In the past, Bobble has shown that he can cut a rug with acid jazz. Now, being older and more streetwise, he’s turned his talons to dubstep!
As a side note, squeee! I got the flash movie player to work locally. No more youtube dependence for me :)
Tag: video
Two videos from this weekend.
We were in Leicester this weekend and the weather was so nice and hot on Sunday that we ended up spending most of the day outside. I discovered that a home-made mocha frappucino made with chocolate ice cream and Cointreau is very, very evil. But tasty!
We tried to ship Bean to Canada in a large box. He seemed to enjoy it.
We got Bean’s swimming pool out in the garden and Bean really got in the spirit of things. All we got was really, really wet.
I need to keep that last video safe somewhere because, one day, it will make excellent blackmail material.
Roger Waters, The Wall, O2 Arena
Phil and I went to see Roger Waters perform The Wall in London last night, and the show lived up to expectations – even considering that I’d already seen it in Ottawa. They’d revamped some of it, which was a fun touch. Because of the tablets I’m currently taking, I couldn’t follow through with my original intent, but it was a great show nonetheless.
We’d decided to have a boys day out in town. We had lunch at a really nice sushi and noodle restaurant I’d seen online, called Taro, where I had a huge bowl of beef ramen. They didn’t kill me, which is a big plus. I need to bring Katy there next time we’re in town. Phil had never been to the British Museum and I’m always looking for a reason to pop in, so that was a nice way to kill a few hours. After that, we had a bit of a sit down in a pub and then headed back to the O2 to pick up the tickets and wait out the show opening. It was amusing to note that the average age of the concert goers was above 40, with some actually closer to their sixties and seventies :)
More pics and a video at: http://flubu.com/various_pics/roger_waters_o2_may_2011/
The bean, it dances!
Christmas has come and gone.
We’re back home after 6 days at the in-laws. Even though the house is in a bit of a state and we have no food, it’s good to be back home. It’ll take a few days for the normal routine to sink back in. We need to do a massive cleanup and sort out to fit all of the xmas schwag we got. Santa was a bit over generous, though the evil elf Visa might be grumpy for the next little while…
Overall, xmas was good. Was a bit sick on xmas day due to an over-indulgence with the good stuff, but a bit of a post-puke nap sorted that out. Have tons of pics that I want to post online. Everybody seemed to have a good time. There are so many leftovers its rather scary. We have tons of stuff we haven’t even opened yet. I might bring some stuff for the vultures at work cause otherwise were going to blow up if we eat all of the goodies we bought and brought back.
I did most of what I wanted to do in leics. We saw HP and the deathly hallows earlier I’m the week and we saw Tron Legacy last night. Very shiny shiny, a bit preachy and a good soundtrack.
Not exactly sure what the plan is for the next few days but I’m sure it’ll involve cooking and cleaning, and possibly lots of eating.
I am Beastie, see me walk!
We were in Leicester this weekend, for Mother’s day. The weekend ended up being rather less than stellar, as Katy wasn’t feeling well and the oldies were in fine form. The Beastie, however, was full of beans:
You might need to boos the volume way up high for the videos, btw.
The Beastie is also becoming a fruit monster:
That last one is impressive. He grabbed an apple out of Pam’s fruit bowl and proceeded to eat it. All of it. It was almost as big as he was. And yet it was eaten. With much slobbering. There are lots more pictures here: http://flubu.com/various_pics/ben_early_2010/, including some taken when my mom came to visit in January.
[Recipe] Won ton soup
The name won ton means swallowing a cloud, and the wonton floating in this popular soup are thought to resemble clouds. This recipe for Won ton soup serves 4. You can get most of the ingredients in a good asian supermarket. Get frozen won ton wrappers, they cost next to nothing and will save you a lot of hassle.
won ton wrappers
1/2 pound boneless lean pork, chopped finely
1 tablespoon soy sauce
1 tablespoon oyster sauce
1 tablespoon Chinese rice wine, mirin or rice vinegar
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1 green onion, finely minced
1 teaspoon cornstarch
2 dashes of pepper
1 small knob of fresh ginger, peeled and finely grated
Combine all the filling ingredients in a bowl, mixing well. Lay one won ton skin in front of you. Cover the remaining won ton skins with a damp towel to keep them from drying out.
