Death Watch For Kitchen Confidential

If you tune into Fox Monday night to see Kitchen Confidential, you are going to be disappointed and you only have me to blame. Despite the on-air promo last week and earlier reports, Fox has decided that repeats of Prison Break are a better sweeps month bet than new episodes of Arrested Development and Kitchen Confidential. According to the official KC website, new episodes will return December 5 in time for people to ignore it through the holiday season.

In my house it is an article of faith that any quirky, offbeat, critically praised, well-written show I take an interest in is doomed. As soon as I mention a show I want to try out, my wife should write the cast telling them to not make any big credit purchases. It is like TV executives have a secret sensor on my VCR they use as some sort of reverse Nielsen meter.

Kitchen Confidential is extremely loosely based on the memoir of the same name by Anthony Bourdain about his days as a sex-crazed, heroin-addicted, top New York chef. Already, this has laff-riot written all over it. I loved the book as well as Bourdain’s Food Network travel show, A Cook's Tour, where he traveled to exotic places to eat bizarre food. My favorite episode is when he went to Vietnam to eat a live beating cobra heart. Reality TV doesn’t get any realer than that.

For the TV show, they have changed the character’s name from Anthony to Jack and put his wilder substance abusing days behind him. Kind of like Sam Malone with a chef’s knife. Jack is played by Bradley Cooper who is most famous as the only non-ass-kicking character on Alias. He has the Jack Bourdain character pegged as a guy who knows the dangers of his lifestyle but still likes the heat of the kitchen.

The supporting cast is full of “types” including some stereotypes: Blond Bimbo, Snarky Gay Waiter, Bitchy Boss’s Daughter. The best is Jack’s sous-chef Steve played by British actor Owain Yeoman who is not nearly as repentant and reformed as Jack. Also showing promise is Freaks and Geeks alum John Francis Daley as the impressionable hero-worshipping wet-behind-the-ears cooking school dweeb.

The show is filmed single camera for a you-are-there effect and there seems to have been great care taken to get the lingo and feel of a top New York restaurant down. I can’t vouch for behind the kitchen door, but my dining experiences don’t contradict the overall verisimilitude.

Getting bumped out of sweeps is never a good sign, particularly for shows that need some time slot continuity to build an audience. Meanwhile crap like The War At Home and Out of Practice (don’t get me started on the paycheck-cashing, talent-wasting, phoned-in performances of both Stockard Channing AND Henry Winkler) is still on the air.

Catch Kitchen Confidential while you still can and enjoy a funny, edgy, well-written comedy before the guardians of the lowest common denominator throw it out in the alley like yesterday's fish special.

Technorati tag:hummingbird rump, Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain, Bradley Cooper, Owain Yeoman, John Francis Daley, television, sweeps

Marching Orders

You never quite know where life is going to lead us, but the one role in life I never thought I would have is Band Parent. When I started my family, I knew I would be dragged into all sorts of activities. I believe in being involved with my son’s activities. Heck, I spent four years as a Cub Scout Assistant Den Leader, which is the lowest rank you can have in Scouting and still get to wear the spiffy uniform. I just never thought I would be involved in a marching band.

In high school I knew lots of band geeks and even dated a few musicians. I, however, have no musical talent whatsoever. I get banned from humming at work. The threat of karaoke night draws laughs and veiled threats from my family.

I love music. I appreciate musical talent. I just have none of my own, so my son didn’t get any from me. My wife is the only Asian I know that has never been forced to learn an instrument, so any latent ability in her is undiscovered. Musical talent was the last thing we expected to find in any mixture of our collective DNA.

We thought elementary school band would be a good way to round out our son’s scholastic experience. For those unfamiliar with the genre, elementary school bands sound like kids throwing rocks at very sick cats that have been tied up in large burlap bags. They usually sound better tuning their instruments than actually playing them. Still we went to the concerts and even have a few performances on videotape just in case any of the other kids ever become famous pop stars and E! needs embarrassing footage for a Behind The Music rip-off.

