, Twitter Updates for 2010-02-09
- Leno's account of taping the promo was classy, and fun. Can't wait to hear Dave's account. #
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No story tonight
I was really counting on a long and funny story from Dave Letterman tonight about the taping of the Super Bowl ad with Jay and Oprah. But there wasn’t one; he made a very brief monologue joke, and then later at the desk he dryly thanked “the actors who played Oprah and Jay Leno.”
Part of the problem may have been that tonight’s Late Show was chock full anyway, with little time for desk chat — Super Bowl QB Drew Brees, Sandra Bullock, the unveiling of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover, and some unexpected crisis in the form of stage manager and frequent cast member Biff Henderson injuring himself. Dave, in Brees’ honor, was tossing the pigskin to various members of the crew and the CBS orchestra, and Biff fell down trying to make a catch. Dave said he was fine, but they apparently took him out on a gurney with his leg in a splint.
I actually watched the first few minutes of “The Jay Leno Show” tonight — the first time I’ve done so since Jay started whining at the peak of the late night crisis — and I have to admit that Jay did a nice job talking about the spot, and about how he had to sneak into the Ed Sullivan Theater in a hoodie, shades and fake moustache for the taping last Tuesday.
Top NBC officials had to approve Jay’s appearance on the CBS promo, but it was kept so hush-hush that a lower-level NBC functionary actually came to Jay a day or two after the taping to tell Jay about a rumor that Letterman had taped a Super Bowl promo with a super-secret guest, which the executive figured might be … Barack Obama. Jay listened with great interest and instructed the NBC executive to keep him informed.
Bet that guy felt stupid when he saw the promo.
Twitter Updates for 2010-02-08
- RT @jonswerens The football players in those bottom-of-the-screen intros act like they don't know their own names. #SB44 #
- LOL at Betty White and Abe Vigoda! #SB44 #
- RT @Late_Show Dave, Oprah & Jay's Super Bowl Commercial. Watch it again. http://bit.ly/cgoKWN #
- Monday night's @Late_Show has just become required viewing (for me, it was already). Can't wait to hear Dave talk about taping the promo. #
- What a gutsy move! #
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Cheese soup recipe
Freely adapted from a recipe by Alton Brown on the Food Network site:
2 T. butter or margarine
1 cup diced onion
1 cup diced carrot (I actually used some pre-shredded carrot from the produce section)
1 cup diced celery
1/2 t. salt
3 T. all-purpose flour
1 quart chicken broth (one box)
2-3 garlic cloves, minced
1 t. red pepper flake (or less to taste)
1/2 t. black pepper
1 cup whipping cream
10 ounces shredded cheddar cheese
2 t. Worcestershire sauce
Melt butter in large heavy-bottomed soup pot or electric kettle over medium heat. Add onion, carrot, celery, and salt. Sweat for 5 to 10 minutes. Sprinkle the flour over the vegetables and cook, stirring constantly, for 2 to 3 minutes.
Gradually add the chicken stock and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Reduce heat to low and add the garlic, red pepper and black pepper. Cover and simmer for 30 minutes or until vegetables are soft.
Turn off the heat and puree with an immersion (stick) blender until the vegetables have been completely pulverized. If you don’t have a stick blender, you should, but in the meantime you could let the soup cool and carefully puree it in batches in a regular blender. Beware of the effect that makes hot liquids explode in a regular blender!
After the soup has been pureed, add the cream and warm the soup slightly if necessary. Add the cheese, a little at a time, stirring each batch until melted before adding the next batch. Add the Worcestershire sauce, check for seasoning, and serve.
An impetuous, homeric purchase
Our church generally has a “Souper Bowl” soup potluck on Super Bowl Sunday, to benefit our youth group, and I’d found a cheese soup recipe I wanted to bring.
But it turned out that my brother had to be at the airport by 10 a.m., so my parents and I skipped church to be there.
I decided that I still wanted to make the cheese soup, as a Super Bowl meal, and so after we got home I ran by Walmart for some of the ingredients.
I was surprised to see that our local Hollywood Video is going out of business. Hollywood Video and Movie Gallery are now owned by the same company, and from what one of the cashiers said, I guess they decided they only needed one location in Shelbyville. They’re selling off their pre-viewed movies (and have discounts on some of their new movies).
