Jan 24

Late to the party

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“The Big Bang Theory” was one of those shows that I always thought sounded like it might be funny but which I never got around to watching. And then, when CBS put it up against one of my favorite shows, the ratings-challenged “Community” on NBC, I sort of didn’t want to watch it.

But now, TBS runs reruns of it before Conan, and I started catching the last few minutes of it. And then I started watching whole episodes. So, yes, I’ve now become the very last geek in America to enjoy “The Big Bang Theory.”

Jan 23

Vingt mille lieues sous les mers

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I have pretty much decided to take a little of my tax refund, in a week or two, and treat myself to the $79 entry-level Amazon Kindle.

Anyway, noodling around the Amazon site in wishful anticipation, I decided to try downloading the Kindle app to my smartphone, just to see how it works and so that I’d already have a Kindle account set up. A smartphone screen is not ideal for long-term reading (as I will point out in a newspaper column about the Kindle platform later in the week), but it actually works quite a bit better than I anticipated.

In order to have a book in my new account, I went to the list of public-domain classics available for free download. My choice was a simple one: “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” by Jules Verne. One of my favorite books as a child, and one I dearly wish I still had, was a terrific annotated edition of this classic. In the margins of the book, the editors would provide helpful definitions and illustrations of the many places and different types of aquatic life mentioned in the book, and would point out passages in which Verne predicted technology that would not exist until decades after the 1870 novel was published.

Anyway, I hadn’t read the book in years, and it seemed like something I’d enjoy revisiting. I started reading it on the smartphone, just to see how it worked, and I’ve gotten about a third of the way through the book just this evening.

I also downloaded the free sample of my own Bad Self-Published Novel, which is available on Kindle. When I get the device, I’ll probably spring for the actual novel, knowing that I’ll eventually get back some of the purchase price. To my knowledge, even though the novel has been available on Kindle since the get-go, I haven’t sold any Kindle copies of it.
Jan 21

Morning pies, evening fries

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You would think that, after spending four and a half hours in the kitchen at church this morning (see the bottom of this post for video) I wouldn’t be in the mood to do anything involved in my home kitchen tonight. You would be wrong.

You see, I’d been planning to make french fries tonight.

I’ve wanted for some time to try making real, good french fries. The consensus seems to be that you soak the fries in ice cold water for a good while, then you fry them twice. The first fry, at a lower temperature, cooks the fries through, giving them a nice fluffy interior, but leaves them somewhat limp. Then you take them out of the oil and let them come to room temperature. You crank the oil up to a higher temperature, and put the fries back in, quickly giving them a beautiful golden-brown finish.

WP_000047Most of the french fries you’ve ever eaten have been made with a variation on this approach – the difference being that the first fry takes place at a factory somewhere, after which the french fries are frozen and shipped to your supermarket or to the kitchen of your local restaurant. The restaurant finishes the fries off.

But the idea of freshly-cooked, start-to-finish fries from my own kitchen sounds better.

As I say, I’d wanted to try this for some time, and when I was at the grocery store yesterday I found Yukon Gold potatoes on sale, so now seemed like the time. I looked up a good recipe on line and found this one from Emeril Lagasse.

Meanwhile, I’d also been reading about the new Smashburger franchise in Murfreesboro. I haven’t been there yet, but I understand that one of their specialties is fries tossed in garlic, rosemary and olive oil. That sounded like a great way to enjoy my homemade fries, too, so I tossed them in a little rosemary, fresh garlic and olive oil.

I have to say, they came out pretty well.

According to Dave Thomas’ autobiography “Dave’s Way,” the process of bringing frozen fries to room temp before the final cook is known at Wendy’s as “slacking” them. I don’t know if the term is universal or exclusive to Wendy’s. Dave told the story of visiting a Wendy’s once with the man who succeeded Dave as CEO after Dave retired and concentrated on being the chain’s commercial spokesman. Not surprisingly, the manager rushed to greet them soon after they walked in the door – and before they’d gotten their food. The CEO immediately chided the manager for not slacking the fries. The manager sputtered a denial and said that everything in the kitchen was being done according to company policy. But when the manager returned sheepishly a few minutes later, he had discovered that there was a new hire in the kitchen who – as it turns out – had not been slacking the fries. The manager apologized profusely, but then asked the CEO how he could possibly know what was going on in the kitchen. Did he have an inside source?

