28 February 2005
SPANGLISH
Crubbish more like.*
A light, family friendly “comedy” about the culture clash between and Mexican maid and the quirky Los Angeles white family she works for. For which read reductive, manipulative and misogynist pseudo-entertainment which unfortunately Adam Sandler decided to make his most nuanced acting performance. His pussy whipped superstar chef is a pretty well drawn picture of a man in crisis. Unfortunately Tea Leoni gets to play his even more neurotic wife which is a character written do badly that you would think her one-dimensionality would render her nigh on invisible. And the end result, the moral: er – people fuck with people and fuck about with people and if you get ideas above your station, you might lose the moral high ground of poverty. Youch!
*Alternative portmanteau words passed over for this not very good joke include Shrubbish (too much like horticulture), Sharbage (described Shirley from Garbage too well to be used for any other purpose) and Shap.
Pete Baran in Do You See • No Comments
MOST ORGANIC PUB EVAH!
The Duke Of Cambridge on St Peter’s Street in Islington prides itself on being an organic gastropub. Perhaps prides is not strong enough. Puffs itself out with so much self satisfaction about absolutely everything being organic that it appears to exist in some sort of parallel universe where oxygen has been replaced with snugness and the staff are taking big gulps.
I’m not saying the St Peter’s Organic Ale was not one of the tastiest pints I’ve had this year. I’m also not arguing with the provenance, live-biocultures and tongue zinging quench of the cider I had there (no name remembered unfortunately). But it is the kind of place that gives Islington a bad name for back slapping. Witness: next to the organic gins, vodkas and whiskeys on the back bar is a small chalk board sign.
“All of our food is organic and source from environmentally friendly suppliers. Except the fish which cannot be certified organic. We do try and buy the fish from nice people though.”*
*Whilst I have presented this as a quote, it is note. It does nevertheless retain the spirit of smugness that pervades the pub.
Pete Baran in Pumpkin Publog • No Comments
27 February 2005
The Long Arm of Jude Law
Apropos of nothing, this is the winner of my own private “Commission a new strip for Viz” competition. Not quite up to snuff were Asher D: Maitre d’ and My Mate Billy. AD:MD was a bit out of date with its subject matter, though the gun-crime/posh-nosh mix was attractive. MMB was a promising combo of IPC comix body-part giganticism with extra schoolyard scatology, but suffered from possibly already having been done, or being TOO Viz-like either way.
TLAoJL wins through not needing any explanation.
Alan in The Brown Wedge • No Comments
The Way To Paradise by Mario Vargas Llosa
I’m a big admirer of Vargas Llosa, but this one isn’t much fun. It’s two separate narratives, one of Gauguin, not a painter or person for whom I have much admiration, and one of his grandmother, Florita Tristan, a socialist idealist and campaigner earlier in the 19th Century. Her story is the more interesting – she is passionately committed to her campaign for social justice, against absurd odds, implacable opposition and apathy and fear from those she wants as her allies, workers and women in particular. She’s also wonderfully bad tempered and sharp of tongue, so this does offer some good moments, and lots of convincing and quite interesting detail about the workings of factories and society in general back then. This is pretty grim stuff, of course.
The Gauguin stuff convinces too (it fits all that I know of him; I know nothing of his grandmother, so don’t know how grounded in known facts that half is – the sometime shapelessness of it suggests it’s largely factual). It skimps rather on his early life, and instead focusses on the time in, in particular, Tahiti. He’s pretty loathsome, with his exploitation of local girls, his noble savage drivel and his arrogance, and it’s hard to make good prose out of describing a painting.
The link is that Gauguin was seeking a paradise in a fantasy version of the uncorrupted island savages, while Florita was trying to carve one out of a grotesquely unjust society. But I’m not sure that we have so much to learn from 170 year old attempts at political reform, and we have surely grown out of the noble savage notion long ago too. I see why the parallels tempted Vargas Llosa (and she was descended from a prominent family from his native Peru), but I don’t think he has made an awful lot out of them.
Martin Skidmore in The Brown Wedge • No Comments
diet a success: dieter scarily hott and smugg (cont.)…
D. ca ma-ca-ren kho coi thit ba chi
(vietnamese mackerel cooked in a pot lined with belly pork)
ok mackerel is VERY CHEAP and VERY OILY, and the oiliness is what some ppl find offputting (esp.as it is “good for you” oiliness): the excellent thing abt this v.easy dish – only one ingred.poss.hard to obtain (i invite comments to put me right here) – is that it is a SOUP in which somehow the oiliness has VANISHED!!
