Okay, so this may be the most depressing thing I've seen all week. I know... I know... we're talking about a minority of the teenage and tweenage fans of the Harry Potter books. But still, I was surprised. I know it's a short trip from fan to fanatic, but it's always sad to see the next generation of sweaty mouth-breathers swinging into action.

Yesterday's question by wordnerdy about cookbooks got me thinking, both about what my faves might be, about which I'd recommend, and cookery books in general. One thing that I realized right off is that I tend to latch onto certain recipes in books and make them over and over and never get around to exploring the rest of the book. The upside of this is that explained by Robert Rodriguez in Five Minute Cooking School, if you focus on a couple of dishes that you really like and make them often, you'll get to be really good at making them. The downside, of course, is that you can find yourself stuck in a culinary rut and never trying anything new. Which is sorta how I'm feeling. I know it's a side-effect of feeling stressed out and all. Trying to think of something new to cook is just one more thing to worry about. So that's something I'd like to do over the next few months is pick a book and set myself a goal of reading (and making) more of the recipes.
Some of my faves include: the Art of Mexican Cooking by Diana Kennedy. There are three or four recipes in here that I make all the time. Plus it's a fascinating book to read. But Kennedy's pretty uncompromising. I think if I decide to work my way through a Mexican cuisine book this summer it'll probably be Rick Bayless's Mexican Kitchen. Bayless is as committed to the authentic flavors and techniques but his recipes just seem more user-friendly to me.
The two food books I most want to read more of this year are: Jacques Pépin's Complete Techniques and I'm Just Here for the Food by Alton Brown. While both contain recipes, they're really more about how to work in a kitchen (Jacques) and how things work in a kitchen (Alton). Complete Techniques covers everything from asparagus stew to cleaning sea urchins. Most of which I'll probably never need to know but it's fascinating. I'm Just Here for the Food really is summed up by its subtitle, food + heat = cooking. Again, I'm not sure I need to know all that much about the Maillard reaction but it's a great read. Plus a gorgeously designed book. It is very meat-centric in the recipes, but the recipes are really secondary to the explanations and the science (!) and general free-ranging inquisitiveness.
But if I had to pick just one book it'd be Think Like a Chef by Tom Colicchio. Colicchio is chef/owner of Craft in NYC but this isn't a collection of restaurant recipes. Instead it's his attempt to get across some of his creative process of working in a kitchen. So there are sections on techniques (roasting, blanching, sauce-making), on specific ingredients (roasted tomatoes) and how they can be used in a variety of recipes, on combinations of ingredients, and on seasonal vegetables ("if it grows together, it goes together"). Most of the techniques seem graspable. I've yet to come across something that I either couldn't pull off or couldn't imagine achieving (for recipes I haven't tried yet). Some sections do tend towards the spend-y (lobsters, morels) or hard-to-find (ramps, sweetbreads) but he's also got roasted chicken, corn chowder and braised cabbage. I think what draws me to this book is the idea that creativity in the kitchen can be expressed not by creating odd unexpected new combinations (foie gras souffle) or elaborate and fussy constructions on the plate but by taking great ingredients and turning them into food that's simple and direct.

This is easily the high point of the week-that-was: penguins v. TSA!! What with the penguins and the two guys in matching outfits, I'd have immediately started searching the terminals for Burgess Meredith. Airport security chief O'Hara was unavailable for comment...

Coming up next weekend is the Kinetic Sculpture Race. I'm way looking forward to it. We went 2 years ago and even what with getting lost in Bawlmer a bit and it was pouring like the deluge it was still a total blast (on one hand, it's a drag that a supercool thing like this is a 5 hour drive away but on the other, the other major KSR is out in Seattle or somewhere up that way so looked at that way, much more of a good thing). Plus it's a chance to hang out with Pru, which is always welcome. And we're driving up on Friday, so it's a day off work too. w00t!

So after writing about the freaky pope-cake yesterday (alas, I did throw out that email) what do I wake up to find this morning but boing boing blogging an NYTimes mention of a hip funky Brooklyn cake decorater. Go CakeMan go! Honestly, tho, I had no idea that boring restrained tastefulness was now the order of the day in cake-decorating. Probably we can blame this on Martha. And I'm all in favor of over-the-top, even wacky cakes. At least until they start looking like the pope...