The CEO replied that he heard the frozen fries hissing and spattering in the oil as soon as he walked into the restaurant. The room-temperature fries slip into the oil with much less noise. Dave used this story to praise the CEO and make the point that a manager has to be aware of every detail. This CEO was so connected with Wendy’s way of doing things that he even knew how a restaurant was supposed to sound, and a different sound indicated a problem.

Anyway, here’s the video from church this morning:

We made more than 50 quart jars of soup and about 20 apple pies. We’re also selling fudge and chess pies, but those were made by two different individual class members at home.
Jan 19

A cosmic code name

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I sometimes listen to “The Dead Authors Podcast,” a somewhat goofy enterprise in which Paul F. Tompkins (in character as author H.G. Wells) employs a time machine to interview other well-known authors of the past.  Emily Dickinson was played by Andy Richter, if that gives you any idea.

The podcast is apparently largely-improvised, in front of a live audience, and it can be hit or miss but is sometimes quite funny.

Anyway, the most recent episode featured Matt Gourley as astronomer Carl Sagan. In the course of the conversation, “Wells” and “Sagan” mentioned a legal dispute between Carl Sagan and Apple Computer which some in the audience might have assumed to be a joke concocted by Tompkins and Gourley, despite Gourley’s insistence that it was a true story.

It was, in point of fact, a true story. In the world of technology, internal code names, the names given to software packages or new devices while they’re still under development, and perhaps while the marketing people are still undecided about their actual names, are no longer secret. In fact, they’re often widely discussed in the media. Android 4.0 is well-known as “Ice Cream Sandwich,” for example.

Well, in the mid-1990s, it became widely known that Apple’s internal code name for what would become the Power Macintosh 7100 was “Carl Sagan.” The designers meant it as a compliment, no doubt – a reference to Sagan’s intelligence – but Sagan was concerned that people would think he was endorsing the computer and asked the company to stop using the name. The company agreed, and the annoyed designers picked a new internal code name: “BHA.”

For “Butt-head Astronomer.”

Well, that led, not to a request, but a lawsuit: Sagan accused the company of libel. He lost the early stages of the battle –  satire is not libel, as long as it’s self-evidently satire, and people would reasonably know not to take it seriously. But Apple decided to settle the case anyway rather than continue to fight through the appeals process. The designers then picked their third and final code name for the computer: LAW, for “Lawyers Are Wimps.”

Jan 17

Another thing

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I bought a book from the bargain bin at Walmart the other day; I wasn’t sure if I would care for it, but I really had little choice but to take a look.

The book is “And Another Thing ….” by Eoin Colfer. I’ll review it further below, but first I have to explain why I was skeptical of it, and yet why I absolutely had to buy it.

I was in college when I first read “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” by Douglas Adams, which had been published the previous year. It immediately became, and remains, one of my favorites.

The book started life as a BBC radio serial and was then adapted for a British TV series. Later, it was made into a big-budget 2005 movie, well-cast but clunky. (Still, it has Zooey Deschanel at her most adorable.) But for me, it will always be a series of books. Adams wrote five of them: “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe,” “Life, The Universe and Everything,” “So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish,” and “Mostly Harmless.” He also wrote a short story, “Young Zaphod Plays It Safe,” which was included in a massive volume combining the first four books (and a later, updated version combining all five).

If you’re not aware of “Hitchhiker’s,” it’s a skewering of science fiction tropes with a very Monty Python-like sense of humor. That’s no accident: Douglas Adams was one of only two outside writers to receive a screen credit during the run of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus.” Adams also served as story editor for “Doctor Who” for a few years. I had always assumed that “Doctor Who” helped inspire “Hitchhikers,” but it turns out that Adams had already written the original radio serial before his tenure at “Doctor Who.”

