We might be windmills

Engaged

2009-12-18T11:03:00.000-06:00

For another look with many more exclamation points, see here

Nearly Perfect Turkey

2009-11-30T12:18:00.002-06:00

We visited my wife's family in Pittsburgh for Thanksgiving. Soon after we arrived, it became clear that her grandmother was feeling stressed out about having to roast a turkey for the whole family. It turns out that despite being in her late 70s, she has admirably escaped roasting a turkey for her entire life. Since she seemed stressed, and also because I wanted to help her keep up her streak, I volunteered to roast the turkey for the 30 people that would be eating with us Thursday afternoon.

The turkey was delivered fresh the day before, which made these easier for me. But it was just a few ounces shy of thirty pounds. That afternoon I went shopping to pick up a few ingredients. Once we made sure that it would fit in the roasting pan, and that once in the roasting pan, they would both fit in the oven, we put it back in the fridge and I set my alarm for 5:00am, certain that roasting a beast this size would take many hours.

We were staying with a cousin down the street, so after a shower and a nice early morning walk, I started prepping the turkey just before 6:00am. I made sure everything was patted nice and dry, inside and out, and made up a rub of salt, black pepper, and sage. I wished I had my kosher salt, but regular iodized salt would have to do. I used plenty of this rub inside the cavity and then used the rest to give the breast a nice massage with some vegetable oil. I then put the turkey in the roaster and let it sit and rest while I did the rest of the prepping.

First, I quartered an apple and an onion and put them in some apple cider (about a cup or so) on the stove with a dash of apple cider vinegar and plenty of salt and pepper. Once this started to boil, I killed the heat and let it steep for a few minutes. This went into the cavity with about 10 sage leaves and a few sprigs of thyme and the whole thing went in the oven at 500.

I don't think my wife's grandma's oven had been at 500 for quote a while because it smoked a bit and kept on setting off the fire alarm. Not wanting to wake the rest of the family, I just took out the battery. Once that had been in for about 20 minutes or so, I knocked the heat down to 300. After about two hours, the breast was starting to look nice and browned, but I didn't want it to get much more browned, so I covered the roaster in foil and let it finish.

After another two hours, the breast was registering around 170, so I turned the heat off. I would have liked to finish it then, but we had some family activities to participate in and we were still a few hours away from eating, so I left it in the oven. When we got back about an hour and a half later, I took it out and made a glaze. The glaze was a stick of butter melted over low heat and whisked together with a few tablespoons of maple syrup, the leaves from a few sprigs of rosemary, and plenty of salt and pepper. This glaze went all over the outside and I sprinkled a few more rosemary leaves into the glaze, just for aesthetic effects. Then I covered it back up with foil to keep things moist while I let it rest.

I realize that a glaze isn't traditionally used for a turkey, that it is usually reserved for hams, but I thought it might be a good way to avoid a dried-out breast. But accordingly, I went for a more butter-based than a sugar-based glaze like you might see on a ham.

After an hour of resting I took off the foil, lifted it onto a cutting board, and let it continue to cool for another half hour while I got going on the gravy. The gravy base was a nice mixture of the salty drippings and the mellow sweetness of the apple and maple flavors. I scraped up all the browned bits, strained out most of the solids, and put this over high heat to reduce it down a bit. I then added some milk (maybe 2 cups or so, about the same amount as the base) and knocked the heat back down to low. I then added salt and a bit of pepper, and just a splash of the apple cider vinegar to wake up the flavors. Then I thickened it by taking some out, whisking it with some corn starch in a cup, and adding it back in. I kept it over medium heat until it thickened, and then kept it hot over low heat while I carved the turkey.

Most of the dark meat was so falling-off-the bone tender that there really wasn't much carving to do other than to slice through the skin and take off the drumsticks. The thighs basically just shredded themselves as I lifted them onto the platter. As for the breast, I took it off whole and then carved across the grain, laying the slices tanding up next to each other on the platter with the skin side up. Most people don't like to eat the skin, but I like to give them the option. Turkey and chicken breast are usually eaten skin off, but when you use a barbeque sauce or a glaze, like I did, then it seems a waste to just strip the skin off and throw it away. Instead, I like to serve it as duck is traditionally served with the skin. The skin also has the added bonus of keeping things moist while you wait to being the meal.

The breast was a little more done than I would have liked, but overall, the bird was juicy and not dried out and the diners universally acclaimed it. I also had a thought---rather than (or maybe in addition to) putting the glaze on before carving, it might be nice to carve it all up and put the glaze on after its all on the platters and ready to serve. This would let it soak in and keep things moist, and it would also warm things up, which would allow you to let the turkey cool more before carving. This cooling time is beneficial because it makes the meat easier to carve without burning your fingers, but also because it allows the juices in the meat to cool and absorb back into the beat rather than simply steaming out as vapor when you cut into the meat.

The Eats Sheet: Butternut Squash Pasta.

2009-11-23T08:45:00.002-06:00

I never been a huge squash fan. I do like a butternut squash soup, and deep-fried zucchini is good, but I've just never really gotten into other squashes. Like acorn squash. I the last time I had some was when I gagged a few bites down at a federal courts dinner a few months ago. It reminded me why I don't buy acorn squash.

But lately I have been more into the idea of eating seasonally, so I have resolved to be more open to winter squashes this year. I made a little butternut squash pasta last night that definitely made me open to more winter squash possibilities. I got the idea for the recipe out of a Williams Sonoma cookbook, but I made my own variations that I think improved it.

1. You start with one butternut squash. You peel it, seed it, and chop it into small bite-sized cubes, and put these in a large bowl. Butternut is hard, so it helps to have a big cleaver or chef's knife. And it helps to to tap the cleaver with a mallet, using it like a wedge to split the squash rather than pushing with your hands.

2. Then peel an onion, half it, and slice it thinly. But not too thinly because you're going to be roasting this---you want it to char and carmelize, but you don't want it to turn into charcoal. Like maybe a quarter-inch slices. Put them in the bowl.

3. Take 4 or 5 slices of thick bacon---as thick as you can find it---and cut them into half-inch pieces. Add them to the bowl.

4. Sprinkle the whole things generously with kosher salt and let it sit for a minute or two, then drizzle it with olive oil and grind some pepper on it. Toss it until the pieces get coated.

5. Lay it all out on a baking dish and sprinkle with sage. Though the recipe didn't call for it, I also added some crushed thyme and rosemary. Then stick it in the oven. The recipe said 425 degrees for 15-20 minutes, but I like my squash a little softer and my bacon less crispy in this type of dish, so I went for 400 for 25-30 minutes. Stir it once or twice.

6. While that's cooking, get some water boiling and cook about a pound of your favorite kind of pasta. Rigatoni or Penne is a good choice for this. If you're going to use a linguini or spaghetti-type noodle, you'd probably want to chop the squash a little smaller and cook it less--otherwise it won't really toss as well. When its al dente, drain it and put in a large wok over high heat. Toss it to cook out the rest of the water.

7. Add the squash to the pasta. At this point, the recipe said to put a little of the pasta water back in to kind of loosen the mixture, but I used some heavy cream instead. Maybe not as healthy, but way tastier. You don't need much though, just enough to moisten it so it's not dry. Only a few drizzles. Like maybe 2-3 tablespoons.

8. Toss it in the wok and turn off the heat. Or turn the heat off just before adding the cream. Either way, you still want it warm when you serve, it but you don't want the cream to sit on the heat and curdle. You might have to keep tossing it to keep that from happening. Add a few handfulls of a good shredded Italian cheese and toss it again. I used a standard parmasean-pecorino romano blend, but I think an asiago would be really good because it is more buttery and little less salty than the parmasean.

This was excellent. And for a person who doesn't really like squash all that much, it was a complete success. I also have a few variations in mind that I'm going to incorporate the next time I make it: I'm going to add a bit of maple syrup and apple cider vinegar with the cream to really give it a seasonal flavor. And maybe even add a finely chopped sauteed apple. I think these will highlight the natural sweetness of the squash and create a good complement of autumnal flavors.

Eggplant deliciousness. No, really.

2009-09-14T11:32:00.002-05:00

So my mom and dad joined this co-op where they paid a certain amount and they get a cornucopia of locally grown veggies delivered to my dad's office every Friday. Well, we all thought it was pretty much a waste of cash at the beginning of the summer because there was a lot of clouds and a lot of rain and not much sun, which led to a pretty meagre harvest. Now, however, my parents are getting more than they can handle and have been dumping the extra food on us. Which is awesome.

So when we had a bunch of eggplant and yellow squash, C decided that it might be a good idea to roast them in the oven and put them in panini (or as I call them, being American, and not Italian, grilled sandwiches). I was skeptical at first, not sure whether a sandwich with nothing but veggies would be good. I've also never liked eggplant (except for when it is breaded and fired and covered in spaghetti sauce and cheese and therefore no longer tastes anything like eggplant). But I went along, figuring it couldn't hurt me to eat more veggies anyway, and eating local is never really a bad thing. Plus, I hate wasting food more than I hate eggplant.

So here's how it went down. In the morning, I cut the eggplant and squash into thick strips, sliced some red onion, and threw them all in a bowl with some olive oil. I seasoned it with some basil, oregano, time, garlic, and salt, and ground on some fresh pepper. Then I arranged them on a cookie sheet and stuck it under the broiler for about 10 minutes, flipping them after 5 or so. We stuck these in the fridge.

At dinnertime, we made our sandwiches. (C had made some gluten free bread for me, so I could be a part of this.) I alternated two layers of the roasted veggies with two layers of thickly sliced mozzarella, and then topped it with some thick slices of fresh roma tomatos. I seasoned the tomatoes with salt and pepper and drizzled them with a little red wine vinegar. Then it went into the panini press. I was honestly blown away by how good the sandwich was. Way better than I expected, and I actually enjoyed eating the eggplant rather than just tolerate it because it was surrounded by good flavors.

The real key, though, was the red win vinegar. It added just a little bit of kick, but it was sweet enough to match the tomato really nicely, and it just really woke up all the flavors. Awesome. I made another one to have for lunch. I did all the same thing, but I also put some sprigs of fresh parsley on top of the tomato. It was a good addition. And these sandwiches were surprisingly filling, for being only veggies. At first, I wondered if some turkey breast might be a good addition (Thanksgiving leftovers, maybe?), but I don't know if it even needs it. Eggplant really is more substantial than a garnish or a condiment.

Demetri Martin Revue

2009-04-12T20:53:00.001-05:00

I recently saw Demetri Martin, a comedian who has a show on Comedy Central. He plays the piano and guitar during the show, and has a gigantic note pad with graphs and pictures as well. And yes, he uses a pointer on it. Not a laser pointer, but a real one. Here are some bits that I remember from the show; nothing is verbatim but it's all close to what he said.

My friend has coconut soap in his bathroom which is nice, unless your hands are dirty from coconuts. Then you don't know if the soap is working or not. "Do you have some soap that smells like hands?"

When I see a sign for a Talent Show I feel there should be a question mark at the end.

A tree house is so insensitive. That would be like if I killed your friend and made you hold him.

I wish I had cold cereal that was shaped like little boats. That way I could feel like a monster every morning.

If I had a baby I would start putting anti-aging cream on him right away. People would look at my baby and ask "How old is he? Is that a fetus?"

I heard a guy say the other day that he could go for some brownies. This got me thinking. If he is a chef, that's OK. If he's a scout leader, that's not OK. If he's a chef at a girl scout camp, I'm not sure.

I would like to fill a pinata with real animal guts.

I saw a guy eat his own burger the other day. It's not my thing, but I guess it works for him. It has its benefits - an endless supply of snacks. Before you go on a road trip you hope to get a cold so you can have snacks galore.

I like the sign for wet floor, because it has a picture. That clarifies the sign. It's not telling you what to do, it's showing you what will happen.

I always feel like my trip overseas was wasted when I go through customs. "Did you go on a farm?" "No." "Did you touch any livestock?" "No." "Do you have any firearms?" "No." Next time I go overseas I'm going to pet a cow than shot it.

I'm allergic to cats. This means I'm allergic to lions. That's a double whammy. Not only will I get mauled if I run into a lion, but I'll get a stuffy nose.

Without a doubt the best thing ever in existence is definitely exaggeration. No wait, it's qualifying statements. [There were a couple more things after that but I can't remember them.]

I don't watch sports as much as I used to. I think that's because I'd rather watch the mascots fight than the teams.

His show was well worth the price of admission, although not as good as Seinfeld, but who is? He spiced up the show well with the use of instruments so it felt longer than it actually was, a little shorter than ninety minutes. I definitely recommend seeing him if possible.

Tandoor-Barbeque Redux

2008-12-16T09:54:00.001-06:00

It turns out that tandoori-barbeque chicken makes a fantastic panini with a little cheese and a few asparagus spears.

Tandoori + Barbeque = Wonderful

2008-12-15T13:18:00.003-06:00

We recently bought a bunch of plain yogurt to make mulligatawny with leftover turkey. It never materialized, so we had a bunch of plain yogurt in the fridge. Chicken breasts were on sale so I figure I'd try a tandoori inspired BBQ concoction called "Chicken Exotica."

You start by marinating chicken breasts in yogurt mixed with lime juice, minced garlic, honey, and a mixture of a bunch of spices (paprika, coriander, cumin, ginger, allspice, salt, and pepper). You marinate the chicken for at least 12 hours and up to 48.

Then you slice up a red bell pepper and an onion into quarter-inch strips and toss them in a skillet with olive oil over medium-high heat until the onions carmelize. Then throw in about a half cup of mutha sauce (from the Dinosaur BBQ Cookbook) and cook a few more minutes until the sauce thickens.

Then you grill the chicken about 5-6 minutes per side. When they're done, you brush them with mutha sauce and bring them in. You put a scoop of the onion-pepper-sauce combo on each breast. I served them over a bed of long-grain basmati rice with asparagus steamed and sauteed in garlic butter on the side.

It was different grilling last night. At one point yesterday, the temperature was around 40 degrees. This morning it was lower than -10 degrees, with 50 mph winds (that translates to -30 degree windchills). So last night around 5:30 when I started the grill it was somewhere between: probably around 15 or 20 degrees with 40 mph winds. I have grilled before in cool weather, but never freezing weather. I was worried that the cold would put out the fire, but the wind acted as a bellows and really got the coals going hot. In just the few short minutes that I steood on the porch brushing the chicken with sauce my ears went numb and I could barely feel my fingers as I pulled the chicken off the grill.

But it was worth it. The yogurt tenderizes the chicken to the point that you can really almost overcook it without losing succulence. That allows you to get a nice carmelized (not quite charred) oustide that really soaks up the natural wood and smoke flavor, but without drying out the inside of the breast. The lime flavor really comes through, and is a fantastic complement to the Indian-inspired spice mixture. The mutha sauce adds some compexity and tang to the whole thing, but without being overpowering. And the carmelized onion really sits well with the honey-lime sweetness. The recipe actually calls for fresh cilantro snipped over the dish at the end, but I forgot.

It was still good.

Mice update

2008-12-05T10:15:00.001-06:00

Well, I think we got them all. Nothing in the trap this morning, and the peanut butter was not disturbed. Five was the magic number.

On how to kill a mouse.

2008-12-04T09:59:00.004-06:00

A few weeks ago, C and I were snuggled on the couch, watching a movie. It was late. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw something skitter across the kitchen floor. I dismissed it as a shadow and forgot about it.

A day or two later, I saw it again. This time, it stopped just under the sink, and I saw the characteristic tail curl up and back over a small body. Moments later, C saw it too. We called the apartment manager. We told them that we had seen a mouse and that they should do something about it. They did nothing. We waited a week. We told them again. They did nothing. Finally, last weekend, we decided to take care of it ourselves. I thought about poison, but with a baby in the house---one that has just learned to walk and likes to play in the kitchen---that was a bad idea. I settled on trap that was based on the conventional spring trap design, but that was covered to avoid mess. And we decided that I would set it at night and put it away in the morning to avoid the baby problem.

The first night we caught the mouse. The trap worked smoothly. Just a little peanut butter for bait. In the morning I found his tail sticking out of the trap. I opened the trap and released the spring, dropping the dead rodent into the garbage. I took out the garbage and threw it in the dumpster. I figured that was that.

But then we saw another one. So I set the trap again. This time, it ate the peanut butter without tripping the trap. That puzzled me, so I decided to test the trap with my finger. Bad idea.

So on Monday, after we put the baby to bed, I set the trap again. Not 30 minutes went by before I heard it snap. I went to check it and found that the mouse had gotten just his tail and one back foot caught in it. He was still very much alive. So I took him outside and released the trap. He dropped to the grounds and scampered off, unhurt as far as I could tell. That was two.

On Tuesday, our apartment manager responded. They dropped off two of the sticky glue-style traps. Unlike the spring traps, that trap and usually kill a mouse by pinning it against a hard surface with a metal bar, the sticky traps trap a mouse in glue. It runs across the trap only to find that it cannot keep running. These traps do not kill the mouse instantly or even quickly. However, it is impossible to try to free a mouse from one of the these traps without killing it.

I placed one of the sticky traps Tuesday night. I woke up around 2:00am and heard a lot of squeaking. I figured the (hopefully) last mouse was out and about and would soon be trapped. When I got up around 5:30 I went to check the trap. I was unsurprised to find a mouse trapped in the glue. That was three But when I got close, I could see the small body still breathing---a fast, tiny rising and falling. I flipped on the light and it blinked at me and tried once again to run. But of course, all its legs and the entire left side of its body had adhered immovably to the trap. Instead of running, it produced nothing but a small, pathetic, quivering struggle. Seemingly resigned to the trap, the mouse quit struggling and lay its head down on the glue. I wondered then whether the squeaking I heard was really crying and struggling. It made me sad to think of a scared creature trapped in glue for hours. The mouse directed its eyes at me. I watched a tiny heart beat under the suddenly beautiful two-tone fur.

I thought I might free it from the trap as I did the night before. I went outside in my slippers, sweatpants, and T-shirt and crouched in the new snow under a streetlight. I gingerly peeled up his tail. He swished it side to side. Then I went for back left leg. I was able to pull it up, but when I did, it was bent at an unnatural-looking angle. Unlike the tail, the leg did not move. At this point, the mouse urinated and began to squeak. I knew that there was no chance of freeing him from the trap, but to just throw it away with a broken leg would be too cruel. Better a quick death than a slow, starving, freezing death tossed into a cold Minneapolis dumpster. So I folded the trap over the mouse, put my thumb where his head would have been, and pressed down until I felt a small snap.

I felt bad. But I had done nothing wrong. I reminded myself that rodents can carry disease, that we have a child in the house, that mice are pests, that they're just little creatures anyway. That we humans are, after all, supposed to be in charge here we have dominion over these lesser creations. And I believe all that. Killing the mouse was justified---in the circumstances, even humane. I believe that that's true. I believe that it is justified. But that doesn't answer for me the deeper question: why do I feel compelled to justify it in the first place?

Throughout the day on Wednesday, fragments of scripture flitted across my mind. I thought of Eden and creation. I heard my own voice speaking the words: "the blood of every beast will I require at your hands." See Genesis 9:11 (Joseph Smith Translation). I think of Jesus saying that God the Father notices even when a sparrow dies. See Matthew 10:29; Luke 12:6. I see an aging prophet asking his church to "don't shoot the little birds." See Ensign, (May 1978) 47. I wonder, does God just "see" the sparrow fall? Is he just coldly, scientifically observing? That seems at odds with the power and passion of a God that weeps. See Moses 7:28. I think there's something more to it: He doesn't just see the sparrow fall, he feels it. He laments it, he mourns it.

That phrase "the blood of every beast will I require at your hands"---I kept repeating it in my mind; where does it come from? This morning looked it up. Turns out that this is what God said to Noah after he, his family, and the animals all emerged from the ark into the light of a new world. But that's not all---the passage is not in the King James Version. It comes from the Joseph Smith Translation. The original passage reads almost exactly opposite: "surely your blood of your lives will I require; at the hand of every beast will I require it, and at the hand of man; at the hand of every man’s brother will I require the life of man." Genesis 9:5 (KJV). The focus in the King James Version is not on animal life, but on human life. The passage seems to say that God will hold animals accountable for killing human beings.

But Joseph Smith turns this reading on its head. Instead, he says, God will hold human beings accountable for killing animals needlessly. And he sets a pretty high standard for what is needful: "surely, blood shall not be shed, only for meat, to save your lives." Genesis 9:11 (JST). Of course, we can say, that was a different time, a different place. That injunction does not apply to us. But I see a harmony between the principle expressed here and other teachings of Joseph Smith.

In the official history of the Church, he recounts this story:

We crossed the Embarras river and encamped on a small branch of the same about one mile west. In pitching my tent we found three massasaugas or prairie rattlesnakes, which the brethren were about to kill, but I said, ‘Let them alone—don’t hurt them!

How will the serpent ever lose his venom, while the servants of God possess the same disposition and continue to make war upon it? Men must become harmless, before the brute creation; and when men lose their vicious dispositions and cease to destroy the animal race, the lion and the lamb can dwell together, and the sucking child can play with the serpent in safety.’

The brethren took the serpents carefully on sticks and carried them across the creek. I exhorted the brethren not to kill a serpent, bird, or an animal of any kind during our journey unless it became necessary in order to preserve ourselves from hunger.” 2 History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 71-72; see also Ensign, (Aug. 2001) 13.

Millennial yearning is not unique to Latter-day Saints. It has been the hope of prophets and poets and preachers throughout the centuries. The prophets of the Old Testament wrote rhapsodically of that day when every valley will be exalted---when every mountain will be made low---when the rough places will be made smooth and the crooked made straight---when the glory of the Lord will be revealed---when all flesh will see it together. And during the civil rights movement, Martin Luther King quoted those passages often for inspiration and hope. But what is unique about Joseph Smith's millenial vision is the explicit way it connects the millennium to the way we human beings use nature. In Joseph's Smith's vision, creation, flood, and millennium are are connected by the silver thread of stewardship.

In the King James version, God tells Noah that animals will be accountable for human life because human beings are made in God's image. In Joseph Smith's translation, God tells Noah that human beings will be accountable for animal life because human beings are created in God's image---and if created in his image, then created to follow his example and be like him.

My compulsion to justify killing the mouse, I think, is a reflection of a deeper truth that life---all life---is precious. I think of what Jacob said: "the one being is as precious in his sight as the other." Jacob 2:21. A loss of life---even a completely justified loss, and even a very small life---is to be mourned.

So this is the question that I ask myself: What does it mean to believe in a God who observes the sparrow's fall, and who will require the blood of every beast at my hands? It can't really mean, literally, that its a sad thing to kill a pest.

But then again, it's easy to forget how radical the religion of Jesus really is.

This morning I found two more dead mice in caught together in the spring trap. That's five.

The Eats Sheet, Extreme Leftover Edition: Grilled Turkey Sandwiches with Sweet Potato Steak Fries

2008-11-29T09:28:00.003-06:00

Well, if I were to be all Italian, I guess I would call them panini. But I prefer the American Grilled Sandwich. Yesterday this became a new day-after-Thanksgiving tradition for our family. It's wonderfully simple, but so much better than simply nuking a plate of turkey and mashed potatoes. I picked up the idea for the sandwiches from Williams-Sonoma the other day, but added a few of my own embellishments.

The Fries:

The thing about sweet potatoes, sometimes called yams, is that they are a pretty darn good vegetable; it makes little sense to turn them into a mediocre-at-best dessert. That awful marshmallow concoction you sometimes see at the table tries to parade a vegetable around as if it were a fruit. Marshmallows should never come near sweet potatoes, in my opinion. If you want to make sweet potatoes into a dessert, just go all the way and make a freakin' sweet potato pie.

Otherwise, allow sweet potatoes the dignity of being what they are: a good root vegetable. This is what I did: Take one or two sweet potatoes and slice them in half, the long way, and then slice them up into 1/4 inch thick steak fries. Put them in a bowl with about 1/3 cup of olive oil. Season them well with salt and pepper, and then sprinkle in some rosemary and thyme. Spread them out on a large cookie sheet (it helps to spray the cookie sheet) and stick them in a 425 degree oven for about 20 minutes. Then take them out, stir them, and stick them back in for another 10 minutes or so until they are nice and crispy. The great thing about these fries is that the sugar in the sweet potatoes caramelizes really nicely, but without being overhwlemingly sweet. They'll be crispy and caramelized on the outside, but soft and mellow on the inside. When you take them out, taste one and salt them again if they need it.

The Gravy:

While the fries are cooking away, get some gravy heated up, because you're going to serve it with the sandwiches---french dip style. I don't know about you, but my gravy is always a little more like meat-flavored jell-o the day after Thanksgiving. Not very appetizing. But what I've found out is that if I heat the meat jell-o in a saucepan with a little turkey stock and maybe a splash of milk, the old gravy is really more like a gravy base and it produces a nice new gravy. Get the gravy good and hot, but reduce the heat when it boils and everything is well combined. Taste it, because you might need to add some more salt. Keep it hot, but not boiling, until the sandwiches are ready.

The turkey stock is something that we usually have a lot of the day after Thanksgiving. It's pretty simple, and a great way to not waste all those bones and bits of meat. You can either divide the turkey bones into two even piles or do it all together if you have a big enough soup pot. Either way, you throw some bones into a stock pot with a quartered onion (don't even bother peeling it, but wash it), two or three crushed garlic cloves, one or two split carrots, and few broken stalks of celery. Season it well with salt, oregano, a little thyme or rosemary, and parsley. Throw in a small handfull of peppercorns and cover it all with water. Get it boiling, redice the heat, and let it simmer for about 2 hours. Then pour it through a fine strainer and skim the fat. You can use it right away for soup or freeze it and save it for making soups, braising meat and veggies, or to spice up a sauce. It handy to have around and its a lot better and less salty than chicken boullion.

The Sandwiches:

Like any Thanksgiving leftover dish, the turkey is the foundation. This is where it becomes important to carve your bird the right way, removing the meat in big chunks and carving the chunks across the grain in thin slices. That way you get tender, juicy meat that works great in sandwiches. For my sandwich I used a combination of breast and thigh meat. But what sets this apart from any old Turkey sandwich is the condiments. First, you spread a piece of thick crusty bread with mayonnaise, and another one with cranberry sauce. Then you stack some turkey on both pieces, and place a slice of cheese on the turkey. I used Colby Jack. Then you put a scoop of stuffing on and put the two slices together. Brush each side with olive oil and grill in a panini press until the bread is golden and it's all heated through. Cut it in half and then serve it up with a nice helping of fries and a cup of gravy to dip it in.

The idea of stuffing in a sandwich seemed odd and a little redundant, but since I used corn bread stuffing, it was a nice variety. And the celery and apple we put in the stuffing was a good compliment for the sandwich. For a spicier variation you could use chipotle mayo, replace the cranberry sauce with a hot creole mustard, and maybe throw a few banana peppers or jalapenos on. If you have folk who don't like sweet potatoes (probably because they've been led by the marhsmallow heresy to believe that they are a gross fruit instead of a decent veggie), you can throw a few regular potatoes into the mix. They take a little longer to cook, but they work as well. Another interesting variation for the fries would be to reduce the salt and throw a splash of soy sauce into the olive oil.

The Easts Sheet: Maple-Glazed Turkey

2008-11-28T10:59:00.006-06:00

This is my third year roasting a turkey, and this was the best so far.

