Category: Culture

The Apprentice has been pretty much enh for a couple of weeks — one team was clearly better, and they were destroying the other team. There was some amusement value from watching Jessie stab Kristi, and then get fired the next week. (Kristi: “What should I do?” Jessie: “Oh, don’t say anything until Mr. Trump talks to you.” Kristi: “OK!” Later, Trump: “You’re not very assertive, Kristi. You’re fired.”)

Oh, and the bit where Troy carefully manipulated the Fab Five into giving him a good item for a charity auction? That was great. He told the camera what he was gonna do and say, he did it, and it worked like a charm. But there weren’t a lot of good moments like that.

This week, on the other hand, ruled. It was a nice simple contest; the two project leaders negotiated for their choice of two apartments, each team renovated the apartment they wound up with, and the side that got the best percentage increase over the base lease price for the apartment won. For the first time, you had two contestants negotiating with each other, and Troy destroyed Katrina. In the end he got what he wanted by the flip of a coin, but I’d say he still wound up with an advantage because Katrina was seriously pissed off about it. If he’d lost, he would have shrugged it off.

Side note: the real question was not which apartment looked nicer, but which apartment had a lower base lease price. A hundred dollar increase over the base price means a lot more if the base lease price is low. Because the show isn’t really about business, nobody mentioned that.

Tammy sucked down the loss for being disloyal, which is a recurring theme. Also because she’s been startlingly non-effective in general, but mostly because she wasn’t loyal to her team.

It’s getting down to the smart people. Right now I’m betting on Troy and Amy, or perhaps Nick. Most likely winner is Troy, because he’s a very good manipulator. He had a better chance before Amy wound up on his team, though; he was going to slip right through till the end but now he has real competition on his team.

Why are you not reading Broog’s film criticism? Do you not know what it is that you are missing?

The mighty cinematic edifice which is the human Jackson’s rendering of Tolkien’s classic novel grinds to its imperial conclusion in the third film, “Lord of the Rings: The Fat Jolly Hobbit Saves Middle Earth And Everyone Is Nice To His Whiny Friend”. The movie follows the exploits of Sam as he hauls his limp and apparently pointless companion across the dark desolation of Mordor, struggling against hunger, despair, orcs, giant spiders, Gollum, and what must surely be an overpowering desire to slap Frodo until he resembles a hubcap.

Now you have no excuse.

“Dave Sim is the only person out there who can tell us what it’s like to self-publish your own wholly idiosyncratic black-and-white comic book for 25 years straight while delivering massive polemics on esoteric issues, and from points of view that most people find indefensible. He’s a wholly unique individual. And while you could argue that EVERYONE is wholly unique, and I’d have to agree, that doesn’t mean they have wholly unique things to say. Dave does.”

My college friend and housemate Tasha works for The Onion A.V. Club. (She writes reviews, conducts interviews, and generally gets to live a life full of interesting people and things.) She spent a chunk of yesterday trying to convince Dave Sim to let her interview him, and then blogged about the phone conversation. It’s brilliant.

I got three comments (on the same entry) in my Livejournal mirror encouraging me to go see The Passion of the Christ. This does not, in fact, convince me to adopt the recommended course of action.

This is pretty much the sort of thing that I anticipated: I don’t think Mel Gibson set out to make a dangerous movie, but I thought that it was the kind of movie that would encourage poor behavior unless he took counterbalancing steps. Spam comments aren’t dangerous, but they do show a distinct disregard for social mores. I expect more of the same, and possibly darker actions. Call me a cynic.

(Anonymous comments are still enabled over there, and I still don’t track IP addresses there, but I do screen anonymous comments. I won’t screen anything but spam.)

Last week’s Apprentice was intensely dull, so I’m only just now getting around to writing about it. Executive summary:

Sex still sells and the women are still using it. The contestants are stuck in the mode of individual achievement these days; they can’t stop running around long enough to delegate to non-contestants. Nick used some pretty good tactics to buy himself an out, and they worked. Bowie got kicked out for no good reason. Omarosa is smart enough to turn people around and get them to like her in one week flat.

This week’s, which I haven’t watched yet, scrambled the teams.

The prelim Nebula ballot is up, with links to many of the nominees in full. Three out of the four novelettes were published on-line first.

And the nominees are…

Biggies (i.e., the ones I care about):

Best Actor
Johnny Depp — Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl
Ben Kingsley — House Of Sand And Fog
Jude Law — Cold Mountain
Bill Murray — Lost In Translation
Sean Penn — Mystic River

Depp is the surprise nomination here. I still think he was better in Once Upon A Time In Mexico, but what do I know? Bill Murray would be my pick for the Oscar.

