I'm ready for my foil hat, Mr. DeMille

Can you feel it?  The Internet is stalking us.

This is nothing new, it's been stalking me for some time now.  Sidebar ads.  Recommendations when I search for something on the great and powerful Google.  Recipes for delicious Spam primavera when I go to my spam folder in email. 

The most recent disturbing message came when I Twittered about our office coffee and it's lack of quality.  Mere moments later, I got an email from WebMD asking me if I didn't think, perhaps, my caffeine intake was a tad high.

This is uncalled for.  If good things happened with this whole Internet spying thing, I wouldn't mind.  If, for example, it triggered shipments of free bacon to my home any time I mentioned #bacon on Twitter, or if someone mysteriously showed up at the office with a four-shot of espresso when I disparage office coffee, we'd be golden.

But really, Internet?  Questioning my caffeine intake?  Spam-kebabs?  Who are you to judge, oh great Judgie McJudgerson?  Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, that Zuckerberg kid from Facebook, whoever invented Google, and even Al Gore, I'm looking at you.  Stop stalking me, just let me live my life in peace.  Am I going insane, here?  Are we in danger of the Internet ruling our lives until we run, screaming, to a tiny shack in the middle of Montana to write our manifestoes on manual typewriters, far from the prying eye of the Worldwide Web?  I think so!

But then again, that could be the caffeine talking, I suppose.

Carry on.

No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to quiz!

I know quizzes normally happen on Thursdays, but it's been far too long since I've quizzed you, my childrens.  I'm here to resolve that and not make you wait another whole week.  You're excited, I can tell.

For that matter, it's also been far too long since I've entrenched myself in a Bond movie marathon.  I love the James Bond franchise, and while I'm generally a fan of the official (Eon Productions) films, there have been others made to feature 007 as well, with varying success.  I'm looking at you, Never Say Never Again....  In lieu of that, getting you to answer questions about the great and powerful Bond is some comfort.

Put on your thinking caps and get Googling, my little spylets!

• Which actor has starred in the most Bond films to date?
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• Which Bond character has been played by the most actors in the franchise history: M, Ernst Stavro Blofeld or Felix Leiter?
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• Which of those characters was played by more than one actor in a single film?
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• Name two actors to play a different role in a subsequent film than in their original Bond appearance.  (Check the CDS archives for this one, kiddoes!)
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• Of the many makes and models of car James Bond has driven, and given his history of destroying anything he drives, which car has featured in more films than any other?
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• What children's author wrote the screenplay for one of the film adaptations of Ian Fleming's novels?
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• What non-Bond film did said author screenwrite based on an Ian Fleming story?
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• Which film featured more actors playing Agent 007 than any other?
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• Of those actors, who is the only one to act in one of the 'official' Bond films? 
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• Who was the best Bond girl ever?  Discuss.  Unless you think it was Halle Berry, in which case you're wrong.  Even Denise Richards as a nuclear physicist exhibited better acting skills.  And by acting skills I mean acting skills.  Get your minds out of the gutter.

Remember to show your work, kids!  Spelling counts.  When you're done, check this out at LOTD.

Answers here.

Tastes (Kinda) Like Chicken, Looks Like The Lower 48?

Call me old-fashioned, but I like my food to look like food.  Sure, it's a well-known fact that I enjoy the little cheese crackers with the peanut butter in them, and that color does not occur in nature except to scream 'poisonous!', but they do look exactly like they're designed to.

On the opposite side of the coin, what's the deal with chicken nuggets?  First it was McDonalds, and now it seems everyone is jumping on the 'that's-not-shaped-like-food' bandwagon.  I don't eat McNuggets, but on occasion, nuggets from other fast food icons make a quick and tidy snack when I'm on the run, and they're all shaped the same. Some of them look like Minnesota.  Some of them are shaped like animators used to draw pork chops back in the 1940's.  Some of them are shaped like paramecia.  Some of them have no rhyme or reason whatsoever, and they're only benefit is the ability to fit neatly into a vat of barbecue or sweet-and-sour.

I get the dinosaurs, the stars and the other amusing kid-friendly shapes, because we want our kids to eat something besides paste and scabs.  But unless you come out with the full fifty state nugget pack to teach them geography, it seems wrong to pick on one or two.  And 50 nuggets would just add to the growing childhood obesity issues in this country, especially dipped in honey mustard.