First, I made up a rub of salt and black pepper with some ground sage and marjoram. I rubbed this all over the inside of the cavity, then quartered an onion and and apple and stuffed these into the cavity with a few broken stalks of celery. This gets a good infusion into the meat, and since you don't eat it, you don't have to worry about it getting cooked, like you do with stuffing.

But the real difference was the sweetness. There were two things I did to get some sweetness going: first, I poured about a half cup of apple cider into the bottom of the roasting pan to keep things moist in there; second, I made up a maple butter glaze to baste the bird while it roasted. There glaze is deceptively simple; there are exactly two ingredients: one cup butter, and 1/2 cup maple syrup. I used a dark amber syrup, which is the most common commercially available maple syrup. A lighter syrup would be sweeter, but since turkey is a savory dish to begin with, I liked the earthier flavor of the dark amber.

I melted the butter and the syrup together and poured about half of it over the bird before sticking it in the oven at 325. I then basted with the remaining glaze every 45 minutes or so. I roasted the bird covered, worried that the sugars and the milk solids in the butter might burn. My plan was to take the cover off for the last hour, but I underestimated how quickly it would cook with the cover on. When I took the cover off, the thighs were already registering at 160. So I kept it in for another just 45 minutes. It didn't quite get the browning I wanted, but it still looked very nice. The meat was more done than I prefer, but with a baby in the house, that's probably a good thing.

But even with the meat being a little overdone, even the breast stayed nice and juicy, not like some dried-out Thanksgiving birds. The reason: resting. When the bird comes out of the oven, it can be really tempting to cut into it right then because everybody's hungry. It's better to let it rest. When the meat is hot, all the tasty fat and juices are hot, so when you cut into it, the juices pour out and instantly turn into steam when they hit the air. The result is that they all evaporate the meat is left dry. When you let the bird rest, those juices have time to cool and to absorb back into the meat. Most recipes suggest a 20-25 minute resting time. I think this is way too short. I like to let it sit for at least 30-35 minutes, and I prefer up to an hour if people can wait that long. If the meat is too hot to touch with my fingers, I don't think it's ready to carve.

But everyone prefers a hot meal, not a room temperature one. You might be wondering if it can be appetizing to eat meat that has cooled that much. There are a few ways to tackle this dilemma: First, you can just cover the meat and stick it in a warm oven to gently reheat it. Second, you can cover the meat and just let the residual heat work. But the best option, and one that you can combine with either of the first two, is to get your heat from the gravy, not the meat. Serve up the turkey on a platter, and then just keep your gravy piping hot on the stove until the moment that everyone has sat down and is ready to eat. With some near-boiling gravy, that meat could be room temperature and nobody would care.

Speaking of gravy, that was really the highlight of this recipe. While the meat was good prepared this way, the real kicker was the gravy that came from the drippings this bird produced. I threw some of the apples and onions into the bottom of the roasting pan to infuse the drippings. There were a good 4-6 cups of drippings. I skimmed off the most obvious fat and then reduced the rest of it down to about 2 1/3 to 3 cups. I salted it, peppered it, threw in some tyme. With it still boiling, I added a cup of milk with 3 tablespoons of cornstarch mixed in, and then let it boil until it thickened. The sage, the onion, and the natural saltiness of the turkey fat mingled with the cider and the maple butter for a mellow gravy with just a hint of sweetness. Very good.

Carving technique is another issue. A lot of people like to carve the breast from the bones. That's the traditional way. But the problem is that you end up slicing along the grain of the meat rather than across the grain, leading to more chewy/stringy, and less tender slices. I like to carve the bird like a butcher would: removing the meat in large pieces, keeping muscles as intact as possible, and then slicing those large chunks on a carving board across the grain into small slices. This, I've found, also preserves the juices better. Here's a handy guide to carving.

First, I take off the drumsticks and thighs together, then the wings, and then I go back and get the breast by slicing down as close as possible to the breast bone, and pulling more than slicing to remove the breast. I then slice the drumsticks off the thigh and serve them up without further carving. The thighs I like to debone before carving. You slice along the bone, and then rotate the bone, continuing to slice along it until you can lift it out. Then you have a whole boneless thigh, which slices up much more nicely than a mangles mess of muscle tissue. The wings are usually pretty fatty and with not all that much meat, so I usually just shred the wing meat and mix it up later with some barbeque sauce for sandwiches, nachos, tostados, or whatever.

Judge of the Day: Richard J. Leon

2008-11-21T10:19:00.003-06:00

Beside having some oddly upswept eyebrows, Judge Richard J. Leon, of the federal district court for the District of Columbia, is also the second federal judge so far to order the release of Guantanamo detainees. Those two combined distinctions earn him the title of WMBW Judge of the day.

The Judge
Unlike Judge Urbina's opinion in the Uyghers' case, which included some lofty language about the historic role of the habeas right and the fundamental freedom of personal liberty, Judge Leon's opinion in this case is much more workmanlike. For Judge Leon, it isn't so much a question of fundamental rights, it's simply a question of evidence: did the Government meet it's burden? No.

Consistent with his brick-and-mortar approach to judicial opinion writing, Judge Leon is not what you would call a liberal: He was appointed by President Bush, and it was Judge Leon that decided back in 2005 that Gitmo detainees didn't have habeas rights. The Supreme Court later reversed that decision.

While he lacks some of the inspiring personal drama of Judge Urbina's life story, Judge Leon's legal credentials are impressive. Judge Leon earned his J.D. from Suffolk University Law in 1974 and then clerked for justices of two state supreme courts. He then earned an L.L.M. from Harvard in 1981 and then taught as a professor at St. John's Law School and worked for the Justice Department where he was chief minority council for the investigation of the Iran-Contra affair. He then went into private practice in D.C. until President Bush appointed him to the bench in 2002.

Background.
Judge Leon already has some history with Gitmo and habeas proceedings. In fact, it was Judge Leon's 2005 decision in Kalid v. Bush, 355 F.Supp.2d 311 (D.D.C. 2005) that prompted the landmark Supreme Court decision Boumediene v. Bush, 128 S. Ct. 2229 (2008), earlier this year.

You see, back in 2004 the Supreme Court made it clear that federal courts had jurisdiction over Guantanamo Bay. Rasul v. Bush, 542 U.S. 466 (2004). Shortly thereafter, six detainees filed habeas petitions challenging their detention. Judge Leon heard the case and decided that even though the court had jurisdiction to hear habeas petitions from Guantanamo, that did not mean that the Gitmo detainees actually had any habeas rights that the court was bound to recognize. Kalid, 355 F.Supp.2d at 314. Judge Leon concluded that they did not, and dismissed the petitions. Id. The Supreme Court reversed the dismissal earlier this year, holding that Gitmo detainees "are entitled to the privilege of habeas corpus to challenge the legality of their detention." Boumediene, 128 S. Ct. at 2262. The Court sent the case back to the district court to let the habeas hearings proceed. In the meantime, Judge Urbina, another Judge on the D.C. District Court relied on Boumediene to grant a habeas petition and order the release of a group of Uyghers who had been held in Gitmo.

The Decision.
Then yesterday, Judge Leon issued his decision in Boumediene v. Bush, Slip Op., No. 04-1116 (RJL) (D.D.C. Nov. 20, 2008). It turns out that the six detainees, who were native Algerians living legally in Bosnia, were arrested in Bosnia on suspicion of having plans to bomb the U.S. embassy in Sarajevo. Id. at 3. But when that suspicion proved to be false, the Government continued to hold them at Guantanamo.

Judge Leon decided that in order to justify the detention, the Government had to prove, not beyond a reasonable doubt, but only by a preponderance of the evidence (a legalese term meaning "more likely than not") that the detainees were enemy combatants---that is, that they were part of or supported Taliban or Al Qaeda forces or associated forces, that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners. Id. at 8.

The Government argued that five of the six detainees were enemy combatants because they had planned to go to Afghanistan and take up arms against U.S. forces there. The detainees disagreed, but argued that even if they did have a plan, a mere plan to be an enemy combatant is not the same thing as actually being one. Id. at 9. Judge Leon never resolved the issue of whether a plan was sufficient because he found that the evidence did not support the Government's allegation that the detainees even had the plan to begin with. He observed that the Government had provided only one classified source as evidence, and that it had failed to provide the Judge with enough evidence to evaluate the reliability and credibility of that one source. Id. at 10. Because most of the hearing was classified and not made public, Judge Leon did not go into any specifics about the deficiencies in the evidence. He concluded, however, that "to allow enemy combatancy to rest on so thin a reed would be inconsistent with this Court's obligation . . . to protect petitioners from the risk of erroneous detention." Id. at 11.

As for the sixth detainee, Judge Leon found that the government had provided sufficient evidence to prove that he was an "al-Qaida facilitator" and allowed his continued detention. Id. at 11-13. Again, because of the classified nature of the evidence, there was no specific discussion of what the Government had proved.

That's two judges now, one liberal and one conservative, who have officially reached the same conclusion. Is it because they are dutifully applying the law? Or are the D.C. district court judges gunning for President-elect Barack "shut-down-Gitmo" Obama to give them a spot on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals---the most likely feeder court for the Supreme Court?

The Eats Sheet: Lentil & Spinach Soup

2008-10-13T12:22:00.005-05:00

Autumn is a time for soups. When the temperature begins to dip, it's nice to have some pot of tastiness bubbling away on the stove filling the home with good smells. With the farmer's market abounding in all manner of squashes, I'm looking forward to trying my hand at Cabeza's latest offering.

Over the weekend, though, I discovered a new arrow to add to my quiver of soups: Lentil and Spinach. Lentils, the bean's less imposing cousin, are a perennial favorite of birkenstock-wearing whole foods shoppers. But they can also please a more refined palette. Less gassy and quicker-cooking than beans, lentils are sometimes translated in the King James Old Testament as "pulse," and were famously eaten by Belteshazzar (aka Daniel) and his three friends Shadrach, Meshach and Abed-Nego when they eschewed the Babylonian King's meat and wine. Since lentils are high in complex carbohydrates and a good source of iron, they're an important staple to a vegetarian diet; it seems the Hebrew expatriates were right to use them rather than meat.

If prepared wrong, lentils are utterly flavorless. Simply boiling them in plain water will not do. You get a bland, gag-inducing mess that's pretty hard to choke down. It's also a mistake to overcomplicate lentils by overwhelming them with with other flavors. They'll taste good, but they won't taste like lentils. But with a few simple accents, you can bring out their natural nuttiness and make lentils good---good enough to trade a birthright for.

This recipe begins with three or four slabs of bacon chopped up into slightly-smaller-than-bite-sized pieces. Throw them in a soup pot over just under medium heat. You want the bacon fat to melt out without burning or browning too much because you're going to use it to sautee some veggies. After about 6-7 minutes, throw in a half a yellow onion, and half a carrott, both finely chopped. Tip the heat up just past medium and let the onion get translucent, while the bacon fat browns just a little on the bottom of the pot. Then throw in two garlic cloves, finely chopped.

After a minute or two, toss in a tablespoon of tyme, a scant teaspoon of salt, a sprinkling of cracked pepper, and a cup of lentils. I used brown, but I suppose any color lentils would do. Scrape up any browned bacon fat from the bottom and dump in four cups chicken broth, a cup of water, and two tablespoons of tomato paste. Crank the heat up to high and get it boiling. Then knock it down to low, cover the pot, crack the lid, and let it simmer.

When the lentils are nice and tender (25-40 minutes), turn off the heat and dump in three packed cups of chopped baby spinach. Let the spinach soak up the flavor and wilt for about 3 minutes. It's done.

I served it with sliced apple and sliced cheese. I also topped off the bowls with some parmesan. To make a more substantial lunch today, I supplemented the leftovers with some leftover rice. It was a good addition. I also think barley or some small pasta could work well instead of rice. I'm also toying with the idea of using quinoa, which I think might be a nice complement to the earthiness of lentils.

The idea of Daniel and his three fire-proof friends sitting down to a bowl of this stuff makes me smile.

"Our system of checks and balances is designed to preserve the fundamental right of liberty": An Update on the Gitmo Habeas Petitioners

2008-10-09T10:25:00.005-05:00

I previously noted D. C. district court judge Ricardo Urbina's decision ordering the government to release 17 Guantanamo detainees. As of yesterday, only the order was available. This morning, though, the full text (though redacted some) of the memorandum opinion was posted on the D.C. district court's website.

It's a pretty interesting read. Because the government admits that these 17 men were not terrorists or "enemy combatants," the only issue was whether the government has the authority to indefinitely detain someone because releasing them into the United States might interfere with the government's authority to decide who gets to come into the U.S. and who doesn't.

It looks like the government's argument was based separation of powers---essentially an assertion that admitting somebody into the U.S. is only a policy decision, not a legal decision, and that it therefore is entirely the decision of Congress and the President, and that the courts have nothing to do with it. This is a bold assertion, but there is some support for it. Courts generally do defer to the other branches of government on matters of immigration and foreign policy.

Judge Urbina recognizes this, and he discusses the cases that give such wide deference. Nevertheless, from the opening line, you know where stands:

"There comes a time when delayed action prompted by judicial deference to the executive branch's function yields inaction not consistent with the constitutional imperative."

And by the end of the introduction, you know where he's going with this:

"because separation-of-powers concerns do not trump the very principal upon which this nation was founded---the unalienable right to liberty---the court orders the government to release the petitioners into the United States."

The big deal in this case is not the Judge Urbina found the continued detention unlawful---that follows pretty logically from the Supreme Court's Boumediene decision, and is even more obvious when the government admits that the 17 Uyghurs are not enemy combatants. What is bold about Judge Urbina's order is that it finds that the court has the authority to order immediate release. Although in Boumediene the court found that Gitmo detainees have the right to file a habeas corpus petition, it basically only treated it as a procedural right. The fact that the district court ordered immediate release into the U.S. goes beyond procedure straight to the remedy that should be given to a successful habeas petitioner. As a matter of common sense, it seems like it ought to be a no-brainer that the remedy for illegal detention is release; but the Boumediene didn't explicitly go that far.

Instead, Judge Urbina turned to the history of the writ of habeas corpus, which makes for the interesting read. It isn't every day that you see a district court opinion quoting the Magna Carta. He then turned to the government's authority to deny people entrance into the U.S. and concluded that naturalization power is not unlimited, but that it must comply with due process, including the mandate that nobody can be deprived of liberty without due process. Finally, quoting John Marshall, he turned the separation-of-powers argument on its head, noting that if the courts fail to review such decisions, such failure would allow Congress and the President, not the courts, to "say what the law is." Accordingly, he concludes that

"Because the petitioners' detention has already crossed the constitutional threshhold into infinitum and because our system of checks and balances is designed to preserve the fundamental right of liberty, the court grants the petitioners' motion for release into the United States."

Ballsy.

Judge of the Day: Ricardo M. Urbina

2008-10-07T15:39:00.004-05:00

Today Judge Ricardo Urbina, ordered the release of 17 Chinese Muslims who have been held in Guatanamo Bay as enemy combatants since their capture in Afghanistan in 2002. This is the first time that a federal judge has ordered the government to release someone held in Guantanamo Bay. That takes balls.

Born in Manhattan to a Honduran father and Perto Rican mother, Judge Urbina was President Reagan's first judicial appointee. Reagan appointed him to serve on the D.C. Superior Court in 1981. In 1994, when President Clinton nomiated him to serve on the U.S. Federal District Court for the District of Columbia, Judge Urbina was the first Latino appointed to the Federal Bench in D.C. Now, fourteen years later, Judge Urbina gets to add being the first federal judge to order the release of a Gitmo detainee to his list of other firsts.

In June 2008, the Supreme Court decided that the constitutional right of habeas corpus (the right to force the government to explain its reasons for detaining a person) is not limited to people held on United States soil, but rather that it extends also to people that the U.S. government holds in Guantanamo Bay. Nevertheless, all that decision really said was that the government had to explain its reasons for holding prisoners---not that they necessarily had to be particularly persuasive reasons.

The seventeen men are members of an ethnic group known as Uyghurs. Uyghurs are ethnically Turkic, and practice Islam, but live in China. In 2002, seventeen the Uyghurs were captured in Afghanistan. They admitted to seeking training from the Taliban in order to defend fellow Uyghurs from the oppressive communist Chinese government. They denied being terrorists, and denied any intent to harm the United States, saying that it was China that they considered the enemy.

A military court called the Combatant Status Review Tribunal determined in 2004 and 2005 that fifteen of the seventeen Uyghurs were not enemy combatants. Earlier this year, the two others were also cleared of suspicion. Nevertheless, they were not released because of concerns about where to send them. They do not want to be sent back to China (for obvious reasons), and other nations are scared of offending China by granting them asylum.

Judge Urbina, however, didn't think that not wanting to offend China was a good enough reason hold people without trial when the government had already admitted that they were innocent. He ordered the government to bring them to his courtroom by next Friday. The DOJ asked for a stay of the order, which Judge Urbina denied. The DOJ stonewalled, saying that it would immediately appeal, and that immigration might have to detain them. Reminding the DOJ that they have already been held for seven years, Judge Urbina impatiently warned the DOJ not to create unnecesary delay.

Like I said, that takes balls.

Seinfeld Revue

2008-10-04T14:25:00.002-05:00

Recently I saw Jerry Seinfeld live for the third time (and in my third state). Some of the material this time was the same as the second time I saw him last year in Richmond VA. After the show we wrote down some quotes that we could remember. I don't think any of these are direct quotes, but they are close.

No matter what restaurant you go to they won't serve you anything as good as a pop-tart.

People think that sucks and great are far apart, but they are actually right next to each other. You're eating an ice cream cone and the ice cream falls off and it sucks. What do you say? Great!

I used to not understand why people had kids. Why would you want someone in your house that poops their pants while they are looking at you? And my daughter will lie about it. "It's all circumstantial evidence. The leaning on the coffee table with both hands groaning; I was just thinking about rearranging the furniture. I want to move this table over by the window, because frankly, it stinks in here."

My favorite suicide bomber is the guy who blows himself up and no one else. He's like jihad-e-coyote. Do you think they are blowing themselves up over there because it's all sand and no beach? Why do they have the monkey bars on the terrorist training videos? Has any war ever been decided on a playground? I think we'd win this one. We could just put some of our fat kids on the see-saw. That'll scare them.

Single guys are meaningless and trivial. Oh you have a girlfriend? That's whiffle ball my friend. I'm out in a real war.

Being married is like constantly being in the lightning round of a game show. I'll take movies we might have seen together for $200. Give me details from a ten minute conversation we had eight years ago at three in the morning for $800 Alex.

What is with the violence towards donkeys at kids' birthday parties? We tell the kids to beat this donkey and eat whatever comes out of his carcass. Then we pin a picture of his brother on the wall and pin a tail on him.

Dad is like a day old helium balloon. You're not sure what to do with it. Play with it? Pop it? Throw it out? Father's Day is a day to show how little we know about him.

Ebay is a great idea. Let's email our trash to each other. Why talk to your family when you can bid $8 to $10 on a doily from Thailand?

I'm a thrower outer. "The wedding album? I thought you were done with that." But now I know that was a mistake.

What's with the Cialis commercials of the couples in two separate bathtubs at the top of a hill? Shouldn't they be in a hot tub? And who owns two bathtubs not hooked up to anything anyways and hulls them up to the top of the hill? That's why they are in two tubs, they're too tired.

Why are bathrooms made out of porcelain? Who decided to cover bathrooms with the most reflective surfaces there are? Why doesn't the bathroom stall come all the way down? It's not like it's an expensive door. I don't want to look down and see your lifeless pants and shoes under there. Maybe that's why we call it a stall. We could cut off the top of the door so we can stick our heads out and talk to people as they walk by. "Hey Tom, this is why I left the meeting early. But that was a good PowerPoint presentation from what I saw."

After the show we were giving him a standing ovation, then we all sat down but one guy on the second row. He didn’t sit down till way after everyone else. Then he stood back up. Jerry looked at him and asked him what he wanted. He started to talk “I brought this homeless guy with me to the show tonight…” Seinfeld cut him off and said that the point of the show is to forget all depressing things and have fun. The guy didn’t still didn’t sit down and was trying to say something, so Seinfeld called for security and then the guy sat down so Jerry waved off the guard.

The question and answer session seemed shorter then the other times I saw him. When asked about making more shows he said “I'm old. I'm rich. I'm tired. You're not seeing a motivated person here.” He seemed content to sit at home with his kids and do periodic standup tours. Whenever he comes close to you, go. It's I think the funniest thing I have ever seen in my life, all three times I've gone.

The Eats Sheet: Butternut squash soup

2008-09-30T16:15:00.007-05:00

In the name of keeping we might be windmills from stinkething again, I offer the following:

My oldest sister introduced me to the wonders of squash-based soups after I first moved to the Washington, DC area. She made a butternut squash concoction with tart green apple blended in to offset the natural sweetness of the gourd, seasoned with nutmeg. I've been making it every autumn since then, adapting the recipe and trying to find its complements. Here's what I've got so far--

Ingredients

1 yellow onion, chopped
1 rib of celery, chopped
1 carrot, chopped
1 Tbsp butter
1 butternut squash, peeled, seeds removed, chopped
1 tart green apple, peeled, cored, chopped
(squash and apple should be at a 3 to 1 ratio)
3-4 cups chicken broth (or vegetable broth if vegetarian)
1-2 red hot chili peppers
nutmeg, cinnamon, salt and pepper
coriander (if desired)
Gruyère cheese

Butternut squash, like most of its winter squash cousins, is pretty hard when it's ripe, so it helps to cook it a little before trying to chop it up. Cut it in half with a large knife or cleaver and place it in a lightly greased pan in a 375-degree oven for about 30 minutes.

When the squash is softened, cooled, peeled, and chopped, combine the butter, onion, celery, and carrot in a large saucepan or small stockpot and sauté them over medium heat for about 5 minutes, or until the onions begin to be translucent and the celery and carrot start to soften. Add the squash and apple and pour enough broth in to just cover the top of the ingredients in the pot. Bring the whole thing to a boil, then let it simmer for 10 minutes or until the squash is soft.

While the mixture in the pot is simmering, halve and seed the peppers and rub a little olive oil on them. Place them in a dish directly under a low broiler and roast them until the skins just begin to blacken. This is something I innovated into the recipe at the suggestion of a friend. The roasted red pepper adds a very, very small bit of spiciness to the soup, and really complements the squash flavor.

When the simmering pot is ready, toss in the peppers and puree the whole thing (I highly recommend a stick (or immersion) blender for this--I used one for my first time last night and it greatly expedited the process (much better than transferring the soup in small portions over to the blender)).

Add spices to taste, paying particular attention to the salt. The pepper, nutmeg, and cinnamon (and coriander) are all important to the spice combination, but the salt will really make the whole mixture arrive in a pleasant way.

Grate up some nice Gruyère cheese (or some generic Swiss if you're on a budget) and put a generous pinch on top of a bowl of soup when you serve it. The cheese is another of my innovations added to this recipe, inspired by a heavenly soup served at a local restaurant called Fireflies. It really makes all the difference. Last night I ate one bowl with the cheese and one bowl without; the soup I ate with the cheese was twice as good.

As a side, serve a light green salad and make some simple crostinis by slicing thin pieces of baguette, covering them with a little Gruyère, and placing them under a low broiler until the cheese melts and the bread browns around the edges. Add a little crushed red pepper before broiling if you want to add a little extra kick.

Lazarus, come forth!

2008-09-12T13:52:00.002-05:00

This is my first attempt at resurrecting a blog. This blog is dead and it stinketh. Even to me it doth stink. Nevertheless, here we go. Round two.

A word of explanation: I quite posting because I got busy. I thought, when the school year ends I'll have more time. Then I started work, and realized that the reality is that school is the best time to blog because you can do it all day. Blogging at work doesn't really fly.

But I'll try to get up and running now that I'm back in school, and now that I'm in the third law school year (i.e. class is even less relevant than the first two years). There may be all kinds of good stuff on the way: inane musings, pithy witticisms, sage proverbs, aphorism, and maxims, perhaps a platitude or two, tales of my adventures at the RNC, and war stories from the fronts of the law school/getting a job battle.

Wish me luck.

Then again, maybe Frankenstein is a better parallel than Lazarus.

Cinematographicus: "The Incredible Hulk" (2008)

2008-06-16T12:41:00.007-05:00

It's only fitting that "The Incredible Hulk" has been met with so much misunderstanding. Much of the inspiration behind the green monster derives from Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde, Beauty and the Beast, and... Frankenstein's monster. As I've heard more and more people bash on the Hulk's character or express dislike of a movie they've yet to see, frequent images of rural townsfolk marching with pitchforks and torches pop into my head, attacking a beast whose harmless desire is to be left alone -- who attacks only when egged on, purely out of self defense. "The Incredible Hulk," much like its title character and Frankenstein's monster, is largely misunderstood without second thought. Are we the ignorant pitchfork wielders, or are we the blind fiddler who looks past the mindless rage to behold the layered story and persona beneath?

Inevitably this movie will be compared to two other films: Ang Lee's 2003 "Hulk," and this summer's other Marvel blockbuster, "Iron Man." "Hulk" '03 was met with large distaste by the public. I personally found the film to be a really interesting psychological character piece, and though it was flawed in its pacing and the boring climax, other elements made up for it. The cinematography and editing was fascinating as it attempted to bring to the viewer something that only comics can do: the ability to see everything that's happening on one page, split into multiple panels. No other medium brings you this sort of visual omniscience, where time and location are less linear and more globbed together as a singular composition. The acting was spectacular -- Eric Bana was a great Bruce Banner, Jennifer Connelly was a beautiful and complex Betty Ross, and even Nick Nolte seemed at home as the psycho dead-beat dad. But the rest of the world has condemned this film for straying from its roots and being more experimental than entertaining, hence "The Incredible Hulk" is a complete reboot of the Hulk franchise -- in no way in continuity with the 2003 interpretation -- after only a five year absence from the big screen.

The bad taste that "Hulk" '03 created still lingers in the American mouth, and "The Incredible Hulk" is suffering because of it, which, frankly, isn't fair -- obviously the studios are trying to correct an "error," so why not see how it goes a second time around? Most people I have spoken to who use "Hulk" '03 as an excuse for not seeing the '08 reboot haven't even WATCHED Ang Lee's creation. I submit that it's more important to realize that "Hulk" '03's failure is due to creative options made by the filmmakers, NOT the nature of the character. If the Hulk himself makes for lackluster material in a medium other than comics, how would you explain the hot success of the television series that ran for four solid seasons and spawned countless made for TV movies (to which this film makes several well-played references, and from which it takes much inspiration)?

"Iron Man" kicked off the summer blockbuster scene with a hugely positive response. In an occurrence as frequent as a roundhouse kick-less episode of "Walker, Texas Ranger," critics AND fans alike have fallen in love with the Robert Downey Jr.-helmed comic story of a hero who is largely unknown to non-comics fans. Taking the cinema-goers by surprise, it seems that most who have viewed it are skeptical that any other comic movie this summer could possibly reach the bar of quality set by Tony Stark and friends (with the possible exception of "The Dark Knight" -- whose anticipation is based on its highly-popular predecessor). A lot of popular media fans tend to have very polarized mentalities: if they love one film, they must compare it with others of its genre and pick a side, rather than embrace the two as twin brothers who are potential equals, yet with different personalities.

