Team Dean

or Gun Jumping Top Chef



The upcoming season of Top Chef has been filming in DC and the publicity blitz for the June 16 premiere is about to start. The list of cheftestants has been released and one of them is Baltimore restaurateur Timothy Dean.

I first went to his place in Baltimore several years ago for Mothers Day when it was known as Timothy Dean Bistro. Then it featured gourmet southern and soul food. Later it was an ill-fated night club and now it has re-opened as Prime with the specialty being steaks and chops. But there is still a lot of soul in the kitchen. The catfish was lightly breaded and served on top of an enormous bed of grits. I got the filet mignon and it was butter-tender on the inside with a fierce herb-encrusted sear on it. As good as that was, the macaroni and cheese side dish (unlike chain steakhouses, each entree comes with one side dish) was the real surprise. It looked fairly mundane, but it was rich and creamy beyond words. Almost as rich as the corn soup which had huge lumps of crabmeat in it.

On an early Sunday evening, the place only had a few customers so when Timothy Dean overheard me lamenting that my water was empty he came out and set it right. That also gave me the opportunity to buttonhole him a little about the Top Chef process. You do not apply for Top Chef; Top Chef finds you. But beyond that there are a lot of hoops to jump through before you get on the air.

As Eli Kirshtein (the evil gnome) from last season told me when we ate at Eno in Atlanta (I am such a food-whore name dropper, aren't I?), being on Top Chef can easily double your business. Dean told me that he was warning his staff to prepare for the onslaught. In fact, the only snag in my visit was trying to reach someone for a reservation. As I mentioned, this particular night showing up without a reservation was not a problem, but I expect it soon will be.

Prime is in Fell's Point which is better known for Bertha and her mussels than for fine dining. Furthermore, it is in the northern end just off Broadway on Eastern Avenue in an area more known for its tacquerias and take-out chinese joints than gourmet steakhouses. But it's just a short walk from the waterfront and offers valet service, always a plus in parking space deprived Fell's Point.

Part of the fun of reality shows is picking a contestant and cheering for them. As a Baltimoron, I am going to be a big-time homer and form Team Dean. Not only is he the local hero, but his cooking has the chops to go over big at the judge's table.

Separated in Photoshop: Deep Space Edition

It's no secret that those Hubble photos of deeps space are highly edited, cropped, and enhanced. Not unlike my sunset photos of Sedona. But somehow I think the photoshop wiz of the latest Hubble pics was getting a little inspiration from a galaxy far far away.


Update: I've decided it's rally based on a Chevy Chase movie:



And kguy has found the original source image:



(h/t to the Achenblog)

WaPo Sells It Soul To FaceBook

I spend a lot of my waking hours with the Washington Post in my browser. Perhaps too many. Definitely too many. Anyways, I was startled yesterday to find a Facebook applet in the far right column where the ads would be if I didn't use AdBlockPlus on my work browser. I clicked around and found this press release touting the benefit of now being able to follow your Facebook friends' links to WaPo articles.

Today you will find a new home page feature, at the top right, that allows you to create a more personalized, social way to experience the news. We call it Network News.

The new box highlights the washingtonpost.com articles, photos, blogs and other content most popular with Facebook users, who click a "Like" button to indicate their interest. The feature will also allow you to log into Facebook from washingtonpost.com and see what your friends have enjoyed on the Post's Web site. Similarly, if you are already logged into Facebook and visit washingtonpost.com, you will instantly see your friends' recommendations.

Only I don't want to see what WaPo articles my friends are recommending. I go to Facebook for that. And despite the blurb, it's not just the WaPo home page. It's every damn article they publish.

I find it very disconcerting to see a sidebar of Facebook avatars when I'm reading a news story. Not all Facebook icons are in good taste. Take two-time Pulitzer Prize winning fart joke writer Gene Weingarten. He uses the mug shot of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the World Trade Center attack mastermind with whom he shares a passing resemblance. At least Weingarten isn't using his Twitter soft-serve turd icon where the similarity is only metaphorical.

I immediately dashed off an angry e-mail to Raju Narisetti, the managing editor under whose name this announcement was made. The story got quickly amended with directions on how to "opt out". Only the directions are really just how to adjust your privacy settings. I keep my privacy settings buttoned down to Friends Only already, so I'm not in danger of my recommendations being broadcast to the world. And if my FB Friends like this widget and don't mind my goofy avatar all over their news stories, who am I to complain?

What I want is a way to turn the damn thing off. It's ugly and obtrusive. I do not want to see the Network News widget on my WaPo pages at all. Even if you are not logged into Facebook it feeds a stream of "Most Shared" links. Good for them. Just tell me how to get rid of it.

This is all part of Facebook's relentless privacy-destroying drive to be THE primary social network. Part of the allure of Facebook over other social sites was that it was a walled garden where only your relatives, classmates, and invited friends could find you. That guiding principle has been steadily eroded as Facebook has become more ubiquitous and pernicious. And WaPo is just the leading edge on this. Expect to see FB feed widgets festooned all over news sites and web pages and in pop-up ads for all I know.