In middle school we started paying for weekly private lessons with a teacher that unbeknownst to us had a really good jazz band on the side and had former students go on to become professional recording artists. We feel like we’re paying Lance Armstrong to teach our kid to ride a tricycle.

Two years ago we showed up for parent night for the high school band and foolishly volunteered to help out moving equipment. Now we chaperone trips, put plumes in hats, sell all sorts of crap, and generally write off every weekend between August and November. Here is what the past few days have entailed:

Thursday: Pick him up from the twice weekly 6 to 9 band practice.

Friday: Attend football game. Push percussion equipment on and off the field at half time. Go to Bennigans after the game because they donate 15% of our sales to the band.

Saturday: Take him to another special practice and then load all the equipment into a rental truck.

Sunday: Wake up at 5:30 am so we can get him down to the school for a 2-1/2 hour bus ride to a competition. We carpool with another band parent to the competition so I can drive the lawn tractor that tows the percussion equipment on and off the field. We return home after 8 pm that night.

Monday: Band Booster meeting: Time to start planning the Spring trip to Orlando.

Tuesday: Set up the school cafeteria for the end of the season pot-luck dinner. Ate lukewarm lasagna and KFC chicken while listening to the students give each other awards like Loudest Belcher and Biggest Wedgie.

Now that marching band season is over, my son is rehearsing every night this week as part of the band for a community theater musical. He is also thinking of joining the afterschool jazz band and the indoor drumline. I don’t know what those entail, but I’m sure it affects my Shell card.

I love that he is involved in something that is only about the fourth dorkiest thing you can do in high school, but I just try to keep some ironic detachment about my own complicity in all this.

I know I am getting no sympathy from the Bloggin’ Moms (and Dads) out there with three kids who each have four activities. One kid with one activity would be their idea of heaven, but a golf shirt with a school logo on the front and “Pit Crew” stitched on the sleeve is definitely not anything I ever imagined in my wardrobe.

So go ahead and top this and tell me what part of your life is a completely random non-sequitor for where you thought you would be?

Technorati tag:hummingbird rump, band, parent, teenager

The 24 Hour Meme

Blond Girl loves memes so much she has even invented her own. You have to come up with something for every different hour of the day. Like you’re Jack Bauer saving the world or something. A good meme is tough to invent, so we’ll see if this one catches on or if it is just too hard. I had a difficult time coming up with stuff for every hour. For some reason nothing significant happens at 3 in my life.

12:00 Midnight: My son’s unofficial weekend curfew. Not really an issue yet. A few more years until he can drive.

1:00 am: This is when Saturday Night Live is over, so it’s the latest I ever stay up and I usually don’t make much past Weekend Update. I stay awake for Tina Fey.

2:00 am: The summer after high school and before college, I worked the closing shift at Wendy’s. I would get home late and listen to the late night punk rock show on Tampa’s public community station WMNF.

3:00 am: Nothing exciting in my life has ever happened at this hour.

4:00 am: My dog wakes up a little after 5, so when Daylight Saving Time ends, he wakes up at 4 instead.

5:00 am: Time to walk the dog. If he wakes me up early enough, I can surf for a few minutes before having to shower.

6:00 am: I have exactly one hour to shower, dress, eat, read the paper, and leave the house to drive my son to school.

7:00 am: The time I was born. My wife was born at 10 pm on the other side of the world, so I am still 2 hours older than her.

8:00 am: Work starts at 8:15. Which doesn’t make sense until you get to the noon entry.

9:00 am: The latest I like to go for my Saturday morning bike ride. Any later and it takes up too much of the family time part of the day

10:00 am: The time my wedding was supposed to start, but was 10 minutes late because my relatives hadn’t finished brunch yet. My wife will never let me live that one down.

11:00 am: Completely stumped. Can’t think of anything special.

12:00 noon: Lunch time. I get 45 minutes for lunch which is not enough time to go out to eat, so I sit at my desk and surf blogs.