Anyway, the first book, like the radio serial, begins with Arthur Dent, a mild-mannered BBC employee, receiving a bit of bad news. He first discovers that his house is supposed to be torn down to make room for a new highway; but then his friend Ford Prefect shows up to give him bigger, but eerily parallel, news: Ford is an alien, who’s been living undercover on Earth researching articles for “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy,” a sort of tablet-based encyclopedia and travel book. As if the fact that his best friend is an alien weren’t enough of a shock, Ford tells Arthur that the two of them have to leave the planet as soon as possible, because it’s about to be destroyed by a race called the Vogons in order to make room for a new hyperspace bypass.

They eventually link up with Zaphod Beeblebrox, the two-headed, narcissistic, outlaw President of the Galaxy; the lovely Trillian; and Marvin, a depressed android. Trillian, nee Tricia McMillan,  turns out to be the only other surviving resident of Earth, having skipped the planet a few months before Arthur – not out of necessity but for adventure.

The first few books are a hysterical romp, and beloved by geeks far and wide. If you’ve ever heard people laugh at the number “42,” as if it were an inside joke of some sort, you’ve run across a “Hitchhiker’s Guide” fan. In the first book, a super-advanced race builds a supercomputer to tell them the ultimate answer to “life, the universe and everything.” The computer answers “42,” and then tells them that if they knew the exact wording of the question, the answer would make more sense.

The fifth book in the series, “Mostly Harmless,” ended [SPOILER ALERT!] on a down note, with the surviving major characters seemingly destroyed in a planetary cataclysm. But Adams regretted the ending, and remarked publicly that he was thinking about bringing the characters back for another book – not unusual in the world of science fiction and fantasy. (Remember Spock dying at the end of “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan”? And then appearing in a number of “Star Trek” movies after that?)

Sadly, Adams did not get the chance to write a sixth book. He died in May 2001, from a heart attack, at age 49 – my current age, come to think of it.

Then, a few years ago, it was announced that another writer – Eoin Colfer, better-known for young adult fiction like the Artemis Fowl series – had been commissioned, with the blessing of Adams’ widow, to produce a new “Hitchhiker’s Guide” sequel.

I recall hearing that the book had been commissioned, but I don’t think I heard anything about it after that. So I was surprised to find “And Another Thing …” in the bargain bin at Walmart. That wasn’t a good sign. But I knew that, for $3.97, I had to buy the book and at least check it out.

It’s neither as good as I’d hoped nor as bad as I’d feared. There are parts I really liked – and, frankly, I enjoyed the book as a whole more than “Mostly Harmless.” But there are other parts where Colfer seemed to be trying too hard either to imitate or avoid imitating Adams.

Then, the book comes to a screeching, and almost-unforgivable, halt when it shifts away from the main  characters to a side plot involving wealthy Earth refugees trying to start a new life on a made-to-order planet. The nominal leader of the planet is striving to set up a religion – any religion – as a way of controlling his subjects. He ends up contracting  with Thor, the Norse god of thunder, who’s been looking to redeem himself after an embarassing video went viral.

I have no problem with satire of religion, including some projects which friends and family members would think sacreligious, because in the end it’s making fun of human attitudes and preconceptions. John Cleese, last I heard, is a Buddhist, but he once remarked in an interview that it would be impossible to actually satirize Jesus because Jesus would have no flaws on which to base the comedy. “Monty Python’s Life of Brian,” reviled during its original release as sacreligious, is quietly enjoyed by a lot of Christians I know because they  recognize it as making fun of us, not Jesus.

But “Life of Brian” is funny. The satire of religion in “And Another Thing ….” is so ham-handed and obvious that it feels the need to keep explaining itself. Douglas Adams was a vocal atheist, but he was also a very funny writer. Even though the humor of the “Hitchhiker’s Guide” series is gloriously over-the-top, I don’t think Adams would have handled  that same material in such an obvious way.

Still, the book recovers from its detour, and ends well.