Filling the won tons:
Moisten all the edges of the won ton wrapper with water. Place a heaping teaspoon of won ton filling in the center. Fold the won ton wrapper in half lengthwise, making sure the ends meet. Press down firmly on the ends to seal.
Use thumbs to push down on the edges of the filling to center it.
Keeping thumbs in place, fold over the won ton wrapper one more time.
Push the corners up and hold in place between your thumb and index finger.
Wet the corners with your fingers. Bring the two ends together so that they overlap. Press to seal.
The finished product should resemble a nurse’s cap.
Repeat with remaining won tons.
Here’s a video with a similar way to fold won tons:
Boiling the won tons:
Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add the won tons, making sure there is enough room for them to move about freely. Let the won tons boil for 5 – 8 minutes, until they rise to the top and the filling is cooked through. Remove from the pot with a slotted spoon.
To make the soup:
Bring the 1L of chicken stock to a boil. Add the won tons and bring the soup back to a boil. Add the green onion, remove the pot from the heat. Ladle into soup bowls, allowing 6 won tons per person.
Optionally, you can also add sliced bok choi and thinly sliced red pepper to the stock.
Holiday Redux
A new year has come, and I’m as tired now as I was before the holiday rush.
Plans got muddled because of all the weather and health issues. I caught a cold just before the holidays and the beastie caught it off of me just a week before Christmas. He was snottyliscious up until a day or so before the big day but it cleared up and wasn’t an issue. We were supposed to go to Costco to buy some of the last-minute stuff but with the roads in the state they were in and with the beastie under the weather, we went to Tesco instead. I cooked a ham and a ribeye beef roast. I made a very decadent chocolate cheesecake and a brussel sprout and bacon tart. We decorated the Christmas cake. Katy’s parents and uncle arrived on the 24th and stayed until the 27th.
There was food. Much food. The table was groaning under the weight of all the meat, cheese, condiments, pickles and sweet stuff. The pantry is still full of biscuits, booze and yet more condiments and chutneys. I’d made this crazy plan for the big Christmas meal, and yet dinner was still one hour late. The food went down a treat though. The turkey was lovely and the sausages we bought from the market stall were really, really nice. I’m amazed that 5 people managed to eat 3 kilos of turkey, 1 kilo of beef, 2 kilos of ham, 18 sausages and a pound of bacon in just a few days, not even counting the sausage rolls, scotch eggs and pork pies… Like I said, too much food!
Katy’s Christmas cake, at last reckoning, cost about £50 of raw materials. It is made with about 2 pounds of various dried fruit, half a dozen eggs, a pound of sugar and 3/4 of a bottle of Cointreau. Then you add the royal icing and various decorations and you get a cake that will stun a small moose with the sugar/fat/booze trifecta. Katy already has several orders for such cakes next year. Might be an interesting sideline :) I have to say that I’m rather proud of that cake because, even though Katy supervised and directed, I’m the one that made it because the beastie, generous creature that he is, had incubated and amplified the cold bug into something that really hit Katy hard.
She got this nasty chest cold that turned into a worse ear infection. The chest cold part kept her awake for days on end because she was coughing so much during the night. It was so bad that I ended up sleeping on the couch a couple of nights. I’d been sleeping on the guest bed until her parents came but we found that she was tossing and turning and couching so much that it would have been useless for me to stay in bed if I wanted to get any sort of sleep. She was scheduled to work over the holidays but her employers, charming people that they are, called her unreliable because she called in sick one day and cancelled her overtime. Have I mentioned just how much I like her employers? They’re really nice people. I hope they DIAF, but that’s just wishful thinking. Anyway, the coughing went away, but when blood-tinged stuff started leaking out of her ears, it was time to call the emergency docs on boxing day to get some antibiotics. She’s back at work today but she’s still not fully recovered. Her hearing is still partially gone and her sinuses are still giving her massive headaches :(
Still, the holiday spirit made an appearance. In between bouts of eating and drinking, we opened lots of presents, wore silly hats and played with the beastie. We’d decided to make the holidays a TV-free zone as much as possible so we plugged in the ipod and listened to oldies and carols.
