop any more?' and 'Do you still have cable TV?'.  I see consumer tech as a varied bag of tricks--just grab the ones that work for you and leave the rest behind.  Come to think of, most of my friends do too, which is the difference between reality and what you read in blogs that make lame statements about what constitutes 'normal' use of technology.

Keep It Flat!

You know what really irks me?  Adding airbrush-y shading to old cartoon characters to tart them up and make them look more "real".

F'r'instance, here's a nice classically flat Bugs Bunny:

 

...and here's the modern, "improved" B.B.:

Ecch!  I'm sure you're as offended as I am.


All the super-flat, limited animation Hanna Barbera characters of my youth have been subjected to the same treatment, which takes away their most appealing quality--their crisp black lines, and flat, bright colors.  Check out this poor guy:

Working it!

You can shade him all you want, but he still won't look real.

Office Humor

I made this cartoon for Beebo last winter while she was still at her old job.  Her department was moving to a shiny new building where the peons were all going to get worse offices, while los big-shots got better ones.  Normally, I am weary of Star Wars references, but sometimes you just have to go there!

27!

Beebo and Isaw this episode of The Simpsons while waiting to go out in Waikiki this evening (nous sommes aux vacances). This part cracked me up so much that I wheezed!

My Brilliant Halloween Costume Idea

A group of people dresses up like failed dot-com era logos and mascots:

 Make sure to give me credit when you do this!  And send photos.

Feel the Quality, Part 2

Hallowe'en Costume Shopping Tips

With these costumes, you can recreate one of my favorite Star Trek - The Original Series episodes: To Walk With the Feet of Giants (from Season Three).

Clowns: They Love Popcorn!

 

...especially Popcorn the Clown!

This poor little clown has a full-time job
making popcorn for other clowns to enjoy....

Help me out here, people

I usually eat lunch at a hospital cafeteria right near my office, partly because it's a low-key place to read and eat and get away from work, and partly because I have a few choices for a lunch with a protein and two sides for six bucks.  This way I don't have to bring lunch in from home and eat at my desk or in the break room, and I don't have to go to one of the same few boring lunch places over and over again.  Also, this is when I try to eat my vegetables.



One thing that puzzles me, and I'm not getting any help from Google.  One cafeteria staple is the 'chicken quarter' -- a leg and thigh that have not been separated, and are served to you in one giant piece.  How exactly am I supposed to go about eating one of these big mothers?  I don't want to be all Henry VIII and pick it up and knaw on it, especially of it's some sort of messy tandoori-style preparation.  On the other hand, when I attempt to cut it up with a fork and knife, I can barely get enough off to feed a small child. 

Any ideas?  Is there a secret and civilized solution to this problem?  Or is it (as I suspect) just an easy and lazy way for the head chef to crank out a lot of substantial-looking entrees with extremely minimal effort?

Easy Poutine

Not a photo of what I made.

I finally made some full-on Poutine for a snack last Sunday.  Here's what I used:

• Frozen french fries, baked in the oven (obviously, fresh are better, but this was a quick and easy snack)
• Bisto gravy granules (really does make tasty gravy, and you can keep it forever in your cupboard)
• Beecher's fresh cheese curds (made locally--the most gourmet part of the snack)

1. Preheat oven, put your fries in.
2. Start boiling water for your Bisto.
3. Chip curds into slightly smaller bits.
4. Sprinkle curds over finished fries on a nice big platter.
5. Mix your gravy and then pour all over fries.
6. Open a beer and enjoy poutine while watching TV.  Offer some to the person who went to the store and bought the curds and fries for you.

Family-Friendly

Here's a fun and stupid thing I found on the internets:

Watch Edited Movies With These
Edited Movies DVD Players

"Now we can finally watch Last Tango in Paris together."

Control the content of movies in your own home. Filter both profanity and offensive scenes while you watch. Without modifying the DVD. Works with over 4000 regular versions of movies that you already own or rent from any video store.