I’m still not sure how I feel about it as a whole. Remember above, when I called the 2005 movie “clunky”? Well, I actually walked out of the theater liking it. (Zooey put a spell on me.) It didn’t hold up, however. My attitude towards the book may shift after I’ve let it percolate a bit.

Jan 13

God in the locker room

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I have an essay on my web site, which I occasionally tweak or update, called “God on the Playlist.” It’s sort of a statement of my personal faith.

Anyway, there’s one segment of this essay that, as a jumping-off point to something else, deals with athletes mentioning their faith. I thought that, in light of all the hubbub about Tim Tebow, it might be worth excerpting here, so as to save you from reading the whole essay:

… There has been a thread in popular culture that tends toward annoyance with anyone who talks about their faith. For example, any athlete who is open about his or her faith in locker room interviews opens the door for legions of scoffers.
“As if God cared who wins a football game!” they say. “Doesn’t God – if God even exists – have better things to worry about?”
I have a couple of responses to that.
When I first posted this essay, I wrote that I personally did not recall ever seeing an athlete claim that God wanted his or her team to win and the other team to lose. I have seen many athletes praise God for their athletic success – which is not the same thing.
Since that time, there has been at least one high-profile case in which an athlete seemed to imply that he or his team had God’s blessing. But I stand by my original argument that the vast majority of athletes who mention their faith in locker room interviews are saying nothing of the sort.
It is always appropriate, for anyone in any line of work, to thank God at all times and in all situations. If I had a good day at my chosen profession (or, in the case of amateur athletes, my chosen avocation), I would make no apologies for praising God and expressing my gratitude. That does not mean that I am deluded enough to assume that God prefers my sports team to the other team or prefers me to my individual competitors.
Tennis star Michael Chang put it this way, in another story at the CNN web site written by Blake: “Chang won the French Open in 1989 as a 17-year-old underdog. He was booed by a Parisian crowd when he thanked Jesus for his victory at the tournament’s trophy presentation.
“Chang, who now helps runs a Christian Sports League in California, says he thanked Jesus not to gloat, but to show gratitude.
“‘When I go out there and share my faith, I’m not saying God is on my side and he’s not on your side,’ Chang says. ‘The Lord loves everybody, and the Lord is on everyone’s side.’”
In fact, at many NFL games, Christian players from opposing teams meet on the field following the game for a quick celebratory prayer. These huddles are seldom shown on television – because of this same irrational attitude that any expression of personal faith is somehow tantamount to shoving Jesus down people’s throats. (To be fair, I’m sure the network would be even less likely to show such interaction between Muslim players.)
It is self-evident that these huddles, involving opponents praying together, are not based on the idea that God prefers one team to another. They are based on the idea that praise and gratitude are Christian virtues and Biblical commandments.
Objections to faith in locker-room interviews often include either a direct statement or an implication that “God has better things to worry about than a football game.” At first glance, this is quite a reasonable statement. But the extended implications of it disturb me, and I hear it even from Christians who should know better. The Bible makes it clear that God is aware of, and concerned with, not only the great matters of cosmology but with the most intimate details of earthly existence. The Bible explicitly tells us that God knows about each sparrow that falls from the sky and that God knows how many hairs are on your head.
It may be true that the CEO of McDonald’s does not know whether you ordered a large fries or a medium fries, or whether there’s toilet paper in the men’s restroom at your local McDonald’s. The CEO of McDonald’s would drive himself crazy if he had to micromanage each of the thousands of locations the chain operates around the world. But God is not a CEO. God is deity. There’s a difference. God is capable of attending to both the infinite and the intimate.
God has encouraged us to lift up all our concerns in prayer – anything that is important to us. Some of the things we pray about seem petty, and selfish, and beneath God’s purpose. Some of them are. But the funny thing about prayer is that, ideally, it becomes a dialogue. The more we pray, the better we get at it, and over time our priorities change. The dialogue must start with honesty, and I think that’s why God instructs us to bring all our cares and concerns to the holy throne.
Here’s another way of looking at it: a five-year-old may ask her daddy for a candy bar one day, a pony the next. A sixteen-year-old may ask for permission to stay out late. A woman who’s about to be married may ask for advice, some reassurance that she’s doing the right thing. Those are very different requests, with very different levels of importance. When the daughter is a child, the father may have to say “no” and may not have the chance to make the child understand why. But each request is special to the father, and the father will treasure those requests as precious memories.
The God we learn about in the Bible is infinite enough to have created the universe, but also intimate enough to have a relationship with each one of us, and to care about each of our struggles. As we grow in our faith, and our understanding of God’s plan, we may learn to ask God for more important things than our missing car keys. But God welcomes, and listens to, every request, no matter how small or seemingly unimportant.

