Miscellaneous Viscera

Russian "Commando" Remake?!?

2010-04-30T19:48:00.003-04:00

How have I not heard of this until just now?

"Day D," a 2008 film by Russian director Mikhail Porechenkov, is apparently a shot-for-shot remake of the indispensable 1985 action masterpiece, "Commando."

I need to see this as soon as possible. Like yesterday. I don't even care if the torrent that I found is subtitled or English-dubbed, I will provide the goddamn dialogue myself.

Goddamn!

Two Words: Clamshell Cases

2010-04-24T19:28:00.001-04:00

Does that bring back any memories? Strike a chord on the ol' nostalgia piano? It did for me, when the inimitable Final Girl posted this fond lookback on the classic Warner Home Video VHS boxes of the mid-1980s. The uniformity of their design is, in its own charmingly outdated way, totally fucking awesome.

Makes me want to grab up as many as can be had via eBay, and arrange them into some kind of giant collage, paying tribute to the mightiness of last century's home movie rentals...

"It's also telling that, despite all the leftist handwringing about how the 'teabaggers' are inciting violence, no one is editing TV shows to avoid pissing them off."

2010-04-23T11:54:00.002-04:00

A simple and noteworthy observation from a commenter over at Reason's blog, in light of Comedy Central/Viacom's unsurprising (yet still disappointing) handling of the most recent "South Park" episode.

Also, just 'cause:

NYPD Confiscates (Steals) Bikes Along Obama's Motorcade Route, Just In Time For Earth Day

2010-04-22T15:00:00.006-04:00

Seriously. *slide whistle*

HTML5 Video Example

2010-04-21T16:12:00.000-04:00

Well color me impressed, for reasons I can only begin to wildly speculate about.

"The Lost Art of Making a Mix Tape"

2010-04-18T08:38:00.000-04:00

This nostalgia-inducing post by Michele Catalano (and the comments that followed it) inspired me to check out 8tracks.com. I just created my first mix there, and it was easy as hell. Thanks, internet, for yet another interesting way to discover and share music.

Really? It's that easy?

2010-04-02T22:16:00.001-04:00

Does Kathleen Hanna get a cut?

1,000 Words

2010-03-30T13:08:00.001-04:00

From here.

Wendigo

2010-03-28T19:54:00.002-04:00

The girlfriend and I are about to sit down to the 2001 Larry Fessenden film, Wendigo.

Not this particular Wendigo, though this one is the first thing I think of when I hear the word.

We've been on a slow Fessenden kick since having discovered his 1996 vampire film Habit a few months ago, which I ended up liking a lot. It was thoughtfully paced, had believable characters, and was set against an unmistakable and atmospheric 1990s New York City backdrop. It also had a very well-played "is she or isn't she an actual vampire?" angle that brought George Romero's Martin immediately to mind.

Wendigo has gotten some great reviews, so we're looking forward to it.

Bonus: Here's a great Onion A.V. Club interview with L.F.

"Trust me, I've been doing it for nine years."

2010-03-26T12:51:00.002-04:00

I chuckled at this exchange from a Reddit thread on how to keep yourself amused on a 13-hour flight:

Happy Dependence Day!

2010-03-21T21:14:00.002-04:00

So...

Mother-fuck.

"And now, the spider gets to give the bug a biiiiiig sting!"

2010-03-16T23:12:00.001-04:00

This month's Film Club selection at Final Girl is the insane Jack Hill "classic," Spider Baby. As is mentioned in her update, you can get it via Netflix instant-watch, or even watch it fo' free right here, if you dare. Me and the girlfriend had the incredible good fortune to see this one on the big screen, at part of last season's Summer Camp Cinema Pay-to-Get-Out Horror Marathon, at the Cinema Arts Centre in Huntington.

Watching this flick in a dark, sweaty theater full of likewise sleep-deprived, overly-caffeinated movie fanatics was an unforgettable experience. It was as much an exercise in hilarious audience participation as it was a primal fight to maintain basic sanity. Absurdly fun.

Tonight on Syfy: Dinoshark

2010-03-13T17:53:00.003-05:00

9pm Eastern! Roger Corman presents: Dinoshark!

Look at this thing. It's like a tyrannosaurus head stuck onto a shark body.

How can you even think about watching anything else?

Apparently Corman himself has a cameo as a marine biologist.

I still think the name "Syfy" looks like the hip new re-branding of The Syphilis Channel.

NY Salt Ban?

2010-03-11T18:28:00.000-05:00

"Chefs call proposed New York salt ban 'absurd.'"

Well, yeah.

Because it is.