The one that's (so far) gotten away... via work email today I saw the most insane picture, of a pope cake. Yes, a cake shaped like a bust of Pope JP2. Totally asswich. And not in a good way. First off, I don't want to be walking into a store and seeing the cakes looking back at me. Secondly, I don't think scaring small children is one of the reactions you want as a cake decorator. Finally, hey! who wants some nose? Alas, I don't have the picture here (i know... i know... tease). And GIS doesn't turn up the right image when I search for "pope cake" or any variant thereof. Maybe I didn't throw out the email and I can get it tomorrow. Otherwise you'll have to use your imaginations, which might produce an even more frightening result than the original. And speaking of "frightening" and "Pope", altho I agree with Lady MacV that B16 looks disconcertingly like Emperor Palpatine, my fave Pope line so far was the Fark headline writer who remarked that Ratzinger was the first-ever cast member of Cheers elevated to the Papacy.

Random randomness while I'm trying to get destressed and unscattered...

One of my current fave tasty beverages is the Brown Ale from Duck-Rabbit. And I'm pretty sure they're the only microbrewery whose name references Wittgenstein.

Just got the new Trans-Global Underground CD, Impossible Broadcasting, at XDU. It kicks major ass. TGU may not have invented ethnotechno (or world fusion or whatever-the-hell-you-wanna-call-it) but they were definitely present at the creation. And they do it just about as well as it needs to be done. Stomping all over the map and back, with guests this time including Trio Bulgarka and Tata Pound. Do yrself a favor and check it out.

Finally, Phil mentioned this little gem over at Minty's blog (and yes, I think that's the most links I've ever gotten into one sentence). But in case you missed it there, here it is again. It's sacrelicious good fun!

Here's a highlight from an otherwise severely meh week... it's Wil v. Star Wars Geeks. I'd been following along last week with the various wacky hijinx out on the left coast, with übernerds lining up at the wrong theater seemingly just for the hell of it, but hadn't had time to keep up with the story. Which is, let me say, well worth keeping up with. Esp. the account of the pizza rescue mission (linked from WWDN). Also fun is this entry from blogging.la. The comments at blogging.la particularly illustrate Wheaton's point that everyone involved needs to get a life (btw, I think it's very cool that he was referencing the famous WFS con sketch from SNL) Nerd v. nerd? Nerd v. geek? Geek v. nerd? Alien lvs Predator? good clean fun!!

Two trailing items from last weekend: here's some photos from the Speedway's site. Bummer that they missed the Aerocar. On the other hand, Aerocar made it onto the official dash magnet. And another highlight of the weekend that I forgot to mention -- deep fried Oreos. Yes, completely unnecessary. And delicious. Possibly filled with pure evil, but the test results aren't back yet.

XDU wrrld music top 10 (week ending 10 apr 05) ::

Ghana Soundz 2 :: various
Pop A Paris 2 :: various
Piove en San Telmo :: Cuarteto Cedron
the Early Years, vol. 2: Rare Recordings 1983-1984 :: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
Motifs :: Paris Combo
Contramano :: Contramano
Synchro Series :: King Sunny Adé
Batards Sensibles :: TTC
No Earthly Man :: Alasdair Roberts
Mauvaises Nouvelles des Etoiles :: Serge Gainsbourg

Saturday night we had dinner at Lava Bistro. Almost everything on the menu looked good so I made a snap decision for the blackened rib-eye. While we were waiting for the food I was regretting the choice. Blackened is too often a synonym for excess spice burned into cheap meat to disguise lack of flavor. But not at Lava. Excellent steak with just the right amount of spice. And it was served on top of bacon & bleu cheese mashed potatoes (aka the best fucking mashed potatoes evah). Sarah had shrimp and grits, which seemed pretty awesome as well. Final score? Good food. Bass on draught. Nice atmosphere of ambience. I noticed on a table nearby that they huge gignormous olives in their martinis. Best fucking mashed potatoes evah. All in all, highly recommended. Maybe not worth a 2 hour drive for dinner but next time we're in Charlotte, we'll definitely go back.

Other than the previously mentioned Unofficial Parade/Art Car Invitational, the coolest thing I saw all weekend was probably Miss Vicki (pictured above) chasing down the Monster Garage World's Fastest Golf Cart. How many times will I ever again see an art car do a donut? The Monster Garage crew had modded a golf cart with the chassis/engine of a Classics Series stock car (kinda like a mini-stock car) and they were running around the parking lot behind us while Dean was pulling out and he decided to gun it and chase them around the oval a few times. Absolute super coolness! Wish I'd had the camera out to get some video of that...