Jan 11

The Secret Life of a classic short story

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I read an entertainment column this week in which the columnist had to explain to a reader the origin of the name “Walter Mitty” for a daydreamer. The name, of course, came from something near and dear to my heart: the short story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty,” by one of America’s greatest humorists, James Thurber.

I have always wanted to give a reading of several Thurber pieces, and I’ve actually practices how I’d do some of the different voices and characters in “Mitty.” It’s one of my favorites.

Anyway, the story was made into a movie starring Danny Kaye, which – according to everything I’ve ever read – Thurber loathed. IMDb reports that Thurber offered Samuel Goldwyn $10,000 not to make the movie. Also according to IMDb, Thurber imagined his friend Robert Benchley when writing the story and thought Danny Kaye all wrong for the part.

Well, I found out from the entertainment column that the movie is going to be remade, with Ben Stiller both starring and directing. I’m guessing Thurber would like this version even less.
Jan 10

Jazz doesn’t resolve

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There are some books I read, and get very excited about, but they don’t necessarily stick with me.

“Blue Like Jazz” has stuck with me. After reading it, I suggested it as curriculum for the Sunday School class I was attending at the time. I wasn’t sure what the reaction would be to it – it’s quite frank, and even includes a little bit of profanity – but I think it was well-received, despite my lack of abilities as a teacher.

The book, published with the subtitle “Nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality,” is a memoir – not a linear sort of memoir, but something more poetic – by Donald Miller, focused on his experiences at Reed College in Oregon. Reed is one of the most intellectual universities in the nation, and also one of the most hostile towards religion. Miller went into that environment as a Christian, but also as someone troubled by the fundamentalist version of Christianity in which he was raised. He ends up finding a circle of friends, who are at various stages in their approach to Christianity. They end up recognizing their own failures and shortcomings, and the ways in which they hinder dicsussion about faith with the already-hostile student body at Reed.

The first thing I read from the book was an excerpt published in “Christianity Today” in which Don and his friends participate in the school’s over-the-top festival of debauchery, Ren Fayre by building a confession booth – and doing something quite different with it than anyone would have expected.

It’s a beautifully-written book, and one that stays with you for some time.

I was a little skeptical – and in some ways, I still am – when I heard it was going to be turned into a movie. The movie is being directed by Steve Taylor, who in an earlier life (when I was at college) was one of my favorite singer-songwriters. He later went on to found the crossover band Chagall Guevara before becoming a record company executive, responsible for making Sixpence None The Richer a success.

Along the way, he directed music videos, both his own and for Sixpence. And eventually, he wanted to try his hand at a feature film.

I still have never seen Steve’s first movie, “The Second Chance,” even though I was present for the filming of one scene. I gather, from some things I’ve heard, that it was a little more mundane than I would have expected from Taylor, who delighted in the sharp and satirical as a recording artist.

But when I heard Steve was trying to film “Blue Like Jazz,” I was intrigued. The film was about to go into production when it suffered budget troubles, and a widely-publicized Kickstarter campaign raised more than enough to finish it, and demonstrated just how much the book had meant to so many. I should have given something myself, but money was tight at the time and I really didn’t have it to spare. Actually, that last sentence sounds a lot like an argument Donald has with his pastor in a chapter late in the book.