Chopped@Home

2010-03-04T19:30:00.014-05:00

Inspired by this post over at the very enlightening (and frequently hilarious) NYC food blog F the Chef, I challenged my girlfriend to a cooking competition a few weekends ago. The idea was that we'd go to the supermarket and each pick out three or four ingredients that the other one would have to use to create a dish. It was to be a contest fraught with intrigue and peril. How did we fare? (Watch out, don't miss the food pun, there.)

With the understanding that we could use anything we already had in our apartment in addition to the secret ingredients we'd pick out (and that the point of the competition wasn't to screw each other over by buying things like toothpaste and baby formula), we headed to the supermarket, grabbed a basket each, and split up.

I headed to the meat department first, figuring I'd select a protein and then pick out some other ingredients to go along with it. I ended up grabbing a package of small chuck steaks, thinking that if she also picked beef for me then I'd go back and pick something else, or give her the option to do so. In the produce section, a colorful trio of bell peppers grabbed my attention, so into the basket they went. I needed at least one more ingredient for her, some sort of starch. I was leaning toward rice, when I discovered that the particular Stop & Shop we'd gone to stocked Maseca corn flour, and that decided it for me.

Her challenge: Create a dish using these steaks, peppers, and corn flour.

We met up again in about 15 minutes, and I got to see what she'd picked out for me: Some nice inch-thick pork chops, fresh asparagus, a loaf of French bread, and a wedge of Gorgonzola.

My challenge: Create a dish using these pork chops, asparagus, French bread and Gorgonzola.

Nothing immediately came to mind upon seeing the ingredients she'd selected. There was always the extreme fall-back position of simply pan-searing the pork chops, steaming or sautéing the asparagus, and slicing and oven-toasting the bread and smearing some Gorgonzola on top of it. Bang, there's a dinner, right?

But where would be the fun in that? This was supposed to be a challenge. Competition fosters innovation, all that good stuff. By the end of the drive home, I'd started to formulate a plan.

Once back in our apartment, we acknowledged the tiny size of our kitchen, and realized it would make it difficult for us both to effectively whip together our own dishes at the same time. I suggested that we split the challenge over two evenings, one of us creating their dish that Saturday night, and the other on Sunday. My girlfriend volunteered to go first if I would act as her sous chef (in the sense of just running around grabbing whatever items she needed, or slicing/dicing/chopping whatever she was too busy to slice/dice/chop at any particular moment, etc.), so that's the way we went.

Now, despite being right there in the kitchen and helping her out every once in a while, obviously seeing what she was doing and all, I couldn't ascertain what her final product was going to be until the very end-- when she told me. I watched as she seared the salted-and-peppered steaks on each side, then added some red wine to the pan and braised them for a little while, until they got almost fork-tender. She took them out of the pan and tossed in the diced red, orange and yellow peppers, along with some red onion and yellow corn. While that sizzled away, she measured out some Maseca and made a couple of little dough balls, which she flattened to 4" discs about a quarter of an inch thick, and then browned in an ungreased pan, before finally adding some canola oil and lightly frying them on each side. She asked, "Have you figured out what I'm doing yet?" I hadn't.

She shredded the steaks with a couple of forks, added the meat back to the pan with the peppers/onion/corn, added cumin and chili powder, and simmered the mixture for a couple of minutes, before dividing it into a couple of little soup crocks. She asked me again if I knew where she was going with it, and I admitted I still didn't. Then she placed the fried corn-flour cakes atop the beef and veggies mixture in each crock, shredded some cheddar on top of each one, and stuck 'em under the broiler, pronouncing them to be Mexican pot pies.

Hot damn, this was satisfying. Mexican pot pie!

What I think I liked best about her idea was the regional approach to a really traditional and basic comfort food. The particular spices in the filling, the use of corn flour dough to make the crispy "crust" on top... it absolutely reminded me of a regular pot pie in terms of texture and appearance, but the flavor was distinctly Mexican/Southwestern. A definite Would Eat Again.

I gave her a very enthusiastic thumbs-up for getting into the spirit of our competition, and coming up with a dish that was: A) Something neither of us had ever thought to try, and B) Delicious.

The following evening, it was my turn.

Eager to put my new copy of The Flavor Bible to use, I flipped through and reaffirmed some flavor combinations I'd been kicking around: Bleu cheese with apples. Pork chops and mustard. Something to make the chops crunchy? Walnuts baked right on top! I just needed to come up with something interesting for the asparagus.

I had been (still am) going kind of crostini-crazy since our Valentine's Day dinner at Bar Americain, where I'd had as an appetizer the Kentucky ham with ricotta and blood oranges served with toasted bread on which to pile it all, and it was such an outstanding synthesis of flavors --ones that I'd never in a million years thought of combining myself-- that I spent the next several nights trying (mostly in vain, but hey, it's learning) to create my own. So with crostini still on my mind, I decided to create little mini-omelets folded around the asparagus tips and a little Parmesan, and place these atop slices of the baguette that had been brushed with olive oil and baked to golden-brownness. Eggs and toast, the fancy way.

