Books Lying Open
¤ What Liberal Media?, Eric Alterman
¤ The Scientists (A History of Science Told Through the Lives of its Greatest Inventors), John Gribbin

Soul-Devouring Worry:
¤ Shrek 2 being such a success that they sell all of those ogre-sized green and brown M&Ms, rather than ending up with thousands of left over bags that I could eventually purchase for about 1/3 price at Big Lots.

Question of the Day:
¤ Will more money ever be enough money?

Curse of the Day:
¤ May your digital camera provide daily evidence of its suckitude.

¤ Perhaps this is some sort of testament to the enduring appeal of the Beatles' pop masterpieces, but since I first downloaded and added them to my very long and constantly changing mp3 play list, I've regularly found one or another of the Beatallica songs running through my head. Given that I've regularly gone out of my way to heap indifference on the Beatles and scorn on their "40 years later still obsessed fans" this is something of a comeuppance... and yet the songs, they're so catchy!

I think this sort of thing would work on me with the modified music of innumerable pop groups. The songs are catchy and infectious and all that, but the music of them and the vocals are so soft and wimpy and whiny that I never enjoy them. I'm talking about any big R&B hit, most pop, all soft rock, American Idol type song. The Beatles weren't that wimpy, at least not all the time, but they were very light and poppy, and that sound doesn't do it for me.

Beatallica (which is two guys playing music as a hobby, not Metallica itself) takes the catchy riffs and beats and rhythms of The Beatles, and basically turns them into Metallica covers. It's as if a band with a sound I like were playing light poppy songs that I would like, if they weren't so light and poppy. Whether this would work on sappier popular music, Britney Spears or a boy band or Whitney Houston or whatever, I can't say. perhaps some amateur band can whip up their rendition of Destallica's Child, or Usher

¤ Here's a comparative illustration of why we no longer eat at Chili's, except when there's a 2+ hour wait at Claim Jumper.  Last weekend we ate at Chili's Friday night, and Claim Jumper Saturday afternoon.

On the left you see my half tuna steak sandwich, left over from Chili's. There were a few of their over-salted/peppered fries left over also, but just a couple, since you don't get that many to begin with.  It's a hamburger-sized tuna steak, grilled and served on a toasted hamburger bun with a medium sized slice of tomato, some strings of shredded lettuce, and basically-flavorless white sauce. It costs about $6.95.

On the right you see the half sandwich I had left from Claim Jumper on Saturday. It's a BBQ Chicken, and comes on a huge bun of thick, chewy bread that looks a bit like foccacio; all pocked with craters and bumps and covered in herbs and spices. You'd happily eat the bread plain as an appetizer dish, if you didn't know any better. The chicken is excellent, covered in tangy BBQ sauce, and it comes with a lot of melted cheese, a large handful of shredded baby greens salad stuff, and 3 or 4 big slices of tomato. It comes to your table cut in half, with a long toothpick though each half, and a black olive on top of each toothpick. There's also a big half dill pickle, and a mountain of FFS, onion rings, or whatever other side you'd like. It costs about $7.95.

I'd estimate that the Claim Jumper one is at least 2.5-3x the mass of the Chili's sandwich, and that's not even counting the pickle, and you get at least 1.5x more fries at CJ than Chili's. The only drawback to CJs is that they don't have any decent soda. Just Coke, which I don't like, Diet Coke, which I really don't like, Sprite, which isn't a real soda, and Mr. Pibb, which is a pathetic Dr. Pepper imitation that tastes like watered down root beer.  Ironically, this is sort of a CJ benefit, since I don't pay $3 for a soda and make do with water, which takes the CJ price down below that of my equivalent meal at Chili's.

Oh, and if you're wondering, the CJ food is so much better tasting. They could easily charge $10 for the sandwich and it would still be a bargain, compared to other comparable restaurant values. Hell, for $8 it's basically two really big sandwiches, one of which you get to reheat and enjoy the next day.  I imagine some people eat the whole thing there, but those people are either a lot hungrier or a lot fatter than I am. Or possibly both. If I have an appetizer salad (which is huge at CJs) and eat most of the fries and the pickle, I'm struggling to finish off even half of the sandwich. They must go through a ridiculous amount of Styrofoam boxes, since it's a rare person who leaves CJ without taking half (or more) of their entree with them.

 

A FRIGHTENING, multi-bladed knife destined for Melbourne's streets was among a cache of weapons seized by Customs yesterday.

Officers detected the 50cm knife during an X-ray of air cargo from the US at Sydney airport last month.

Bound for Melbourne, the four-pronged attack knife was found with a small arsenal including a sword stick, trench knives, a double-edged dagger and other knives.

Given that it was headed to Oz, the inescapable comment paraphrases Crocodile Dundee. "Now that's a knife!" Let's be serious though, the article goes on about how it was headed to "Melbourne's streets," as if crime is at a standstill in the city, held down by lack of sufficient impractical weaponry. I'd assume it's just some knife-collector type who wants this. Now maybe the guy who wanted this is a criminal, but really, what could you use this for? It's not like you can conceal it and carry it around. A gun is 5000x more convenient and useful a weapon, as is a plain kitchen knife or gardening machete.

Well of course it won, you're thinking. The French hate Americans and especially our cowboy president, etc, etc, so on and so on. Moore's one step ahead of you on this one though:

Which may be true, but politics and being the hottest flavor of the day definitely had something to do with it.

Most of the early Cannes reviews of the film are full of praise, and I'm interested enough to see it, assuming they ever get the distribution lined up in the US. Read some of the reviews linked from RT if you want more info about the movie, though they'll all pretty much full of spoilers, in terms of describing the best scenes and biggest revelations in the documentary.

¤ For the past year I'd been thinking that Hero would be the next Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; a Chinese epic set in the sword and non-sorcery era with a romance and gorgeous fight scenes and all of that. It may still be, and it's finally got a pretty good trailer online, but with Miramax delaying the release of Hero in the US for over two years so far, we may have to move on. Move on to House of Flying Daggers! It's taking the Cannes Festival by storm.

Sounds pretty cool, eh? I hadn't heard anything about it before this article, so I hunted around and found a link to the trailer (scroll to the bottom of the page). But when I watched the trailer... eh. Nothing special; just a lot of scenes of the male and female chars kissing, with half-second shots of sword fights. The trailer is way, way, way too tightly-edited; as if they got paid by the number of cuts. It doesn't help that it's in unsubtitled Chinese, but the biggest problem is that no scenes are shown for more than a fraction of a second. The movie may be brilliant, but the trailer sucks.

There's a film clip of part of the bamboo battle scene online now, and it's better, but nothing amazing. Of it plays in a postage stamp-sized window, which looks curiously fuzzy, and I don't think anything could look very amazing in that medium.