To paraphrase Howard Beale, "I'm mad as hell, and I can't avoid it anymore." WaPo in its desperate pathetic attempt to remain relevant in the digital age has sold its soul to Mark Zuckerberg for the price of a cheap ugly applet. I don't know if they realize that by doing so, they have already capitulated. But they will. Facebook, or one of its successors, will eventually swalllow the Post whole. And right now, WaPo, like the cow at the Restaurant At The End Of The Universe, is gleefully cutting off portions.

And while I am ranting about WaPo's shitty web design, in a complaint that smacks of "and the portions are so small", I have never gotten the comment applet on the news stories to work under Firefox on any platform, Windows or Mac. It so pains me to fire up IE just to read, let alone wade into, the festering cesspool that is the commentariat of most WaPo news stories that I avoid doing so as much as possible. Which is probably a good thing. But you would think that I am not the only one with this problem and that somewhere sometime some person in the bowels of WaPo's virtual sweatshop would want to fix this. But I guess not. When you outsource your web design to whomever with no concern over its functionality, you get what you deserve. Because as the Washington Post's radio ads ironically state, "if you don't get it, you just don't get it." And pretty soon the Post will be one of those things I just don't get anymore.

So Gaiman Goes

Neil Gaiman was in Indianapolis last night to receive the Kurt Vonnegut literature award. It is given by the Indianapolis Marion County Library and has only been around for a few years. The award goes to someone whose "works ... document and define the human condition." The first one was awarded posthumously to Kurt himself and other winners have included Richard Peck and Eric Carle.

Vonnegut and Gaiman are probably the two most mentioned authors in this blog. Vonnegut of course inspired the title of it and Neil Gaiman is just a Rock Star, but I never would have connected them so directly. I always find it odd when what I think fairly different realms of my obsessions collide like that. For example, Warren Zevon had cowritten songs with both Bruce Springsteen and Carl Hiaasen.

My Twitter feed this morning also had a link to a bootleg YouTube posting of a short film written and directed by Neil.



It is silent movie style and stars Bill Nighy and a real Doll, Amanda Fucking Palmer. I wonder who he had to sleep with to get her in the movie.

NCCCC 2010 Round 3 - Doonesbury Dopplegangers

For this round of the National Crappy Comics Copy Cats Competition, we look at strips that take a stand.

Politics and comics rarely mix. At least not well. Topical humor does not age well with lead times of two weeks or more. The truly funny political strips of the past like Pogo an L'il Abner had a sensibility that transcended partisanship. The current reigning champion is long-running and Pulitzer Prize-winning Doonesbury. For several decades now, conservatives have chafed under the piercing wit of Garry Trudeau (and just how American can someone named after a Canadian prime minister be?) hoping for a right-wing equivalent. Meanwhile liberal cartoonists labor under Doonesbury's long shadow, which is its own burden.

Doonesbury Dopplegangers

Let's look at political cartoons of various ideologies:

Mallard Filmore



Mallard Filmore or That Fuckin' Duck as I prefer to call him combines the intellectual rigor of Sean Hannity with the rational discourse of Glenn Beck. This lazy compilation of cheap shot sub-Fox News talking points would be the worst comic strip in print even without its infuriating reliance on straw men, poorly sourced quotes, and cheap Ted Kennedy gags. There is no narrative arc and each strip is nearly indistinguishable from the last. Its only redeeming value is that it is universally despised except amongst Washington Times subscribers.

Prickly City



You can't spell Prickly City without 'ick'. Perhaps the most obvious beneficiary of reverse affirmative action anywhere, Scott Stantis seems to be deliberately trying to win a Worst Drawn Comic award. The use of a right-wing big-lipped ethnically-ambiguous girl as his primary mouthpiece is just offensive on multiple levels. And while it tries to use oddball metaphors in incomprehensible thinly disguised allegories (terrorist desert hamsters anybody?), they mostly come off as half-cocked.

The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee



I have not quite yet deciphered the random political leanings of Edison Lee except that it seems to have a vaguely anti-big government and anti-tax stance. Way to go out on the populist limb there. The jabs and cheap shots just seem so forced and obvious. The inclusion of a lab rat pet puts in Calvin and Hobbes range (as write-in nominator john observed), but it's the college-freshman-that's-read-just-a-little-too-much-Ayn-Rand sensibility that makes this strip most annoying.

Non Sequitur



Wiley has toned down his Non Sequitur political rants considerably since the election, which can be considered a weakness. A good cartoonist would stick to his guns no matter who is in office. The ObviousMan and History of Cavemen bits at least provide a slightly different take on the usual ax-grinding. Still, being the second best knee-jerk liberal on the comics page is pretty faint praise.


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And there is still time to vote in the Calvin Clones and Faux Far Side categories.

NCCCC 2010 Round 2 - Faux Far Side

In the first round of the National Crappy Comics Copy Cats™, we looked at strips trying to fill the big shoes of Calvin and Hobbes. An even bigger and much missed comic strip was the off-beat and relentlessly eccentric Far Side. Gary Larson is as much a part of geek culture as Monty Python or The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy. There is a Far Side for any situation. It's hard to believe that their have not been any new strips since 1995. For fifteen years we have had to relive the strips in the endless books, calendars and tee shirts or put up with its many pale imitators. Which brings us to our next category:

Faux Far Sides

And the heirs to the throne cover a lot of different territories. Here are a few of the most blatant flatterers.