While I was putting those together, the pork chops baked in the oven. First I'd seared them for a minute on each side in a pan, then spread a thin layer of Dijon mustard on one side of each, into which I pressed a handful of crushed walnuts. The mustard served the dual purpose of flavoring the chops while also giving the walnuts a sticky surface to adhere to, so that worked well.

For the final touch, I put together a sort of "salad" (I don't know if it can rightfully be called a salad, but I don't know what else to call it) of Gorgonzola, dried cranberries, and thin slices of green apple. The idea was that it could be eaten by itself, or spread onto bites of pork chop. Apples + pork = good, Bleu cheese + apples = good. This was my line of thinking.

Coordinating everything toward the end became tough, and I cooked the eggs a little too long. I would've preferred a creamier egg mixture, but in the end my little asparagus-Parmesan omelet crostinis made a nice appetizer.

In a moment of inspiration, I stuck the apple slices vertically into the cheese...

The pork chops came out pretty well (at least I didn't overcook 'em!), and I was pleased with the walnuts adding some crunch, and the mustard imparting a little flavor. I can't say I felt like the entire main course came together like absolute magic, but a bite of pork chop together with a bite of Gorgonzola with apple tasted pretty good, and I was honestly proud that I'd managed to cook a meal that was outside the realm of things I'm usually comfortable throwing together. I also kind of cheated, in not using all of the ingredients she picked for me together in a single dish. If this were the actual "Chopped" show, I assume that'd disqualify me.

All in all, it really was a fun way to spend a couple of evenings, and we're looking forward to doing it again soon, with new sets of mystery ingredients. Any excuse to crack open the Flavor Bible and get crazy with interesting combinations of tastes that complement and enhance each other, and I'm happy.

Also, she insists I won.

"So, how do you make a picture called Sharktopus?"

2010-03-04T12:05:00.001-05:00

Roger Corman explains:

I started with this: The first one was DinoCroc and then DinoShark. And you could assume that there was a prehistoric crocodile and prehistoric sharks, so maybe there could have been dinocrocs and dinosharks. But there never was... a half-shark, half-octopus doesn't exist. So I had to come up with some way to justify this. My theory of this type of picture is, the audience wants to see it, based on the title, or they wouldn't turn on the channel.

Damn straight, I want to see Sharktopus.

Prune Whip... Jellied Chicken... Hot Dog Salad Dressing...

2010-03-01T19:51:00.001-05:00

'Nuff said.

I've got a crazy-long post in the works, detailing the adventure my girlfriend and I had a few weekends ago playing our own version of Chopped: the Home Game, but in the meantime, I had to link to this incredible collection of...

Awful Recipes from the Past!

Gloriously disgusting.

Quote of the Day - February 22nd, 2010

2010-02-22T12:01:00.004-05:00

Reason's Tim Cavanaugh, on the fact that the quality of the 1974 film Killdozer is guaranteed in its title:

You see Killdozer, you can rest easy, because you're gonna see a bulldozer that kills. Nobody ever watched Killdozer and then said, "The trailer made it look like there'd be more sex," or "I expected the puppetry to be better."

Tips from sci-fi movies on how to survive winter

2010-02-16T13:45:00.001-05:00

John Scalzi provides a handy list.

Tip # 4: "The guy who accuses you of being the thing?

He's totally the thing."

Jim Treacher, Giant Steel Car, Etc.

2010-02-08T23:17:00.000-05:00

Almost a week later, this here is pretty much the best account of what happened, including Media Matters' dumbshit "response." I wish Jim/Sean a quick recovery, and as a commenter on the Daily Caller site said, I'm glad he doesn't write with his knee.

(That makes sense if you read the article and stuff.)

Iron Chef tonight

2010-02-06T17:41:00.002-05:00

The most recent episode of Iron Chef is on right now. Flay vs. Michael Smith, a Canadian, in Battle Avocado. Watching them dash around, slicing cool, creamy green avocados and red onions and tomatoes in glorious high definition is instilling a nearly overwhelming desire to go make giant bowl of guacamole, but I think I can hold out until tomorrow-- our Super Bowl Barely-Paying-Attention-To Party menu includes eight avocados' worth.

On tonight's new episode, Chef Duff from Ace of ~~Fondant~~ Cakes is taking on Iron Chef Michael Symon. I'll be watching. I'm kind of surprised at how curious I am as to how a cake chef will fare (food pun, there) in a non-cake challenge.

I mean, I'm assuming the challenge won't be cake. Jesus.

Tune in, 10pm Eastern!