I bought a pre-viewed copy of “The Quiet Man,” one of my all-time favorites, with John Wayne and Maureen O’Hara. The title of this post comes from my favorite line in the film (“Impetuous! Homeric!”), spoken by Barry Fitzgerald when he sees a broken bed after Sean Thornton’s wedding night and makes an unspoken assumption about how it got broken.
The cheese soup turned out to be wonderful. I made some changes from the original Food Network recipe (for example, Fontina was waaay too expensive for just me, so I used cheddar). I’ll have to figure out exactly what I did and come back and post it here.
Super Bowl ad of the year
Well, I’m dying to hear the story behind this:
Safe travels, Thomas
We went to the airport in Nashville today to see off my youngest brother, who will work for a year for a civilian contractor in Iraq.
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| From 2010_02_07 |
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| From 2010_02_07 |
Please keep Thomas in your prayers, as well as his wife and sons back here at home.
Mashed potatoes: You’re doing it all wrong
I shared one of these on Facebook the other day after seeing it on Mark Evanier’s site. Here’s another, which I also saw at Evanier’s site — and it really, really makes me want to cook mashed potatoes:
Twitter Updates for 2010-02-07
- How am I ever going to learn all of these lines? #
- If you liked Siskel and Ebert in their prime, you need to be watching Michael Phillips and A.O. Scott on "At The Movies." They're great. #
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The Life Arachnid with Peter Parker
There was a rumor that Wes Anderson (“Rushmore,” “The Royal Tennenbaums,” “The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou,” etc.) might direct the “Spider-Man” reboot. Here, with a hat tip to John at The Zeray Gazette and to Gavin, who Tweeted it, is a brilliant tongue-in-cheek supposition of what that might look like:
Something fishy going on here
All right, Alton Brown, this is the craziest thing you’ve ever inspired me to do. By far.
I just had a late lunch involving sardines.
It was not exactly according to Alton’s recipe for sherried sardine toast. I didn’t have sherry vinegar, so I just used the juice from the lemon I was zesting anyway. I also added some onion and diced jalapeno to the avocado, and I used fresh hot bread out of my bread machine rather than toasting it.
But I ate … sardines. And enjoyed it, sort of.
On the episode of “Good Eats” on which Alton presented this recipe, he got around most of our reactions to sardines by referring to them as “brisling,” the actual name of the fish in question. The gag was that at one point, the paper label fell off his can of brisling to reveal the real “sardines” label underneath. Then, the POV camera bolted for the door and Alton had to try to talk the viewer down.
The recipe called for brisling sardines packed in olive oil, more expensive than some types of sardines. You drain off some of the oil and mix it with lemon zest, parsley and sherry vinegar (or in my case, lemon juice) to make a dressing, which the sardines marinate in for a little while. In Alton’s original recipe, a little more of the sardine oil is brushed on slices of bread before toasting them.
The toast is slathered with mashed avocado, then a few of the sardines are placed on top, topped with a little bit of the marinade and a sprinkle of salt. (I didn’t have sea salt either, another part of the original recipe.)
It frankly wasn’t that bad. I love avocado, and it actually offset some of the fishy taste of the sardines.
Alton is the only TV chef I trust enough to get me to eat sardines.
BriWi slow jams the news
One of the funniest recurring bits on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon” is “Slow Jam The News,” which Jimmy and his incredible house band, The Roots, premiered on their very first episode. Friday night, Jimmy slow jammed the news with a special, news-aware celebrity guest:
Williams has a great sense of humor, as you know if you’ve seen his frequent appearances as a guest on “The Daily Show” or the time he guest-hosted “Saturday Night Live.”
Twitter Updates for 2010-02-06
- Stern replacing Simon? No. No. No. No. (Some say this is a ploy on Stern's part for his negotiations with SiriusXM.) http://bit.ly/cnuRyL #
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Twitter Updates for 2010-02-05
- New "Important Things with Demitri Martin"! Yaaaay! #
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Why no blog post, John?
It’s been a long and strange week, starting on Saturday with work and our family celebration, then the funeral, then a busy week with work and the play and trips to Murfreesboro Tuesday, Wednesday and today. By the time we got done with rehearsal tonight (early, since we were shorthanded) I was, and still am, dog tired. Sometimes that works in my favor where blogging is concerned — some of the funniest stuff I’ve ever written was when I was tired — but not tonight.
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