1:00 pm: About when I can get my family out of the house on the weekend if we have something to do.

2:00 pm: A good time for a nap on the weekend if I don’t have anything to do.

3:00 pm: Just like 3 am.

4:00 pm: I just learned what 4:20 means awhile ago. Not that it matters to me. I was just confused by the bumper stickers and stuff.

5:00 pm: Whistle blows. Yabba Dabba Doo. Slide down the dinosaur and start running home.

6:00 pm: When I actually leave the office. It helps with the traffic and I get more done when the phone quits ringing.

7:00 pm: Dinner time. Assuming there’s no band practice or show rehearsal or study group. Home cooked meals maybe three times a week.

8:00 pm: Anytime after 8 I can give the dog his last walk of the day. Any sooner and he won’t sleep all night.

9:00 pm: The time my son was born. He has never been asleep before 9 in his life.

10:00 pm: My son’s nominal bedtime. This is when the yelling starts. It usually ends about 10:30

11:00 pm: I had better be asleep by now or I will be uselessly tired the next day.

And you have to tag people for a meme to spread and my memory is pretty bad, so I'm tagging Keb, Twisted Cinderella, mean girl, and lucinda. Give it a shot guys. As always no obligations, no recriminations.

Technorati tag:hummingbird rump, meme

Hottest. Columnist. Ever.

I am one of probably a fairly small sick group of fetishists that watch Sunday morning political talk shows for the eye candy. I find brainy women talking about politics very sexy. Cokie Roberts is not only smart and well-connected, she is firmly in the Grandmother Division of the MILF Hall of Fame. Her salt and pepper well-sculpted hairdo tells me she can bake me cookies any time. I pray for Supreme Court controversies because they give Nina Totenberg more air time, adding new meaning to legal affairs. Mara Liasson makes Fox News Sunday bearable. I wait all year for Ellen Goodman’s Equal Rites Awards. But none compare to Maureen Dowd who is the crème-de-la-crème of female punditry.

Maureen Dowd is a particularly fascinating columnist, not just because she is the only regular New York Times Op/Ed inhabitant without a Y-chromosome, but also for the rabid, drooling, mouth-breathing fan base she has developed. Google “Maureen Dowd is hot” and you get 90 hits. “Eleanor Clift is hot” did not match any documents.

The Washington Post Style section has an astoundingly long puff piece by Howard Kurtz on MoDo (as internet shorthand refers to her) and her new book, Are Men Necessary?. New York Magazine has an even longer more fawning article. And these are her competitors. Wonkette calls the media orgy over her a "mogasm".

So what makes Maureen such an object of desire? It can’t be just looks. Although at 53, she gives Rene Russo a run for her money in the well-preserved category. She is famously single and has been at different times connected to Michael Douglas, “West Wing” genius and mushroom aficionado Aaron Sorkin, and new NYT stablemate John Tierney. Her red hair is the taking off point for many a descriptive metaphor for her fiery snarky prose.

If power is the ultimate aphrodisiac, being the New York Times premier female columnist just reeks of pheromones. She took over the Anna Quindlen Endowed Chair Of Female Commentary in 1995, just in time for the Clinton-Lewinsky media feeding frenzy where she got to play both directions by condemning Clinton’s crimes against decency AND the conservative war against him. Right wing blow-hards and ideologues have made her the columnist they love to hate. And her most recent smackdown of Judith Miller firmly establishes her as the Queen Bee of the Gray Lady.

But the brain is the most important erogenous zone. Both critics and fans cite her prose as being exceptionally crisp and frequently acid-tinged. Her pop-culture references are sharp and creative. She stays just this side of the ad hominem precipice that Ann Coulter has thrown herself down. She is disingenuously dismissive of her skill as a columnist and borders on Katherine Hepburn-esque reclusiveness when she doesn’t have a book to flog. She keeps her Sunday morning appearance infrequent enough to not wear out her welcome. All of this adds to this image of the valedictorian hottie that sits home on prom night because everyone is too nervous to ask her out.