Well, the money was raised, the movie was completed, and there’s now a teaser trailer:

I think it looks promising, although there are a couple of line readings in the trailer that are a little clunky. I really, really don’t want this to be a typical “Christian movie.” I really, really want this to convey the complexity and nuance that make the book so wonderful.

Jan 10

The slow-motion cold

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All day Friday, and Saturday morning, I was sure I was coming down with a cold. I felt wrung-out and had a scratchy throat. About midday Saturday, I e-mailed Mountain T.O.P. to cancel my RSVP for the annual holiday gathering at Cumberland Pines, to which I’d been looking forward.

But then, by the time people were gathering at Pines, I was feeling better. I figured maybe it had just been allergies. I got up early Sunday morning and helped cook men’s club breakfast at church, and felt fine Sunday, if maybe a little tired. I still felt OK during the day on Monday. But then, last night, I got a stuffy nose — the kind that’s stuffy and swollen even when it’s not runny.

My colds usually follow a predictable pattern: a little tickle at the back of the throat, then a day of feeling miserable and wrung-out but sounding OK, then a few days of sneezing and coughing, during which I sound horrible but actually feel better than I did on the first day of the cold. This is all followed by a few days of being croupy in the chest. This cold isn’t following that pattern at all. It’s a weird slow-motion cold. My nose is a little bit runny, and I’ve sneezed once while writing this, but it still doesn’t feel like a regular cold.

Jan 06

Special delivery

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Samsung-Focus-S-and-Samsung-Focus-Flash-I ordered a new phone on Thursday. My last good phone broke over the summer, and I’ve been using a cheapo, older-model unlocked phone since that time. I’m now to the point where I could re-up with AT&T and get a new phone. I thought about shopping around for a new company, or switching to a pre-paid phone. But I’m grandfathered in on a good calling plan with my current provider, so switching (or using a third-party vendor, which won’t let you carry over your old plan and treats you like a new customer) would have cost me $10 or even $20 more for the “phone” part of the smartphone, cancelling out any savings or other advantages on the data side of the equation. There are some good pre-paid plans, but I wanted a smartphone.

I subscribed to the daily-deals Twitter feed offered by my provider. There was a terrific deal last month on refurbished Galaxy S II phones, and I really should have jumped on it. But I was preoccupied with Christmas shopping, and by the time I made up my mind they were out of the refurbs. I had hoped they would have a big after-Christmas sale (and they’ll probably start one next week, now that I’ve ordered something else).

Anyway, I finally decided this week to get a Samsung Focus Flash – a Windows Phone 7.5 model with a 5 megapixel autofocus camera and an LED flash. I ordered it on Thursday. The web site offered free two-day priority shipping, so I assumed the phone would arrive on Monday. I had it shipped to the office, so that someone would be sure to sign for it. The web site would not let you use a PO Box for a shipping address, which usually means they’re using FedEx or UPS. I entered the newspaper’s street address.

When the phone shipped late yesterday, however, the tracking number turned out to be USPS. The phone was being shipped from Memphis, and the tracking number information last night showed an estimated delivery date of Jan. 6 – today. Could that be right? Could I really get my phone today, and have all weekend to play with it and get it set up to suit me? I got my hopes up. Last night, I set up the Zune software on my PC. As a side note, I really like the Zune desktop software. It does a much better job managing podcasts than the last two programs I’d used. It doesn’t recognize some of my older, copy-protected legal music downloads, however, even though I have the proper authorizations for them in Windows Media.

But I digress. Anyway, I hoped that my phone would arrive today. But it did not arrive with the morning mail. As of tonight, the Postal Service has no further information since 10:22 last night, when it was in Memphis. It may still be in Memphis, or it may have been placed into the newspaper’s post office box right after the front office staff picked up the mail this morning. All I know is that I don’t have it.

If, by some chance, I get an update tonight saying that the phone was delivered today, I may try to go to the post office tomorrow, show them the tracking printout, and see if I can sign for the package. I doubt they’d let me, however, unless it was one of the people who knows me.

It’s too bad – I may be coming down with a cold, and setting up a new tech gadget would have been an excellent distraction.