• Filter your movies from Graphic Violence, Suggestive Scenes, Strong or Vulgar Language.
• Filter popular TV Series like 24 and Lost.
• Control the rating of the movies allowed to be played.
• Password protected settings.
• No waiting for edited movies in the mail or letting someone else decide what you want edited... It's your choice!

What a fascinating and lame idea!  I'm sure you could have a wonderfully incoherent movies experience this way, if you pick the right film. 

However, what I'd really like is a DVD player that adds sex, violence, and profanity to boring family movies to jazz them up! Or at least a DVD with all the bits they edited out of those 4000 movies...

With Ted McGinley, how can it go wrong?

Gee whiz...this direct-to-DVD movie looks like it'll be crack for snarky, mocking people (like me).  I won't feel like it's really Xmas this year unless I get to see it!  I can't imagine it letting me down the way DC 9/11: Time of Crisis did.

My prediction: the guy with the beard turns out to be...Jesus.

Peter Fonda Gives You the Finger

In the past few months, I've watched three of Peter Fonda's 1970s film efforts--Futureworld, Dirty Mary and Crazy Larry, and most recently, Race with the Devil. All of these were made after Easy Rider, which created the illusion that Peter Fonda had what it took to be a movie star.

In Futureworld, the sequel to Westworld, Fonda is a newspaper reporter (with attitude!) who is investigating strange goings on at Delos, the recently re-opened robot-populated adult amusement park--think Club Med with sex robots and historical recreations. He's aided by perky tv reporter (and old flame) Blythe Danner. The film is a sorry, confused mess of a sci-fi concept, not helped by P.F.'s total lack of charisma and likeability. He really works his 'rebellious' image in this (and all his movies), and just seems like a smug 70s a-hole. See above for his parting shot at the robot bad guys--I can't help but think that was his own improvisation. Peter Fonda just seems like the kind of guy who thinks flipping the bird is really witty.

Dirty Mary and Crazy Larry is a car chase/supermarket robbery movie co-starring odd British actress Susan George. In this one, Pete plays a smug 70s a-hole race car driver (with attitude!), who needs money to buy some great car to race in Nascar, or something like that. It has a fatalistic ending where their car runs into a truck and blows up. (spoiler alert) Also, he gives the finger again.

In Race With the Devil, Fonda, along with the great Warren Oates and their wives (one is Loretta Swit) are being chased across rural Texas by Satanists. Sadly, Peter does not get an opportunity to give the finger in this film, but this is mitigated by the fact that the vehicle he drives is a Winnebago (with attitude!), which is really a central character in the story. Much attention is paid to the impressive fact that it has a microwave oven.

In all these movies, I never saw one moment where Fonda demonstrates any reason why he should have been a movie star--and I'm pretty broadminded about actors in old films. I can usually find something I like, but in this case I'm stymied. Warren Oates, Susan George, and even Blythe Danner have to do a lot of work to make up for the void that is P.F.

No hard feelings, man!

Beebo Alert!

Hello!
Beebo asked me to alert everyone about some slight changes to her blog. Due to her busy work schedule, Beebo will now be updating her blog weekly, on Saturday. Think of it as really slow tweeting.

Why so sad?

Is it because you just paid $56 for a t-shirt?

Hallowe'en movie time begins

Beebo and I kicked off the season of watching scary movies last night--kind of a day early, but it was a dark and rainy night, so I didn't want to squander it. We watched City of the Dead (aka Horror Hotel), a nice, efficient little witchcraft story from 1960. It's about a cursed Massachusetts town called Whitewood, where it's apparently always nighttime, and they have a serious fog problem. It was filmed in England, but most of the cast does a passable American accent.

The big name star is Christopher Lee, playing a college professor teaching a course in witchcraft. This is the kind of course you can only take in the movies, from my experience.