Santa was generous, given the times. I got salt and pepper mills, some Robert Welch signature knives and a knife sharpener, a Le Creuset cast-iron casserole, some chocolate, a new cologne and a book. I also got lots of DVDs, and a shiny-shiny new DVD player that can read divX files off a USB stick :D Katy and I bought ourselves Bud ducks. She got the bestest present ever though. She got a tin!!! OMGWTFBBQ!!!eleventyone! She also got lots of l’Occitane stuff, some chocolate DVDs, more ducks, two terrapin garden statues and a really funky japanese-themed statue. But the tin really was the most commented-on gift :)
Beastie, again, was spoiled with presents though, this year, he actually preferred to play with them than with the box they came in. Most of them make noise, but that’s ok cause it’s not too aggressively cheerful. Mel and Stu actually spent more time playing with some of his toys than Ben did :)
We had a few quiet days between the end of Christmas and going to to Leicester for new years. I had a doctor’s appointment and the beastie had his immunization jabs. We took down the Christmas decorations because, without the mountain of gifts to keep him away from the tree, the beastie discovered that he had direct access to it and was always trying to eat parts of it. The drive up to Leics was uneventful, even though the weather was starting to turn ugly a bit.
Things in Leicester were pretty much of the same. We managed to sneak some adult time and went to see Avatar and Sherlock Holmes. Both were very good and I’m surprised that I enjoyed the Holmes movie. I was expecting to hate it, but surprisingly I didn’t. MORE FOOD! Jeminie and Stu came over for new year’s day. Katy’s uncle Michael and auntie Minal came to pick Jeminie up later in the evening and they said hello to the beastie.
We brought in the new year playing Carcassonne and then went to bed. We watched some of the fireworks from Katy’s bedroom window. The mood turned a bit weird just after new years day. There was a strained vibe in the air and it never really went away. The oldies were alternatively sniping or sulky. I think people were overdone. Katy’s been stressing about her back to work meetings and the beastie has been a handful since we’ve been back. He’s gotten used to constant attention and always being picked up and always having food thrown at him by the oldies to keep him quiet. It’s back to the normal grind now and he’s less than thrilled.
Speaking of the beastie, he now has almost a full set of teeth and is almost at the point of standing up by himself and taking a few steps. He can cruise along furniture and can stand up if he’s holding on to something. He can also climb stairs like nobody’s business and seems to derive much glee from doing so.
All in all, we had a good time. A much better time than I expected to have, and a much better time than we had this time last year. I still remember having a mental breakdown and crying in the front room with Pam asking us when we’d be ready for dinner. So yeah. Less tears, more laughts.
Still too much food. I can say that I am truly processed-pork-product’ed out.
Pictures and videos online: http://www.flubu.com/various_pics/xmas_2009/
Movie sequel under threat from writer’s estate
RITCHIE’S HOLMES SEQUEL UNDER THREAT FROM WRITER’S ESTATE
The executors of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s literary estate have threatened to withdraw Guy Ritchie’s rights to the SHERLOCK HOLMES story if the director hints at a homosexual relationship between the lead characters in his sequel.
Robert Downey, Jr., who plays the supersleuth in Ritchie’s new movie adaption, recently appeared on David Letterman’s U.S. talk show and hinted at a homoerotic subtext in the relationship between his character and Jude Law’s Dr. Watson. During the interview the actor also asked the audience to decide whether Holmes is “a very butch homosexual.”
But Downey, Jr.’s comments have infuriated Andrea Plunket, who controls the remaining U.S. copyrights to the Holmes story, and she’s threatened to withdraw permission for a follow-up if Ritchie suggests the detective is more than just friends with his sidekick. She says, “I hope this is just an example of Mr Downey’s black sense of humour. It would be drastic, but I would withdraw permission for more films to be made if they feel that is a theme they wish to bring out in the future. I am not hostile to homosexuals, but I am to anyone who is not true to the spirit of the books.”