It is with this mindset that I approach "The Incredible Hulk" and "Iron Man." In a metaphor that perhaps isn't entirely appropriate (for more reasons than one), they are like my little babies who I've been waiting to birth for so long. "Iron Man" was the first to see the light of day, followed shortly after by his angrier brother. In all honesty, I do love the armored, charismatic billionaire child slightly more, if only because he's more upbeat and fun-spirited. But the green-skinned lad is no less satisfying in the sense of solid character and thrill-ride entertainment. And the two are very much born to BE TOGETHER. They function as separate beings yet as a unit they're part of something much bigger. They know they have other brothers who will follow them shortly. If you've seen both of these films, you will understand what I'm referring to.

If you liked "Iron Man," you will most likely enjoy "The Incredible Hulk" as well. Probably not as much as "Iron Man," but it will be fun and it will give you that kick in the face you look for when expecting a solid action film.

Edward Norton brings a level of complexity to the Bruce Banner persona that, as good as Erica Bana was, went missing in the '03 telling of the tale. Looking into Norton's eyes shows us the painful journey he walks as he strives to contain the beast within and eliminate it. He presents us with the classic virtue vs. vice setup that we all experience as natural men. How do we contain our lusts and knee-jerk reactions to life? We ARE the Hulk, and we hopefully all strive to eliminate the desire to give in to temptations. Yet Norton presents us with another insight to the Beast and how we view our own inner turmoils as, later in the film, he gains a better understanding of who the "monster" is and how his rage might be focused for more effective service to humanity.

Liv Tyler is a little more loving and empathetic as Betty Ross, Bruce Banner's love interest, than perhaps Jennifer Connelly was, though I'm not sure I prefer her performance over Connelly's. Connelly seemed to be a more realistic product of paternal neglect and a military upbringing.

While being presented with the psychological and emotional struggles of our protagonist, we are presented with a well-paced, thrilling succession of events for a solid two hours as the military seeks to control the beast, ignoring that Hulk only unleashes his rage when provoked -- he is not a proactive destroyer. The battle scenes trump "Iron Man"'s action scenes hands-down. Using a divided car as boxing gloves, our protagonist delivers staggering blows that will bring you to the edge of your seat and have you actually cheering out loud in the theater. Any film that can move a story along and keep a nice pace without sacrificing the complexity of characters is a success in my book -- and "The Incredible Hulk" does this.

Go see "The Incredible Hulk," and if you're anything like me you'll find yourself losing sleep because you just can't avoid smiling when your mind wanders to specific moments of grandiose Hulk smashings!

Why is she still in?

2008-05-14T12:30:00.004-05:00

It is essentially impossible for Hillary Clinton to be the Democratic nominee for president.

She is losing in every measure of success: pledged delegates, superdelegates, states won, and the overall popular vote. Her victory last night in West Virgina was considerable (something like 67% to 26%), but doesn't change any of those measures.

Moreover, the victory is also tainted racism and religious bigotry. Exit polls reflect that one in four Clinton voters reported that race was an important factor in the vote. Stories coming out of West Virginia just before the election told stories of voters who planned to vote for Clinton because they "heard that Obama is a Muslim and his wife’s an atheist," or because they "want someone who is a full-blooded American." It's interesting that these voters didn't say they were voting for Clinton because of something they like about her, but because of the things they didn't like about Obama. But nonetheless, Clinton has been all to willing to ride that wave of prejudice, sending Bill to tell white audiences in West Virginia that she represents "people like you."

But not only does the West Virgina win not erase Obama's lead in every measure of success, it has also failed to even slow Obama's increasing lead in superdelegates---he picked up two more this morning.

There are only two ways it might happen: 1) The old angry white people of West Virginia somehow possess the voters in all the remaining primaries and give Clinton similar margins of victory, while simultaneously, there is a mass exodus of superdelegates from Obama to Clinton. 2) Clinton and a mass army of political lackeys somehow succeed in pressuring the delegates at the convention to ignore who they are pledged to vote for while simultaneously, Obama either disappears completely or has a massive breakdown and spends the rest of the campaign rocking in a fetal position. Basically, it's not going to happen.

And yet she keeps going, like a demented energizer bunny in a pantsuit. Like the little engine that (thought she) could she keeps chugging through coal country. And why? With Obama's increasing leads, it isn't bettering her chances; and it's also working evil on her family's image and reputation. Whereas Bill was once a celebrity among African-American Democrats, Clinton's race-baiting tactics in West Virginia has Chris Matthews calling her "the Al Sharpton of white people." And with apologies to the good Reverend, that isn't an honor.

So, again, why?

I can think of four possible reasons:

1) She wants to lock in the spot as VP. While Obama is usually cordial with Clinton in public, some have speculated that the rancor between their campaigns on the trail has foreclosed any possibility of a Clinton-Obama ticket. Others cite Michelle Obama's personal dislike for the pantsuited former first lady and argue that Michelle would veto Clinton as a running mate. Knowing that the odds are against her being VP, Clinton may be trying to force Obama's hand by trying proving that without her on the ticket, Obama can't win with old white Democrats.

2) She wants to massage her ego with a big win in West Virginia before she gets out for good. Maybe Clinton does realize that she won't win, but since she was so highly favored in West Virginia, she knew that it would give her the chance to go out in a blaze of glory rather than in the calumny of a streak of losses followed by a close Pennsylvania win and a marginal victory in Indiana.

3) She wants to keep fundraising. Clinton's campaign is running at least a 20 million dollar debt right now and she has had to led almost 12 million out of her own pocket just to keep it afloat. With a win in coal country, maybe she give some hope to old angry white people who want to see her win. That way she could convince more retirees to send in donations and make up some of the cash rather than eat the deficit herself. Getting on the ticket as VP would also solve this problem.

4) She wants McCain to win. If Obama wins, he'll be the presumptive nominee again the next time around and Clinton would have to wait eight years to try again. If McCain wins, Clinton will be able to turn around, thumb her nose at the rest of the party and say "I told you Obama wasn't electable! Next time you better listen to me!" Also, McCain is old. See, e.g., here. In four years, he'll be even older. If he wins, there is a decent chance that he might not run again. Even if he does run again, he'll be easier to pick off than a younger incumbent Obama. At 61, Clinton's no spring chicken herself, and a 69 or 70 year old Hillary Clinton would have a harder row to hoe than a 65 year old Hillary Clinton.

So what do you think? Which explanation is more plausible? What other explanations have I overlooked?

Race in the Race

2008-05-08T10:56:00.002-05:00

In case you don't know, here's an oversimplified wrap-up of the recent goings on in the democratic primary.

Last week, Clinton joined John McCain in calling for a summer gas tax holiday, only she put a twist on it by proposing that oil companies pay the tax rather than just getting rid of it. Obama's counter was that it's a gimmick, not a solution. Then earlier this week, Obama won North Carolina by about 14 percent, and lost Indiana by about two. North Carolina was a bigger win, not only because of the margin of victory, but also because there were more delegates.

In the aftermath, the talking heads on cable declared Obama the nominee. Their reasoning: at this point, Clinton would have to win every remaining race 65% to 35% in order for the math to add up for her. She hasn't won a single race by that margin so far. In protest, Clinton flew in a huff to West Virginia to campaign. In an effort to stem the growing chorus of commentators who say she can't win and should concede, she has begun trying to make the argument that Obama's support is defective because it is too black.

The argument goes like this: you have to have white people to win the election, and white people like me more than they like Obama. A less charitable reading is that she is simply playing off of the racial prejudice of older white voters and concealing it with some nonsense about electability. But whatever her intentions, she sure is being explicit about the racial lines she's drawing. After boasting of her white support in several states, she comes right out and says "there's a pattern emerging here." Paul Begala, a one-time advisor to Bill Clinton and current Clinton supporter put it more bluntly, saying that the democracts can't win with just "eggheads and African-Americans."

Ironic that this comes from the woman whose husband once had almost rock-star status among African Americans, and who was once dubbed the nation's first black President by Toni Morrison. And conveniently, Ms. Morrison has recently explained what she really meant when she called Bill the first black President: not that he was culturally black, but that the nation was treating him as the cops treat a black man on the street: guilty from the start. And, by the way, she supports Obama.

Rock-a-bye Baby

2008-05-03T10:05:00.002-05:00

So it turns out that I don't know very many lullabyes.

Really the only one I know is the one about the baby in the tree-top, which, by the way, if you pay attention to the words, is a little disturbing and kind of Steven King-esque. "When the bough breaks, the cradle will fall, and down will come baby. . ." I have to wonder, is that supposed to be a threat? Are you telling the kid that she better shut up and hold still or else she might rock the cradle to much? Or is it just a comment on the inevitability of death? After all, it's not the baby that makes the cradle rock, it's just something that happens "when the wind blows." That's so ominous and kind of creepy. And this is how we put our kids to bed? And what's the kid doing in the top of a tree in the first place?

Anyway, the unsatisfying philosophy of the song about the baby in the treetop combines with sheer boredom and makes me want to seek out new ones. Since I don't really know many, I've had to improvise and use other songs I know, which has been interesting.

It turns out the Beatles wrote some good lullabyes. The one that seems to work the best is "Mother Nature's Son." "Here comes the Sun" is pretty good too, but it seems weird too sing it at night. "Rocky Racoon" isn't too bad, but it's easy to get into it and sing it too loud. Even more surprising is that Weezer's "My name is Jonas" gets the baby to quite down pretty really well. I once tried "Only in Dreams" but there's too many guitar parts that don't translate to well into a vocal solo.

There are a few They Might be Giants tunes that work well, also (you knew it was coming). She really seems to like "Mink Car." "Another First Kiss" isn't too bad either. Of course, TMBG has also written a few songs intended as lullabyes on their children's album, "No!". "Sleepwalkers" and "Lazyhead and Sleepybones" are good ones, but "Bed Bed Bed" doesn't work so well. Again, too many instrumentals, and too raucous.

When it comes to church music, "I am a child of God" is of course an old standby. But my favorite is "Adam-ondi-Ahman." "O Savior, thou who wearest a crown" is another really good one.

Pet names

2008-04-30T09:35:00.002-05:00

I'm intrigued by what people call their pets.

My brother named his cat "Skookums" after the Chinook word for the creature otherwise known as Sasquatch. Mark Twain is said to have dubbed his housecats "Famine," "Pestilence," "Satan," and "Sin." One of my law professors has a little dog she styles "William the Conqueror." My dad had a law school classmate who kept in his carrel a goldfish named after the eminent American jurist Learned Hand.

I like the idea of naming animals after historical or literary figures. We'll probably end up getting a cat after I graduate and we move into a house rather than an apartment. We've decided that his name will be "Count Leo." If I had a golden retriever I would call him "Lord Byron." If we ever got a husky or malamute, his name would be "Pushkin."

I also like the idea of giving the pets a title as part for their name. It exalts the animal kingdom tongue-in-cheek and points out the utter silliness of our human pretense. It seems to me that it uses humor to advance the great mandate that "ye shall not esteem one flesh above another."

One of my favorite names ever is the alliterative moniker of the the Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter. The great thing about this name is that if takes two words, one Latin and one German, that both begin with F, but that, by some hilarious miracle of history, both begin with H when translated into their American English cognates. Felix Frankfurter becomes Happy Hot-dog. It's a wonderful name. And Felix is of course, a archetypal cat name. So naturally, I also would like to name a cat "Mr. Justice Frankfurter."

Calling all ska fans!

2008-04-22T15:00:00.000-05:00

I'm writing a paper on ska and its fans, and I created a little survey to help me collect some data. If you are a fan of ska (and only if you consider yourself such a fan), please click on the link and take the survey. It's pretty short--should really only take you five minutes or so. Thanks!

Click Here to take survey

An experiment.

2008-03-26T12:38:00.006-06:00

I find many passages of scripture to be poetic, but I find the numbered verse format to be rigid and stifling, and not conductive of the lyrical beauty that I'm convinced is often there. After amanda's recent post soliciting thoughts on light, I've been thinking about one passage in particular. Here's an experiment with line breaks---an attempt to bring out the rhythmic beauty I hear in these words.

Doctrine and Covenants 88:6-13.

This is the light of Christ.

As also he is in the sun,
and the light of the sun,
and the power thereof by which it was made.
As also he is in the moon,
and is the light of the moon,
and the power thereof by which it was made;
As also the light of the stars,
and the power thereof by which they were made;
And the earth also---
and the power thereof,
even the earth upon which you stand.

And the light
which shineth,
which giveth you light,
is through him
who enlighteneth your eyes,
which is the same light
that quickeneth your understandings;

Which light proceedeth forth
from the presence of God
to fill the immensity of space—

The light
which is in all things,
which giveth life to all things,
which is the law by which all things are governed,
even the power of God
who sitteth upon his throne,
who is in the bosom of eternity,
who is in the midst of all things.

What say ye?

A dumb euphemism

2008-03-25T06:34:00.006-06:00

So my new calling is to teach Sunday school to the 12-18 year olds. Yes, that's right, all the youth are in one class. One of the many joys (I'm saying this seriously, not ironically) of a small ward. It can be a challenge to teach in a way that is both interesting to the older kids and not boring to the younger ones, but sometimes I do it.

Anyway, this past week went really well. We studied Jacob 1-4 in the Book of Mormon. We talked about how Nephi got old and decided that separation of church and state seemed like a good idea, anointed some nameless dude to be king, and consecrated Jacob (and Joseph, as a footnote) to be preachers. We talked about how Jacob took his calling as a preacher very seriously and we talked about the three main sins he preached against: (1) love of riches/pride, (2) sexual sin, and (3) racism.

As I prepared the lesson, though, I noticed how the manual only once uses the word "sexual" and only once uses the word "unchastity". Instead, it refers repeatedly to "immorality." First, I just thought this was strange. It seemed like some kind of weird, harmless, victorian squeamishness. Then I started to think about the (probably unintended) implications of this particular euphemism. The manual says

"After warning the people about pride and the love of riches, Jacob called them to repentance for their immoral behavior. How were the Nephites rationalizing their immoral behavior?"

It then asks

"Why is it important to be morally clean?"

And then this:

"What must a person do to be forgiven of immorality?"

My problem with this particular wording is that it implies that "pride and the love of riches" are not "immoral behavior," that avoiding sexual sin is equivalent to being "morally clean" and that there is some kind of different, harder kind of repentance to be forgiven for sexual sin than for other kinds of sin.

The danger of this euphemism, I think, is that using "immorality" as code for sexual sin allows us to let ourselves off the hook too easily. And it reflects, I think, a larger problem. We are so obsessed with sex in our culture, that at times (especially for the youth) it begins to eclipse every other sin. The danger is that we may begin to think that if we're not fornicating, we're doing just fine. I'm all for being more optimistic and I believe strongly that discouragement and guilt are almost always diabolically inspired. One of Satan's most effective lies is that forgiveness is too hard. But his other lie is that it is too easy.

If a prophet says "don't do anything immoral" and I think, "well, I may be a hypocrite and grind on the faces of the poor, but at least I'm not a fornicator, so I'm alright," then I'm not in a good position. Of course if I listen to everything the prophets say, then I'll probably get the message that there's more to it. But in our sound-byte world, that may be asking a lot. For example: how many times did we hear the phrase "tender mercies" in 2005? Now we even have a song about it. Now, how many times did we actually read or discuss the talk Elder Bednar gave where he quoted Nephi talking about the tender mercies of the Lord? I even heard people talk as though Elder Bednar had authored the phrase rather than Nephi. I don't fault Elder Bednar for the fact that people listened to only one phrase of his talk, I just think it reflects the fact that our society does not do well remembering anything longer than a sound-byte.

Now I'm sure that the CES committee that wrote the manual didn't use the "immorality" euphemism with some ill-intent to make it easy to justify ourselves. I'm sure they really were only motivated by an odd, perhaps subconscious, victorian aversion to speaking of sex. But the point is that words matter. See, e.g., Elder Holland. We can't afford to be careless with our words. We should be precise and accurate, we should speak in a way that we cannot easily be taken out of context and twisted, confused, or misremembered. All sexual sin==immorality, but all immorality=/=sexual sin. I bristle at this euphemism. Let's just call it what it is. As Nephi said, I glory in plainness.

When did the NYT hire Speilberg as a photographer?

2008-03-12T12:46:00.004-06:00

If it weren't for the fact that what's happening in Pakistan really is a tragedy, this would be hilarious. As it is, it's just funny. The other day I went to the NYT website to keep abreast of of world events, and as the page loaded, I beheld this.

Now, is it just me, or does this picture not look like a poster for a bad action movie? I can hear the trailer voice-over: "In a world where no lawyer is safe, how can one man in a black suit survive? How can he find the woman he loves when barbed wire and tear gas are stacked against him? Will they escape? Will he shoes be unscuffed? Coming this spring, an fast-paced, high-stakes action adventure, 'Justice without Mercy,' starring a low-budget Bollywood Burt Reynolds look-a-like."

Read the story here. Turns out it has nothing to do with Burt Reynolds.

Why is this not on the headline of every paper?

2008-02-28T15:06:00.003-06:00

My perusal of the drudge report last week yielded this: "Automated Killer Robots are a Threat to Humanity."

I have three reactions. First, it's redundant. Aren't all robots automated? Isn't "automated" a derivative of "automaton," which is just another word for robot anyway? Second, that kind of seems like a no-brainer. I mean, if there really are automated killer robots out there, isn't it pretty obvious that they would be a threat to humanity? Third, if automated killer robots actually are threatening humanity, why is this not being trumpeted from the rooftops? Must be the liberal media with it's pro-robot agenda.

Cinematographicus: Across the Universe (2007)

2008-02-27T13:07:00.006-06:00

We picked this one up at Target last week. I remember being intrigued by it when it came out, hearing classmates review it positively, thinking I might see it, and then forgetting about it. The main idea is that it is a love story / hippie drama musical pieced together out of Beatles songs. The first comparison that comes to mind is Mama Mia!. Except that Across the Universe was not on Broadway, and of course, that it is an insult to all coolness to compare the finest rock songs of the 20th century to the disco drivel of Abba.

Watching this movie is kind of like watching two hours of MTV---old school MTV, when there were actually music videos instead of a mind-numbing, horizonless expanse of "reality" TV programming. Like any decent music video, there's a heavy emphasis on creative camerawork, and making the visual aesthetic reflect the music. The difference is that there is some plot continuity, less overt hero-worship of musicians, and no straight band-playing scenes.

No, it's actually closer to Moulin Rouge, both stylistically and thematically. Both films depart from the standard stage-inspired musical template by weaving the music into the plot, and keeping the story going through the songs. This makes for a more pleasant viewing experience than the stage-based template where the plot is continuously put on hold to show off the singing or dancing abilities of the actors. It's better adapted to the screen, where long singing and dancing scenes can invoke more yawns than smiles. See the 1965 film version of Rogers & Hammerstein's Cinderella as an example of the worst offenders.

And both films deal heavily in the ideal of the restricting and destructive nature of society pitted against the liberating ideals of love, sex, music, art, and of course, drugs. The absinthe-happy bohemians of Moulin Rouge are a pretty straight parallel to the psychadelic hippies living in New York in Across the Universe.

But the hippie narrative departs from substance-induced reveries and love fest of Moulin Rouge, when Across the Universe portrays the social upheaval of the 60s---the Detroit riots, the assassination of MLK, and the specter of Vietnam brooding over the whole film throughout. This adds a bit more weight and substance to the film (but not that much---it's still a musical). The Vietnam sequences also create some of the more interesting visual imagery---a spectral, almost skeletal Uncle Sam singing out of a recruiting poster and an Iwo Jima-esque group of young men in underwear and combat boots, struggling to carry an enormous statue of liberty over rice paddies and jungles in "I want you (she's so heavy)," and flaming strawberries dropping out of an airplane's bomb bay over the jungle in "Strawberry fields."

Like with the Beatles' own music, there's also a thematic progression. The opening scene is a sad, seaside rendition of the opening lines of "Girl" basically lifted from Moulin Rouge's rendition of Nat King Cole's "Nature Boy." The next scene opens to "It won't be long" with a picturesque sock-hop scene and continues with stereotypical high-school scenes of football players and cheerleaders. But by the end, the darker and more more psychedelic tunes dominate as it all takes a downward spiral. The low point is "Happiness is a warm gun" when we see one of the main characters, shell-shocked in a military hospital, sung to and tranquilized by a nurse played by Selma Hayek. But it all ends predictably with "All you need is love."

I had two favorite scenes. The first, "Let it be," is sung to the backdrop of the Detroit riots cross edited with scenes of a family learning of a soldier's death. It eventually turns into a gospel song at a funeral, and is actually kind of moving.

The second, "Revolution" shows off the integration of music, and especially of lyrics, into the plot. It's also just a great song.

There are things I could have done without. There was a scene, for example, where the main character, who is clichédly an artist, draws his sleeping naked girlfriend. We see a nipple. But it's not just the nudity that bugged me about the scene, it was the uncanny parallel to the naked drawing scene in Titanic. Anything that reminds me of Titanic gets minus 10 points at the outset. But this was doubly wrong because the chain of connections leads incestuously back onto itself: Titanic starred Leonardo DiCaprio, who also starred in Romeo and Juliet which was directed by Baz Luhrmann (who names their kid Baz, anyway?), who also directed Moulin Rouge, which serves in many ways as a template for Across the Universe. That's only four connections. That's like marrying your cousin and is totally unacceptable. Unless of course your cousin is Kevin Bacon. Then it's inevitable.

And the psychadelic descent, while interesting (and while maybe an accurate portrayal of the spirit of the 1960s), got a bit too weird for me. On the up side, it did include Bono making a cameo appearance to sing "I am the walrus."

Overall, my reaction is positive, but don't set your expectations too high.

Jobs Americans Won't Do: Win Oscars

2008-02-25T10:06:00.001-06:00

All acting Oscars went to foreigners this year, and foreigners also won various other Oscars as well. I'm waiting for some nonsensical rant from an anti-immigrant zealot to declare the end of the American film industry since non-Americans are doing so well.

Cinematographicus: "Serenity" (2005)

2008-02-21T09:20:00.007-06:00

In a move that would once more prove that Fox is a network of complete morons, Firefly died in 2002, shortly after seeing the light of day. Its questionable numbers in viewership were certainly not helped by the fact that Fox aired the episodes out of order (the very pilot wasn't aired for two or three weeks after the SECOND installment was shown!), juggled its time slot like a hopped-up circus clown, and unreasonably would go weeks on end without airing a new one. The last four episodes of the season had been produced but never saw the light of day until the DVD release a couple years later.

The show's premise was creatively original and fresh, something that hadn't been done in some time. Classified as a "Sci-Fi Western" (side note: did you know that "Star Wars" was originally labeled a western?), the show followed a retired Confederate rebel who'd earned his veteran status in an intragalactic battle with the Alliance, the future's Man and governing body that performs unspeakable acts of horror and downright intrusion in the name of justice and peace. Mal, now captain of a small crew aboard a ship they use to run their business as smugglers, spends his time running jobs and quietly avoiding run-ins with the Alliance by keeping his work as far into the outskirts of society as possible.

What's more to add to the very Western feel of the premise is that, despite advancements in technology, shotguns and revolvers are still common weapons. Mal carries a sidearm in a holster around his waist on a regular basis. There's also an episode that involves the transportation and herding of a large number of cattle. Certainly an unorthodox setting for an attempt at pop culture success, but nonetheless delightful. Mal's the type of character you love to watch. He doesn't put up with the silly, cliche-type setups that most pop culture icons find themselves in (he's more likely to blow a bad guy's head off than listen to his attempt at a monologue), and thus provides a critique of formulaic storytelling and melodrama. Each and every member of the crew is also a treat in his or her own respect.

Joss Whedon, creator of Firefly (and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, among others), managed to draw a cult following after the show's cancellation. It was strong enough to get the studios to back a feature film that took us back to this universe, and it was the preview of this film that sparked my interest in these characters (I didn't watch any television, aside from bits and pieces of Carita de Angel, from 2001-2003 and therefore missed the series' original airing). An old roommate of mine owned the DVD set of Firefly and let me watch the pilot before hitting up the theater for the film.

Hands down, "Serenity" is one of the most well-constructed movies I've ever seen. In addition to all the excellent elements carried over from the TV show, the visuals are greatly enhanced by the budget of a major motion picture, the story's intensity is kicked up about ten notches, and the action sequences are all the more stunning. You know how, in most films, you can somewhat predict the overall outcome of the story, depending on their genre and inciting incidents? Well, the genius of Joss Whedon's tale here was that it somehow managed to keep me guessing the entire length of the film! In fact, there was a long stretch of the story where I felt an utter sense of hopelessness for Mal and his crew -- there was NO way they were going to walk away from this situation, even if they were to succeed in their ultimate objective (and, in fact, some of them don't). The sense of doom was thicker than Christina Ricci's forehead!

The other major element of "Serenity" that makes this movie so interesting to me is its message that teaches the viewer to never be a fence-sitter, but to rather take a stance on issues (of any magnitude) and proactively stand by them. This theme is illustrated as Mal finds himself having to wrestle with the fact that merely "staying out of the Alliance's way" is detrimental and imprisoning, not to mention unjust to the people who have less power than he to oppose their iron fist. The point is not to always come out on top, the point is to do what you feel is right and embrace that part of you. The theme is a very important message, and a very unique one at that, given the large number of films that seem to teach us no more than "don't get carried away with science" or "BFF's are more important then selling out for romance."

Finally, if NOTHING else convinces you to rent this movie right away, know that it's jam-packed with awesome action sequences. Not only are there some complex, explosive space battles (side note: Whedon opts to go with a slightly more scientific approach to the outer space battle sequence in that, when an explosion occurs in the vacuum, there is no accompanying "kaboom!" sound), but one of the major characters (who is an inciting incident for the entire series) surprisingly breaks out of her mellow shell and delivers some fan-freakin'-tastic hand-to-hand combat scenes that WILL blow you away.

I give this film a definite 10/10 rating and sincerely hope a sequel is made one day.

Playlist for Chicago.

2008-02-12T08:55:00.001-06:00

So I'm going to the Windy City on Thursday to compete in the Jessup International Moot Court Tournament. I need a good collection of tunes to accompany my travels and entrance into the land of the Bulls and Bears. I'm thinking a of a good mix of Chicago-related songs, oral argument related songs, and just plain good tunes.

So what are some good ones to include?

I only make one stipulation. The "eye of the tiger" is not allowed. That song wasn't too bad but then it got way overused as a psych-up song for high school sports teams. Then it got even worse when it got overused as a psych-up song for middle-school girls basketball teams. Then it plummeted even further when it got overused as a psych-up song for cheerleaders. To use it as a psych-up song for a moot court team would just be adding insult to injury.

Maybe I need three lists: one to enter Chicago, one to leave Chicago triumphantly if we place well, and one to leave Chicago despondently if we get knocked out early.

McCain raises the stakes in celebrity tough-guy endorsements

2008-01-29T10:35:00.000-06:00

John McCain sees Mike Huckabee's Texas Ranger and Raises him a Rambo and a Rocky. The ironic thing is, in a competition for whose celebrity endorsement will make the biggest difference in the end, both these tough-guys lose to Oprah.

