“Oh pardon me thou bleeding piece of earth,
that I am meek and gentle with these butchers
thou art the ruins of the noblest man that ever lived in the tide of times
woe to the hand that shed this costly blood!
Over thy wounds now do I prophesy
which like dumb mouths do ope their ruby lips
to beg the voice and utterance of thy my tongue”
….
That is all I can remember of Antony’s speech over the murdered body of Julius Caesar in William Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar. Those seven lines stayed with me since high school freshman(?) English. Only misremembered one pronoun! Yet I don’t think Mr. “balding” Spalding would be impressed, since I didn’t know the rest.
“A curse shall light upon the limbs of men;
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy;
Blood and destruction shall be so in use
And dreadful objects so familiar
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quarter’d with the hands of war;
All pity choked with custom of fell deeds:
And Caesar’s spirit, ranging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice
Cry ‘Havoc,’ and let slip the dogs of war;
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial.”
Wow, that’s gross. Now I feel like reading Shakespeare again. Or, maybe I’ll just celebrate the Ides of March with a nice glass of wine instead.
The image is James Purefoy as Mark Antony in the underrated HBO series Rome.
The Hawaii episode aired last week and I have to say, I’m disappointed. I guess that’s somewhat inevitable when you have such high expectations. Honestly, I couldn’t believe how much I disliked this episode of No Reservations. I watched it twice just to make sure I wasn’t trippin.
The whole episode is available on youtube–for now–so watch while you can.
Below is a loose play-by-play of the episode with my commentary.
Wrote about a great spot that Rowen has been telling me about for over a year, The Dragon Upstairs. The piece came out okay. But the place itself is very cool and a must-do in Honolulu, if you appreciate jazz even a little bit.
I submitted one more story to HI Luxury, and I’ve enjoyed working with them. The staff I’ve talked to seem like fun, intelligent people. Hopefully someone as sparkly-prosed, literate and in-the-know as myself ;~j takes the nightlife entertainment writer position and that door will close for me.
I’m also resigning quadmag.com, my pet project of the last ten years. I will always represent for that site, but I’m officially retired. (I’m living the dream! retire by 30 haha.) We’d love to see it keep going, but with TeN in San Francisco and Lance in Portland, it’s been hard to keep the momentum and these technical lumps are demoralizing. I’m just done.
It is crunch time. Holidays are upon us and the semester is rolling to a relentless close. It’s all I can do to make time to laugh, and the folks at Adult Swim/ Comedy Central/ Aaron McGruder Inc. have made it easy.
What I love about the show is how it combines social commentary and satire with hiphop and anime. C’mon!
I wanted to embed my favorite episode this season, the Story of Thugnificent, below…. well, actually, the Usher one was more funny, althoooo, the Attack of the Kung Fu Wolf Bitch was hilarious as well… ah, I hate these kind of debates. Especially with myself.
In any case, the embedding didn’t seem to be an option I could work out, so you just have to go to the sites and see for yourself.
Unlike iTunes, the Amazon mp3 downloads are DRM-free, so you can burn, copy and save to your heart’s content. You do need to install a small bit of software, but it’s a painless, 1-minute process. Then the program manages and organizes your downloads and imports them into iTunes or Windows Media Player, automatically. Very slick.
I don’t think the library is that huge yet, but I will shop there again. Besides the ease, I am really pleased to support Manu Chao.
This was the first video off the album, “Rainin’ in Paradize.”
Popcorn is an amazing food. Kernels of whole grain goodness that pop to unique, tasty shapes. Like snowflakes with substance. It tastes so great all salty and crunchy and chewy and in the case of my recent addiction, coated in white cheddar powder. We were eating it bag by organic bag-full when the “popcorn lung” scare hit mainstream media.
Even tho the scare concerns the ConAgra-fake-buttered type of microwave popcorn and not the heath-food-store-bought version we’d been consuming like popcorn-crazed maniacs, the story did make popcorn suddenly seem a little less wonderful.
This is all you have to do to make your own microwave popcorn.
You’ll need a brown paper lunch sack about 1/4 cup of loose, organic popcorn kernels. Measure the kernels into your bag. Add one teaspoon of olive oil and popcorn salt to taste. Fold the top of the bag and shake gently to mix.
Press most of the air out of the bag. Secure with two staples (they won’t spark in most ovens) or tape loosely, leaving room for steam to vent. Place flat on a microwave-safe plate and heat on a high setting until the pops have slowed down to about three seconds apart. it will take less than four minutes.
Within hours of reading this recipe, I had to try it, and the results were fantastic (see photo). The recipe is extra simple, but can be refined with different proportions, flavors and methods.
Recently took in The Century of the Self, about psycho-analysis, advertising, consumerism, mass behavior and how we’re all getting got. The BBC-produced series illustrates how both Freud’s theories and his family members were well in the mix of American public relations, advertising, entertainment and politics before, during and after World War II. It goes on to show how their influences still guide the hand of business in producing consumer-citizens who are “constantly moving happiness machines” (as Herbert Hoover put it) seeking only the fulfillment of personal desire and identity.
Shows like this get me agitated. Thankfully, this level-headed Village Voice review helped me be less hysterical in my thinking. Consumerism is not just a trap, it’s a total head trip. Middle classics like me are conditioned by the powers-that-be to salivate at the site of new consumer goods like the Nokia e90 Communicator. What can I do? Say no to technology? That’s no fun! Meh.
The BBC-produced Century of the Self is available free online, in four hour-long parts.
Sometimes I tell people I dont have a television and then let them believe that means that I dont watch a lot of television. Cuz people who dont watch television are cool. But this isnt true at all, I do watch television. In fact I watch quite a bit of television, more than I care to admit, but I watch it on my computer, that’s all.
One day I may be ambitious and install a tv tuner on my comp, but even just viewing what is available online is more than enough to keep me happily procrastinating for the rest of my life. And besides, what am I really missing?
Probably the most frustrating thing about online television is that you cant always get anything you want, even tho the prospect of just such a thing hovers tantalizingly close. I look forward to the day when tv shows and movies will be available on (easy) demand, I’ll gladly pay for that, too. But the 2 pay services I’ve tried so far have been disappointing.
Never mind that I was supposed to be working on my MA project, I managed to squeeze in a couple books just for fun: Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia and the last half of Paul Theroux’s Dark Star Safari, which I had on loan from the library since ah, 2005. (Gotta love the generous faculty/staff borrowing privileges.)
The title links above go to amazon via my affiliate name and if anyone buys following these links, I’d get a small commission. I’ll be surprised if this turns into a revenue stream but figured why not, I shop amazon for books, CDs, movies, all kinds of things.