Merry Fucking Christmas
Source: The Guardian
At the time of writing, it’s not clear whether the 2009 Christmas No 1 will be The Climb by Joe McElderry, or Killing in the Name by Rage Against the Machine. I’ve just done my bit to inch the latter closer to the top spot by downloading it – something I’d resisted doing until now because I initially thought there was something a bit embarrassing about the campaign. After all, as every other internet smartarse pointed out, both tracks are owned by Sony BMG – so no matter which one sells the most, Simon Cowell wins. In other words, even by raging against the machine, you’re somehow raging within it.
But profit isn’t the point – or at least it’s not the reason I downloaded it. For one thing, I happen to think Killing in the Name is an excellent song, so I’ve already got something out of it. Most importantly, it contains genuine emotion. Even if the climactic repeated howls of “Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me!” put you in mind of a teenager loudly refusing to tidy his bedroom – as opposed to a masked anarchist hurling petrol bombs at the riot squad – there is at least an authentic human sentiment being expressed. Zack de la Rocha is audibly pissed off.
Compare this to the pissweak vocal doodle that is Joe McElderry’s X Factor single. For a song whose lyrics ostensibly document an attempt to gather the spiritual strength to overcome adversity and thereby attain enlightenment, The Climb is about as inspiring as a Lion bar. It’s a listless announcement on a service station Tannoy; an advert for buttons; a fart in a clinic; a dot on a spreadsheet. Listening to it from beginning to end is like watching a bored cleaner methodically wiping a smudge from a Formica worksurface.
But then nobody’s buying The Climb in order to actually listen to it. They’re buying it out of sedated confusion, pushing a button they’ve been told will make them feel better. It’s the sound of the assisted suicide clinic, and it doesn’t deserve to be No 1 this Christmas.
This isn’t mere pop snobbery, by the way. I’d rather see Girls Aloud at No 1 than Editors. But The Climb is a lame cover version of a lame Miley Cyrus song. If X Factor can’t be arsed to do better than that, its grip on the yuletide charts deserves to be broken.
Anyway, while I’m happy for Rage Against the Machine to be enjoying the sales and publicity, I can’t help thinking we could’ve organised a slightly better protest ourselves. Chances are the X Factor will try to kick back extra hard next year – perhaps by actually releasing a song with a melody in it – so it’s best to start planning the resistance now.
The temptation might be to pour a lot of time and effort into creating a catchy anti-X Factor anthem, but the smartest counter-move would be to release something short, cheap and throwaway that isn’t even a proper song at all. I propose a track called Simon Cowell: Shit for Ears, which consists of a couple of eight-year-olds droning the phrase “Simon Cowell, shit for ears” four times in a row in the most deliberately tuneless manner possible. It should last only about 15 seconds or so. Quick enough to register; brief enough not to outstay its welcome.
Then we release it online at the lowest price possible. What’s the bare minimum you can charge and still be eligible for a chart position? It could be as little as 2p. Because the track is just recorded on to a cheap mic, and released without the assistance of any record label, 100% of the profits go to charity.
Dot-eyed CGI judge and omnipresent hair product spokeswoman Cheryl Cole recently complained that the campaign against McElderry’s single was “mean”, adding “If that song – or should I say campaign – by an American group is our Christmas No 1, I’ll be gutted for him and our charts.”
She’s missing the point. It’s not mean: it’s funny. If the Christmas No 1 turns out to be an angry, confrontational rock track that concludes with an explosion of f-words, it’ll be precisely the shot in the arm the charts have been sorely lacking the last few years: something that puts a genuine smile on the face of millions of people; sensitive people, thoughtful people; people alienated by the stifling cloud of grinning mechanical pap farted into their faces on a weekly basis by cocky, clattering, calculating talent shows such as X Factor. It would give these people hope. Maybe only in a very small and silly way, but still: a tiny spoonful of hope. And what could be more Christmassy than that?