Bill Clinton caught sleeping in church

2008-01-22T12:46:00.000-06:00

Attacking Obama all weekend, Bill must have just tuckered himself out. From the New York Post:

Debate Reactions

2008-01-22T08:55:00.000-06:00

A few thoughts:

1) Why is Edwards still running? The guy hasn't won a primary yet, hasn't come close to winning one, and is not going to win one. At one point, when Clinton and Obama really got into it, Edwards asked "Are there just two people in this debate." The funny thing is, actually, there really are only two serious possible candidates.

My thought has been that he's trying to pull some decent percentages to use as leverage to be the VP candidate. But that's not a good strategy if he waits too long. Edwards' support comes mainly from the health-care/labor faction of the Democratic party--a faction that will be less relevant as the focus moves from party nomination to general election. The reality is that Edwards will not win. There are, I suspect, a good number of voters who know for sure they don't like Clinton, but who can't decide who is the better Clinton alternative. At this point, about the only thing that Edwards' candidacy is going to do is weaken Obama. As both Clinton and Edwards turned on Obama, the one thing that seemed clear was that Clinton sure is glad Edwards is still running.

2) Obama did seem a tad Janus-faced when he attacked Clinton and then asked for more civility. On the other hand, for me it's forgivable. With the attacks coming from the Clinton campaign lately, it's not realistic to expect Obama to not respond by giving her a bit of her own medicine. One thing he did do well was to actually have an explanation for what Clinton calls inconsistencies in his record.

He did get off one of the best lines of the night on this topic. When he said that Bill Clinton was distorting his record on behalf of his wife's campaign, Hillary tried to draw the focus away from Bill saying "I'm here, he's not." Obama shot back, "Well, sometimes its hard to tell who I'm running against."

Actually, I think Obama played a good rhetorical move by constantly bringing up Bill. You might think that Bill's popularity might make Obama want to draw the focus of him, but by constantly mentioning him in the same breath as Hillary, Obama continually reminded audiences that he's up against the Clinton machine, not just Hillary Clinton. It raises the unseemly specter of a behind the scenes third-term Bill behind his own version of a Manchurian candidate. It also makes Obama the underdog, and it allows him to write off his losses as the result of having been double-teamed.

3) Obama is better at responding to attacks than Clinton is. I think it's perfectly fair for a candidate to use personal attacks in politics. I also think it's perfectly fair for candidate to call the attacker to task for it.

It all started when Clinton started attacking Obama for having something nice to say about President Reagan. Obama's response:

What I said -- and I will provide you with a quote -- what I said was is that Ronald Reagan was a transformative political figure because he was able to get Democrats to vote against their economic interests to form a majority to push through their agenda, an agenda that I objected to. Because while I was working on those streets watching those folks see their jobs shift overseas, you were a corporate lawyer sitting on the board at Wal-Mart.

Fightin' words. So Clinton tries to respond. But rather than explain her ties to Wal-mart, she hits back.

CLINTON: Well, you know, I think we both have very passionate and committed spouses who stand up for us. And I'm proud of that.

But you also talked about the Republicans having ideas over the last 10 to 15 years.

OBAMA: I didn't say they were good ones.

CLINTON: Well, you can read the context of it.

OBAMA: Well, I didn't say they were good ones.

CLINTON: Well, it certainly...

OBAMA: All right, Wolf.

CLINTON: It certainly came across in the way that it was presented, as though the Republicans had been standing up against the conventional wisdom with their ideas. I'm just reacting to the fact, yes, they did have ideas, and they were bad ideas.

OBAMA: I agree.

CLINTON: Bad for America, and I was fighting against those ideas when you were practicing law and representing your contributor, Resco, in his slum-lord business in inner city Chicago.

So what's worse, being on the board of Wal-mart, or representing a slum-lord? Close call. Both provide something that there is a market for, I guess. But compare Obama's response to Clinton's attack to her response to his attack:

BLITZER: I just want to give you a chance, Senator Obama, if you want to respond. Senator Clinton made a serious allegation that you worked for a slumlord. And I wonder if you want to respond.

OBAMA: I'm happy to respond. Here's what happened: I was an associate at a law firm that represented a church group that had partnered with this individual to do a project and I did about five hours worth of work on this joint project. That's what she's referring to.

Now, it's fine for her to throw that out, but the larger reason that I think this debate is important is because we do have to trust our leaders and what they say. That is important, because if we can't, then we're not going to be able to mobilize the American people behind bringing about changes in health care reform, bringing about changes in how we're going to put people back to work, changing our trade laws. And consistency matters. Truthfulness during campaigns makes a difference.

Way more effective. Rather than hit back tit-for-tat, he corrects what he calls a lie on Clinton's part by putting his own spin on it, and then bringing it back to his theme about truthfulness in the campaign.

Another moment when Clinton's attacks seemed to backfire was when she accused Obama of being evasive and unwilling to talk about his record. She brought up the fact that he voted against an amendment that would have capped credit card interest rates at 30%. Obama explained that he voted against the amendment because he thought 30% was too high, and he wanted to see serious debate on the issue before voting for anything. The irony of it all, is that even though Obama voted against the amendment, he still voted against the bill it was attached to, while Clinton and Edwards both voted for it before changing their minds and voting against it. But Clinton's attack did not go well, and it was the only time a candidate drew audible boos from the audience. She said:

Well, you know, Senator Obama, it is very difficult having a straight-up debate with you, because you never take responsibility for any vote, and that has been a pattern.

You, in the -- now, wait a minute. In the Illinois state legislature...

(AUDIENCE BOOING)

4) This is my most superficial observation. Compare the three candidates when they raise their voice. When Edwards does it, he drawls more and it just accentuates his folksiness. When Obama does it, his voice deepens and becomes more resonant. When Clinton does it, it grates on my ears. She sounds feisty, yes, which is what I think she's going for, but she also sounds shrill. It's not good for her. I think she would do better to keep an even-keel. I know there's a certain misogynistic connotation associated with the word "shrill," but I honestly can't think of a word that better describes Clinton's voice.

5) One last thought. The last question of the debate was "If MLK were alive today, why would he endorse you?" Edwards actually answered the question fairly well. He said that King's life was dedicated to eradicating poverty and that his campaign is as well. Obama said that King would endorse none of them because he would let people make their own choices. Clinton basically ignored the question and talked about how nice it is that there's an African-American, and woman, and a "son of the south" (zip-a-de-doo-dah, zip-a-dee-ay! My dad worked in a mill, so vote for me!) running together. While Obama came the closest, none gave the answer that I wanted to hear. If it were me, this is how I would have responded:

Well, I fundamentally disagree with the premise of that question, that we ought to be speaking for Dr. King and claiming him as our own to use as a weapon against each other in our political fight. Rather than speak for him, we ought to let his life and his work speak for itself. I refuse to claim Dr. King as mine alone because his legacy is one that belongs to all Americans. But I will tell you how my vision for America is consistent with Dr. King's dream...

Anyway, here's the transcript of the debate.

Happy Birthday, Walter Mondale!

2008-01-05T16:50:00.001-06:00

Walter Mondale, namesake of my Law School, former VP and one-time presidential candidate turned 80 today. I gotta say, he looks pretty good for his age. Too bad he's endorsing Clinton.

A few observations on the Iowa caucus speeches last night

2008-01-04T09:25:00.000-06:00

I'll leave the parsing of the percentages and all that to abler analysts. What interests me more than the results are the speeches that followed. I didn't stay up to watch all the speeches, I was mostly interested in Obama's and Huckabee's as the winners. But while waiting for those two I did catch Edwards' and Clinton's.

First was Clinton. She was predictably stilted and only barely stifled her rage at Obama and Edwards. It was a stale, safe, innocuous, boring speech. The highlight was seeing Madeline Albright over her right shoulder.

Next was Edwards. I suppose it's no surprise that Edwards did well in Iowa, what with his populist pro-union, anti-free trade, universal health care shtick. Not surprisingly, his speech hit the health care theme hard, complete with anecdotes of individual Americans who get sick and can't pay for treatment delivered in a charming, folksy drawl. It's his bread and butter. It's his theme, and he plays it well. He played it well as a trial lawyer and he still does well. The only problem is that he's a bit of a Johnny-one-note. My other stylistic criticism of Edwards he does the Bill Clinton thumb point. The idea is that pointing is rude and a subtle thumb emphasis is more friendly. But when Clinton was in office, the thumb point was satirized to death by late night comics ("Ah feel your pain"). Edwards doing it now is almost self-caricature.

Then came Huckabee. It was about what you would expect. A lot of folksy grandstanding, a lot of talk about our American (i.e. evangelical Christian) values, and a lot of drawling. He talked about how it's a "new day" in American politics---an throwback, I think, to Reagan's "morning in America." The funniest part of Huckabee's speech was the way a be-flanneled Chuck Norris hung, fawning, on his every word like, grinning giddily like a twelve-year-old girl at a Hannah Montana concert. And for some inexplicable reason, the unshaven Texas Ranger shifted from Huckabee's left shoulder to his right shoulder midway through the speech.

Obama's was the best speech of the night. I like to compare it with Edwards. Edwards' message really plays only to working class Democrats. That's not a bad thing, particularly in a Democratic primary in Iowa, but it is limiting. Obama's message has a more universal appeal. He eschewed the Clintonian anecdotes of individuals and went for a more abstract, but more unifying message hitting hard on hope, unity, and possibility. Such abstractions can be hard to visualize and can often make for a forgettable speech, But Obama countered that with his personal stage presence. I appreciate that Obama does the real finger point rather than the Clintonian thumb point. I don't think it's rude, I think it's forceful. He was by far the most energetic, the most passionate. This highlighted his youth and energy, which in turn complements his message of change over Clinton's of experience.

Speaking of Democratic youth, energy, and idealism, I couldn't help but see shades of Kennedy. Not only is Obama a young man who appeals to the unifying transcendence of American values, but he also has a young, attractive, graceful wife, and two cute kids to boot. And if you look at Michelle Obama, it's not hard to see a shadow of Jacki Kennedy, especially in her conservative, chin length, flipped coif---specially last night, wearing pearls and a conservative dress that would not have been too out of place in the 1960s. All she needed was a pill box hat, and a pair of gloves. It was to the point that I almost wonder if it's on purpose.

But after two Bushes and a Clinton, I guess we could use another Camelot after all.

Anyone see Romney's?

Why I want Romney to win the Republican nomination

2008-01-01T12:34:00.000-06:00

This is cross-posted at the Council of Fifty.

I don't like Romney's politics. I've said this before. I also think he has come across as insincere and seems to be more a conservative of convenience than of conviction. I also can't get his support for President Bush's foreign policies.

But I want Romney to win. As I've said before, I think it would be good for the Republican party. So what do I, a Democrat, care about having a good Republican party? Well, if my party screws it up, there's only one other alternative. Sure there's a lot of dissatisfaction right now with the current Administration, but Congressional Democrats aren't that far behind he President as targets of public bile. In this atmosphere, neither party is all that likely to win an overwhelming Congressional majority. And the fact is, no matter which party wins the White House in 2008, the other one will still have a significant amount of power. So even if there's a Democrat in the White House, the Republicans will still have plenty of influence. I want them to be shepherded by a party leadership that is moderate, pragmatic, reasonable.

An additional reason: it would make Clinton less likely to win the Democratic nomination. If, say, Huckabee gets it, he would stand no chance against Clinton, and the liberal party elite would have an easier time getting Clinton the victory because the concern about drawing moderate votes would be essentially irrelevant. If, on the other hand, the Republicans put up someone with a real fighting chance to beat Clinton, the Democrats would be more likely to give their nomination to a candidate less polarizing than the ex-First Lady, someone who could draw more moderate voters.

Romney is more Presidential, arguably more moderate, and most importantly, better funded than any of the other Republican candidates. He stands the best chance against Clinton. If he wins, the Democrats will be forced to think more carefully about nominating Clinton. A strong, moderate, electable Republican candidate gives more leverage to the Edwards and Obama campaigns to argue that Clinton, a elite northeastern liberal connected to perhaps the most hated Democrat (at least among conservatives) in recent memory, can't win in the heartland.

And on a personal level, it comes down to this: I don't want to vote for Clinton. And at this point, Romney is the most appealing Republican.

So what's my beef with Hillary? Well, for one, it goes back to before my mission when she first started trying to be a Senator from my home state (actually, I voted against her by absentee ballot). I had no problem in theory with the idea of Clinton running for, or even being my Senator. She's certainly capable. But the fact that she wasn't from New York and hadn't lived there, that she bought a house to barely met the residency requirements, and that it was obvious that she had chosen New York only because it was a liberal enough state to elect her to a calculated Presidential launching pad---well, that bothered me.

And to make matters worse, the state Party leadership didn't even make her run the primary. They just handed her the nomination. That bothered me even more. Now, the interesting thing about Hillary Clinton is that most of the other members of the New York Delegation in Congress can't stand her, personally. These are the people that have worked with her, not those that are paid to stump for her. But they won't say that in public because of the huge amount of influence that the Clintons hold over the party machine. I trust their opinions, and I don't trust her.

Another problem with Clinton: We've already had eight years of the second half of a Republican political dynasty. Do we really want the same thing coming from the Democrats? Do we really want the last few decades of our history to go Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton? Are there really so few qualified people that we have to keep picking from the same two families?

Of course, it would be cool to say that we had finally elected a woman to be President. But do we really want to show the world that the only way a woman can be elected in this country is if she schemes for three decades, finagles her party leadership, and rides on her husband's popularity? Wouldn't we rather have a woman who gets elected on her own merits?

So I want the Republicans to choose someone that will give the Obama and Edwards campaigns a better chance against Clinton. Nobody but Romney can do it: McCain is too old and crazy, Huckabee is too trailer park and Ted Nugent, Fred "Cadaver" Thompson (AKA dead man walking) can barely keep his eyes open during interveiws, Guiliani ought to be disqualified for running a campaign based entirely on 9-11, and Ron Paul, well, come on, it's Ron Paul. If he wins, the Democrats might as well run Kucinich so we can distribute the crazy equally on both sides. It's got to be Romney.

On the other hand, if Clinton does win, that would make Bill the first First Gentleman, which might get him into the news more often and provide some excellent political comic relief.

Book Review: Leaping, Brian Doyle

2007-12-23T17:47:00.000-06:00

Ways that Brian Doyle has changed my life (I went to three of his presentations when he visited campus last month and just finished Leaping):
a) I've come to realize the gift that artistic inspiration is. He quoted his dad as saying "the difference between writers and non-writers is that writers record the things they think about in the shower or lying in bed." Doyle also introduced half the essays he read with a story something like: "I met this incredible old woman/fireman/baseball playing kid, and they told me this story and after hearing it I shuffled off to my office as fast as I could to get it down." He talked about stories having expiration dates, that you have to write ideas down when they're fresh and interesting in your head. And how true this is. How many times have you had an interesting idea and put off doing anything with it? Soon enough either you forget it or it gets tired and brittle and is worth nothing. So I'm a little better at writing things down. And hope to get even better.
b) He made me a better Christian. Inspired me to be. First through this idea of stories: that people are stories and people want to share their stories and when you're humble enough to really listen you invite connection with people and I'm a huge believer that connection is our most urgent imperative in regards to our fellow man (John 15). Second through his example of a man unashamed of his faith and love. Moved to tears by stories of great sacrifice and of his children. Third, through what he taught me about grace. "God's love is more powerful than your sin hands-down, any day of the week." Why didn't I know this? Why have I been clinging to a wienie and watered-down version of grace hoping that this shadowy whisper of an omnipotent being's love was enough to pull me to salvation? Grace.

Leaping itself is pure gold. And think elven gold a la Tolkien--dancing and shimmering in inexplicable ways. It's a collection of essays on Christ and Grace and Children, but in the way of the best essayists, Doyle approaches inexpressible truths through the mundane and the ordinary. His essays feature summer camp and Bruce Springsteen and altar boys being boys. I regret that my review has taken such an ridiculous tone of the superlative because probably it undercuts my credibility, but the truth is that Doyle is a hilarious, human, and humble man with an eye for detail and a faith that shoots each essay through with a spark of the divine.
He manages it without dwelling in the dark and heavy. A tribute to the dead of 9-11 is somber and thought-provoking without being hopeless or vengeful.

I'd like to compare Leaping with Leap by Terry Tempest Williams for a minute. The two are both non-fiction, both attempts to defining and understanding faith and the way the glory of God works in a fallen world. Granted, their aims and audiences are different, but the fact remains: Williams' memoir is dark and jarring and the redemption at the end is a relief that just only justifies the vale of sorrow that readers have been pulled through. Doyle's short-ish pieces are grounded solidly in the muddy mundane (sorry, I've spent the afternoon reading Maxwell) but the heights of giddy redemption they reach are enough to pull you through dark winter finals weeks. Thoughtful and hilarious and human.

In my experience, when I feel closest to the divine I don't get sobby or somber, I want to dance and sing and laugh. That's the kind of divinity that Doyle captures. ke

Best and Worst Christmas Movies

2007-12-21T16:01:00.000-06:00

Good:
It's a Wonderful Life. This one has real staying power, if nothing else. It's also sentimental enough for Christmas without being overly manipulative. It's a great story, the family and friends theme is both Christmas appropriate and timeless. It also has the interesting characteristic of an historical relic, with its strains of progressive (almost socialistic at times) politics.
Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown. This one is really more a TV special than a movie, but I think it has transcended its original context. Great music. The pacing is nicely done, moving back and forth at just the right speed between Snoopy's antics and the kids' story. Extra points for being the only one to quote the entire Christmas story from Luke. Linus is my hero.
Elf. The best recent one without question. Will Ferrel can be be tiresome in the wrong role, but this one suits him. Also, this one has the best Santa Claus---a cantankerous old connoisseur of NYC pizza. Extra points for making fun of the puppet movies. Best line: "Don't listen to Leon, he's never been anywhere; he doesn't even have feet!" Runner-up: "Bye, Mr. Narwhal."
A Muppet Christmas Carol. Christmas Carol adaptations could really be a separate category. Really, the only way to see it is on the stage. On screen, this one is my favorite.
Home Alone. Great characters. Physical comedy. A great soundtrack. An old man beating robbers with a shovel. What's not to like?
Scrooged. I like this overlooked Bill Murray performance. It doesn't have the festive-ness or the fun of the muppets, but it stays true enough to the story to be recognizable and plausible, while at the same time varying from it enough to avoid being nothing more than a remake of the George C. Scott version.
The Snowman. I'm not crazy about the altar-boy vocals during the flying scene. But telling the entire story sans words and keeping it engaging takes skill.
How the Grinch Stole Christmas. No, I'm not talking about that abomination with Jim Carey. The original is a classic. Who would have thought Boris Karloff would star in a Christmas film?

Mediocre:
All the stop-animation puppet films. Okay, I know these are pretty much a holiday staple. But they're so overrated. If you sit down and watch them without the nostalgia, you realize they're really not all that good. One exception: The Year Without a Santa Clause gets extra points for the heat miser and cold miser routines, and Yukon Cornelius is the best character this genre ever produced. Also, extra points for having a yeti as a main character.

Bad:
The Christmas Story. Another staple, but I'm going iconoclast with this. Maybe this movie isn't completely no good, but it is hugely overrated. It's so deep in nostalgia that it can't even see the plot. It has some funny moments, no doubt. But it certainly doesn't deserve the 24-hour Christmas Eve marathon it sometimes gets. Minus extra points for inspiring The Wonder Years.
Santa Claus: The Movie. This is a 1985 gem starring Dudley Moore, the 80s' favorite low-budget excuse for Paul McCartney. It gets points for doing a pretty decent job with explaining the origins of Santa and for doing a' decent visualization of the North Pole. It loses points for starring John Lithgow and having a very dated sound to the music.
Any sequel to any Christmas movie. Due to the electromagnetic force generated by the earth's rotation and tilt, the law of sequels (explained here) is several magnitudes stronger around the winter solstice.

Just Plain Ugly:
George and the Christmas Star. In this heartwarming animated tale, the title character decides his tree needs a start and decides to go on a space journey to get one. This is the worst Christmas movie ever produced. And probably rivals "Plan 9 from Outer Space" for the title of worst movie ever. Minus 10 for using Paul Anka to write the music.

Gun, Control.

2007-12-20T11:24:00.000-06:00

Last week the NYT published an editorial by Adam Freedman about the Second Amendment case we're waiting for the Court to hear. Freedman blogs at Party of the First Part about the ongoing battle between legalese and plain English. I like Freedman. I identify with his obsessive disdain for legalese and love of plain Anglo-Saxon syntax. Freedman's editorial does a good job of summing up the textual wrangle in way that is precise, thorough, concise, and accessible. Well done.

New post on new blog: Why Democrats should be pro-life.

2007-12-20T08:55:00.001-06:00

I've been invited to blog over at The Council of Fifty, a new blog about politics and Mormons (the name was my idea).

The original Council of Fifty was organized by Joseph Smith just prior to his death. The idea was that it would be a sort of political wing of God's Kingdom, while the church was the spiritual wing. The wikipedia article on it is pretty good. Two articles published in BYU Studies in 1980 give a more complete historical treatment. The first, by Michael Quinn, lays out the basic chronology and purposes. The second, by Andrew Ehat, attempts to answer some of the questions that Quinn raised and gets more into the theological background and purposes of the council.

This Council of Fifty is about discussing politics as it relates to Mormonism. My first post is about why the Democrats should be more open to running pro-lifers, especially for the Presidency. Here's a summary of my line of thought:

A less militantly pro-choice Democratic party would diffuse the potency of the abortion card. This would be good for the Democratic party, good for Mormons, and good for the Republican party as well. It would be good for Democrats because they could expand their base. It would be good for Mormons because it could help bring balance to the one-sidedness of political affiliation among Mormons. This in turn may give Republicans more incentive to attract Mormons, or at least to stop tolerating the anti-Mormon rhetoric from the fundamentalist wing of the party.

Of course, this is all speculative. But that’s what makes it fun.

So, really this post comes down to a few observations and a conclusion: (1) the Democrats are trying to ride a wave of populist discontent with the Bush administration and its blunders, (2) populist movements are only successful if they represent what is popular, (3) a hard-line pro-choice stance is out of line with what is popular, and (4) a hard-line pro-choice stance is not crucial to the party’s most important goals and ideals, especially not in presidential politics. Therefore, it makes sense for the party to moderate bit more on the abortion issue.

Read the entire post here. Leave comments about the argument there, comments about other stuff here. I don't want to poach the discussion.

I Still Have a Pony

2007-12-16T22:34:00.000-06:00

I was introduced to the comedian Steven Wright by Jared Gillins a while ago. I got hooked on his CD “I Have a Pony.” It was funny and definitely worth listening too.

For Christmas my sister and brother-in-law got me Wright’s new CD “I Still Have a Pony.” I found it as enjoyable as the original, and recommend it to anyone looking for quality comedy. It is in his usual deadpan style with crazy one liners and bizarre stories. Here are some key quotes:

When I was a little kid I wished the first word I ever said was the word quote so right before I died I could say unquote.

You know the earth is bipolar.

You ever notice when a house burns down the only thing left standing is the fireplace and the chimney? How’s that for evidence?

What did Jesus ever do for Santa Claus on his birthday?

My nephew has HDADD - High Definition Attention Deficit Disorder. He can barely pay attention but when he does it’s unbelievably clear.

So I’ve been emailing my answering machine which has been sending faxes to my cellular subconscious which has call waiting so in case I’m thinking about something else I can get back to myself later.

…my mind is skipping around and I’m wondering how my life would have been different had I been born one day earlier and then I’m thinking maybe it wouldn’t have been different other than I would have asked that question yesterday.

I’m addicted to placebos. I could quit but it wouldn’t matter.

A friend of mine has a trophy wife but apparently it wasn’t first place.

So I’m driving down the highway and there’s a guy hitchhiking, he’s holding a sign that says heaven. So I hit him.

Here’s an interview with Steven Wright.

This was kinda funny.

2007-12-13T08:59:00.000-06:00

The Weekly Standard did a parody of part of Romney's speech.

My Dad was on CNN

2007-12-12T16:32:00.000-06:00

Check it out here.

London Layover

2007-12-11T20:56:00.000-06:00

I am going to Doha Qatar for Christmas to visit my parents. I fly back on Saturday December 29, with a fairly long layover in London. I land in Heathrow at 6:30am and take off at 5:00 that night. I have been to London before on a layover, and saw Big Ben and Buckingham Palace.

So my question to everyone who has been to London: what should I do with the little bit of time I have? I would like to make it back to the airport with two hours to spare.

Three examples of the rhetoric of religious identity in national politics: Smoot, Kennedy, and Romney.

2007-12-08T10:24:00.000-06:00

Here's an interesting comparison and contrast. Three speeches addressed to similar concerns about how a candidate's religion will color his reception in the national political arena.

The first was given by Reed Smoot (Utahn Senator, LDS Apostle, and forerunner of Wilford Brimley, famous walrus impersonator) on the floor of the Senate in 1907. Several Senators had opposed Smoot sitting in the Senate charging that his religious obligations disqualified him from performing his civic obligations in the Senate. The speech is reprinted, with some background and commentary, in the Spring 2007 Issue of Utah Historical Quarterly (Click here for online version). The article starts on page 100, and the speech on 105.

The second is the famous JFK Speech given in 1960 to convince protestant ministers that his religious obligations would not interfere with his civic obligations as president. You can read, listen to, or watch the speech at NPR.

The third is the Romney speech given Wednesday to convince GOP voters in Iowa that his membership in the Mormon church does not disqualify him from being a good Republican candidate for President. I put up video and links to text and audio here on this blog the other day.

This being the middle of the finals cram, I'm not going to post an extensive exposition of my thoughts. But I find the similarities and differences interesting. What do the readers think?

The Romney Speech: A Rhetorical Comment

2007-12-07T10:29:00.000-06:00

There's been considerable hype about Romney's speech yesterday and over whether it was successful. The speech, entitled with a not-so-clever pun, "Faith in America," was billed as the "JFK Speech" where Romney would finally address his religion the way JFK did in the 60s by reassuring WASPS that he wouldn't turn America into a Papal State. But there are differences between JFK and Romney and their respective situations that make the comparison a bit misleading.

First, Kennedy and Romney are addressing different audiences. Kennedy gave his speech weeks before the general election and was speaking to America as a whole.

Romney's audience is a bit more complicated. His speech was given weeks before the primaries begin, and is addressed to GOP voters---specifically, GOP voters in Iowa. On the other hand, it was also nationally televised and predictably pounced on by the national punditry, so he had a bigger indirect audience.

Secondly, Kennedy and Romney are addressing different concerns. This is partially a function of the first difference. With Kennedy the fear was that he would answer to the Pope. This was relatively easy to disarm. He simply disavowed that he would make Rome a decision-maker. With Romney also, some fear that he will answer to Salt Lake, but for most, there is also the more amorphous fear is that he is not truly Christian, and that he is part of a weird cult. This seems to matter to GOP voters in Iowa (hence, Huckabee's success). This is harder to disarm. He could just disavow Mormonism, but that's not really an option if he has any devotion or integrity. So he has to either (1) make Mormonism acceptable to the Christian conservatives in the heartland, or (2) convince them that Mormonism doesn't matter.

To evaluate whether Romney was successful, we need to have answer three questions:

what exactly was his goal in giving the speech?
how well did he achieve that goal? and
are there unintended consequences that undermine that achievement?