Back from Charlotte, which was a totally awesome time. I am fried, on several levels (forgot the small detail of sunscreen before walking around outside for hours). Tons o' cool cars -- both classic and art. In addition to Sarah's car, Tim (Plaid Car), who I met at Houston and Bawlmer last year was there. And I got to meet several other drivers, inc. Chris (Heaven and Hell Car), Dean (Miss Vicki), Carolyn and Mike (Stink Bug) and Dave (Aero Car). Altho big events with lots o' cars are thrilling, there's something nice about a small event where you get a chance to hang out and talk to everyone. But what was especially cool about Charlotte was the presence of Dalton Stevens, the Button King!! Not only was he featured in Wild Wheels (Harrod Blank's first art car movie/book) but he even shows up as a stock photo in the WebShots screensaver I use at work. He came up from South Carolina and apparently this was his last art car/car show event. He's planning to retire his car and all his stuff into a museum he's opening up at his home. He explained to Sarah and me this morning that he had buttoned two coffins. One for him to use and the other to stay in the museum (but they'll both be at the museum, he said, "until I go.") I love meeting art car people but I think I was more in awe of meeting the Button King than anyone else I've met in the scene. I think because, in a way, he didn't set out to make an art car. He just set out to cover stuff in buttons.

Anyway, y'all should bounce over to Sarah's site and check out a short movie clip I shot (and she edited and scored) of the unofficial Charlotte Auto Fair 2005 artcar parade.

File under "no shit" -- if you stay up until 1.30am and wake up at 6.30am, and then try to drive for a couple hundred miles later that day, it's highly unlikely you will enjoy the trip, esp. if 2/3 of it are thru rain so hard you can barely see the highway.
But it's still worth it.

Just finished reading Don't Panic: the Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion by Neil Gaiman. Lotsa fun and loaded with odd little bits of HHG ephemera, lore, gossip, etc. Fun fact I think I just learned. In the original BBC radio series (which I've never heard), Arthur Dent's brother is revealed to have been nibbled to death by an okapi. The Damned song "Smash It Up" ends with a loop of a voice saying "nibbled to death by an okapi" which I assume was taken from the radio series. I always wondered where the hell that came from...

Bagged off (in a professional, find-a-sub-first manner) the radio show tonight. Just needed those two hours to work on the laundry list of things I needed to get done. Which, yes, did include laundry. Mostly got all that dealt with. Now I'm reading and listening to the electronica channel on the cable, which has played some surprisingly good stuff.
Last night I watched Winged Migration. I think probably it would've been better on the big screen. It's visually stunning to the point of breath-taking. But the TV in the living room doesn't do breath-taking all that well. And since the visuals weren't able to overwhelm me, I was able to notice the music, which is heinous almost throughout. Some ghastly mix of new age and deracinated worldbeat. The other distracting thing was I kept wondering if any of the shots were staged. There was an opening title card that disavowed all special effects. But nature documentary films have a long history of manufacturing reality, when nature won't come thru with the needed shots. And there were a few points in the movie that carried that whiff. All of which makes it sound like I didn't enjoy the movie. But I did. It's quite spectacular. Reminded me a bit of Microcosmos which is also visually brilliant, if a bit dodgy around the edges.