Best Supporting Actor
Alec Baldwin — The Cooler
Benicio Del Toro — 21 Grams
Djimon Hounsou — In America
Tim Robbins — Mystic River
Ken Watanabe — The Last Samurai

Alec Baldwin is the trendy cool nomination. Lotta quality performances here; this is a really strong field. Baldwin is deserving, Robbins is deserving, and Watanabe is deserving. I’d bet Del Toro is deserving too.

Best Actress
Keisha Castle-Hughes — Whale Rider
Diane Keaton — Something’s Gotta Give
Samantha Morton — In America
Charlize Theron — Monster
Naomi Watts — 21 Grams

Trendy choice: Keisha Castle-Hughes. Winner: probably Charlize Theron. Shamefully, I have seen none of these.

Best Supporting Actress
Shohreh Aghdashloo — House Of Sand And Fog
Patricia Clarkson — Pieces Of April
Marcia Gay Harden — Mystic River
Holly Hunter — Thirteen
Renée Zellweger — Cold Mountain

I dunno. Shamefully — you know the rest. (OK, I saw Mystic River. Marcia Gay Harden was good.)

Best Animated Film
Brother Bear
Finding Nemo
The Triplets Of Belleville

Triplets is a bit of a surprise. This year, the voters will decide if this award is a prestige award or an award for the big US film (which is not to say Finding Nemo isn’t good, but it’s a perception thing). So far it’s gone both ways, with Shrek and Spirited Away.

Best Director
City Of God
The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King
Lost In Translation
Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World
Mystic River

HEY. I guess City of God is eligible this year after all. It’s not gonna win but possibly it should.

Best Screenplay (Adaptation)
American Splendor
City Of God
The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King
Mystic River
Seabiscuit

I’m torn between Mystic River and Return of the King. I guess you gotta go with the latter as a recognition of the trilogy, but the Mystic River screenplay was a superlative adaptation of a difficult book.

Best Screenplay (Original)
The Barbarian Invasions
Dirty Pretty Things
Finding Nemo
In America
Lost In Translation

Dirty Pretty Things. Not that I didn’t love Lost in Translation, but it wasn’t the screenplay that made it a great movie.

Best Picture
The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King
Lost In Translation
Master And Commander: The Far Side Of The World
Mystic River
Seabiscuit

All good choices. Return of the King gets it, again for the trilogy, although I can’t say it was a better movie than Lost in Translation.

That was a long week. Productive, but lengthy. Instead of talking about business, which I can’t talk about, I’ll talk about the one non-business thing I did this week: Dixie’s BBQ.

Dixie’s is pretty decent BBQ with a great gimmick. You get your food, you go sit down at your table, and the owner of the place wanders over with a pot of his hot sauce: “The Man.” He makes a big production about giving you some, especially if it’s your first time. I was there with a couple of co-workers, and since they were native Bostonians I figured my experience with hot sauces went a little beyond theirs. I believed them when they said The Man was hotter than hot, but I was pretty sure I could handle it anyhow. So I let Gene (the aforementioned owner) plop a big spoonful onto my brisket.

It’s insanely hot, most likely the hottest thing anyone who isn’t fanatical about their hot sauces has ever tasted. According to the intelligent folks at chile-heads, it’s about 2/3rds Endorphin Rush and 1/3rd the normal Dixie’s barbecue sauce.

I can only find one source for the Scoville value of Endorphin Rush, alas. They claim it’s 120,000 Scovilles. Sounds about right, but I have no way to verify it. If we accept that at face value, and we accept the chile-heads guesses at face value, that’d put The Man at about 80,000 Scovilles. Tabasco sauce is around 3,000 Scovilles.

The fired-up brisket wasn’t much of a problem; the heat brought out the flavor nicely. I even got another half-spoon of The Man on the remainder of the brisket. I should not, however, have let Gene dump another spoon into the baked beans. It wasn’t so much the heat as it was the combo of the heat and the sweetness of the beans and the not-so-tasty hot link I got with my brisket — I handled the heat just fine, but the mixture of flavors was hard on my stomach. If I ever wander by there again I’ll just get the brisket straight and see how that goes.

None of this is very impressive to the madmen who go past the very hot sauces such as Endorphin Rush into the superhots. Endorphin Rush is based on a pepper extract, so it’s way more intense than you generally get out of a hot sauce. Some sauces go further: you can in fact get 1 million plus Scoville heat in a bottle. I sort of suspect that it’s more a collector thing than anything else, since Blair’s sauces can go for a couple hundred bucks on EBay. The hottest of the hots are literally dangerous to handle, so I can’t imagine anyone breaking the wax seals and cooking with ‘em.

Either way, though, I’ll stick with the sauces that ring in at 100,000 Scovilles and under.