I.
Romney's goal, it seems to me, is simply to convince voters that the fact that he is a Mormon is not a valid reason to vote against him. Some of the TV pundits suggested last night that his purpose in giving the speech was to "address his Mormonism" as though he intended to give an exposition of the faith, and criticized him for not doing so. That approach misunderstands the concerns Romney is trying to address and the viability of the different ways to address them. They seem to assume that Romney would have attempted to make Mormonism seem palatable and rational to evangelical Christians. That is probably not possible at all, and certainly not possible in the available forum. His goal cannot be to make Mormonism acceptable, and his faith and integrity do not allow him to disavow it, so the only reasonable goal is to articulate convincingly why Mormonism simply does not matter.

II.
So did he do it? Did he convincingly articulate why it should not matter to GOP voters in the heartland (mostly evangelical Christians) that he is a Mormon? I say yes, he did about the best job anyone could do. However, the question that remains is whether the evangelical Christian GOP voters will buy it.

He spends a lot of the speech doing the normal flag waving and laudatory patriotism, and makes the requisite hagiographic references to the so-called greatest generation, and the founding fathers, but there is a section early in the middle of the speech where he really gets into the meat of addressing his goal.

"They would prefer it if I would simply distance myself from my religion, say that it is more a tradition than my personal conviction, or disavow one or another of its precepts. That I will not do. I believe in my Mormon faith and I endeavor to live by it. My faith is the faith of my fathers - I will be true to them and to my beliefs.

Some believe that such a confession of my faith will sink my candidacy. If they are right, so be it. But I think they underestimate the American people. Americans do not respect believers of convenience. Americans tire of those who would jettison their beliefs, even to gain the world."

A couple of strengths to note here. First, he makes his religious commitment clear. This is an improvement over the past where he has sometimes seemed uncomfortable about his religion. Building integrity is almost always helpful. Second, he makes a nice rhetorical move in heading off those who wish he would not be committed to Mormonism. With the "they underestimate the American People" phrase he is not only praising the goodness and greatness of Americans' religious tolerance, he is also implicitly saying that if you don't agree to be tolerant, you don't live up to being a real American. I thought this was effective.

He then goes on to elaborate on the American virtue of religious tolerance. Specifically, he expands its application, and challenges those who don't think tolerance extends to accepting cultish religions.

"Each religion has its own unique doctrines and history. These are not bases for criticism but rather a test of our tolerance. Religious tolerance would be a shallow principle indeed if it were reserved only for faiths with which we agree."

Framing his Mormonism as a test of the tolerance (and therefore the American-ness) of his critics was a well-played rhetorical move. And then he articulated a constitutional standard to back up the tradition of religious tolerance he had already alluded to:

"There are some who would have a presidential candidate describe and explain his church's distinctive doctrines. To do so would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution."

This has the virtue of grounding tradition in text, for any legalistically minded listeners. The appeal of a text is also important to evangelicals who subscribe to "sola scriptura" inerrancy. It also has the added bonus of an appeal to the founders, which is always an important trope in political rhetoric, and one that is particularly useful with GOP voters who tend to be originalists.

Then he illustrated the principle of religious tolerance with this nice little "it's-a-small-world-after-all" survey of religions.

"And in every faith I have come to know, there are features I wish were in my own: I love the profound ceremony of the Catholic Mass, the approachability of God in the prayers of the Evangelicals, the tenderness of spirit among the Pentecostals, the confident independence of the Lutherans, the ancient traditions of the Jews, unchanged through the ages, and the commitment to frequent prayer of the Muslims."

But you can't tell evangelical GOP voters that faith doesn't matter altogether. So after tearing down the notion that a candidate's subscription to evangelical Christianity should be some kind of litmus test, he then had to build some kind of shared faith to stand in it's place. He did so by appealing to the "shared values" trope.

"These American values, this great moral heritage, is shared and lived in my religion as it is in yours. I was taught in my home to honor God and love my neighbor. I saw my father march with Martin Luther King. I saw my parents provide compassionate care to others, in personal ways to people nearby, and in just as consequential ways in leading national volunteer movements. I am moved by the Lord's words: 'For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: naked, and ye clothed me...'"

The shared values idea has a long and venerable history in the GOP that extends from the time that protestant denominations banded together to fight the "twin relics of barbarism" to the time they now welcome Catholics in their crusade against gay marriage and abortion rights.

While I might quibble with Romney's choice of words in a few places, overall I think he did a good job. He was articulate, smart, laudatory, and (unsurprisingly) polished. Whether the audience bought it is something that will have to be determined by upcoming polls, but I think he stated the case as compellingly as anyone could have.

III.
Are there unintended consequences? A few possibilities come to mind. First, while Romney did mention the venerability of the separation of church and state, he also spent most of the speech extolling religious virtues and asserting their place in the public sphere. This could alienate any potential atheists or agnostics. However, remembering Romney's audience, this is not a surprising choice. Secularists on the whole tend to be the sort that would be unlikely to vote for Romney even if he were an atheist himself simply because of his politics, so he has very little to gain by accommodating them, and potentially much to lose.

Second, quoting Matthew 25:35 and alluding his father marching with Martin Luther King is a great appeal to the social conscience. But the social conscience is generally (though not exclusively) a thing of the left in this country. This is not to say that Republicans can't appreciate civil rights, only that Romney saying these things almost makes him sound like a democrat. This could remind some GOP hardliners of his father's embarrassing (to them) opposition to the Vietnam War. But he also worked in the religious angle to the social conscience, which is going to be hard for Christians to deny. It may also help him with the more moderate national audience that may have tuned in.

The bottom line: I think it was a good speech---way better than the admittedly low standard the current President has set. And while I still have policy concerns about Romney, it is nice to see him stand up to the religiously intolerant wing of the GOP and call them on the un-American-ness and hypocrisy of that attitude. I wonder if this is what he would be like all the time if were being his own moderate self rather than trying so hard to be a conservative. After all, this is a guy who won an election in Mass.

The Speech

2007-12-06T12:51:00.000-06:00

Here's the video that Romney's campaign put up on his website.

George Herbert Walker Bush gives an introduction. Romney starts talking around 2:55. It's about 20 min.

Here's the text. There's also a link to audio on the same page. The NPR audio is way better quality than the audio on the video.

Gun control?(!)

2007-12-06T09:36:00.001-06:00

About two weeks ago, the Supreme Court granted certiorari to decide District of Columbia v. Heller. Heller is a Second Amendment challenge to D.C.'s gun law, which prohibits handguns within the district (with an exception for retired police officers) and requires that long guns be kept either secured with a trigger lock or dissembled.

This challenge to the 32-year old D.C. gun law was initially rejected by the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia in 2004. In March of last year, however, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the District Court's decision. See Parker v. District of Columbia. That it is now before the Supreme Court is significant because the Court has addressed the Second Amendment head-on only once---and that was almost 7 decades ago.

In Miller v. U.S., a prohibition-era case, a bootlegger was prosecuted for taking an unregistered sawed-off double-barreled 12-gauge shotgun across state lines, which was a violation of federal law. The bootlegger, Miller, argued that the federal law was an unconstitutional restriction of his right to keep and bear arms. The Supreme Court rejected Miller's Second Amendment challenge, holding that he had failed to prove that his "possession or use" of a sawed-off double-barreled 12-gauge shotgun had "some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia."

The Miller court did not hold that one has to be a member of a state militia to lay claim on the Second Amendment. However, it did say that that the "possession or use" of a firearm has to be reasonably related to the militia in order to be protected by the Second Amendment. Under Miller, the question is whether the possession or use of handguns in the District of Columbia is in some way related to a well-regulated militia.

Curiously, though, the D.C. Circuit refused to approach the issue under the Miller holding. Instead, it asked whether the Amendment protects the individual right to have guns, or the collective right to bear arms. This individual vs. collective question had been a point of controversy among law professors and academics, and the historical and linguistic evidence is pretty evenly stacked on either hand. But the odd thing is that Judge Silberman and my old Stake President could have avoided taking sides in the controversy if they would have just asked the question presented under Miller.

Why did they do this? They could have just said that owning handguns in D.C. is related to the militia and ended it there. Instead, they spent the time and effort to take sides in the whole individual/collective debate. Why? My best guess is that it is ideologically driven (though probably completely sincere). The D.C. Circuit is a conservative court and it is popular among conservatives to support gun rights. See, for example, Mitt Romney's recently having joined the NRA become a life-long hunter. The current ideologically orthodox position for conservatives seems to be the individual rights position. In 2001, for example, John Ashcroft wrote a memorandum changing the official position of the department of Justice from the collective rights to the individual rights view. The memo is appended to the government's brief in Haney v. U.S..

I think it was wrong for the D.C. Circuit to address the question the way it did rather than stick with the Miller precedent. But what I think is irrelevant, now, because the case is before Johnny and the Supremes and they don't have the same obligation to respect precedent that lower courts have. Not much is known about the individual Justices' views on the Second Amendment, but the speculation is that this relatively conservative Court will approve what the D.C. Circuit did. So it will be interesting to see how it all goes.

The Eats Sheet: Turkey Mulligatawny

2007-12-05T12:28:00.001-06:00

KRAMER: Oh, a hot bowl of Mulligatawny would hit the spot.

ELAINE: Mulligatawny?

KRAMER: Yeah, it's an Indian soup. Simmered to perfection by one of the great soup artisans in the modern era.

ELAINE: Oh. Who, the Soup Nazi?

KRAMER: He's not a Nazi. He just happens to be a little eccentric. You know, most geniuses are.

. . .

ELAINE: Yeah, that's right. I got 'em all. Cold cucumber, corn and crab chowder, mulligatawny.

SOUP NAZI: Mulliga...tawny?

Like many people, my first exposure to Mulligatawny was in this classic Seinfeld episode. It turns out that Mulligatawny is a creative but quite appropriate solution to the early December Thanksgiving leftovers dilemma. Rather than eating increasingly dried out turkey breast in sandwiches, try a pot of this with a few cups of leftover turkey breast.

1. Put 6 tbs of butter in a stock pot over medium heat.

2. Chop the following veggies and sauté them until the onions are translucent.

One and a half white or yellow onions.
4 carrots
4 celery stalks
2 cloves of garlic

3. Add 2 tbs curry powder to the veggies and continue to cook for another few minutes.

4. Add 1 cup long-grain rice and 8 cups of turkey or chicken stock. I used stock that I made from the turkey and froze. Increase heat to high until it boils, then reduce to medium and simmer 20 minutes or until the rice is cooked.

5. Add 2 cups plain (not vanilla) yogurt, 4 cups chopped leftover turkey, season with salt and pepper, and simmer 10 minutes.

6. Season with a few shakes of paprika and garnish with sprigs of fresh cilantro or parsley.

You and your racist friend.

2007-11-30T09:17:00.000-06:00

In case anyone read the hate crimes posts and wasn't all that familiar with Nat Turner, here's a pretty decent documentary bit that explains part of his slave rebellion. The segment also details some of the most pernicious, insidious, disgusting, and just plain evil misuse of the scriptures that corrupted southern Christianity has ever produced.

I'm reminded that J. Golden Kimball once quipped, while serving as President of the southern states mission, that "the only way to redeem the south is burn it all up and baptize for the dead."

All roads lead to me

2007-11-30T08:47:00.000-06:00

Periodically, especially when some helium-handed moron is trying to sound smart in class and I decide to ignore him, I find it interesting to browse the search terms that people have entered to get to my blog. Here is a random sampling of the latest ones.

"bear bating"
"nautical themes tmbg"
"what are interesting things about windmills?"
"disney movie enchanted purple dress at ball"
"dairy store, kirkland"
"he lays in the reins" "into the wild"
"stackable milk jug"
"costco milk"
"non canonized scripture"
"mormon apostles paintings"
"Cormack MCarthy"
"amy adams, costume design, purple dress"
"spiritual blacksmith"

It's funny that some of my most read posts are the ones I put very little effort into. Like, for example, that half-facetious rant about the stupid costco milk jug. It also looks like several people had some kind of interest in what I had to say about the costume design in "Enchanted."

I have no idea what a spiritual blacksmith is, but it sounds kind of cool. It kind of reminds me of Joseph Smith's "welding link" image from the letter he wrote to the church in 1842, out of hiding, about baptism for the dead (parts of which are reflected in Doctrine and Covenants 128). But I don't think I've ever blogged about that (until now).

The Eats Sheet: Pumpkin Pie Ice Cream

2007-11-29T08:01:00.000-06:00

My penchant for ice cream resurfaced over the Thanksgiving break. While C was making pumpkin pie, I figured this would be a natural choice.

It was a pretty easy concoction: two cans pumpkin, one can sweetened condensed milk, 2/3 cup brown sugar, and a few teaspoons of nutmeg, ginger, and cinnamon. This went in with a double recipe of my normal ice cream base (5 egg yolks, 1 cup sugar, 2 cups milk, all heated until just before boiling, and then chilled and added to 1 quart heavy cream).

It's so much better than the storebought pumpkin ice cream. And seasonally appropriate, to boot. The only problem is that it doesn't go so well with hot fudge. Caramel isn't bad, I suppose, but I think it's best alone or with whipped cream.

Hate Crimes, cont'd.

2007-11-28T08:37:00.000-06:00

A follow-up from yesterday's post:

It turns out there's basically no way the vandalism I referred to yesterday could be a hate crime under federal law. It might be a hate crime under Alabama state law, but I doubt it.

I.
The federal hate crime law, found in Title 18, Section 245 of the U. S. Code, requires that the crime be committed "against a person," because of "race, color, religion, or national origin," and that it interferes with the victim taking part in one of the listed activities that range from attending schools to serving on juries, to eating in a public restaurant.

This particular instance of vandalism was not directed at "a person," but at a statue, so it fails right there, unless a court bought the argument that it somehow interfered with the right of white people to enjoy looking at confederate statues. Even then, visiting a war memorial is not one of the protected activities listed in the statute.

Earlier this year, however, the house passed a bill, H.R. 1952, that would include gender, sexual orientation, and disability as protected classes, and would eliminate the requirement that the victim be engaged in a protected activity. In September, the Senate passed it's version, S. 1105, as an amendment to a Defense Reauthorization Bill. However, the White House opposes the bill, and President Bush has said that he will veto the Defense Bill if it comes with the hate crimes legislation attached.

If the President does not veto, the vandalism would come closer to qualifying under the new version of the hate crimes law because it would not have to interfere with a protected activity. However, it would still have to be directed against "a person," which would be nigh impossible to argue convincingly. Bottom line: no federal hate crime.

II.
Under Alabama state law, though, I'm not sure what the answer would be. Alabama appears to have a hate crime law against "institutional vandalism," but I don't know the details. (And with finals coming I'm not going to take the time to research it.) I assume that this is a response to "cross burning" and other defacement on black churches.

Speculating that the institution referred to would probably have to be an institution representative of some protected class, and assuming that the memorial is state-owned, I think it would be at best an uphill battle to convince a court that the state is an institution that distinctly represents white people. If the memorial is owned by the United Daughters of the Confederacy or some other such group, it might be a better argument, but you would still have to prove that it was motivated by racial hatred against whites rather than some other motivation like admiration for a historical "freedom fighter," opposition to the death penalty, or just a highly developed sense of historical irony.

Is this a "hate crime"?

2007-11-27T07:39:00.000-06:00

Recently I came across this over at Civil War Memory

Some of you are no doubt aware of the story out of Montgomery, Alabama surrounding the vandalizing of a Confederate statue. Last week the faces of Confederate soldiers were painted black with "N.T. 11 11 31" spray painted in reference to the anniversary of Nat Turner's insurrection execution in Southampton County, Virginia.

I understand that this offended some southerners, but I think it's pretty funny. First, I love irony, and the irony is fantastic. Second, the fact that southerners are offended, I confess, means very little to me. I am an unapologetic Yankee.

Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center calls the vandalism "very objectionable," but asserts that unless it had included the message "Kill Whitey" or some equivalent, it cannot be a hate crime because it does not target an entire race (or ethnicity, or faith, etc.).

On the flip side, the Alabama Division of the Sons of the Confederacy is offering a thousand dollar bounty for the "arrest and conviction of the perpetrators" (so if somebody turns them in but they get acquitted does that mean he doesn't get his money?) and calling for investigation as a hate crime (though I'm not sure how calling it a hate crime would affect the investigation). And Pat Goodwin, of the United Daughters of the Confederacy (isn't it ironic that they have a permutation of the word "Union" in their name?) says the following: "This speaks loudly to me as a white person that whoever defaced this monument must hate all whites by honoring Nat Turner, who slaughtered innocent white children by decapitating them in 1831." Congratulations, Ms. Goodwin, you just won the non-sequitur award of the 2007.

Regardless of Goodwin's unfortunate lack of a grasp on logic, is there an argument that the defacement is the functional equivalent of a "kill whitey"-type statement? Could Nat Turner occupy such a place in the common memory that honoring him is an endorsement of racial hatred? Or are Turner's actions just insignificant in the face of the ongoing societal brutality of slavery? Was it worse for Nat Turner to kill innocent whites than for the heroes of the Confederacy to kill innocents of both races to defend their right to enslave innocent blacks? Or does American historical amnesia pretty much just foreclose any assertion about the common memory anyway?

What say ye? Hate crime or creative historical hooliganism?

Just in case you haven't made up your mind yet...

2007-11-27T07:15:00.000-06:00

If you happen to be: (1) a Republican, (2) not apathetic enough that you actually are going to vote in the primaries, and (3) heretofore undecided who you're voting for, Chuck Norris might help you decide who is really the best candidate.

Cinematographicus: "Enchanted" (2007)

2007-11-26T06:38:00.001-06:00

"Enchanted" is a story about fairy tale characters popping up out of a manhole in Times Square. This movie teaches us several important truths:
1. A lawyer always beats a prince.
2. Never trust a bumbling manservant.
3. Susan Sarandon is an evil dragon-witch.

The story begins with Giselle, a beautiful peasant girl who lives in the magical Kingdom of Andalasia, a saccharine world of gloriously flat animation (real animation, not CGI) where she spends her days singing arpeggios to summon woodland friends of all species to help her perform important household tasks such as cleaning, sewing, and swooning over her imaginary true love. One day she meets Edward the Prince (who is neither black nor of Wales) and they decide on sight to get married the next day. Unfortunately, that land is ruled by Edward's wicked stepmother who won't allow the marriage because it will take away her crown.

So The evil queen, Narissa, turns herself into a old hag and pushes Giselle down a magic wishing well that drops her underneath a manhole in Times square, which is in the live action world. Giselle waits for Edward to rescue her and meets a handsome lawyer, Robert, with a 6-year-old daughter, Morgan, who loves princesses. Eventually Edward figures out how to jump down the well and with his bumbling manservant (secretly in league with Queen Narissa) sets off after Giselle.

Enchanted's first and most obvious strength is its good-natured spoofing of the stereotypes of the Disney pantheon. Giselle is an amalgam of Aurora with hints of Ariel and Snow White. Narissa is a recast of Maleficent with a dash of Ursula thrown in. Prince Edward is a more airheaded version of Prince Philip, while his bumbling manservant, Nathaniel, is a more British, less French version of Gaston's bumbling sidekick, Lefou.

The film opens playing the satire note hard. Giselle's incongruity with New York gets the most emphasis. Her constant breaking into song, her clueless naivete, and her wide-eyed faith in true love are cast in stark relief to New York to point out and poke fun at these perennial staples of Disney stories. The satire hits a sublime high note of absurdity when Giselle sings her arpeggios to summon pigeons, rats, mice, and cockroaches to help her tidy up in a brilliant spoof on "Whistle while You Work." Amy Adams pulls it off so well, that you are almost convinced that roaches and rats are just as friendly as the animated chipmunks and rabbits. Just as the musical number finishes up, a pigeon suddenly eats one of the roaches in a hilarious reminder that this is New York, not Anadalasia.

After this strongly ironic opening, however, the satire takes a back seat and the love story begins playing the lead. While Giselle walks through Central park she begins giving love advice to Robert in song. She is joined by a passing calypso band and a few other street musicians, and eventually everyone in the park gets into the act, with a large scale song-and-dance number. The number is reminiscent of "The Little Mermaid" with it's Caribbean beat, but the hilarity of rats and roaches is missing it is almost a little too straightforward. The irony is almost not there.

This shift in irony leads NYT's Manohla Dargis to conclude that the film "disappoints." I disagree. While the satire was hilarious and spectacularly pulled off, to keep it up at that pace would have ultimately been unsustainable. Unless, perhaps, you have Eric Idle working on the script, a spoof can only work as long as it follows the main outline of the story it spoofs. Dargis' conclusion is also founded, I think, on a misunderstanding of the film's intended audience. While it is tempting to see this as a satire for adults, let's not forget that this is a Disney movie about a princess, and that one of the main protagonists is 6-year-old girl.

Another strength is that "Enchanted" is well-cast. Amy Adams steals the show with her completely and unbelievably straight-faced performance as Giselle. But only slightly less impressive is James Marsden in an almost Cary Elwes-esque performance as Prince Edward. Marsden is probably most well known for playing Cyclops in the X-Men movies, but he also notably played John Wilkes Booth, the original model/actor in "Zoolander" (2001). Both Adams and Marsden manage the difficult task of acting a part that drips with irony without giving the slightest hint that the character is anything but 100% sincere (like Marsden's line: "I don't know what melodramatic is."). Second rate heartthrob Patrick Dempsey does passably as Robert. Susan Sarandon is a convincing witch and pulls the role off well, other than a poorly executed tongue movement. I think it was supposed to be a serpentine flitting, a foreshadow of her later transformation into a dragon, but it came across more like a canine tail wag in her mouth.

The costuming was for the most part well-done. Particularly nice were the impossibly huge shoulders on both Giselle's improbably big wedding dress and Edward's gored princely tunic. This highlighted the ridiculousness of these characters. The floppiness of Nathaniel's baggy renaissance garb played well, and Sarandon was Maleficent in live action.

But it was marred by one almost fatal costuming flaw. Toward the end of the movie Giselle needs a dress to go the ball but she cannot find a fairy godmother, so she and Morgan go shopping. At this point, you're set up to see a flawlessly arrayed Giselle looking at the top of her game. Instead, costume designer Mona May delivers a purple crepe-looking thing stretched unflatteringly across Adams' bust line, with a too-long 80s era silver necklace and her hair looking flat both physically and chromatically. The point, I suppose, was to make a contrast with her earlier fairy-tale attire, and to show that she does fit in after all in New York. But the hair flattening was an unfortunate decision that largely stripped Giselle of her whimsical character. And the purple was likewise an unfortunate middle-shade, neither light enough to be pretty nor dark enough to be striking. An ivory, champagne, brown, or even black dress would have clashed less with her light-red hair.

My only other complaint is that there were moments toward the end when Narissa's constant explicit pointing out that this plot is a twist on the normal Disney story grows tedious. Yes, this is a twist, and yes, the whole point of the film is to make a witty meta-fictitious spoof, but wit loses its cleverness when it is made too obvious. It's like having to explain the punch line.

So "Enchanted" is not without blemish, but still, it is worth seeing, if for nothing else, for Adams' and Marsdens' straight-faced irony.

I love this painting.

2007-11-20T13:13:00.001-06:00

It is called "Doubting Thomas," and was painted by a young artist named Ben Steele. I found it on Anneke Majors' latest post on AMV. It captures my attitude toward Thomas Kinkade perfectly. I used to be ambivalent about Thomas Kinkade. He was just something that I would walk past in the mall. He was the Sunglass Hut of the trailer park art world---Obnoxious, overpriced, and of poor quality, but easily ignored. But then this painting of the Twin Towers changed my mind.

Now I really dislike him. What is this flagpole actually affixed to, anyway? A bouy? And thanks for reminding us that the New York Skyline has an empty space now, because that wasn't obvious or repeated ad nauseum for several years after 9/11. To be fair, Kinkade is hardly the only one, but he's a representative of that element of our society that plays off of tragedy and loss to sell it's low-brow kitsch. And in the process of profiteering from tragedy, it encourages pride rather than patriotism---a clannish, self-righteous, priestly sort of pride.

But his art itself, regardless of his profiteering, reminds me also of Greg Olsen. I dislike Olsen's painting a fair bit less than Kinkade's---perhaps because Olsen seems, for some reason, to be more sincere. His art is kitschy and artificial, and he uses religious channels to market it (which annoys me, but is probably a subject for another post), but at least he doesn't have an army of minions who churn it out to give it the false appearance of hand-painted-ness, and another army of minions who market it in those mall kiosks. And at least he hasn't given himself such a presumptuous moniker as the self-dubbed "painter of light."

But back to Steele's visual indictment of Kinkade. I love the way the figure in the painting is extending his finger, like the ancient apostle. But instead of a confirmation of faith, this one is a confirmation that his doubts are justified. I also love the way the other guy is pulling his hand away, as if to say, "just let it go." I'm not sure if these guys are supposed to be renaissance masters or apostles, but the aura of authority and ancient wisdom is there either way. I also love the way the background is drab and dour, but more complex and interesting than the storybook land of artificial light inside the frame. Your eye goes not to the horrifically glowing cottage, but to the triumvirate of ancient heads. Very cool.

Cinematographicus: "Superman Returns" (2006)

2007-11-16T10:57:00.000-06:00

I bought the special edition DVD of "Superman Returns" shortly after it was released, but was never quite in the mood to watch the movie for a while, even though the only time I'd seen it was on its opening night in theaters. After moving to the DC area recently, I had an itch to watch it again, but decided to hold off a bit longer in order to do the film justice. You see, my new roommate had recently done some army time in Korea, and had a 40+" HD flat screen on the way. It arrived two days ago. I broke it in last night. So beautiful.

Any movie that involves grand-scale action scenes and threats deserves to be viewed in such a way. In fact, doing this made me realize something: "Superman Returns" really isn't as boring as most people seem to think. I heartily disagree with the myriad of complaints I find online whining that the movie was a dud.

First of all, you have to view this film with the understanding that it's somewhat a continuation of "Superman: The Movie" and "Superman II" (the Richard Donner cut?). I use the word "somewhat" because there are possible inconsistencies between the films that are given vaguely-implied explanations -- the biggest one being that Lois Lane has been raising a child she had conceived with Superman.

(Spoilers ahead for those who haven't seen the first two films!) In "Superman II," Lois Lane finds out that Clark Kent and Superman are one and the same. After realizing this, Clark throws caution into the wind, swoops Lois away to the Fortress of Solitude, and makes superlove to her on a bed lined with space blankets (because, of course, Kryptonians were actually a race survived by cheap hookers -- perhaps a better explanation for the planet's downfall). In the original cut of the film, near the end Clark realizes that the pressure of dating Superman is too much for Lois to bear. To relieve her of her stress, he performs a "superkiss" that erases her memory of the past few days' worth of events, so she now has no recollection of Clark and Kal-El being the same person. In the Richard Donner cut, a similar end is met when Superman repeats the time-reversing performance of spinning the Earth backwards on its axis. Granted, both of these endings are ridiculous in nature (spinning the Earth backwards would simply wreak havoc with its gravitational pull and tear it apart, and a "superkiss" that erases memories is not one of Superman's powers in any other incarnation of the character), but at least the latter is consistent with the ending of the first film and deletes a stupid superpower, though encourages false ideas about physics and time travel.

Back to "Superman Returns," apparently Lois recalls having slept with Superman, but how could this be, unless we assume that they hooked back up after the events of "Superman II" had ended, without her ever learning again that he is Clark Kent? And by making her forget everything, does that classify the lusty field trip to the Antarctic as date rape? Did Jor-El teach his son how to give Earth women a super-roofie? In any case, there could be a little better bridging of the gaps in this regard.