The Argyle Sweater



Stylistically, you couldn't find a closer cousin to the Far Side than The Argyle Sweater right down to the line style and shading. It has mad scientists, anthropomorphic animals and oddball geeks. The humor is also dependent on bad puns, odd juxtapositions and surreal situations. And when it misses it misses big.

Bizarro



When it comes to surreal situations, no strip out-DaDas Dan Piraro's Bizarro. Full of trademark signatures like pie slices and dynamite sticks. The humor is perplexing and off-beat to point of opaqueness. There is almost and Emperor's New Clothes quality to many of the jokes. You don't want to declare yourself too unhip to get the gag even if there may not be any funny there.

Rubes




If you wanted to design a Far Side Lite, you couldn't do much worse than Rubes. Relying on the typical single panel tropes, the jokes are clever but not too deep. It lacks any sort of post-modern twist. Just standard gags executed competently.

Non Sequitur



Before it had any continuing characters, Non Sequitur was, just as its title implied, a random series of gag-a-day strips. While drawn in a standard strip format, the sensibility was that of a square single panel. And it covered a lot of Far Side territory: cave men, oddball animals, and subtle puns.

There will never be another Far Side. It covered so much ground, it's tough to do a truly fresh take. That doesn't keep people from trying. So which strip is trying a little too hard?


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NCCCC-2010 Round 1 - Calvin Clones

For this year's version of Foma Madness, we are going back to our roots and finding crappy comics. While we did a fairly exhaustive series in the inaugural edition of the National Crappy Comics Competition, this time we are narrowing our focus and naming it the National Crappy Comics Copy Cats™. We are looking for the comic that is lamest rip-off of an established strip or genre. And our first category is:

Calvin Clones

Kids and their pets are a comic strip staple. From Charlie Brown and Snoopy to Milo and Opus, anthropomorphic companion animals have always been comedy gold. However, a wise-assed kid and his stuffed tiger redefined the paradigm. Intellectually challenging, subversively anti-nostalgic and iconically irreverent, the philosophically named Calvin and Hobbes was arguably the greatest strip of a generation.

But success breeds excess. Since C&H went dark many other strips have tried to bottle that magic but mostly missed the mark. Let's look at the pretenders to the throne.

Red And Rover



Chronologically ambiguous (it could be set in the 50s or yesterday), Red and Rover is the most family friendly nominee with a sweet tone that borders on insulin overdose inducing. While Rover is slightly sarcastic, he is no stuffed tiger. And Red is so milquetoast he makes Dennis The Menace look like a serial killer.

Boy And Cow



Since all the good preternaturally provocative pets were taken, Boy and Cow takes a titular turn towards the bovine. While Cow is plenty punchy, the lack of animation makes her (a cow would be a her, right?) a particularly static foil. There are only so many set-ups that can come out of a kid and cow standing in a field.

Big Top



If a single talking animal is funny, an entire menagerie must be frickin' hilarious. At least that is the premise of Big Top where a ten-year-old boy lived with poodles, tigers, and bears (Oh, my!) Now living on only in reruns, Big Top tried to up the ante with an entire cast of wise cracking circus animals. At least it gets points for being self-aware.

Non Sequitur



Like its name, Non Sequitur is all over the map. However, one of the more common story lines involves precocious hellion Danae and her miniature pony. The equine companion is not a charter cast member, but has become a bigger part of the piece as it tries to temper the dark cynicism of their pint sized cynic with the wide-eyed innocence of a four-footed friend.


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ABBA-tastic

I've been critical of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the past, but this year they are honoring one of the bands that made my middle-school years special, those four flare-legged sirens from Sweden, ABBA. Now some of you may think that Anni-Frid, Benny, Bjorn, and Agnetha aren't very rock and roll. Well, to them I only have this to say:

Honey, honey,

Knowing me, knowing you, does your mother know the name of the game? I wonder, because she should have taught you that the winner takes it all and it’s money, money, money or you meet your Waterloo. Baby, those are the rules for one man, one woman.

I have a dream and you should take a chance on me because you have a hole in your soul that can only be cured by that dancing queen, Nina the pretty ballerina.

So don’t settle for the S.O.S. because I need to thank you for the music. Otherwise, so long and hasta manana, because I dance while the music still goes on, Chiquitita. Watch out because when all is said and done you owe me one.

I could go on and on and on since I am head over heels. Do I want them to gimme gimme gimme some kisses of fire? I do, I do, I do, so I will stay a super trooper because lovers live a little longer.

Sincerely,
Your Fernando

I dare you to click any of those links and not catch the spirit and energy that formed the premiere pop band of the 70s and early 80s. There music is infectious and catchy. They were video pioneers that presented a visual style every bit as bright and flashy as their carefully crafted tunes. Every time I hear one of their songs, I am sent back thirty years to when music to me was fresh and new.