Update: Post-show, I have to say I'm ashamed to have even momentarily considered the possibility that Duff Goldman can only decorate cakes. Homeboy can cook a dinner, no joke.

Super Bowl!

2010-02-05T18:37:00.007-05:00

No, not that Super Bowl!

The Marvel vs. DC Super Bowl! A Super Bowl that an utter football ignoramus like me can get behind.

Even though the author uses popular characters (and some lesser-known dudes, like the infuriating, punch-absorbing Sebastian Shaw, an inspired choice for any situation in which getting stronger by being brutally pummeled is a valuable asset) with whom I am embarrassingly familiar in order to hypothesize about the lineups and field strategies of two opposing teams, I still have no idea what the hell 99% of it means.

Nevertheless, I would wholeheartedly watch the sweet bejesus out of such a nerdly, fantastic Super Bowl. The central appeal Sunday's actual game holds for me is the opportunity to make and eat an obnoxious number of wings.

Sidenote: I'm loathe to admit it, but in the scenario outlined in the link, DC would win. Most of their characters are effectively gods, with ludicrously limitless power. Which makes them unrelatable. Which is why Marvel is and always has been better.

In Praise of Pepperhouse Gourmaise

2010-02-05T13:08:00.001-05:00

I'm a little late to the Pepperhouse Gourmaise party, but at least I made it.

Boar's Head has a winner on its hands, here. It's a zesty, cracked-pepper-y, mayostard-y spread that will turn any sandwich from a "blandwich" into a [find word that rhymes with "bland" but means the exact goddamn opposite]-wich! Buy some immediately.

Selleck Waterfall Sandwich

2010-01-30T23:55:00.001-05:00

You want your Web 2.0? You got it. This is what it's all about. Nothing but pictures featuring Tom Selleck, waterfalls, and sandwiches.

Bask in it.

That brother's bite was outta sight!

2010-01-30T18:16:00.007-05:00

Went to the charming video shop Mother's Movies in Patchogue today with the girlfriend, and we picked ourselves up a nice little smorgasbord of cinematic delights.

I snagged a double-feature of "Blacula," and the sequel with Pam Grier, "Scream, Blacula, Scream" on one disc, as well as the 1977 classic (not really a classic), "Tarantulas: The Deadly Cargo," which should pair nicely with a viewing of "Kingdom of the Spiders" (starring none other than Captain Kirk himself) later tonight.

Alli picked up a copy of "Food of the Gods," as well as a 1980 movie she'd just read about someplace, called "Without Warning." It's supposed to be a sort of proto-"Predator," inasmuch as it's about an alien coming to Earth and hunting people. The kicker is that apparently Kevin Peter Hall, who wore the Predator suit in both of those movies (as well as the sasquatch suit in "Harry and the Hendersons!") plays the alien in this movie, too. Fun!

"Bunch of Phonies Mourn J.D. Salinger"

2010-01-29T11:21:00.001-05:00

Excellent lil' obit from The Onion.

2010-01-27T11:24:00.010-05:00

Word is that Obama will be announcing plans for an eight-billion-dollar highspeed rail project, either tonight in his State of the Union address, or possibly tomorrow. If it's tonight, try work it into your SOTU drinking game. Drink for every "let me be clear," "save or create jobs," and denial that the project will bear any resemblance to the 1979 TV show Supertrain, either in ballooning production costs or hasty failure.

Update: Jim Treacher points out that folks at the Cato Institute will be ~~drinking~~ liveblogging the SOTU tonight at 9pm Eastern. Also, so will he, probably.

Presented without comment...

2010-01-26T12:38:00.000-05:00

"Somebody do some magic..."

2010-01-24T22:58:00.002-05:00

The girlfriend just asked a perfectly legitimate question: Why, after Kitty Pryde went flying off into deep space inside a giant bullet at the end of Joss Whedon's run on Astonishing X-Men, is her fate being revealed in an upcoming issue of Uncanny X-Men? Like, why is a character's story arc being resolved in an entirely different series? Certainly, a reasonable thing to wonder.

I tried to come up with answer, became flustered, and ultimately couldn't, offering only weak excuses and examples of confusing crossovers from the 90s.

Sandra Lee's Kitchen

2010-01-24T15:26:00.003-05:00

Look how white it is. Imagine Ms. Lee, concocting some sort of mixed-berry smoothie in her blender (laden with hi-test booze, natch), and neglecting to make sure the top is secure. Imagine a Vesuvian torrent of red and purple mash erupting onto her immaculate cabinets and countertops. Imagine her reaction.

I mean, look how white it is.

(This has been a test of the Blogger labeling thingy.)

Firstly...

2010-01-24T11:36:00.007-05:00

Here I is.