But the relationship to the first two films establishes much of the tone of this film, and the continuation of said tone is pulled of majestically. Brandon Routh's Superman may not look or sound EXACTLY like Christopher Reeve's, but he did a better job than any of the big-name celebrities I could think of. His Clark Kent is almost dead-on the same as Reeve's.

Gene Hackman's Lex Luthor was a criminal genius with a twisted sense of humor that he couldn't help but evoke in every diabolical plan he outlined to everyone he came in contact with. Kevin Spacey's version of the same character is a fitting tribute to Hackman's. Spacey does an incredible job of making you believe that he IS Hackman's Luthor, not just another spin of it. And Parker Posey is the perfect, ditsy companion for Lex.

Lois Lane, however, is a different story. Margot Kidder played the first love interest to Supes, and while she did a great job of portraying the gutsy, independent, won't-take-no-for-an-answer reporter, her sex appeal wasn't as great as one would perhaps imagine for Lois. Kate Bosworth, the new version, arguably has the sex appeal (despite the ominous, barren wasteland she calls a forehead) , but, for the most part, lacks in making you believe that she could hold her own in a fist fight with Raquel Welch. It would have been great to find the happier medium of these two takes on the damsel in distress.

The story's pacing is right on target with regards to the pacing of its prequels, as well. Watching "Superman: The Movie," you really don't get blown away by the action scenes too much. It really focuses more on the characters and describing the life of an alien trying to find his place in a planet where he can't openly be himself. "Returns" continues in this tradition, bringing this struggle to a sort of conclusion as Superman finds company in the realization of his offspring.

And resurrecting Marlon Brando's Jor-El? Genius. Nobody else can measure up to Brando's performance of this character, and this is probably the strongest tie to the original movies. I get chills up and down my spine every time his voice is heard in this movie.

Aside from what's already been mentioned, there are four major aspects of the film that make me want to stand up and cheer when I watch this: 1) The best opening credit sequence perhaps to ever be made, complete with spectacular space images and huge respect given to the original film; 2) An incredible soundtrack that implements much of John William's original scores and themes, while updating the movement of the works a little bit in a natural progression from its predecessor; 3) Breath-taking landscapes and colorfully-rich views of the sky, Earth from various levels in the atmosphere, and Metropolis at night; 4) A heart-racing scene where Superman stops a 777 jet from crashing into a professional baseball stadium during a sold-out game, a scene which caused me to applaud and cheer out loud in my own living room (and, as I recall, it led the entire audience I saw it with on opening night to follow suit).

The film really is a masterpiece in every respect, and does great work with characterization. I also appreciated that Lois was dating another man, but we weren't dragged through a cliche routine of the boyfriend being the flaky, jealous type who makes us want her to get back with the protagonist even more. No, Lois's beau is actually a decently admirable man whose character rivals that of Clark's.

It took a little bit of work to get over the fact that Superman fornicated in the continuity of the movies (I know Superman isn't exactly a Mormon, but he is widely referred to, in the comics, as the "Boy Scout" - a character who is squeaky-clean with the highest standards you could find in a man), but once I was able to deal with the films as more of a "what if?" scenario for the Superman character, I was able to more-readily accept the possibility of Superman having a bastard child and unwittingly becoming a dead-beat dad. But what still gets me is how ugly the kid is. Doesn't Lois care if her son looks like a schmuck? I suppose the casting director is really to blame in the end, though, for casting a child who made me want to turn away from the screen whenever he appeared.

It was also interesting me to realize that, in the end of the film, Superman really only had one scene where he interacted with his intellectual adversary, Luthor. I suppose this is in keeping with the original film, but I wonder if most of the viewing audiences out there sub-consciously had problems with the fact that the protagonist, for the most part, wasn't directly confronting the villain.

When all is said and done, I give this film a hearty two thumbs up. I think I would LOVE to see a modern take on Superman going head-to-head with other super-powered beings, but for now I feel like re-establishing the connection between Superman and his surroundings, especially his arch-nemesis was rightfully given priority in this film. The next one will build more on brute strength and awe-inspiring, god-like capabilities.

Until then, oh wicked generation, get over your short attention spans and revel in a film that brings back a classic American icon in a very fitting way.

In defense of praying for humility

2007-11-12T06:29:00.000-06:00

So there's a proverb in the church, sometimes tongue-in-cheek, sometimes not, that says that you should not pray for humility because then you might get it. I remember missionaries in the MTC and in the mission field who would repeat this without any sense of irony at all as though they actually believed it. Yesterday it was repeated over the pulpit.

I have a problem with that.

It reminds me of Augustine's prayer (Give me chastity, but not yet!). It's a rather selfish attitude, really. It's an attitude of fear, fear of being humbled. But what if what you really need is humility? Then you shouldn't pray for it because being humbled might be hard? Doesn't all repentance have the same potential to be hard? If I pray for charity, what's to say that I won't have to go through something difficult to learn charity? Why is a plea for humility any more susceptible to hard answers than a plea for any other trait of a Christian life? What if pride is the reason I have a hard time learning charity? Should I then not pray for charity because I might have to be humbled to get it?

And it takes a odd view about what it means to be humbled. It assumes that being compelled to be humble is something that will only happen to you if you pray for it. That ignores reality. Most people in the world live lives that make our North American lifestyle look like the height of luxury. Alma said this:

it is because that ye are cast out, that ye are despised of your brethren because of your exceeding poverty, that ye are brought to a lowliness of heart; for ye are necessarily brought to be humble. And now, because ye are compelled to be humble blessed are ye; for a man sometimes, if he is compelled to be humble, seeketh repentance; and now surely, whosoever repenteth shall find mercy; and he that findeth mercy and endureth to the end the same shall be saved. (Alma 32:12-13)

I find it interesting that Alma uses the word necessarily, like it was some incontrovertible decree. Is it likely that the people Alma was talking to had asked to be humbled? Some of them, maybe, but not all. (See verse 25). It happened to them anyway. Do we really think that the majority of the world's population that lives in "exceeding poverty" got where they are because they made the dumb mistake of praying for humility? How arrogant is it to think that not asking for humility is going to stop anyone from being "necessarily brought to be humble"?

Compulsion to humility is not a bad thing. Why do we talk about it like it is? Alma calls it a blessing. Why in the world would be ever tell anyone not to seek repentance? But isn't that essentially what we do when we repeat the maxim: don't pray for humility?

But telling someone not to pray for humility goes beyond just being afraid of being compelled to be humble. It actually increases the need to be compelled to be humble. Alma also said this:

And now, as I said unto you, that because ye were compelled to be humble ye were blessed, do ye not suppose that they are more blessed who truly humble themselves because of the word? Yea, he that truly humbleth himself, and repenteth of his sins, and endureth to the end, the same shall be blessed—yea, much more blessed than they who are compelled to be humble because of their exceeding poverty. Therefore, blessed are they who humble themselves without being compelled to be humble. (Alma 32:14-15)

What does it mean to humble oneself? If it is done sincerely, isn't a prayer for humility an act of humbling oneself? If so, then doesn't refusing to pray for humility actually make me more likely to have to be compelled to be humble? Not only is it selfish, it is ultimately self-defeating. It brings on the very consequences it sulkily seeks to avoid.

And given the interrelation between humility and charity, teaching that we should not pray for humility runs the risk of directly naysaying one of the most sublime injunctions of the Christian life:

pray unto the Father with all the energy of heart, that ye may be filled with this love, which he hath bestowed upon all who are true followers of his Son, Jesus Christ; that ye may become the sons of God; that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is; that we may have this hope; that we may be purified even as he is pure. (Moroni 7:48)

Those of use who claim to understand and believe the Book of Mormon should be the last people to breathe a discouraging word about praying for humility.

Changes to non-canonized scripture

2007-11-09T07:33:00.001-06:00

The Salt Lake Tribune and the Deseret News are reporting an interesting change in the introduction to the Book of Mormon. The introduction to the Book of Mormon, which formerly called the Lamanites "the principal ancestors of the American Indians" will in future editions refer to the Lamanites as merely "among the ancestors of the American Indians." The speculation, which seems accurate, is that this change is a response to recent DNA studies that place the principal ancestors of the Native Americans in Siberia.

The current edition of the Book of Mormon was completed in 1981 (with its introduction, footnotes, cross references, index, and various textual corrections). See here for background. The introduction was most likely written by a committee, though there are still stories floating around that Bruce R. McConkie did it single-handedly.

Whoever wrote the introduction, it does not purport to be revealed and it has never been officially accepted into the LDS canon. It is probably true, however, that the 1981 introduction's explanation of Native American origins accurately reflects what most members of the Church thought about. The fact that the church is making this editorial change without presenting it to the church for a sustaining vote confirms that the introduction was never canon and can be freely changed. The Book of Mormon itself makes no claims about Native American ancestry.

At any rate, my opinion is that this is a good (though fairly insignificant) change for at least two reasons.First, it demonstrates that the Church is willing to accept the validity of scientific research and to reconsider traditional assumptions. Second, it illustrates that interpretations of the scriptures, even an interpretation written and published by the church, are not absolute. Understanding this fact devolves more responsibility on the individual to understand the scriptures through study and prayer rather than take someone else's word for it.

In which our intrepid hero belies his own snootiness

2007-11-08T12:43:00.000-06:00

So today while my Wills and Trusts professor amplified on the minutia of Mark Rothko's estate, I quickly but gradually and almost imperceptibly slipped into my own thoughts. Thoughts became dreams and soon I was on the verge of sleeping. You know Rothko, he was the one who painted all the squares and rectangles. Anyway, realizing that I had to do something to stay awake, I began browsing the NY Times online. I ended up, as I often do, at the "Dining and Wine" page (though half of it is Greek to me).

After learning about an interesting and potentially tasty but not so original way to make a burger, I found and loved this article, "Tonight, Patronizing Language. Enjoy". Being a lover of both food (gastrophile, for you lovers of latinate construction) and direct plain English (and a disparager of euphemism, circumdiction, and false eloquence), I was immediately intrigued. The article pokes fun at the peculiar language of servers, and how it creates a patronizing and presumptuous air. In particular, it observes how odd it is that nothing is eaten, but rather everything is "enjoyed." The author does a decent job of pointing out these foibles. He calls for more direct, frank form of address, calling a spoon a spoon and calling eating eating. He doesn't like all the presumption and the pretension:

Restaurantspeak dusts off hoary courtesies, as when a server asks if “the madam would enjoy a glass of white wine with her branzino.” That always sets my neck to swiveling. Did Sydney Biddle Barrows sit down and join us?

Be he completely undercuts his ethos of egalitarian frankness when he ends his piece with these lines:

I wonder if a waiter who served me recently at an haute Chinese restaurant is paid by the joyful syllable. There was no end to what he wanted me and my companions to enjoy: the fried lobster, the braised pork belly, hot air. In regard to the last, he admonished us for recoiling from a bamboo steamer that was cooking baby vegetables in front of us.

“While the steam is rising,” he said, “you can enjoy the aroma.”

Or I can wait until tomorrow for my facial, and get it in an honest-to-goodness spa. That I might enjoy.

He's just an everyday guy, right? A plain man who prefers plain speech, a guy like everyone else. Then he reminds you that he's a fancy Manhattan restaurant critic who gets facials at a spa. And does so often enough that it is natural for him to daydream wistfully about it when he grows weary of the wait staff at "an haute Chinese restaurant."

And that is funny.

The Eats Sheet: Mulled Cider

2007-11-07T08:37:00.000-06:00

Per Cabeza's request:

Hot apple cider is a wonderful thing this time of year. Mulled cider is even better.

Mulled cider is a descendant or perhaps a cousin of an older drink called wassail. Modern wassail is almost indistinguishable from mulled cider, but originally it was a beer or ale laced with citrus and other spices. The name wassail comes from Old English and Old Norse phrases meaning "be thou hale" and used as a greeting or a toast. It was enjoyed at Christmas, New Year's and Twelfth Night. It appears to have perhaps come from a Roman drink called calda which was a sort of diluted spiced wine traditionally enjoyed in the winter at Saturnalia festivals.

But whatever origins, mulled cider is a fantastic thing. Mulling cider should not be overly formulaic or prescriptive. It should be organic and should be able to respond to whatever whimsy happens to pass by at the moment. The general idea is to infuse cider (there's also mulled wine, but I've never tried it) with the flavor of some complementary spices, and usually, a sweetener is added.

The basic flavors are the spices associated with the holidays: cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and allspice. Other variations include cardamom, cranberry, anise, or some kind of citrus peel, usually orange. You get better and more pungent flavor from fresh whole spices as opposed to dried ground spices. Whole spices can also be more easily removed after their flavor has infused the cider. This can be an advantage because the ground spices tend to collect at the bottom of the mug as dregs. Folks sometimes use a teabag or a tea ball to counter the dregs effect, but I like to just run it through a fine mesh sieve. That way you still get some of the spices floating in there to give some texture, but you get rid of most of the bitter dregs. There are also commercial mulling spice mixes available, and some come in teabags, which are convenient.

The sweetener can be any sweetener. White sugar works, but is kind of bland. Brown sugar is a nice complement to the spices. Honey is mild but rich, and it is what I usually use. Molasses or a molasses/corn syrup mixture would give a deeper, richer hue to the flavor, but I've never tried it. I suppose melted caramel is another possibility, but I've never tried that either. My new and so far untested idea is to use maple syrup. Maple trees and apple trees are kindred autumnal images in my mind, and I think their flavors would also work well together.

So much for the basics. The method is pretty straightforward. You put it all together in a saucepan or a big pot and turn the heat on to high. You don't want it to boil because that can scorch the flavors, so watch it closely and just when it starts to steam, turn the heat down to low and let it steam like that for 20 minutes or so. It won't hurt it to go longer, and the longer it goes the stronger the flavors, but 20 minutes is usually sufficient.

A word about ratios: I usually do about 1/2 teaspoon each of ground allspice and grated nutmeg, eight whole cloves, and 2 cinnamon sticks to 4 cups cider and 4 tablespoons of honey. You can play with the ratios to emphasize the flavors you like better.

If you want to get fancy you can garnish it with a spiral of orange peel or cinnamon sticks as stir sticks. And you can top it with a dollop of butter or whipped cream, but I prefer mine straight. It is a great thing this time of year and at least through Christmas.

Things I have lately enjoyed.

2007-11-07T06:31:00.000-06:00

1. New jeans
2. Old wool sweaters
3. A juicy, savory slab of meatloaf
4. The prose of Bleak House
5. Candy that was for the trick or treaters that didn't come
6. In utero kicks
7. Brisk mornings
8. Mulled cider
9. Not teaching legal writing this week
10. Macaroni and cheese made from scratch

The best Joseph

2007-11-06T06:58:00.000-06:00

Followers of Mormon film are aware of the difficulty of casting and playing the role of Joseph Smith, the prophet. It is somewhat similar to Richard Bushman's dilemma in writing a Joseph Smith biography. (See the preface to Rough Stone Rolling.) No matter what you do with the role, someone will be disappointed. The zealously faithful will complain that it wasn't laudatory enough. The cynics and skeptics will claim that it's too hagiographic. If you split the difference, everyone will complain that it is boring and stale.

Fortunately, the church has gotten better at casting the prophet's role over the years. I think it's safe to say that the recent (within the last two years or so) film is probably the best church-produced Joseph Smith picture and Nate did the best job of playing Joseph.

Part of the problem in playing Joseph Smith is that the man is a bundle of paradox. You have to be a mystic, but you have to be a down-to-earth Yankee and a frontier mayor. You have to be a visionary, but also a wrestler. You have to be a radical and also a man of power. It can seem schizophrenic. Mormons who play the prophet are even more keenly afflicted by the paradox, even if they are not conscious of it. The result can be paralyzing. Another problem is that for us Mormons, there is often so much emotion involved that you can easily get an over-the-top beyond Kenneth Branaugh-style portrayal---so emotionally charged that it borders on manipulative.

Non-LDS actors fare a bit better. Paradoxically, because they don't have the intimate personal experience with Joseph's legacy that Mormons do, they are not bound by the awful burden of trying to portray revelation---which no tongue can tell---on screen.

Oddly enough, my opinion is that the best Joseph Smith on the screen was Vincent Price in the 1940 picture Brigham Young. What I like about Price's acting is that he is otherworldly and mystic (this is Vincent Price, after all), but in a subtle and guileless, and natural way. He doesn't use overmuch emotion. He keeps it cool and collected, but not spookily so. He also portrays the friendship that Joseph had with his friends. Mormon Joseph's too often have had some kind of sacred distance between them and the rest of the cast that gets in the way. (Although more recently, this is better).

And a few years back there was the rumor that Richard Dutcher was going to bill Val Kilmer in his treatment of the prophet's life. Who knows how that would have gone. I'm inclined to think he'd do okay with it, but I think his performance would be more physical. I'm not convinced of his ability to really capture the charisma, though.

But if I could pick someone that would have played Joseph well but never did, I would have to pick Gene Wilder. Yes, yes, I know, that sounds absurd. But hear me out. Think of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Maybe this is just because when I was young I saw an awful portrayal of Joseph Smith in a very low-budget 1970s-era BYU student production. At the end of the film, a dead Josph Smith appears to Brigham Young in vision wearing, of all things, a purple tuxedo. Maybe it was this association between Joseph Smith and purple tuxedos that makes me think Gene Wilder would do a good job.

But think of Wilder's Willy Wonka. A man full of secrets, a man who loves children, values loyalty, a man who loves creativity. A visionary man who creates whole worlds in his factory. And think of Joseph Smith, a man who likewise revealed worlds, a man who loved to innovate, and who, like Willy Wonka, envisioned sending the fruits of his visions to bring joy to the whole world.

The chocolate factory itself (at least in the version Wilder appears in) is in some ways like the temple. You can't get in without a golden ticket (though, of course, the qualifications for getting one are just a little different from the temple recommend). Once inside you can't go anywhere unless directed. You are essentially taken on a journey by your guide through different worlds. There is a sin, some forbidden thing is taken, and it is only through admitting guilt and accepting responsibility that reconciliation with the creator can be achieved.

Yes, of course, that's a strained analogy. And yes, of course, I'm being half facetious. But when I say that Gene Wilder would have been a good Joseph Smith, I'm only half joking. I think he could have done it.

The heat is on.

2007-11-05T15:31:00.000-06:00

After holding out until the fourth of November, we finally gave in and turned on our heat. It was a brisk 60 degrees in our brick apartment (we live in a former railroad freighthouse) yesterday. I made mulled cider, which helped, but sitting under a blanket with cold noses, we surrendered. I walked across the room and threw the switch.

The low hum began after a minute or two. In five, our noses had thawed.

And it's a good thing we turned it on, because today is a grey day with many clouds, many gusts, and few sunbeams. There have been snowflakes also. But not the friendly ones that come in happy blanketing hoards---these are the solitary ones, beaten and driven before a merciless wind, dashed against the brick and stone, shattered into microscopic dust. Their hard fragments, too small to see, fall to rest without a eulogy among the scattering remnants of leaves. Only the wind whines out a doleful dirge.

Nights that follow a day like this one call for more mulled cider. And the lights must be kept on. And candles, too. Draw the curtains tight, speak not of evil things. Smear the lamb's blood thick upon the door.

Cinematographicus: "Young Frankenstein" (1974)

2007-11-01T11:58:00.000-06:00

The only Halloween tradition that I have consistently observed over the last few years is to watch Mel Brook's 1974 film, "Young Frankenstein." I was first exposed to Young Frankenstein during an English class at BYU. We were reading Mary Shelley's novel and Nick Mason was trying to make the point that it is really quite different from the Holloywood version embedded in our cultural memory. Specifically, he wanted us to see that the famed "It is a-live!" scene was not conceived by Shelley. But since he couldn't find a copy of the 1931 Universal Studios picture starring Boris Karloff, Nick had us watch the scene from "Young Frankenstein."

That scene is a great parody of the 1931 Frankenstein picture. But Young Frankenstein is more than parody. It's tribute-parody. Pure farcical parody is characteristic of later Brooks films (such as "Space Balls" and "Robin Hood: Men in Tights"), but this one, co-written with the inimitable Gene Wilder, goes beyond parody in recreating the mood and technical elements of previous Frankenstein films. Prodigious fog and the intermittent thunder clap set the mood. Technically, the film is a bona-fide period piece. It is shot entirely in black and white, it opens with the credits, it has a period score, and it uses elements like the iris fade. The set for the "Give my creation life scene" is actually the same set that was created for the 1931 picture.

In that scene particularly, Wilder captures the archetypal mad scientist like no one else can. With his characteristic frizzed out mane, and moustache, the protruding goggles, the white lab coat, and his maniacal verbal outbursts, he is at once convincing and hilarious.

But Wilder's performance isn't just as good as the mad scientist. He also has some classic slapstick moments. The scalpel in the leg gag is executed perfectly. No matter how many times I watch it, I never tire of the way he deftly maneuvers the tool in his fingers while shouting indignantly that his insane grandfather was not a real scientist. Just before the monster goes berserk onstage, the backstage view of Wilder furiously dancing with his cane and tails and saying to the monster "come on, are you trying to make me to look like a fool?!" is comedic brilliance.

The rest of the cast includes a few notables. Elizabeth, Fredrick Frankenstein's fiancee is flawlessly played by the great Madeline Kahn. An unrecognizably bearded Gene Hackman appears as an old lonely hermit. Marty Feldman's physical and verbal wackiness are indispensable to the film. The monster is Peter Boyle, otherwise known as the Dad from "Everybody Loves Raymond." Of course, Brooks appears in a cameo.

Young Frankenstein is the kind of film that makes slapstick silliness a high art. Wilder makes Fredrick Frankenstein a character that you simultaneously laugh at and identify with. That takes talent. One thing that Young Frankenstein does well is the lost art of the creative insult. Most insults these days are predictable strings of four-letter words. Wilder's exclamation, "Open the door or I'll kick your rotten heads in!" is a much more vivid, striking, effective image than the standard Bruce Willis "I'll kick your @$$." But it isn't so vulgar as to be distasteful, like Stanley Kubrick's Sargeant Hartman for example. Unfortunately, you don't see that kind of writing much anymore.

This is one tradition I'll stick to.

Cinematographicus: "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" (1954)

2007-10-31T14:13:00.000-06:00

It is with utmost sincerity that I ask, "What the heck?" every time someone tells me that "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" is their favorite musical of all time. In fact, I was at a party last Sunday when I heard a girl state this opinion, to which I retorted, "How many musicals have you SEEN?"

I'm sorry -- this is a decent movie, but by no means does it outshine "Guys and Dolls" (1955), "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" (1967), "Newsies" (1992), "White Chrismas," (1954), or any of a number of many other musicals that have been produced! Honestly, has the person who rates this film so high been exposed to any other forms of non-contemporary movie pop culture? Holy Moses. Sometimes I feel like I'm part of a truly wicked and perverse generation.

For those few of us who aren't familiar with the plot, it begins with the Brawny man, mustachioed and flannelized, on the lookout for a woman to marry with no notice. Immediately the male audience is sucked in, for who doesn't want to find a hottie who can cook, clean, milk a cow, AND blindly jump into marriage with a total stranger, cutting through all the headache and confusion of courtship? Mr. Brawny sings "Bless Your Beautiful Hide," perhaps the greatest song in the entire movie, which never really lives up to this moment music-wise, though it makes a few valiant attempts. After finding and marrying the Swiss Miss girl, the Brawnies head out to the woods to live, because what is the most rational thing to do when a scruffy strangers asks you to marry him and go to the mountains with you?

The new Mrs. Brawny is in for a surprise when she finds that her husband has six not-quite-as-burly brothers living with him, and she's supposed to feed and clean up after them all. Sexual frustration being piqued by a woman's introduction to their testosterone farm, they all decide to get themselves hitched, but only after they learn how to closet their burly ways in a group effort to guise themselves as gentlemen.

They collectively come back out of the closet about thirty minutes later (after an impressive scene - in which they win the attention of six women who serve no purpose than to be sex objects for the men - that involves some sincerely-amazing acrobatics and choreography), when they find themselves putting on a ballet for each other while desperately gripping their axes - symbolic of their frustrated attempts at being real men as they weakly chop at trees made of rubber.

This depressing - yet unintenionally-hilarious - number is a result of another no-brainer: the seven brothers decided to go into town and kidnap their six women because, heck, it worked with the Romans' Sabine women. In their defense, Mr. Brawny sang a very entertaining, toe-tapping number that made the whole plan sound simply delightful even to ME, detailing the entire plight of the Romans. Really, it's another great music number that's very convincing. Unfortunately, however, they discover that there's something called a "culture gap" that comes from a couple millenia's difference in time and half a globe's distance, which had them at the disadvantage. They were rejected and chastized by the ladies, and to make matters worse -- there was an avalanche that is preventing the women from being able to leave and the township from being able to rescue their daughters from six men who by now must surely have nothing decent left in their intentions.

I won't spoil the ending for you, but let's just say that there is a mass wedding involving angry fathers and shotguns. The image only confirms suspicions raised by the ballet number.

So why, you ask, am I not as thrilled by this movie as most of my peers seem to be? Is it the low production quality that involves painted backdrops and plastic foliage in every scene as opposed to real settings? Is it the objectifying of women, which apparently goes over the head of the ladies I know (yes, I know the women stand up to the men, but they are nonetheless objects to be gained, and it's made clear that despite the horrible actions of the brothers, they are still open to falling in love with them; plus, the movie is told almost entirely from the point of view of the men, because they are the psyche we need to relate with, according to the filmmakers)? Or is it just the fact that I hate that people expose themselves to so little of what's good in the film world and gloat that they've found the best that's out there (summing up the pop-culture opinion of my generation in general)?

Gee, I just can't place my finger on it. I like the movie, and I would own it if I found it for the right price, but it's so much slower and not as finely-produced as SO many other musicals out there. Please, if you're going to find yourself a favorite musical, do some research before settling on this one.

The next time I want to rant on a similar subject, I will be discussing the highly overrated "Singing in the Rain" (1952).

The Eats Sheet: Championship Chili

2007-10-30T14:16:00.000-06:00

This week I gloat. I decided to accept a job offer at an employment law firm representing employees. I'll start part time sometime after the new year, and then full time next summer. I was also offered a spot on the Law School's four-member Jessup International Law Moot Court Competition team. This means that I get to go to a regional competition (maybe in Chicago) and hopefully a national competition (in D.C.). It also means that I have to go through intense research crap for the next three weeks to write (with my partner) a 60-page brief which is due before next semester. So much for Christmas vacation. Sigh.

But most importantly, I gloat because I am now the reigning champion of the Cedar Lake Ward Halloween Party Chili Cook-off. My chili was a modified combination of Cabeza's chili recipe and the Dinosaur BBQ recipe, with some of my own variations. It took two days (really a day and a half) to build, and it blew away the competition. There were three categories: best presentation, spiciest, and best overall chili. I won the third.

Not only am I a great culinary, I am also magnanimous. So I blush not to share my winning blueprint with the world. It follows:

1. I started with 3 pounds of steak cut into bite-sized pieces. I sprinkled these generously with cajun seasoning, black pepper, and some garlic powder and salt. I let them sit to soak in the flavor.