Round is good.  Shape them like drumsticks, I'll be happy.  It's an extrusion, you can't tell me these are the only shapes we can come up with.

Does that look like a McNugget/New Hampshire to you?

I mentioned my curiousity about this to someone the other day, and they sent me to this article about genetically engineered ground meat.  That's right, scientists are developing cell structures that will grow a hamburger without ever needing to be farm-raised, slaughtered or butchered, and it won't create the mass amounts of greenhouse gas expelled by real cows and chickens. 

This makes perfect sense to me, that half of the meat we consume is already ground, so why not remove the animal cruelty from the picture?  I love the American farm and the American farmer, but I've read much on the environmental impact a single cow can have on global warming, and how each cow produces 1/16th the meat-to-pollution ratio of smaller animals like chickens.  And now, everyone could grow their own meat.  I'm on board.

The only tragedy here?  Every day I don't finish my old novel is a day that my imaginary happenings become closer to truth.

Damn.  I wish I had some of those cheesy peanut butter crackers.

You can't go to Eddy's again

I spend a lot of time thinking about food.  It's possible I spend more time thinking about it than I do eating it.  And, like other areas of life, it would seem the Chinese restaurant experience of my youth is quickly disappearing from the American landscape. 

I miss Eddy's Place, the weekly destination of my youth.  Eddy is a family friend, as is Rosie, his long-time waitress.  I very nearly proposed to Lori there, but got nervous when we walked in to find my parents sitting at a corner table.  (I did ask, and she accepted, later that evening.)  We have an afghan on our sofa that Rosie gave us as a wedding present.  Since Eddy had been pushed into closing by his landlord, he and Rosie came to my sister's wedding, and it was a joy to see them again.  This is not a typical restaurateur-client relationship, and I'm okay with that. 

Eddy's was not exactly unique in my childhood.  There were four or five other Chinese restaurants of the same sit-down variety that made their way though our dining spectrum, and only one little delivery place.  There was no such thing as the 'Super Happy Steam Buffet of Overcookedness' in my childhood.  I always got a placemat that told me what my zodiac sign meant, and strangely, it's pretty dead-on for me.

There were always egg rolls and egg foo young, and later, dozens of potstickers.  (Due to that family friendship, I have a dozen or so of Eddy's potstickers, frozen for later consumption and made by the man himself in his own home kitchen as a gift to my parents.)  There was custom ordering, combinations that didn't exist on the soy-stained paper menu.  When we were children, my sister would order milk, and since she was, apparently, the only customer who ever ordered it, Eddy would have to send someone across the street to the tiny grocery store to buy some.

As time has passed, I've watched those sit-down restaurants disappear.  In their place, buffets of questionable quality and tiny carry-out places have cropped up.  Lori and I tried yet another buffet last night, hoping for something of higher quality than we got.  So awful was this place, with multi-colored light bulbs, and a scratchy PA system that broke out into the traditional 'Happy Bursday To You' at one point (yes, bursday.  Really.) and the too-common steamed beyond recognition food, that we'll never go back. 

With few exceptions for the high-priced Chinese-Restaurant-As-Fine-Dining places, most of the sit-down places have fallen to disrepair, fish tanks empty or covered in algae, ceiling tiles falling down from unattended roof leaks.  Now, most of the places that will sell me carryout belong to families or corporations that have purchased the Chinese restaurant kit, advertised as 'New York Style'.  These places, in Wisconsin, Florida and Ohio (and I'm sure...your state has them, too...) have the same menus, the same pictures of pre-staged dishes, the same chairs with fan-patterned vinyl, usually green but occasionally pink. 

What they don't have is the same charm of the neighborhood restaurant, a casual family-owned place where the kitchen is hidden, where traditional music is streamed through bad speakers, and where I might even get an odd mix of Chinese-style and American dishes, like a plate of carrot sticks and olives, or the option to order a hamburger.  I've never ordered a hamburger at a Chinese restaurant, but it was comforting to know it was there.  (I spent years with our daughters ordering chicken strips at the Mexican restaurant, so a hamburger at the Chinese place would have opened up our family dining options a little more before their palates grew.)  