The recent move of her column behind the NYT Select VIP room red rope and her conspicuous silence on the move has only enhanced her rock star appeal. The Post’s Joel Achenbach had a hilarious blog post about people furtively meeting to pass along bootleg copies of her column to the cold turkey addicts that need their hit of MoDo.

The two photos the Post published prove that Maureen is hotter fully clothed than anything Esquire had of the half-naked Jessica Biel, the current Sexiest Woman Alive poseur. The second photo unfortunately is not available on the Post website, so I am flirting with cyber-stalkerdom (not that I haven’t been there before) by scanning and cropping it here. The thoughts I get imagining myself in a book-lined room with Maureen Dowd leaning across a chessboard about to capture my rook are so wrong I should go take a very cold shower and scrub myself with a steel wool falafel loofah.

Forgive me, Maureen. I’m happily married and can’t possibly be the man you deserve, so I will quietly step aside. I just ask that you find in your heart the pity to e-mail me your new columns so I don’t have to scrounge through the recycling bin at Starbucks any more. They're starting to get suspicious that I'm there for more than the over-priced highly-caffeinated milkshakes.

Technorati tag:hummingbird rump, Maureen Dowd, Howard Kurtz, Cokie Roberts, Ellen Goodman, sexy, Times Select, Achenblog, Ann Coulter, Eleanor Clift, Mara Liasson, New York Times, Jessica Biel

Hank Pym - The Yellowjacket

On the Comics Curmudgeon site one day, another frequent poster there noticed my yellojkt signature and was honored to be in the presence of the one and only Hank Pym. I had never heard of Hank Pym and went googling to find that Hank was among other things a Marvel superhero named Yellowjacket. He also goes by Ant-Man, Giant-Man, Goliath or even sans alter ego. Scott Tipton has an enormously entertaining and obsessively detailed history of Yellowjacket and his other identities here. Heck, Yellowjacket even has his own Wikipedia entry.

I read a lot of comics when I was a kid. My parents would stop at a convenience store and I would beg for a superhero comic, but they would only let me get the Scrooge McDuck type Disney comics. Finally, when I was in first grade, I went to the Seven-Eleven and bought a Superman (issue #242 if my web source is correct). I went to a vacant lot and read it three times before I snuck it into the house. I was hooked.

The problem was that I became a fan of DC comics which included great heroes like Batman, Flash, Green Lantern, Wonder Woman, and more, but that in the early seventies all the comics buzz was at Marvel which had Spiderman, The (Uncanny) X-Men, The Fantastic Four, Hulk, and the Avengers.

I saw the Avengers as a cheap rip-off of the much more prestigious Justice Leage of America over at DC. Hawkeye was a poor man's Green Arrow. Tony Stark was Bruce Wayne with a bad ticker. Scarlett Witch was nowhere near as sexy as Black Canary. And so on.

Yellowjacket was an Avenger. One whose career ended in disgrace in a long convoluted soap-opera-ish story arc that is the trademark of Marvel comics. My comic company snobbery had blinded me to the existence of my future namesake. I had long adopted the yellojkt persona well before I knew there was a superhero of the same name.

After I graduated from college, my mom gave me the "Clean out the closet" ultimatum and my comic collection got liquidated. They were in terrible shape since an eight year old knows nothing about acid free backer paper and clear covers. None of them were particularly collectible anyway.

I haven't bought a comic book since I tried to cash in on the "new" Superman craze several years ago. The "Marvelization" of comics is complete. All the superheroes have incredibly complicated storylines that are impossible to follow if you aren't showing up at your local comics store every Wednesday for the new releases.

I still read them when I am killing time at the mall in Waldenbooks Borders Express. Their selection of comic books is thin and disorganized. Meanwhile, my teenage son and his peers are crowding the manga aisle to read translations of black and white Japanese comics from back to front. If I were a comic publisher I would fear the losing of a generation to anime and manga. I am one of the last of a generation that read comics from when they could read.