2. I browned the meat in oil in a cast-iron skillet and transferred it to a big soup pot.

3. I put one-and-a-half chopped onions and one-and-a-half chopped green bell peppers into the grease left in the skillet, ground on some black pepper, and sprinkled them with salt. When they were cooked, I added them to the pot.

4. I added to the pot these ingredients:

one-and-one-third cup of beef stock
one-and-one-third cup of chicken stock
one-third cup V8
one small can tomato paste
three cans of stewed tomatoes, drained
two cans red beans and one can pinto beans, drained and rinsed well (sorry, Cabeza)
four tablespoons chili powder
one tablespoon cajun seasoning
one tablespoon paprika
two teaspoons powdered chipotle
two teaspoons cumin
two teaspoons oregano
one stick of cinnamon
3 bay leaves
one-third cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (or, I bet a few squares of dark chocolate would be good)
2 teaspoons crushed rosemary

4. Then I covered the pot, put it in the fridge, and went to bed.

5. The next day, I put the pot on the stove and turned the burner on to medium. As soon as the chili started to bubble, I turned the heat down to low and let it simmer.

6. After about 20-30 minutes of simmering, I fished out the cinnamon and let it continue to simmer for another three hours.

7. Just before it was time to serve, I put a heavy grid-iron on the stove, set the burner on high, and got it smoking hot. I put a few jalapenos on it, and grilled them until they had the nice black grill lines and blistered skin. Then I seeded them, chopped them up, and put them in a serving bowl as a garnish.

The bishopric, the primary president, the relief society president, and the Elders' Quorum president judged the chili. I knew it was a lock when I saw the bishopric go straight to my pot after the judging was done and the chili was open for pot-luck.

The winner for presentation was a regular chili in a regular crock pot, but with three brightly colored peppers floating on top. The spiciest winner was fairly mild, I thought. It was a ground turkey based chili. In my opinion, the salient strengths of my chili are 1) meat quality, and 2) the earthy mole-esque flavor of chocolate and cinnamon. The cinnamon and chocolate can be overdone, though. You don't want it to taste like Big Red or like chocolate. It's a deep, subtle undertone that you're going for.

I also have an idea about how I can win presentation next year, but I'm not putting that one on the web.

Where have all the ghost stories gone?

2007-10-29T14:56:00.000-06:00

I don't really get that into Halloween. Carving pumpkins is fun, and trick or treating is okay for little kids. But I really hate giving candy to the adolescents who show up at my door having put minimal effort into a "costume" consisting of a hoodie and a mask they bought at Spencer's.

And I hate spook houses. Nothing but a cheap trick designed to get girls to grab onto guys who lack the guts to actually make a move. The same goes for horror films---a genre which these days has degenerated into one of two things: 1) a boring, not-scary, not-suspenseful blood fest, or 2) uncreative occult creepiness. It has been many years since we had a horror film that stood on its own two feet for suspense. The common practice now is to use gore or satanism as a crutch for scariness.

But it was not always so. There used to be ghost stories. Most of the great scary stories are folktales too old for authorship. Look at the Brothers Grimm (the real brothers, not that filmic abomoination)---their collection of Germanic folktales isn't all princesses and fairies. In fact, those fairy tales go more to the gothic and the sublime than the picturesque. Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle, a classic spook tale, drew heavily on this Germanic legacy. So also did Lord Byron when he proposed a ghost-story-telling contest to his guests one dreary Genevan summer. That challenge spawned both the Frankenstein and the Vampire traditions---now Halloween staples. These stories create fantastic worlds of supernatural mystery that ooze the essence of the gothic and the sublime. They are a far cry from the contemporary blood-soaked and gore-splattered plotless excuses that make their perennial appearance on HBO.

But before it devolved into that, there was a golden age of horror film. The Wolfman, the Mummy, Frankenstein's monster, and Count Dracula were the golden boys of that golden age. Those films struck a perfect balance between spooky and fun---just spooky enough to make your skin crawl, but not so violent or evil that you feel sick. Most importantly, they had characters and plots. And they had their stars as well. Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi stood astride the narrow world as two legs of the great campy colossus that was the horror genre. Vincent Price wasn't far behind.

Aside from also redefining the music video genre, Michael Jackson's Thriller is also a great tribute to that golden age. Watch the video. It's chock-full of the landmarks of camp: the 50's dress, the convertible, the misty night, the frightened girl, and Jackson's agonized transformation into a were-wolf (although if you ask me, it looks more like a were-cat, which is odd, but somehow fitting). If you pay attention in Thriller, you see Vincent Price's name on the marquee outside the theatre. And yes, that is Vincent Price doing the spoken word incantation that brings the zombies out to dance.

Thriller is a nice tribute. But my favorite is the granddaddy of Halloween horror spoofs, Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein. Ghostbusters is of course genius, but can that count as a Halloween flic? I'm not so sure. The gothic darkness of Batman jives well with Halloween, I suppose, but I think its safe to say that the Bat fits more squarely in the superhero genre than the Halloween pile. I suppose the two Halloween greats of the 1990s were Interview with the Vampire and Blair Witch, but neither one takes my breath away.

So what are the best Halloween movies of all time? What was the last Halloween movie that wasn't a plotless slasher?

Euterpeos: The Shepard's Dog

2007-10-29T01:20:00.000-06:00

There's something primal about Sam Beam's music. And when I say primal, I mean old---not wild, feral, and uncouth, but some ancient thing that wells up from a deep historical and cultural well. It's the same feeling you get from the theophanies of the blues and the supernatural, superstitious spiritualism of the Southern Gothic (as expressed, for example, in Flannery O'Connor).

My exposure to Iron & Wine is admittedly limited. I heard his first album, Our Endless Numbered Days, a few years ago in college. I thought it was good, but kind of forgettable. The music had some interesting harmonies, but his breathy voice was a little too John Mayer to make me like him. But a year or so later I heard "He Lays in the Reins." I just had to respect the way Beam had combined the machismo of the vocals of Mexican ranchero ballads and the twang of an electric slide guitar with a lulling, cascading rhythm. This was music as expansive as the landscape of the American west, but without all the sell-out sentimental jingoism and emotional manipulation of modern country music. That takes talent.

Then last month I read Susan M's review of The Shepard's Dog over at Kulturblog. I was convinced. I bought The Shepard's Dog the weekend we moved, and have been meaning since then to do a write-up. Finally, now that oral arguments are done, I'm getting around to it.

The Shepard's Dog is easily Sam Beam's best album to date. It is certainly the most ambitious and the most musically complex. Beam lays down layer upon genre-straddling layer of rhythm, melody, and counter-melody. The music has an almost symphonic quality to it. And he uses a wide variety of instrumentation drawn from several traditions to keep it interesting. With jumping rock-folk rhythms and more expansive vocal back-ups, the music rocks enough that Beam's breathy voice doesn't bother me in this album---less John Mayer, more Dan Fogelberg.

"Lovesong of the Buzzard," for example, starts with a syncopated hand percussion line entwined with a simple acoustic guitar strum. Vocal melody comes in, and is joined by harmony. Then a cheery Van Morrison/Janis-Joplin style organ comes in and slowly grows in volume and complexity. Then the acoustic guitar part picks up and gets rocking. Thats when the accordion arpeggios start. That's right: accordion arpeggios. The tracks ends with a little nautical-sounding accordion part that is joined briefly by a western electric slide guitar and then breaks down into chaotic electronic noise.

The album opens with one of my favorite tracks: "Pagan Angel and a Borrowed Car." If King Lear had had a theme song this would be it. It begins with a steady acoustic guitar rhythm, develops with some Celtic-inspired slow-drawn fiddle, more complex acoustic guitar parts, and otherwordly vocal harmonies, and then climaxes with some high piano twiddling. The different parts work together and jam like an Appalachian jug band transported into some heather-crowned Celtic highland. You gotta love these lines:

I was still a beggar shaking out my stolen coat
among the angry cemetery leaves
when they caught the king beneath the borrowed car,
righteous, drunk, and fumbling for the royal keys

But even though Beam draws heavily on folk roots, it's not all fiddle and gut-bucket. This album also nods to celtic, reggae, electronic, Indian, country, and other traditions, but it plants its roots squarely in rock and roll soil. The second track, "White Tooth Man," opens with sitars and sounds like a late Beatles tune. The tenth track, "The Devil Never Sleeps" is a joyful old-time rock and roll tune. With its snippets of honky-tonk-esque piano and its 12-string/electric guitar duets, it sounds like an early Beatles tune. And the last track, "Flightless Bird, American Mouth," is a waltz ballad picked out on acoustic guitar with accordion and electric guitar accents and almost Righteous Brothers-esque vocals. The title track has a reggae beat, but combines it with a groaning 12-string and a Janis Joplin style organ part. "Peace Beneath the City" gives you sitars with wah-wah electric guitar, a deep background cello drone. A Theremin makes a ghostly appearance.

"Ressurection Fern" is perhaps the simplest song on this album. An single acoustic strum and a shaker holds up the tune, supported only minimally by electric slide accents. This song is a mystery to me because it reminds me of country music but doesn't make me want to stab lead pencils through my eardrums. Even C likes it, and she hates country even more than I do.

Another substantial strength of The Shepard's Dog is that Beam is enough of a poet that he matches his interesting sounds with equally interesting images. Just as the sitars in "White Tooth Man" echo the sound of late Beatles, that track's lyrics mirror the imagery of songs like Eleanor Rigby. Beam's line, "the postman cried while reading the mail and we all got trampled in the Christmas parade" reminds me of "Father Mackenzie, writing the words to a sermon that no one will hear." The Shepard's Dog is fraught with images of rural America, religion, and nature. It deals with themes that range from violence to innocence to consumerism, but does so through images rather than polemics. As a result, the poetry is subtle, unobstrusive, and memorable.

This is an album worth having.

Arguing Orally

2007-10-24T08:23:00.000-05:00

I had Oral Arguments last night for International Moot Court, otherwise known as fake ICJ. It went fine. I wasn't too nervous, until I actually sat down and listened to my opponent start. Then I started getting the knot in the stomach that gets tighter and tighter until you feel sick. Other than a bit of dry mouth, though, I felt much better when I started arguing. Overall it went well. I'll find out Friday if I made the competition team.

I have to say, though, that my proudest moments were not the logical and legal points I proved, but the classical and biblical allusions I made. Having strong legal and factual arguments is essential, but they can be so dry.

I.
It is customary for an advocate to make some theme statement at the beginning of argument. Usually, it's something like "this is a case about the rule of law" or some other such boring and forgettable legal principle. My theme was an allusion to Aesop. I told the judges that "this is a case about political sour grapes." The judges liked that.

II.
At one point during my opponent's argument, one of the judges asked him if he was not trying to have it both ways. When I argued, I recalled that colloquy and told the judges that my opponent was "taking a rather Janus-faced position." One judge didn't like that because it was obscure and distracting. Two judges loved it because it was original.

III.
Then, pointing out another logical inconsistency in my opponent's argument, I said to the judges "after straining at such technical legal gnats, I don't know how the opposing side can then expect the court to swallow such blatant factual camels." This one made my teacher almost laugh.

I guess it shows I was an English major that I'm prouder of my allusions than my legal analysis.

The Eats Sheet: Chicken Stock

2007-10-23T12:21:00.000-05:00

What's the difference between decent chicken soup and really good chicken soup? The stock.

Now, normally, when I want a quick bowl of chicken soup I throw a couple of bullion cubes into boiling water for the stock. But recently, I discovered a much tastier, and less salty way.

C likes to roast a chicken periodically. We'll eat the drumsticks et al. with mashed potatoes Thanksgiving Turkey style and then make a variety of dishes with the leftover meat. Favorites include chicken noodle soup, chicken salad, and white chili. This last time, we decided we would roast a chicken Sunday night and make white chili on Monday. White chili is a great dish that consists of a base of chicken stock either with or without thickener, chopped and/or shredded chicken meat (usually breast), celery, onions, white and black pepper, white beans, some jalapeno or anaheim peppers, and whatever other spices. You top it with cheese, tortilla chips, and cilantro. It's not chili for a chili purist, but its a dang good meal.

So to make white chili, I decided this time to get some of the really good flavor by making a stock from the bones and skin rather than just use the chicken-flavored salt we call bullion. Here's what you do.

1. Roast a chicken.

2. While the chicken is resting, put the roasting pan over medium heat and pour in two cups of hot water. Scrape up all the brown bits and juices from the bottom of the roasting pan and bring it to a boil, continuing to stir and scrape.

3. After about 15 minutes, pour the roasting pan juices into a soup pot.

4. Carve and eat the chicken.

5. Put the bones and skin and any meat that you don't want to eat into the stock pot. Throw in a few sticks of celery, a quartered onion, a couple of carrots, and a few cloves of garlic. Add 2 quarts of water and season with salt, black pepper, parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. Add any of your other favorite spices.

6. Bring it to a boil and let it boil for 10-15 minutes. Skim off any obvious fat or foam. Then reduce the heat to low and let it simmer for 2-3 hours.

7. Turn off the heat and pick out the bones. Line a colander with cheese cloth if you have it. Put the colander over a bowl and pour it all through. Fold the cheese cloth over the veggies and stuff left in the colander and press down on them to release the flavor.

8. Let it cool and skim off any obvious fat.

This stock makes any soup that much better. It's way better than canned chicken stock and way way better than bullion. It's a much more complex, robust flavor. You'll find that you don't need to season your soups as much. You can keep it in the fridge for maybe a week, or you can freeze it. You can use it in soups, but it also makes a great braising liquid or a substitute for cooking wine.

One nifty idea from the Dinosaur cookbook is to pour some into an ice cube tray, then pop out the frozen chicken stock cubes and keep them in a bag in the freezer. You can add them to sauces for a flavor boost.

An Eats Sheet Double Feature: BBQ Pulled Pork and Pulled Pork Potato Skins

2007-10-22T09:19:00.002-05:00

Saturday I wanted to make pulled pork. Unfortunately, the stores around here apparently stop selling charcoal when the leaves change, and I didn't have enough to keep an all day fire going in the grill. I also couldn't find any hickory chips. We also had errands to run. So I couldn't spend all day tending the grill to smoke a pork butt. So I improvised. It went like this:

1. Take a 4-6 pound pork shoulder and rub it down with olive oil and a red rub. Mine has paprika, powdered chipotles, cumin, oregano, rosemary, garlic powder, onion powder, salt, black pepper, and brown sugar. Let it sit overnight if you can.

2. Get a nice medium fire going in the grill.

3. Sear the pork roast on all sides, just barely.

4. Dump any leftover rub into a crockpot with a half cup of vegetable broth, a few shakes of Tabasco, and a splash of apple cider vinegar.

5. Stick the pork in the crockpot and let it cook on low for 5 hours.

6. Pull it out, shred it with a pair of forks, and heap it into a baking pan. Pour 1-2 cups BBQ sauce over it. Keep it warm in the oven. I had three almost-empty bottles of different sauces in the fridge, so I mixed up some Dinosaur Honey Roasted Garlic Sauce and Wegmans Memphis Sauce with some Jack Daniels Sauce (It's non-alcoholic, but it includes "whiskey flavoring." I don't even know what whiskey tastes like, let alone know what the heck whiskey flavoring might entail. But the sauce is good.)

7. Toast up some rolls. Use the grill if you aren't lazy. I was lazy. Pack the pork into the rolls. Heat up some sauce to serve at the table.

We had it with Cuban black beans and rice, steak fries, and a salad. It was good. But even better, leftover pulled pork opens a multitude of possibilities. Quesadillas, nachos, tamales, or even a breakfast hash are good choices. Sunday night I piled some onto potato skins. It went like this:

1. Scrub clean 6-8 potatoes. Poke 'em with a fork, and wrap 'em with foil.

2. Bake the potatoes 45 minutes to an hour in a 425 degree oven.

3. Pull the potatoes out and slice them in half lengthwise. Use a sharp knife so you don't tear the skins.

4. Carve out the insides of the spuds with a spoon. Leave a quarter-inch shell. Save the insides for mashed potatoes or potato soup or something.

5. Mix up some creole seasoning (paprika, cayenne, garlic, black pepper, oregano, rosemary, onion powder, salt) with some vegetable oil or olive oil. Use a pastry brush to glaze the inside of the potato shells with this oil mixture.

6. Bake the oiled shells 10-15 minutes until the insides have a nice golden color.

7. Fill the shells with green onions, pulled pork, and cheddar cheese (mozzarella, Monterrey jack, or some Mexican queso fresco would also work; or if you're getting all highbrow, some gruyere wouldn't be bad, either). Grind some black pepper on each one and bake them another 5 minutes or so until the cheese melts.

8. Top 'em with sour cream and serve.

We had them with a buttermilk ranch salad. The sweet spice of the BBQ pork mingles well with the saltiness of the potatoes and cheese. The creole seasoning gives it a nice kick, and the sour cream mellows it all out and holds the flavors together. Leftover black beans and rice are a nice accompaniment.

Bullied by Big Milk: Why I oppose Kirkland's new jug

2007-10-09T15:09:00.001-05:00

How could this happen?

The other day we went to Costco to pick up some essentials. We walked past the milk jugs like four times looking for the milk. This is because milk at Costco no longer looks like milk. Apparently, Kirkland (Costco store brand) has redesigned their milk jugs.

I can only assume that it is supposed to increase efficiency. The new shape has a slightly smaller footprint, but more importantly, a flat top so you can stack them more easily on a pallet.

The good part is that it fits a little more easily in the side of the refrigerator. The bad part is that when it's full, it's a little top heavy. And the lid lacks the funnel shaped neck of the old bottles. The lid is also inexplicably bigger. I can't figure why, but I'm sure some physics-savvy soul could explain the efficiency-increasing reason for a bigger lid. The result of all this (top-heaviness, no neck, big opening) is an unwieldy pour. It reminds me of trying to pour from a paint can without the benefit of the little wire handle.

Top-heavy, big mouth, no neck, flat-top: I will call Kirkland's new jug the Biff. Aside from the aforementioned pouring issues, I have other problems with the Biff. The Biff is a sqaure, meat-headed container. It lacks the ample base, and the friendly side-circles of the old jug. The voluptuous curves and the slender neck of the old jug are more befitting a vessel for milk than the sharp, angular lines of the Biff.

The Biff in all its squarishness evokes the outline of a Borg ship. It is a synecdoche of the sinister sense-deadening uniformity and conformity of corporate America. The cost-benefit analysis behind the Biff reveals reckless disregard for the consumer. Yes, the Biff is easy to stack on pallets, but how many consumers buy enough milk that they need to stack Biffs in their refrigerator? And yes, the Biff fits slightly better in the fridge door, but who honestly has a difficult time fitting milk in his fridge? And it is true that the stackable-ness of the Biff probably reduces the cost of a jug of milk by increasing efficiency in shipping.

But at what cost? The consumer has to endure less manageable pouring, which creates waste. Notwithstanding Kirkland's claims to the contrary, the Biff pours worse. With the old jug, you could pick it up and tip it further to an almost horizontal position so that when the milk poured, it fell more or less perpendicular to the side of the jug. But with the Biff, the milk begins to pour earlier, when the jug is still between vertical and 45 degrees. Combined with a large opening, the milk pours in a wide, cumbersome stream. After you pour a glass or moisten your cereal, there is always that tell-tale trickle. The wasted milk oozes down the side of the Biff and where it later solidifies into nasty crustiness. It may soil a countertop, table, or the inside of a fridge. This fosters bacteria and may lead to food poisoning. It must be cleaned. All these costs are borne by the American working man, not by the fat cats in the milk industry.

I oppose the Biff.

Negative space---filled!

2007-10-08T12:47:00.001-05:00

It has been raining almost nonstop in Minneapolis for about two weeks. We get a day here or there with a peek of sunshine and some longer periods with clouded monotony, but it seems to be almost all interminable rain.

Add to that the fact that the temp's been hovering around 80-85 degrees. It's been steamy, and not in a sexy way. It's wrong for October.

On a positive note, I did grill some salmon last night. I did a garlic, black pepper, basil, and oregano rub with olive oil and salt on the fish. We ate it with risotto.

We moved last weekend. It was tiring and stressful. The best part was when our landlady told us Saturday morning that we had to leave Saturday night (this after telling us previously that we couldn't leave until Monday night). But with a few guys recruited from the ward, and some missionaries that showed up at the end, we were all moved into our new place with the bed set up by about 9:30.

So now we have another bedroom. And our ceilings are higher, but they're wooden, which makes it darker, but not too oppressive because of the height. And we have more kitchen space, which is a huge bonus. And we don't have to go up stairs to go home. On the other hand, people on the sidewalk can look right into our windows. But not that many people hang out on the sidewalk near our apartment so it's cool. We get a patio, but since we don't have any patio furniture, my tiny grill looks a little lonely out there.

To fill our new space, and also to have somewhere to put our stuff that was previously stacked up on the floor, we bought some cheap shelves from target and made an ikea run Saturday. Now we have a chrome shelf (I think they call it a microwave cart, but we didn't put the wheels on it) that we put our pots and pans on, a white thing that's like an armoire except really skinny and with shelves instead of a hanger rod and a cabinet on the bottom, two shelves that remind me of orange crates (in a good way), and a really comfy chair. I put them together on Saturday while watching conference over the internet tubes.

We also have a bunch of baby girl clothes. A friend bought us a bunch for C's birthday. Then a lady in the ward gave us a ton of stuff that her boys used to wear. Lots of it is also okay for a girl to wear (like red velvet overalls). She also gave us a swing, a large plastic donut, a crescent shaped pillow, a baby-bouncing thing, a tiny bathtub, a fleece bag to put a kid in before you put the kid in a car seat, a car seat, and a stroller that was kind of sticky. It's nice to have so much free stuff.

Saturday I ate at Fuddrucker's after priesthood. It was good, but it should never cost $6 to eat fries and a chocolate shake. Ahh, Fuddrucker's: the American Eagle to Red Robin's Old Navy.

C wanted some new music to listen to while we packed and unpacked. She got Feist because of the iPod commercial. I told her if she likes Feist she should check out Imogen Heap, so she got Imogen Heap. I got Iron & Wine.

They say baby is going to start recognizing our voices this week.

And if you read all the way to here, thinking I was eventually going to make some insightful comment on all these happenings---sucker!

A poem

2007-09-26T07:24:00.001-05:00

I wrote this one a while back when they were starting the construction to move the railroad tracks to accommodate the new twins stadium. I don't think I like the title, and I'm not really sure where I want to go with it. Any good ideas?

The Maintenance of Progress

Between the tracks, eternal parallel lines
(and all lines, we know, are circles):

To the right, a hobo’s blanket soaking in a puddle—
plaid flannel smeared with grime,
besmirched with mud and corruption,
debased,
limp and defeated under a sky of cold steel.

To the left a sapling, two seasons old—
a thin stem whipped with trans-American winds
dusted with coal particulates,
dogged,
baked under the hardening sun,

and marked with an orange nylon flag,
while orange paint poured out like blood upon the ground
cuts cross-ways in a jagged perpendicular
between clumps of splintered wood.

Sean Penn's "Into the Wild": a summary judgment.

2007-09-24T11:05:00.000-05:00

"Into the Wild" was released last Friday. I watched the trailer for it the other day and really wanted to see it. The cinematography looks beautiful, the story is compelling, and they used a great Iron & Wine and Clexico collaboration (He Lays in the Reins) in the trailer. Because I decided not to see Into the Wild, I suppose you could say this is a review based on the trailer, rather than on the merits.

Into the Wild is one of my favorite books. I remember reading the original article, entitled, "Death of an Innocent" in Outside magazine back in 1993. Krakauer is a gripping writer, and the article combines gumshoe reporting and forensic discovery with the finesse of a novelist and the introspection of an essayist. And even without fine writing the story itself is engaging: authorities find a young man's decaying body in a sleeping bag in an abandoned bus in the Alaskan wilderness---eventually the body is identified as Chris McCandless, a kid from an affluent family in the elite Northeastern establishment, but how McCandless ended up in Alaska remains a mystery, so a writer collects the clues and slowly pieces together Chris' journey across the midwest, west, southwest, and up the coast to Alaska. But Krakauer made the story better with his persistent questioning: not just where? what? who? and how? but more importantly, why?

Krakauer's article was his big break. Soon he expanded the article, delved a little deeper into the introspection, developed it into a full-length book and published it as Into the Wild. Soon after, he published Eiger Dreams, a collection of wilderness essays/memoirs, and short journalistic pieces and then Into thin Air, another book based on an Outside article, (this one about the disastrous 1996 climbing season on Mt. Everest). Krakauer admits that his writing has become obsessed with extremism in one form or another. Most recently, he published, Under the Banner of Heaven, an exploration of the perils of religious extremism using fundamentalist Dan Lafferty as a case study.

And now Sean Penn has made Into the Wild a movie. On the one hand, who can blame him. It's a great adventure story and just begs for a gorgeously shot film to go along with it. But on the other hand, if this review is to be believed, Penn takes great liberties with the facts of McCandless' life to make Chris a one-dimensional tortured anti-establishment hero and excises the introspection and questioning that made Krakauer's study of McCandless great. If this is true, it's disappointing.

I have nothing against taking artistic liberties with the facts as a theoretical principle. Some of Shakespeare's greatest works aren't faithful to history the purport to portray. The Standing on the Promises series is a fantastic work of historical fiction. But these books take artistic liberties to fill negative space in the historical record, rather than rewrite history that is reliably set down. When history is scant, I have no problem with an author filling in the blanks. Too often, though, artistic liberties and "historical fiction" are merely excuses for a failure to write compelling history.

It's one thing to write ahistorical things about ancient English Kings like Lear and Hamlet, or to use the novelist's gift to flesh out the minimally recorded lives of slaves. But using artistic liberty as an excuse to malign the character of living people is egregious. According to the review at Slate, Penn crudely justifies McCandless' disowning his family by inventing out of whole cloth a childhood of abusive memories. In reality, Walt McCandless did not get drunk and beat his wife. Spousal abuse is not among his many faults. Chris cut off all contact with his family because he disapproved of the materialistic way they lived. Their New England elitism didn't jive with his Thoreauvian ethic and his Jack London aesthetic. Their complicity in the environmental and social exploitation of American capitalism offended him. As a result, his rock-hard integrity demanded that he have nothing to do with them.

Whether these are worthy ideals is one question; whether they justify disowning a beloved family is another. Krakauer's book is good because he takes on these questions (and others), grapples with them, and refuses to take the easy way out. My beef with Penn's movie is not that it is too positive, but that it reduces Chris McCandless to a one-dimensional stock hero. Chris was not just a hippie or an emo hero, and his life story should be more than a surfer movie sans surfing. His staunch ethic makes him more like firebrand John Brown than flowerchild Thoreau. And like John Brown, Chris McCandless' is a bundle of contradictions that should make us think about ourselves. It's unfortunate that Penn's hagiographic portrayal hasn't preserved this. I don't think I want to see Into the Wild after all.

Cinematographicus: Rocketman

2007-09-20T11:18:00.000-05:00

I take pride in being a film graduate who isn't afraid to not take the art of filmmaking quite as seriously as the stereotypical, snooty film student. Thus I bring to you my thoughts on a movie I recently watched for the first time in a long time: "Rocketman" (1997).

This is one of those movies that you have to watch while your mom/wife is taking a nap or out running errands, because if they watch this over your shoulder your reputation may suffer some damage. Like "UHF" and the "Bill & Ted" movies, the humor in this one is loaded with slapstick and goofiness that, although clever, is often conceived as a waste of time.