When I Google Eddy's Place for nostalgia's sake, the restaurant now comes up with his home address.  I can even see it on Google Stalker View.  Maybe this means I can go to Eddy's again.

He won't mind, I'm sure.

Random Acts of Thursday - Dan Aykroyd - Angel of Death?

As many of my regular readers know, I've watched a film or two in my day.  Recently, it dawned on me, while watching 'The Dark Knight', that a lot of actors have passed before their time was perhaps due.

(Okay, so a number of them pumped their bodies full of enough drugs to mellow the western hemisphere, but that's beside the point here...work with me.)

In particular, I started running down my list o' dead celebs, and it became rather apparent to me that Dan Aykroyd might be the Angel of Death.  Among his soon-to-be-dead co-stars are Chris Farley, John Candy, John Belushi, Tupac Shakur, River Phoenix, Jack Lemmon, Phil Hartman, Anna Chlumsky...wait, she's not dead.  I never saw 'My Girl', but somehow I had it in my head that she died.  Did she die in the movie, or was that Macaulay Culkin?

Anyhow.  Lots of dead folks piling up around Dan.  Not saying it's his fault, just saying that's a lot of dead people.

So this week's quiz is a little morbid, but bear with me.  Two parts to this: first, match the dead actor to the living.  Each list contains both.  With only one exception, I've tried to avoid scenarios where both actors are dead but screws fall out every day - the world's an imperfect place.  Next, identify the film which starred both actors.

An example:  Heath Ledger (B, dead) starred with Christian Bale (1, living) in 'The Dark Knight'.

A) Alicia Silverstone
B) Heath Ledger
C) Jet Li
D) Dudley Moore
E) Christina Ricci
F) Chris Farley
G) Harrison Ford
H) Sharon Tate
I) Kevin Bacon
J) Rodney Dangerfield
K) Marilyn Monroe
L) Steve Martin
M) Bruce Lee
N) John Belushi
O) Dan Aykroyd

1) Christian Bale
2) Raoul Julia
3) David Spade
4) River Phoenix
5) Tony Curtis
6) Aaliyah
7) Joe Pesci
8) John Candy
9) Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
10) Bo Derek
11) John Candy
12) Tupac Shakur
13) Brittany Murphy
14) Mia Farrow
15) Chris Penn

Simple, yes?  It's supposed to be fun, kids.  Don't kill yourself over this.

Fun Fact Friday - Shoot That Poison Arrow

First, some business.  

First, I've been unfollowed.  Perhaps it was the blatant sexism sexiness of my holiday blogs.  Perhaps whomever unfollowed is offended by the thought of Free Bacon.  Obviously they weren't of the open-minded, intelligent ilk represented by you, dear readers.


Second, on the topic of Free Bacon, Movies and Artwork (not necessarily in that order), there's still a contest to be won.  You've got until tomorrow, and right now I only have one entry with a single question answered, so there's hope for you yet.


We now return you to your regularly scheduled Fun Fact.  Note the artful use of parentheses throughout.  And not just so I could prove I can spell 'parentheses'.

Growing up in Milwaukee, with a neighbor who worked for Miller Brewing back in the day when the employees were paid in beer, I was exposed to alcohol at a young age.  (Not surprisingly, when I Google 'Lots of Beer', the first photo of someone actually drinking was proudly taken at Milwaukee's lakefront.)

Now that it's New Year's Eve, and I'm an adult, I will have a tipple or two before I toddle off to bed around 9:15.  (Hey, I'm a party animal!)  I certainly won't be driving, since yesterday's freezing rain had me sliding from the top of the lot to the bottom at the office, and I don't need a repeat of that.  Thankfully, the OfficeMax driver asked me to move my icebound car before, and not after, he slammed into the side of it with his truck.  (Not so thankfully, I'm still not sure of the damage I may have done to the car myself when I was stopped by the snowbank.) 

speaking of party animals, how about that guy with the candle in his skull?