Technorati tag:hummingbird rump, comic books, Yellowjacket, DC, Marvel, superhero, Avengers, yellojkt

More Supreme Court Options

With Harriet Miers officially withdrawn from consideration for Supreme Court Justice, the selection process begins again. A few weeks ago I made some excellent suggestions for women more qualified than Harriet. Now many are calling for consideration of a minority person to fill the seat.

The nominee must be a judge with a strong reputaion and exemplary credentials. As a public service I have gathered several judges that meet this exacting standard. If you know George Bush or any of his cronies, please pass along these suggestions. They can't be any worse than the choice he made last time.

	Judge Joe Brown Minority: Daytime Television Celebrity Advantages: Slogan "It's About Being A Man" would ring true. Disadvantages: Only available for arguments at 4 pm on weekdays.
	Judge Ito Minority: Celebrity Trial Laughingstock Advantages: High name recognition Disadvantages: Jay Leno still has Dancing Itos on retainer.
	Judge Dredd Minority: Comic Book Character Advantages:Law and order reputation makes Scalia look like a tree-hugger Disadvantages: Weapons not allowed in court room.
	Mike Judge Minority: Comic Book Geek Advantages: Fellow Texan to George Bush. Disadvantages: Hearing Beavis constantly snickering, "He said 'penal'."

Update: I want to go on the record that this post complete with Judge Ito gag predates the nomination of Ale-ITO by at least twelve hours. Leno, Stewart, Conan, and you other guys that regularly steal my best bits can make a donation to the Planned Parenthood Going Out Of Business Fund in lieu of royalties.

Technorati tag:hummingbird rump, Supreme Court, Harriet Miers, Judge Ito, Joe Brown, Judge Dredd, Mike Judge

Time Warp For Tots

The school where my wife works has a Fall Festival every year near the end of October. Fall Festival being the non-denominational, non-occult version of Halloween. As I walked through the halls I heard a vaguely familiar tune that I wouldn’t normally associate with a school environment. It was the Kidz Bop version of “Time Warp” from The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

This disturbed in a great number of ways. It’s just so wrong when that stuff filters sown to the elementary school set. The first time I saw a group of five year olds clamoring to be included in a YMCA line dance, I cringed and wondered what happened to all that was edgy and subversive from my younger days. Rocky Horror was a vital part of my youth that has now been co-opted as children’s entertainment. Not to mention the cloying children’s chorus arrangements that the succubae at Kidz Bop use to totally defang anything. I think they could do Iron Maiden Kidz Bob style and no one would object.

I was never a huge Rocky Horror aficionado, but went at least a half dozen times when in high school. I knew what to shout and when, but never went out of my way to bring props or show up in costume. A casual fan.

In college, my future wife and I were visiting an old junior high friend of hers that attended Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina. Her friend, B., said he was a cast member of the local Rocky Horror troupe at the only Cineplex in the area and wanted to know if we wanted to go along. My wife is the only person I know that has fallen asleep at Rocky Horror and she begged off, but I was game.

B. warned me that the Saturday night performance was a little looser than their by-the-book show on Fridays and cast members frequently skipped out. B. played the monster and had the gold bikini shorts for the part. We got there and found out that the regular actor that played Brad had called in sick. B. asked me if I wanted to substitute. I tried to beg off by saying I didn’t know the movie well enough. He rightly said “What is there to know? The movie is right there on the screen and all you have to do is pantomime the action.”

Besides, the cast thought I was perfect for the part. I was tall, thin, wore glasses and had a dorky yellow Members Only jacket. Secretly indulging my deeply repressed thespian tendencies, I went on with the show.

It was easy and a great time. The cast was a lot of fun and everyone went out to Waffle House afterwards, where I found out that Columbia and Magenta stayed in character off stage, if you know what I mean. While the whole event seems pretty tame in retrospect, it was all wild and bacchanalian when set against the mores of the surrounding community. Greenville, after all, is also the home of Bob Jones University, but that is a whole ‘nuther culture clash.