"Rocketman," for those who've never seen it, is sort of a cult-classic Disney movie about a NASA programmer, Fred Randall (played by comedian Harland Williams), who is chosen as an unlikely candidate to replace an injured astronaut on a mission to land on Mars for the first time. Note that this was released three years prior to the over-hyped flops "Mission to Mars" and "Red Planet," and succeeded in telling its story much better.

What I love about "Rocketman" (and movies like it) is that it doesn't try to be anything more than what it is: a goofy movie that exists to showcase the silly physical antics of Harland Williams. Is it shallow? Pretty much. But it isn't very redundant, and its length is just right so that you never wonder when it's going to end.

My only major complaint with the film is that it has a couple scenes where the jokes focus on flatulence, which is the absolute cheapest way to get a laugh. Anytime I'm confronted with a fart joke I just roll my eyes and wait for something original to come around. Yes, it's interesting to think about what would happen if one astronaut passed gas while sharing his space suit's oxygen with his commander, but dragging that moment out for a full three minutes is torture.

But let's face it: the real reason I'm mentioning this movie is for the gems inside it.

My favorite scene involves Fred expressing his feelings of inadequacy at becoming an astronaut, explaining that he compares himself to the Cowardly Lion. He then proceeds to do an amazing impersonation of the Lion, singing "If I Were the King of the Forest." Cracks me up every time. Another great moment is when Fred fails to enter his hyper-sleep chamber and goes crazy after being awake the entire 8-month journey to Mars, resulting in his using the crew's food supply to recreate a version of Michelangelo's "The Creation" on the space shuttle's ceiling. Fred also does a great rendition of Jiminy Cricket's "When You Wish Upon a Star," falsetto-voiced and everything, which is the precise moment in which he wins his female coworker's heart - a scene that is amazingly pulled off!

Other highlights include exclamations such as "Sweet Alaskan asparagus tips!" or "Sweet, swirling onion rings!"

Not the most profound movie in existence, but you know what? It succeeds at what it tries to be: a lighthearted story with a few moments that will make you so glad you sat through the whole thing.

Omphalos

2007-09-18T04:37:00.000-05:00

These are just a few thoughts that have been bouncing around the cavernous recesses of my cranium lately.

The omphalos, or navel, is an archetype. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the center place of the world, whether you place it in Jerusalem, Rome, Cuzco, or Independence, Missouri, is often called the "navel of the world." The navel as a symbol also has special significance in Mormon ritual. Then on Thursday I got to see the umbilical tether of my unborn daughter in an ultrasound image. All this got me thinking, what's so special about the belly button? Why does it seem to inspire such fascination?

I've always thought of the navel simply as a reference to the stomach---nothing more than a convenient mark on the body placed right over the organ associated with digestion and nourishment. But the thing is, the navel itself isn't an organ or a useful appendage---the navel is a scar. It's a leftover, a shadow, a dried up remnant of something that used to be. It's a reminder that the umbilical cord, the source of constant pre-natal nourishment is gone. A reminder that we, quite literally, have been cut off from that source, and that it was bloody and painful. As a scar, the navel is an assertive absence.

This physical, visceral cutting off has at least three spiritual parallels. 1) The pre-mortal life doctrines teach that before birth, we were in God's presence and constantly nourished and that when we are born, we are cut off from that source of pre-mortal spiritual sustenance. 2) Adam and Eve enjoyed God's presence in Eden, but were then cut off in the fall and forced to earn their own food by the sweat of their face. 3) In the Doctrine and Covenants, we read that we as children are innocent, but as we grow and gain knowledge we become accountable and are cut off from God because of sin.

So how does this all relate to the umbilical scar? Usually we think of the Eden story, the pre-mortal story and the story of our individual fall from innocence as a precursor to some greater narrative of reconciliation and reconnection. But with the navel, reconnection doesn't seem to be an option. We sure can't reconnect to a placenta. That would be grotesque and perverse, almost like an old man trying to re-enter his mother's womb to be reborn. With no hope of umbilical renewal, what are we to do?

An infant is cut off, and so she must nurse. She has to work to get her food. It's difficult for both mother and child. But nourishment comes, and when it does, it is given to her freely, (she gets milk without money and without price, so to speak). And despite the necessity of her own sucking efforts, she is still completely dependent on her mother, her source of food. I'm reminded of Julian of Norwich, a 14-century mystic who described the Savior's role as a mother's role. Julian said:

"A mother can give her child milk to suck, but our precious mother, Jesus, can feed us with himself. He does so most courteously and most tenderly, with the Blessed Sacrament, which is the precious food of true life. With all the sweet sacraments he sustains us most mercifully and graciously."

Transubstantiation questions aside, I think Julian's on to something. Maybe the point of the umbilical scar is to remind us that we are cut off, and that therefore we absolutely must rely on the one who gives (new) birth to us. Otherwise, we die. Maybe the point of this scar, a symbol of our separation, is to remind us of the other scars---those in the hands, wrists, feet, and side---that represent our reconnection, or at-one-ment, with God.

Happy Constitution Day

2007-09-17T06:24:00.000-05:00

Today is Constitution Day. Our Constitution turns 220 today. All federally funded schools must commemorate the ratification of the Constitution in some way. According to the "Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2005,’’ Dec. 8,
2004; 118 Stat. 2809, 3344–45 (Section
111), ‘‘each educational institution that receives
Federal funds for a fiscal year shall hold
an educational program on the United
States Constitution on September 17 of
such year for the students served by the
educational institution.’’ If you're wondering if Constitution Day might not be constitutional, look at this to see what one law prof thinks. In honor of this August occasion, here is a nice little list of "constitutional curiosities" put together by a guy that was once my Con Law prof and is now dean at some law school in ol' Kentuck.

CONSTITUTIONAL CURIOSITIES: A TWENTY-ONE QUESTION SCAVENGER HUNT
by Jim Chen

This exercise is intended to make reading the Constitution a little livelier. All answers to the questions below may be had by consulting the text of the United States Constitution.

1. Of which state are you a citizen?

2. Are you eligible for the House of Representatives? The Senate? The Presidency? If not, why not?

3. Bill Dodge, son of two United States citizens, was born in Niger during his parents’ African travels. Ousseini Abdoulaye was born in Niger on the very same day; Ousseini’s parents, however, were citizens of Niger. Ousseini later moves to the United States and becomes a United States citizen. Assume that both Bill and Ousseini are 40 years old and have lived in the United States for at least last 20 years. Is either Bill or Ousseini eligible to serve as President?

4. The original Constitution contemplated the continuation of slavery in those states that permitted slavery as of 1787. Find the first instance of the word “slave” or “slavery” in the Constitution. If you don’t find either of these words in the original Constitution, what are the hints that the original Constitution contemplated and tolerated slavery?

5. Assume that the free population of South Carolina in 1850 was 1 million, that its slave population was 500,000, and that its untaxed Indian population was 100,000. For purposes of determining South Carolina’s representation in the House and direct tax obligations to the federal government, what was the population of South Carolina?

6. The Constitution refers to only three types of unlawful behavior, and a fourth may be inferred from the text of a general prohibition. Name all four.

7. Does the Constitution contemplate capital punishment? Where? Which provision or provisions would you invoke if you wished to attack the constitutionality of the death penalty?

8. What is the only use of the word “right” in the original Constitution?

9. When is Inauguration Day? Is it the same as the first day of a new congressional term?

10. What is the maximum time anyone may serve as Presi-dent?

11. What is the only part of the Constitution that may never be amended?

12. Speaking of amendments, name the commercial activity that the Framers of the Constitution declared off-limits to regulation via constitutional amendment until 1808 (i.e., 21 years after the framing of the original Constitution).

13. Still speaking of amendments, how can they be made? (Name two methods.)

14. José and Maria Nazarena are citizens of El Salvador. They enter the United States illegally. Maria then gives birth to Jesus in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Consulting only the Constitution, name one country of which Jesus is a citizen.

15. In a fit of pique, the President decides to skip this year’s State of the Union address. As White House legal counsel, what do you advise?

16. In a fit of pique (probably provoked by the flap over the State of the Union address), the House begins debating a bill to cut the President’s pay and Supreme Court Justices’ pay. As counsel to the Speaker of the House, what do you advise?

17. Before 1913, who chose Senators? After 1913?

18. Rose Perot, a candidate for the House of Representatives, plans to issue a campaign promise to oppose any Supreme Court nominee who will not commit to upholding a woman’s right to abortion. As Rose’s campaign manager, do you run the ad? (Base your answer strictly on your interpretation of the Constitution, not on any political considerations.)

19. Jessie Ventura-Boulevard ultimately defeats Rose Perot in a hotly contested race for Congress. The victorious Jessie now represents Texas in the House of Representatives. Her political “lone star” having risen swiftly, she now seeks a national political platform. She would like to be the running mate of her fellow Texan, Governor George W. Shrub, the Reform Party nominee for President. As Jessie’s political adviser, can you point out the constitutional flaw in the congresswoman’s vice-presidential ambitions?

20. How much Hawaiian money do you have in your purse or wallet?

21. Speaking of purses, your cousin Rhonda left hers at your recent family reunion. Upon rifling through the purse, you discover a certified mail receipt, a Confederate $10 bill, a District of Columbia driver’s license, a copy of the Koran, and a Susan B. Anthony dollar. Whatever their market value, these items make up a constitutional treasure trove. Find any and all constitutional provisions that relate to the contents of Rhonda’s purse. Incidentally, does it make a constitutional difference if you open the purse in your capacity as an FBI agent or if you are simply a nosy busybody?

Find the answers here.

Euterpeos: Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga

2007-09-14T16:53:00.000-05:00

What happens when one-time punk/grunge band with a vaguely Foo-Fighter-eqsue sound decides to go minimalist and hitchhike to Motown? You get Spoon's last album, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga.

A week or so ago, I was ordering some stuff from Amazon and was close to getting free shipping. I had heard that Spoon had released a new album, so I looked it up and bought it on impulse for 10 bucks, only 3 more than my shipping would have cost. I don't much about Spoon, so I'm probably not qualified to say much in the way of comparison to their previous work. But what I do know is that they claim the Pixies as an influence and in the past have been compared to Nirvana, another Pixies-influenced band. Overall, Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga doesn't sound that much like Nirvana or the Pixies. But there are footprints of Seattle grunge---like the bass lines on "Don't You Evah," and "Rhthm And Soul" and the power chord rhythms on "My Little Japanese Cigarette Case."

Most of Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is what I would describe as minimalist rock. The sound is for the most part pared down to the essential elements of the genre. It tends to favor acoustic, simple rhythms, repetition, and above all simplicity. You don't get a lot of guitar duets, overlapping melodies, or even much vocal harmony. "The Ghost of You Lingers," which features multiple vocalists, is essentially call-and-response as opposed to simultaneous harmony. In fact, the name Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is supposed to suggest the simplistic repetition of a piano rhythm; it aptly describes the minimalist sound of the album. When you do get a more complex melody line (like the Flamenco-inspired guitar-picking in "My Little Japanese Cigarette Case"), it's showcased against an unembellished background of muted rhythm guitar and percussion.

That it favors acoustic simplicity is not to say that Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga eschews electronic elements, though. They're there, especially on "The Ghost of You Lingers." And some songs use echo effects on the vocals, but on the whole electric elements are used sparingly. In this case, a little electronica leaveneth the whole lump.

But the minimalist overtone of Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga makes the few larger, deeper arrangements really stand out and rock, especially with the Motown inspired horns. In particular, "The Underdog" and "You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb" incorporate this little touch of soul. "Cherry Bomb" even adds in the Martha and the Vandellas-style bells. It's fun.

Actually, one of the most interesting features of Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga is its use of percussion. I already mentioned the Motown bells, but there's more. My favorite track, "The Underdog" incorporates, in successive layers, shakers, tambourines, sleigh bells, and, spoons---yes, spoons---over a folksy, O.A.R.-reminiscent acoustic strum rhythm with Motown horns. The Jazzy trumpet flourish at the end even sounds distinctly like something They Might Be Giants would do. They use spoons---it's so eponymous. And you've gotta respect that.

The Center Place

2007-09-10T06:58:00.000-05:00

Romney raised some eyebrows a few months back when George Stephenopobopobopolous asked him about the Mormon belief that Jesus, at some point during his second coming, will end up in central Missouri. Romney responded that no, he believes, just like all good Bible-belt evangelical Christians, that Jesus' second coming will be in Jerusalem.

In reality, both Romney and that journalist with the hard-to-spell Greek name were hedging a little bit. It is true that Joseph Smith and others have taught that the Savior will be in Missouri when he comes again. However, he and others also taught that the Savior will come to Jerusalem. It is generally assumed that he will initially appear at Jerusalem, and then come to this continent, but the exact chronology is not a defined point in Mormon doctrine or theology. The problem for some was that they felt like Romney was being less than honest, and trying too hard to look like a typical Southern evangelical Christian (i.e. Republican voter).

But whatever you think about that, the idea that Joseph Smith taught is intriguing in its own right. Essentially, it is that Adam-ondi-Ahman, or the place where Adam and Eve went when they were kicked out of Eden, is near a farm in Northwestern Missouri. It is also taught that this place will also be the place of a great reunion meeting attended by Jesus, a resurrected Adam, and others. (See Doctrine and Covenants 116). It is extrapolated that since the place where Adam and Eve ended up was in Northwestern Missouri, than the Garden of Eden was also nearby. Recently, this article chronicled the quest of one non-Mormon to find the Garden of Eden. The tone is somewhat flippantly glib, but the article itself is interesting. (The one thing I find odd is that the author seems compelled to include the hair color of every sister missionary he meets).

Yes, the Mormon beliefs about Adam-ondi-Ahman seem strange. But I love them. What I think is so cool here is the idea of center places. The Holy Land---Jersualem, Mt. Moriah, Arauna's threshing floor, Sinai, Eden---was considered in early and medieval Christianity and Judaism to be the center of the world. Early mapmakers, influenced by this idea, called that area the "earth's middle" or medi-terranean. It is said that Jerusalem was "the navel of the world," the place where humanity would receive constant nourishment from the heavens. (Incidentally, the term "navel of the world" is not unique to Jerusalem. The same term has been used to describe temples, altars, and significant cities throughout the world, including, the Temple and Oracle at Delphi, the Incan Temple of Cuzco, the ancient city of Rome, and even Easter Island.)

When most Christians lived in the near east, proximity to these ancient sites was a fact of life. But as Christianity became a western European phenomenon, it gradually removed itself from its past and in the process became less and less literal and more and more ethereal. As Christianity moved from Europe to America, some Christians tried to recover the past. The pilgrim fathers were obsessed with overlaying their present on the pattern of the Biblical archive, comparing their journey across the sea to the Exodus, and calling themselves God's people---the "shining city on the hill," even taking some of their penal codes right out of Leviticus. The Salem Witch Trials were at least in part, precipitated by a desire to literally obey Exodus 22:18. You see the same attitudes early in the book of Mormon, where Nephi constantly compares himself and his father's family to Moses and Israel, and Laban to Pharaoh.

In the Book of Mormon, the importance of recovering the past is illustrated by the fact that even after traveling quite some distance, Lehi's son's were asked to go back for the historical record. They probably knew the stories, at least the most important ones, and probably could have written them down themselves. After all, Nephi did have to learn himself how to make metal records. It was apparently important not just to have a written record, but to maintain some physical connection to the past itself. The necessity of this connection comes into focus when Lehi's family runs into the Mulekites, who had failed to recover their past and as a result, their language had become corrupted.

The cool thing about Joseph Smith's Adam-ondi-Ahman teachings, though, is that they recover the past---or perhaps restore the past---much more completely than these earlier attempts. In addition to the restoration of authority, doctrine, ordinances, etc., Joseph also restored the proximity to antiquity that was enjoyed by early Christians. Consider the juxtaposition of cosmic center place and quotidian courthouse in this revelation: "Behold, the place which is now called Independence is the center place; and a spot for the temple is lying westward, upon a lot which is not far from the courthouse" (Doctrine and Covenants 57:3). Instead of placing Eden at the center place of what was the known world a few millenia B.C., Joseph placed it at the center of his world, the new world, which is also my world. And that is cool.

The Eats Sheet: BBQ Ribs

2007-09-04T14:08:00.000-05:00

As has been previously mentioned on this blog, the Dinosaur BBQ has some of the best ribs available on planet earth. They also have a a nice cookbook that tells you how to smoke 'em yourself in your own backyard grill. But what do you do when you don't have any woodchips, and when you can't stay home for 3-4 hours checking your ribs every hour? This is what you do, it's not a perfect substitute, but it still does a great job of producing some succulent pig meat.

First you buy a a rack of ribs (I used a St. Louie cut rack) and the night before you're going to prepare them, you rub them down with a nice red rub. Mine is based primarily in paprika, garlic, and salt, but also contains cumin, oregano, black pepper, rosemary, and brown sugar. The key is to keep the sweet and savory flavors in balance. Then throw them in the fridge in some kind of pan or dish and let the flavors mingle and soak into the meat all night. I had to cut the rack in half because I didn't have a big enough platter.

Then, in the mid-morning, you fire up the grill with a nice hot coal bed. Give the meat a nice sear over the coals to lock in the juices and flavors so it doesn't dry out later as you cook it. Don't overcook the meat, just a quick sear on the very outside edge. It should still be raw in the middle. If your fire is hot enough, you should only have to keep it on the grill for about a minute per side. You could probably also do this on the stove over a cast iron skillet or grid iron.

When the meat is seared, bring it in the house and put it in your crock pot. if you haven't already, you're going to have to cut the rack in half to fit it in the crock pot. Lean the two pieces toward each other, meeting in the middle of the crock like a tipi or a house of cards. Don't lean then against the sides of the cooker because you don't want them to burn. Pour a half to a full cup of veggie broth in the bottom of the crock pot, rub a bit of your favorite BBQ sauce on the meat, and set it on low for 6-7 hours. Then you can go shopping or whatever you need to do that prevents you from smoking the ribs.

When you get back, you can finish the ribs right away or keep them warm in the cooker until its time to eat. When you're ready, get a nice medium coal bed going in your grill and get out there with your ribs, a pair of tongs, and a bowl of sauce. Throw the ribs on the grill, meaty side down, and caramelize the fat, getting them nice and crispy, but don't burn them. It helps to have a spray bottle to mist the coals if they flare up too much. After a minute or two, give them a flip and slather the meaty side of the ribs with sauce. Cover the grill and close down the vents to put out the fire and leave the ribs for 3-4 minutes. This will allow the sauce to form a nice glaze without burning the underside too much.

Bring 'em in the house, cut 'em up with a chef's knife, and enjoy. My favorite sides with ribs are black beans and rice, cornbread, and fries or rosemary roasted potatoes. Good stuff. You don't get the nice smoke flavor, but everything else is there. It's a pretty decent approximation.

Yaaarrrrrrrrgh!

2007-08-29T16:19:00.000-05:00

Scene I:
A street corner in Minneapolis about 8:00 AM in late August. A hobo walks down the street toward me. The first thing I notice is the smile gaping in his soiled visage. Not the usual glazed smile of the inebriated and insane, but a real genuine, hearty, roguish smile paired with a set of glinting baby blues. Curving over the top of the smile is a thick mustache that manages to be bushy and yet at the same time curl up rakishly at the corners---reminiscent, perhaps, of more muscular incarnation of the famed whiskers of Dalí. This singular lip-mane is matched by a lustrous black mullet that falls in Jacobean fashion, cascading abundantly down both sides of the shoulders. This man is wearing a dirty loose-fitting, red shirt, tucked into a pair of close-fitting black jeans that cover the tops of a pair of scuffed patent-leather loafers with gold-colored accents.

Scene II:
A flashback. Two weeks ago I sit on a couch with my brother, visiting from New York. He shows me the website of a band called dark dark dark. I wonder if it's an allusion to Milton or Eliot. Or if Eliot is alluding to Milton. My brother clicks on a demo song and the eerie sounds of a squeeze box begin to emanate from the computer, punctuated at regular intervals with percussion that sounds oddly like breaking glass. (Apparently this band was playing in Mpls the night we got back from Nauvoo, but we didn't go.)

Conclusion:
It must be time for me to list my top five pirate songs. I am not picking actual authentic pirate tunes (that would be too obscure). Instead, these are pirate-related songs found floating around in today's cultural flotsam. Here are my picks of the top five:

1) Iron Maiden's Rime of the Ancient Mariner, based on Coleridge's poem of the same title is first because it has the distinction of being the rocking-est song on the list, and also the one with the most and longest face-melting guitar solos. Also the best use of an electric guitar to imitate the creaking of the decks on board ship.

2) The Decemberists' Mariner's Revenge. A Poe-esque tale of revenge and filial devotion set to a pirate-y tune performed mainly on accordion and tambourine.

3) Disney's Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life for Me) from Peter Pan. "You'll love the life of a thief, you'll relish the life of a crook. / There isn't a boy who won't enjoy a-working for Captain Hook."

4) Henry H. Russel's, Ocean Wave is the tune set to Hannah Cornaby's 'Who's on the Lord's Side?' in the current LDS Hymnal. Russel apparently wrote a lot of swashbucklin' type tunes, judging by their titles.

5) They Might Be Giants' With the Dark is not musically very buccaneer-like. However, it makes the list because it has this line: "I'm growing tired of all my nautical dreams / I'm growing tired of all my nautical themes / bustin' my pirate hump / rocking my peg leg stump / my mind naturally turns / to taxidermy, to taxidermy, yeah!"

What be yer picks, me hearties?

Cinematographicus: September Yawn

2007-08-29T08:20:00.000-05:00

Director Christopher Cain's ill-fated attempt at directing a pseudo-historical film about the Mountain Meadows massacre is consistently getting awful reviews. This post over at T&S gave some good excerpts from the various reviews. My favorite: the New York Post says,

“‘September Dawn’ succeeds completely at failure; the unified incompetence of its writing, directing and acting suggest a man who manages to be on fire and drowning at the same time, just as the bus runs him over.”

A three-in-one unholy trinity of failure.

But even funnier is Eric Snider's reaction to the fact that the film apparently includes a castration scene with some bizarre and disturbing things coming from the prop shop:

"There's one flashback sequence where they drag an adulterous man outside, cut off his testicles, and nail them to a wall. Cain briefly shows the ball-laden scrotum hanging from the knifepoint, and my only question is why, if he was going to show it, didn't he find a set of fake gonads that looked more realistic and less like a rubber novelty item? I mean, if it were me, and I wanted to include a pair of severed testicles in my movie -- and why wouldn't I, really? -- and this was the best the props department could find, I think that's where I would start to question just how integral this particular shot was to my overall vision. 'Hmm,' I would think. 'It's really, really vital that my film include the image of someone's ball sac stuck to a wall with a knife. But the only thing my people could produce is comically oversized and disturbingly hairless. What would Spielberg do in this situation?'

But that's just me. I am not the director here! The director here is Christopher Cain. You will remember him as also having directed such fine films as 'Gone Fishin',' 'The Next Karate Kid,' and 'Young Guns.'"

Read the entire review here. It's worth it.

Prophets of doom have been saying for a few months that September Dawn would bring terrible waves of persecution upon the church. The reaction of critics appears to confirm four things:
1) Anti-Mormon propaganda, whether in film or in print, is almost universally work of poor quality.
2) Smart people tend to recognize work of poor quality and give it the appropriate level of respect.
3) The mainstream media is generally smart enough to recognize that religious bigotry is unacceptable.
4) Perhaps there is less anti-Mormon feeling in America than the doomsayers seem to think there is.

It is interesting to note that many, though not all, of the media sources blasting September Dawn are on the liberal side. A few examples: the New York Times calls the film a "maudlin, grotesque western," and accuses it of "ap[ing] 'Schindler's List' in hopes of creating a Christian holocaust picture," the Washington Post calls it "soap opera posing as moral outrage," and the Baltimore Sun calls it "ham fisted," a "melodrama of the most lurid kind," noting that "there’s a big difference between historical fact and emotional screed." (Speculation: will this undermine attempts by the Romney campaign to dismiss his critics by accusing them of anti-Mormon bigotry?) The doomsayers' prophecy that the Church would have to hunker down to take the mainstream media's heat did not come to pass.

This whole situation reminds me of two scenes from Children's stories: The ending of C.S. Lewis's The Horse and His Boy, and the ending of Disney's Peter Pan. In both these stories, the great and terrible villain is defeated not through violence, but by ridicule. Rabadash, the fearful and ruthless becomes "Rabadash the Ridiculous," while Hook, the bloodthirsty buccaneer is laughed to scorn. In both stories, the villain's most crushing defeat is embarrassment, and the most powerful weapon is the laughter of children. In any event, nobody had to become the great defender of the faith to fight off the evils of September Dawn because people tend to see such blatant bigotry for what it is, and to ridicule it. Maybe Christopher Cain should have to appear on Larry King (or better yet, Fox News) and exclaim "I'm a cod-fish!"

The Eats Sheet: Am I a culinary wine-bibber?

2007-08-28T15:48:00.000-05:00

Do you cook with wine?

I know a lot of Mormons (I don't know if this is the majority view or not) who see eating something cooked with an alcoholic liquid as a violation of the word of wisdom. I don't. For one, the revelation itself only says that strong drinks are not for the belly, not that strong foods are not for the belly. This might seem like doctrinal hair splitting, but I feel okay about it since David O. McKay once relied on this interpretation when he accepted a piece of rum cake, quipping that "it only says we can't drink rum, not that we can't eat it."* I don't have a problem with the idea that some alcohol in food is okay. Most vanilla and other flavor extracts are alcohol based, but I've never heard of a Mormon baker cutting vanilla out of the recipe or substituting for it. Though I do admit that I would have second thoughts about eating a Guinness stew, where the entire base of the dish is beer (does that even taste good?). And while I know that Joseph Smith was not a teetotaler, I am not focused here on the historical practice of the word of wisdom, but with its current status.

Like I said, I'm okay with a little booze in my food. But even if using some wine in a sauce is not doctrinally verboten, I choose not to for other reasons: I don't want wine in my house because I might offend a home teacher or other ward member with more W of W scruples than I, the stuff is expensive, I don't want my kids to have the chance to get at it, my kitchen is small and there's no room for bottles, I probably wouldn't use it before it went all vinegary, etc. So if you choose not to use wine, how do you substitute in a recipe that calls for wine?

Usually, if it calls for white wine I'll use white grape juice with a bit of apple cider vinegar. This seems to work, but I don't know what to compare it to, since I don't know what it would taste like with the wine. Once, I used concord grape juice cocktail in a recipe that called for red wine and it turned out way too fruity. I've also heard of using beef or chicken broth, and I've wondered about mixing some broth with some juice and vinegar. Last night I made a roasted tomato and basil soup that called for white wine. I used apple juice and a bit of cider vinegar. It was good, but also quite sweetly pungent. I had to add a lot of salt to balance it out. And what about cooking wine? Is it true that it is much less alcoholic than the potable stuff? I've never used it, for many of the same reasons I don't use normal wine, but I wonder if its a good option.

So what do you do? Use the real stuff, use cooking wine, or substitute? What do you use to substitute?

* That's from Greg Prince's David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism. I would get the page number, but it's packed away and I'm not going to get it out. We're moving at the end of September.