As a child I also had a ratty, worn copy of 'Ripley's Believe it or Not!', a double-sided paperback edition, that taught me what it meant to be intoxicated: 

intoxicate - early 15c., "full of poison" (pp. adj.), from M.L. intoxicatus , pp. of intoxicare  "to poison," from L. in-  "in" + toxicare  "to poison," from toxicum  "poison" (see toxic). The verb meaning "to poison" is first attested 1520s; meaning "make drunk" first recorded 1570s (implied in intoxicated)

Specifically, Ripley stated that to be intoxicated was to be shot with a poison arrow. 

To that point, I found a shot called The Poison Arrow, and it's a perfect dare shot for your New Year's festivities:

Poison Arrow Ingredients:
1 part Lime Cordial (Rose's Lime Juice)
1 dash Grenadine
1 part Bailey’s Irish Creme

Directions: Fill up a shot glass with lime cordial and add a dash of Grenadine to the top. Now very slowly pour Baileys into the center of the shot glass until the liqueur hits the bottom of the shot. Take a straw and slowly twirl it round so the Baileys twists around the tube. Retract the straw and serve.  (Recipe and photo courtesy of OXM-UK - and yes, there are all sorts of video-game-themed alcoholic beverages out there.  Not that anyone asked.)

Don't that sound tasty?  What this fails to mention is that the lime juice will curdle the Bailey's.  Mmmm, mmm.  Chunky.

Happy New Year, kids.  Don't go messing with any arrows while you're drunk, poisoned or not.  (You'll shoot your eye out...)

The Hair Apparent

Yesterday would have been Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderón's 103rd birthday.  (Thank you, Google!)  And sure, she was a fantastic painter, surreal, edgy - especially for the '40's - and unapologetic.  But really, whenever you think of Frida, you think of the unibrow.  Admit it.

In particular, I always think of this painting.

Or at least I did.  It made me think of Willie Nelson.  Now I'll be fighting to keep this one out of my brain:

So it goes.

In other news of the hirsute, this guy just turned down $1 million for solving a math problem, just because he used another mathematician's work as the basis for his final solution.

In case you were worried, let me just remind you that not all mathematicians look like that.  Some of them look like this:

And even if she did rock the U.B. she'd still be hot.  AAAhhhhnd, with that picture, I have just quadrupled the number of hits this post will receive.  Don't you just love math?

When in Rome

Way back in 2002, Lori and I made our first trip to Rome. It was a whim, conceived and booked inside of 24 hours, scheduled a mere three months in the future.

And it was exquisite. The flavors, the sounds, the smells, nothing could have prepared us for this journey. And it would seem I'm on a quest lately to recreate those flavors. Several weeks ago, the carbonara, Rome's signature pasta dish. Freshly made, hand-crafted pizza on Superbowl Sunday.
Last night? Bruschetta, toasted over hot coals, rubbed with garlic and covered with a beautiful mix of grape tomatoes, arugula, basil and fresh mozzarella tossed in olive oil with a little S&P. My taste buds were awash with the flavors of that first trip, of lunch at Florian's, on the Piazza dell'Indipendenzia where we could watch the cook practice his art at the wood-fired hearth. The picture is not my creation, we consumed it far too eagerly to wait for photographs.

Even last night's porterhouse, purchased on sale and grilled beautifully rare, couldn't erase that flavor from my head. Though it certainly tried. Good food feeds your soul as it nourishes your belly, and it shouldn't be any other way.

On a slightly related note, despite the hell that people gave Google when they created 'Street View', I love that I could go out and capture that first shot for you.

On a completely unrelated subject, my parents informed me that a new record sturgeon was caught in one of Wisconsin's larger lakes. Two hundred pounds of sturgeon. Speared and reeled in by one man. To give you an idea of what that might look like, the fish in the photo below weighed in at a mere 100 pounds.
Caviar, anyone? Perhaps on toast?

Several food notes. First, it's pronounced 'broo-SKET-eh', not 'broo-SHET-tah'. If you have to, go watch some Giada DiLaurentis videos to get the inflection down. Or to check out her boobies.

Second, bruschetta is the bread itself, toasted and rubbed with garlic. Anything else you add, oil, tomatoes, basil, cheese, mushrooms, those are all toppings. It bugs me to go to the grocery store and see a jar of chopped tomatoes swimming in oil labeled as 'bruschetta'.

You can have your soapbox back now, thank you for listening.