1 step beyond

This is going to seem half a universe away to most of you, the internet/blogging world as it is. Those on the feed readers - I don't want to link to YouTube for you because I don't want the title to show my hand - though you'll know it soon enough.

I want you here. Come home for a second.



To the generation of 9/11, this will all seem pretty tame I'm sure. I can't throw you in a time machine, pick you up by the collar and sit you down in front of a black and white TV and expect - after all you've seen, the color given to your eye that you've always known - ...I shouldn't expect you to get it. I know that.

Probably, when all is said and done, you guys have seen much worse. It's a matter of context I suppose. In the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who was speaking of another time even foreign to me, from the point of view of a 10 year old for whom all things were possible; "My lovely, safe world blew itself up."

Looking back it does rather pale to what is visible today. But before this, there wasn't - or at least there didn't seem to be - any possibility of such a thing. That's what you have to remember. As jaw dropping as 9/11 was, for those of us who watched this )above) it was horrific, certainly... but not a surprise, somehow.

I was only a 10 year old kid. So what the hell did I know?

45 years ago today. The world of baseball and cartoons was over - until we had to force ourselves to reclaim it. Nothing at all would ever be the same for us. From here on everything was tainted.

Thanks for indulging me.

President-elect Obama and Michelle pick a school...

Sidwell Friends School.

Quakers.

You know, Quakers... the Johns Hopkins guys. I know DC well - lived there for a time. I know exactly where Sidwell is.

Barack and Michelle couldn't have picked better for their daughters. Trust me. :=)

I think I'll have something to be thankful for at Quaker meeting this Sunday!

There were reasons why that, on September 11 2001, I had to do a double-take watching the machinations of insult and rage being expressed by some of my fellow Americans in behalf of our other fellow Americans who were killed that day. I had always thought that, on a certain level, we Americans don't always like each other all that much and if something bad befell someone else we're not the best at showing a lot of compassion. Just think how many slow drivers you hate were removed from the roads that day.

So I always take this "defend this great country" rhetoric with a grain of salt. From hypocrisy to out-and-out rowdies, we can fill in the ranks of the terminally questionable as good as anybody on this planet, and provide an extra slice of disdain for our countrymen at the drop of a menstrual cycle. I believe that most people are just glad the bad stuff didn't happen to them, pretty much.

**Here's an imagined quote from Mr. O.U. Betigotmine, chief mogul of the First Bank of the World in New York; "I believe in small government. I don't want the government in my business telling me what to do. Government has no business in business. Now where do I sign up for that bailout money?"

**At Standish, Maine, a sign inside the Oak Hill General Store read: "Osama Obama Shotgun Pool." Customers could sign up to bet $1 on a date when Obama would be killed. "Stabbing, shooting, roadside bombs, they all count," the sign said. At the bottom of the marker board was written "Let's hope someone wins."

**Am I the only one who is wondering where the $700,000,000,000 came from that the government is using to prop up all these banks and AIG? I know I know - tax revenues. Yeah, but where was it a day before somebody signed that check and turned it over to the Fed? I know they didn't just print it up because otherwise inflation would be rampant, and the opposite is happening to prices.

**Second- and third-grade students on a school bus in Rexburg, Idaho, chanted "assassinate Obama," a district official said.

**$720,000,000 a day in Iraq.

**Racist graffiti was found in places including New York's Long Island, where two dozen cars were spray-painted; Kilgore, Texas, where the local high school and skate park were defaced; and the Los Angeles area, where swastikas, racial slurs and "Go Back To Africa" were spray painted on sidewalks, houses and cars.

(Documentation)

Have a nice day. And Gawd Bless the YUnited States of UmMAIRca.

Labels: Reality Check, Society

If you fall in love with an ingredient you need to FALL IN LOVE with it. Being captivated by an ostrich egg and then turning it into an over-sized quiche isn't quite it. I think what's her name (Jill?) got inspired by a product and then didn't know what the hell to do with it. I have no bloody idea what you do with an ostrich egg (it tastes just like a regular chicken egg, only it's industrial sized), but I'm not a trained chef. Looked like most of the chefs didn't know what to do tonight. It's like they didn't get the hint from the Quickfire. Remember what that was? A hot dog. Make a hot dog that goes up against a New York dog (sauerkraut and onion sauce). the winner took an American classic and fused it with East Indian flavors. Yes! "New American" cooking starts with an American usual and either deconstructs or fuses it. The Quickfire hinted at the elimination challenge. Duh.

Fabio sealed his win with beautiful-looking salad thing. But the technique he used on the olives isn't "new". It isn't American and it isn't even Italian. It's passed through the culinary lexicon after it's development at that restaurant in Spain that is on my "do before I die list" that I'll probably never do. I've mentioned El Bulli a million times already ever since I saw them distill the taste of a pine tree into a little white morsel. I mean...! I gotta see that! Anyway Fabio's dish did look & sound pretty yummeh.

MrsRW and I were pretty sure the old broad was going to be sent home. She's two for two - landing on the bottom both challenges. Come on... crumbled cookies on the bottom of an over-sweetened dessert something or other? Yeah... hit the road. Instead they punished Jill for having an incomplete thought. That didn't break anybody's heart.

So this is the Top Chef for New York. Where's Bourdain?

Labels: Food

In various places and from time to time I've alluded to a germ of an unformed idea that there was something about the medium of blogging that hinted at the notion that blogs are not being tapped to their fullest potential. That there's an unseen next level to take it to, or something. I've been toying with this nebulous idea that there is some other thing it can evolve into and for the life of me I can't put my finger on it. Yet I know there's something - some thought or idea - hiding in that morass that tries to act like a brain up there in my head. It's a question of creative potential that goes beyond the standard lists of blogs we all know and enjoy.

It would seem to be a track worthy of pursuing, at least for me, because there's only so much of my personal self or my personal life that I'll reveal before I hit the limits of my comfort level. I can't express how I marvel at folks who interweave their personal lives into this. It boggles my mind and I can't possibly have more admiration for that. But no way is that my path.

And there are sports blogs and art blogs and picture blogs and blog-review blogs. Entertainment industry blogs. TV blogs. Blogs by stars and blogs by people who think they're stars. And that's an illustration of the thing I haven't been able to communicate to you very well while stammering around trying to find out just what, exactly, it is that I'm talking about.

See it isn't so much the "kind" of blog - the genre of the blog - that I'm talking about. It isn't "what kind of a blog are you doing...? Sports? Movies? Book blog?" It's... something else. There are concept blogs and there are concept blogs. I'm wondering if blogs themselves can be made to do other things.

And so... yeah... I still haven't explained it very well, have I? Right. I'm working on it.

But I've been playing around with something and I'm not quite ready to reveal it yet. I started something like it a few years ago and scrapped it before it got going. And I still couldn't exactly say what I was doing... any more than I can rightly explain what I'm doing now. And this may be yet another pointless intellectual puzzle that amounts to nothing and was stupid from the start. I guess we can't know until we know... as it were.

So I've started this other project and that's where I've been, mostly. If you want a divorce i guess I'll understand. But am I ready to reveal the whole thing?

I don't know. It isn't "there" yet, and it may go through seventeen more manifestations. Let's see what happens. It could all be just a stupid idea too, so. There is that.

Labels: Blogging