It also stars lovely blonde Venetia Stevenson, who was married (at different times) to Russ Tamblyn and Don Everly. The funniest (non-scary) scene in the movie has her lounging in her room (at the creepy Raven's Inn), in a big quilted robe. Hearing that there's a dance going on in the lobby, she decides to take a break from her witchcraft research and join the fun. When she takes off her robe, she's wearing a baroque and ridiculously sexy merry widow with stockings and garters. If you've ever known a woman (or are one), you know that the first thing a girl who's just sitting around by herself does is get into the most comfortable lounging clothes possible. I could buy the part about the 300 year-old witches, and the cursed town, but this is where my suspension of disbelief was stretched a bit too far!

But it's a great movie--highly recommended!

Stella!

I just learned something interesting: Stella Artois, the beer with the pretentious commercials I have to sit through when I see a foreign movie at one of my local Landmark Cinemas, is nicknamed 'wife beater' in England! That's a different cultural interpretation!

From what I've read, its high-ish alcohol content allegedly makes British men get all 'aggro', though in truth, it's obviously the innate qualities of the louts who drink it that make them act out. However, some of the theories here are rather amusing--some people even think it has 'special chemicals' that turn a normal peace-loving chav fellow into a raging animal:

"I reckon it is true. My Mum used to work in a pub and the effect that stuff had on some of the guys in there was just awful. One in particular found himself with his hands round his girlfriend's neck after a night in it. He hasn't touched it since because he thinks it was because he had been drinking Stella that night. I think maybe it just brings out the very worst in someone, it doesn;t necessarily make them go home and beat seven shades out of the missus. My boyfriend had been drinking it one night when his usual lager was off and we had such a huge row on the way home, I've never seen him so argumentative.

"I think they should be allowed to conduct some kind of study into it, despite what it may do to the sales, because if there really is something in it which makes people behave aggressively, they should either change some of the ingredients or make people fully aware of the risks."

"In my last bar I was forced to change Stella to another lager because everybody who got drunk on it just ended up fighting. When the new lager was introduced there were no longer any problems. So in my experience it is true."

"It really do make some people very aggressive, my local pub will refuse to sell it to some customers."

"A policman told me it is true. It is well known to make men aggresive and abusive."

And my very favorite:

"Good question man, I always get in trouble when drinking that stuff, it couls be from the water they use to make it. Another side effect of Stella, it makes me poop really bad the next day. Anyone else have that problem?"

More information here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-494149/Where-did-wrong-beer-wife-beater.html

Do you want to know what the time is?

Scary and Inexplicable Yahoo Mail ads

I find this Zappos computer/puppet customer service person
disturbing, not 'fun'. Now I'm afraid to buy shoes!

So this girl beat up her mom for not having life insurance? Why?
How does that resolve the problem?

Computers and Martinis

One thing you can say about evil 1970s supercomputers: They know their martini preparation.

In the good-bad 1970 film, Colossus: the Forbin Project, Dr. Forbin (Eric Braeden) is being held prisoner by his creation (Colossus), and has to trick it into letting his secretary visit him, by lying to the computer and saying she's his girlfriend. She's allowed to visit him, conjugally, as long as she takes all her clothes off to make sure she's not sneaking anything in (or that's your story anyway, right, Colossus?). In the guise as Forbin's lady, she makes him a martini. But the computer is watching her carefully! Earlier, Dr. Forbin had explained his vermouth method (pour a large quantity of it over the cubes to 'rinse' them, and then drain it out before adding the gin). Fortunately, the secretary is hip to this, and passes the test.

The best part is in the earlier scene, when Colossus texts THAT IS TOO MUCH VERMOUTH to Forbin.

In the bad-bad 1977 film Demon Seed, super-computer whiz Dr. Anderson (Fritz Weaver) has programmed his house to do everything by spoken instructions, which is not a good idea if it stops listening to you (as it does). In an early scene, however, he gets home from work and requests 'the usual', which turns out to be a martini that he compliments as 'perfect'. I had to wonder how much time he spent creating a robot arm that can spear an olive with a toothpick, though!