So I did wear a yellow jacket while in college, but that is not why I am yellojkt. But if anyone needs a Brad for a Rocky Horror revival, I’ve got that on my resume.

Technorati tag:hummingbird rump, Rocky Horror, Kidz Bop, yellojkt, comics

Why yellojkt?

Whenever I am asked for a username/alias/handle I rely on the one I have had since I first started visiting computer bulletin boards back in the early 90s. This was way before the World Wide Web hit the mainstream and the internet meant e-mail or Usenet. Most bulletin board systems (BBS) were hobbyist things that a guy (and it was inevitably a guy) used his computer for after he got a modem.

My first modem was a US Robotics Sportster 19.2kbps v-something or other. In those days, the speed of the modem and the protocols it supported was a major marketing phenomena as each new standard would immediately render the other standards obsolete. Modem speed increased exponentially from 300 bps in days that predate me to 2400, then 9600, and 14.4k. Modem speeds eventually topped out at 56kbps, which was when I made the jump to broadband, never to turn back.

Using a modem was very high-geek. You needed to know a bunch of very obscure initialization string settings. The most important of which was how to silence the dial tone, dialing and answer squawk so that you wouldn’t wake up your wife while BBS’ing late at night. The word “surfing” didn’t even exist then.

The typical BBS sysop (system operator) was a guy with a computer he left on 24/7. As his BBS grew he would add modems so that more than one user could be on at a time. Large ones would charge membership and adult oriented ones often required proof of age (or so I heard). Widespread use of the WWW put most of these guys out of business. Some bigger commercial ones evolved into ISP’s, but the hobbyists all went onto other things. Like running fan-sites on the web.

Once on a BBS, there was precious little to do except post on a message board or download files. Files tended to be of the variety favored by male technically enabled early adopters, warez and pr0n. There was a whole etiquette to downloading files that included uploading files as well. Since I didn’t have a stash of uploadable files and was a little squeamish about having that stuff on a family computer, I kept to the message boards or reading Fidonet threads.

Fidonet was the BBS users’ semaphore-flag-on-a-hill simulation of Usenet that ran in parallel to and in many ways was superior to the similar Usenet groups. The topic groups ran to the geek end of the spectrum. Star Trek was well represented.

Much of the jargon that still exists was coined by users of early BBS’s as well as the mainframe users of Usenet. There were “lurkers” and “trolls” and “doodz” and “file-leeches” and several other sub-species of anti-social specimens. Each BBS would develop its own little community of frequent users and hierarchies and feuds and flame-wars would ensue. Just like any decent blog or message board today. The more things change the more they stay the same.

And my point before I started geezing was…. Oh, yeah, most of these BBS’s were DOS based shareware platforms that created little files for each user on the host’s machine, so user names were limited to eight characters. I needed an eight character word to succinctly summarize me and my multi-faceted personality yet still remain anonymous, just in case.

I chose yellojkt.

Over the years this choice has served me well. There are very few places I go where I can’t get yellojkt as a username without having to resort to silly numerical suffixes. By now, nearly everybody everywhere allows names of nearly unlimited length. I hang onto yellojkt for sentimental and practical reasons. yellojkt is short, easy to type, and easy to remember. I have been yellojkt on Prodigy, AOL, Netcom, Earthlink, Comcast, and numerous chat-rooms, bulletin boards, blogging services, and other assorted members-only environments. I even now own yellojkt.com, although all you will find is a redirect to my Blogger account. I just hated the thought that someone else might have grabbed that domain name when I get around to wanting to do something with it.

But why yellojkt, and not some other nonsensical eight letter combination?

That’s a different question altogether. It’s fairly easy to figure out phonetically that yellojkt is short for Yellow Jacket.

But why Yellow Jacket?

For one thing it’s a great conversation starter. It’s really not hard to figure out, but I’m going to give out some red herrings in further posts before I spill the beans. I have heard some wild guesses over the years and you are welcome to give it a try. The more outlandish the better.

Sincerely,

yellojkt