this week's winner for pint of delicious evil:: Ben & Jerry's Dublin Mudslide

Best headline I saw today was along the lines of "Attorney General wants to extend Patriot Act." This just in, water still wet. Pope still dead.
Speaking of which, I'm on the air this Thursday. Anyone know any Pope songs? The only one I can think of is "Antipope" by the Damned. I know, I know... it really is unseemly to be riffing on the death of the Pope. On the other hand (to paraphrase John Bigbooté), it's not my goddamn planet, monkey boy.
Also seen today, an article saying that the Watchmen movie was having problems. Can't remember what sort of problems, if it's a pre-production thing or whatever. I'm pretty sure they're not actually filming anything yet. But I'm not sure how much credence to grant this article, since they identified Alan Moore as creator of Hellboy. I may not know my comix history like the back of my hand (hey, what's that?) but I'm pretty sure they've confused Hellboy with From Hell (which is kinda like confusing Snow Crash and Snow White).
Art car season! Actually, it's pretty much always art car season somewhere but the first major event for Sarah's coming up this weekend, Auto Fair Carnival in Charlotte. Should be a blast. I've met several of the other drivers who'll be there, but I'm very excited that Dave Major (AeroCar) and Dalton "Button King" Stevens will be there. Sarah met Dave and his wife at an event in Charlotte a few years ago, which I sicked out of. He was at Artscape one year but I never got the chance to meet him. So that'll be cool. And the Button King. Damn! He was one of the featured artists in Harrod Blank's first movie, Wild Wheels. Not only that but my shareware screensaver at work includes a pic of him. No car, alas, but it does show his button covered coat, banjo, toilet and coffin.
Oh yeah, and the Monster Garage gang will apparently be there. Plus it's, y'know, a carnival. So lotsa deep fried goodness.

XDU wrrld music top 10 (week ending 3 apr 05) ::

Ghana Soundz 2 :: various
Synchro Series :: King Sunny Adé
Pop A Paris 2 :: various
Studio One Funk :: various
Piove en San Telmo :: Cuarteto Cedron
No Earthly Man :: Alasdair Roberts
the Early Years, vol. 1: Rare Recordings 1978-1982 :: Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
Motifs :: Paris Combo
Contramano :: Contramano
Mauvaises Nouvelles des Etoiles :: Serge Gainsbourg

Gig-normous article in this week's Sunday NYTimes Magazine about the Japanese artist Murakami. Maybe a bit long at 9 pages but lots of interesting stuff. At least, I thought so. Could all be a complete load of blathering bullshit, I suppose. But any article that's got a 500 kilo fiberglass elephant, an art gallery on the 12th floor of a dept store, outraged otaku, obscene kawaii notebooks in a cake shop, Marc Jacobs, and 14th century gay manga... hell, that's a pretty okay read.
I'm not sure why but I've always enjoyed Murakami's stuff. Other artists who only conceptualize their work and leave the, y'know, messy inconvenient part of actually creating to staffs and factories tend to bug the crap outta me. I'm thinking of guys like Jeff Koons, Mark Kostabi, Damien Hirst. All of whom I generally loathe to some degree. It's perhaps the choice of source material (otaku v. kitsch v. graffiti v. whatever-the-hell-it-is-Hirst-is-thinking-about).

Was meant to be more of an even mind/body, indoor/outdoor split to the weekend. And we did get out to the Raleigh farmer's market yesterday. Bought some plants, but only had time to get one planted and do the smallest amount of weeding in the afternoon before the rain started. Then it got cold and windy and that's pretty much continued thru today. So I spent the morning reading the Sunday Times online, drinking coffee and reviewing another Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan CD for the station. This afternoon it was the usual thrill-packed excitement that is the semi-annual XDU all DJ meeting. Then off to Southpointy with Sarah and Lisa to watch Sin City. Yowza. Not, I would have to agree, a movie for everyone. Hyper-hyper-violent but, esp. given the censorious and blue-nosed nature of the times, I really admire Rodriguez for his willingness to just go all the way with Miller's stories. I've never read any of the Sin City graphic novels, but they seemed instantly familiar to me from what I do know of Miller's work (mostly Dark Knight and Ronin) only more extreme and brutalist. Critics seem to be split, altho I'm still not quite sure what the NYTimes didn't like about the movie. Reading between the lines, my guess is that they found it either too graphic or too CGI and thus never engaged with the story, but what they ended up saying was that the movie was boring. Many things I think you could say about Sin City (I frequently found myself thinking "oh, I can't believe I just saw that" after something truly grotesque happened) but boring wouldn't be one of them.

happy happy joy joy...

1. fog
2. finally sat down last night and got my iPod set up to shuffle with iTrip
3. Bean Traders now on Ninth Street. w00t!!
4. wonderful dinner made by Sarah
5. watched Tokyo Godfathers. Outstanding movie! Directed by Satoshi Kon. Much different from his earlier movies Perfect Blue and Millennium Actress. Completely fabulous (in every sense of the word), it achieves the same kind of giddy magic realism as A Life Less Ordinary. And of course it's just loaded with stunning visuals.
6. DVD also had a preview for Steamboy which (as I said before) looks amazing.