you will need
–two large or three small fresh mackerel (cleaned and beheaded), cut into inch-thick steaks
–a handful of mushrooms, cut into threads (the vietnamese use a giant shiny cleaver but i use scissors)
–two strips of bellypork (or similar cut), also cut into threads
–a small bowlful of thin-sliced bamboo shoots (this is the tricky ingredient: see note at end): it is important though as it colours the soup all creamy and softens the taste
–two pieces beancurd (=tofu) (also = not that vital) chopped into little cubes
–one red chilli pepper, chopped tiny (i actually use dried as i have a huge old bag of em) (hotness to taste AS ALWAYS)
–two slices fresh root ginger, chopped small (size of slice to taste) (mmm ginger)
–authentic flavoursome sauce = 2 parts DARK SOYA SAUCE to 2 parts NUOC MAM (see note at end) to 1 part WHITE WINE, plus a spoonful of sugar
–pint of hot water ready on the side
–spring onions for garnish (so far i have never remembered these)
i. i cook everything in a wok, as you can flash-fry AND make soup in it: otherwise you need a biggish fryin pan and a soup-pan or eathenware cookin pot
ii. if using, flash-fry the tofu and set aside
iii. flash-fry the mackerel steaks till they are “golden brown”
add everything else (except the water and the spring onions) and STIR FRY (actually you might want to add the pork first and stir, then the mushrooms, to sear and seal, and then the rest)
iv. add the hot water, bring to boil, down down and braise for 20 mins (if not usin wok, transfer to pan or pot b4 adding water)
serve (w.spring onion garnish if you remember)
it is EXCELLENTLY FILLING and will probably serve three – two if it’s the whole of the meal – but remember to give ppl a side-dish to spit the bones onto: mackerel bones are pretty ok but you don’t want to be pickin them off the carpet for weeks to come
THE NOTE ABOUT AVAILABILITY:
ok i live in east london’s vietnamese quarter so ALL the above is easy to find (and i actually use dried chinese black mushrooms swank swank, which need soakin in warm water after you threaded em) : HOWEVER – apart from bamboo shoots!! – you can do it all at a one-shop at tescos/sainsbury’s/similar IF (a) you subst.a slightly posher cut of pork for bellypork, which is too vulgar for the sainsbury-tesco massive, and (b) you subt. Blue Dragon Thai NAM PLA fish sauce for NUOC MAM (by taste test they are almost identical – both based on fermented anthonies anchovies yum yum – if thai or viet readers will not be offended to read that). Bamboo shoots you will have to hunt for! (Also worth remembering: you will NOT be usin a whole tinful an they only keep three days in water in the fridge PROVIDED YOU CHANGE THE WATER EVERY DAY – thus bamboo shoots are the pandas of cookin ingredients, almost more trouble than they are worth EXCEPT NOT…)
pˆnk s lord sükråt cunctør in Pumpkin Publog • No Comments
25 February 2005
Channel 4 is launching its new digital channel, More4, in October, for factual-based programming. It’s intended to be ‘more down to earth and accessible than BBC Four’, with ‘a strong international flavour’.
Have a guess which Channel 4 programme the BBC website has decided to illustrate this with, then.
WBS in Do You See • No Comments
I was trying to work out what it was that was nagging me about The Door In The Floor. It is a sedate and thoughtful movie which is a wee bit like the Graduate with less laughs, and more tragedy. And a naked Jeff Bridges.
And even though I had guessed where the actual door in the floor was, the weight of childrens book symbolism distracted me from what should have been plainly obvious.
The Door In the Floor = A Trap Door.
Never, ever, ever open the door in the floor = Stay away from that trap door, cos there’s something down there…
Pete Baran in Do You See • No Comments
Kill yr idols, right? I can’t face this book, don’t want to. This is probably not the first time I’ve bashed David Thomson here, and I’ve not got round to the long and hard work of finding what’s gone wrong and how, but even positive reviews of this book aren’t going to bring me round, this time. What would have struck me as elegant — key quotation: it’s “not just the history of American movies, but the history of America in the time of movies” — now strike me as dumb. Is his book really a history of the States 1895-2005?
There’s something odd about being ‘the world’s greatest movie critic’ — no-one ever makes that kind of claim for literary critics — and perhaps it’s this I find wearisome. It’s not exactly the pessimism Thomson has about Hollywood that I find grinding, more the self-satisfaction that accompanies it.
If cinema really is dead (and it is, kind of), then we ought to be dancing on its grave, not cursing it for its lapses. Recently I used a digital camera for the first time — it cost about £60 and has a moving-image function. I don’t want to sound Lutheran, but there is something last-ditch and scorched-earth about Thomson’s decision to give up on the movies at the very point when they’re going to get interesting.
HKM in Do You See • No Comments
So what have we learned…?
1. Everybody likes Here Comes The Hotstepper.
2. Camera phones in dark bars are rub.
3. Wireless laptops are double rub, especially when you foolishly leave yourself logged in and tell everyone to get posting.
4. Where’s Me Jumper is improved with audience participation.
5. Pete and microphones do mix, all too often.
A full retrospective of Club FT: The Chapel Years to follow.
Tom in FT /New York London Paris Munich • No Comments
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