New Review: F.B.I. Girl (1951)

Normally I don’t post reviews for two movies in a row out of the same set, but I couldn’t find my notes for the review I had originally slated to post tonight; the review is all written, but the Notable Totables are still only a handwritten tally, probably buried somewhere on my desk. (If they’re not, I’ll have to rewatch the movie at 20x to recreate the tallies.) I have another review in the same situation, the Notable Totables are AWOL, and another two written for movies that I only have on VHS, and my video capture card didn’t want to play nice tonight.

So F.B.I. Girl (1951) it is!

(This kind of behind-the-scenes info is the kind of “value-added” thing you can only get here on the blog. Savor it, folks.)

01

07 2009

Deraptera hate.

The European earwig is an insect migrant from Europe that was established in the eastern United States around 1907. This insect rapidly spread across the United States… [source]

Someone in 1907 guaranteed himself a place in hell. The helliest hell there is.

01

07 2009

Experiments I ate.

It was a terrific idea I had just before the last campout I went on, and didn’t have time to try out. So tonight seemed like a good time.

Take a Twinkie:

twinkie1

Cover it with marshmallow cream:

twinkie2

And roast it.

Alas, there were some practical problems. The marshmallow cream was so stiff and sticky that it pulled apart the Twinkie. Microwaving the ‘mallow helped with that, but the result was still kind of underwhelming. After all, the stuff inside a Twinkie tastes kinda like marshmallow cream anyway.

“But, Nathan,” you say, “surely you could work some bacon into this experiment, couldn’t you? With, say, marshmallow-coated bacon?”

Well…

bacon1
bacon2

It was actually better than I expected. I like a little salty with my sweet, which is why I like Reese’s Peanut Butter Cuts and 100 Grand bars. I would tell anyone trying this to make sure that you have a LOT of marshmallow to go with your bacon.

27

06 2009

And happy birthday…

…to Andrew Nicholson, the childhood friend up the road who always had his birthday party just after mine. I have no idea where he is now; he moved from our end of the Island in fourth or fifth grade, when his widowed mother remarried. (His father had been a fisherman who didn’t know how to swim. He died by… well, I think I just told you.)

Anyway, happy birthday, Andrew, wherever you are.

26

06 2009

It’s — it’s — a miracle! (chomp)

Last night for my birthday dinner, I assembled a mini-buffet of fingers foods — apples, oranges, lemons, limes, grapefruit, rhubarb, green olives, black olives, cheddar cheese, swiss cheese, crackers, tortilla chips, guacamole, salsa, creole dip, pickles, bologna, salami, ham, smoked turkey — and then, when the kids had come to the table, broke out the secret ingredient: miracle fruit tablets.

In case you’ve never heard of “miracle fruit” or “miracle berries,” are apparently a West African fruit which alters the taste of food eaten the hour thereafter, thusly:

20090625160258

The berries are perishable and expensive; the second-grade solution is the tablets, which use extract in a base of corn starch. (The above graphic was taken from an eBay seller of the tablets. Whether you search eBay or generally online for a vendor, the cost is roughly fifteen dollars for a ten-tablet pack.)

20090625151441We didn’t have as extreme a set of reactions as detailed here — probably, again, because we were using the tablets instead of fresh berries — but there were noticeable results, to wit:

Rhubarb without its sour doesn’t taste like the same plant.

Green olives? No real difference. Black olives were sweeter.

Swiss cheese lost its bitterness. Cheddar cheese lost its tang, leaving it bland.

Dill pickles became sweet pickles. (This is not a good thing.)

A sour cream-based dip lost all of its sourness.

Salsa tasted sweet, as it it had been made with peaches instead of tomatoes.

Oranges tastes like tangerines. Lemons and limes were still tart, though I didn’t sample them beforehand to see how sour these ones were.

Smoke oysters lost almost all of their flavor.

Sprite tasted like a fountain drink that accidentally put too much syrup in the mix.

Most other things, like the various prepared meats, tasted subtly “off.”

The effect varied from person to person; Sariah in particular complained that everything tasted just like normal. After about half an hour, it was pretty apparent that the effect was wearing off for everyone.

This concludes our experimental report.

25

06 2009

New review: Mask of the Dragon (1951)

Posting on the evening of my birthday and wedding anniversary? Certainly not; I have more pressing things to do. Instead, I’ve set this post to go live — IN THE FUTURE!!! (Hello, future! This is the past! Do you have flying cars yet?)

And all this because I didn’t want you to miss out on my review of Mask of the Dragon (1951), which is a lot more unmissable than the movie itself was. If I do say so myself. Which I do. Because it’s my birthday, and I can.

24

06 2009

Achievement.

It is a sobering thought, for example, that when Mozart was my age he had been dead for two years.
- Tom Lehrer, That Was The Year That Was (1965)

Happy birthday to me.

(It it almost as sobering to realize that by the time Tom Lehrer was my age, he had written just about everything we know him for — “The Elements,” “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park,” “Rickety-Tickety Tin,” “New Math,” “Lobachevsky”…)

24

06 2009

Not the greatest camping trip ever.

Last night was our local church congregation’s annual campout. People we kind of nervous because this was the first night without rain in the forecast for almost a month, dinner around the firepit was fine; we potlucked sides and dutch oven desserts, with marinated grilled chicken provided. Some of the kids and teenagers did skits, and the Boy Scouts retired three flags.

Morning was otherwise. The air mattress settled to the floor of the tent overnight; someone had packed the leaky air mattress (which meant that someone had kept the leaky air mattress, despite having bought a replacement). Breakfast was a do-if-yourself proposition, so I fired up the camp stove and was halfway through frying the first package of bacon when the butane ran out. No one had packed a spare. Plan B was starting a campfire, but the kindling twigs flamed only reluctantly and the bigger logs not at all, probably from having been rained on almost every night in the past month. So the scrambled eggs and blueberry pancakes were off the menu, leaving rationed bacon, bananas, leftover marshmallows, orange juice, and raw Jiffy blueberry mix (it’s like cookie dough, but runnier!). Sariah woke up and promptly vomited on her sleeping bad. Alex’s jaw was too sore to eat anything because his braces were just tightened yesterday. Then it began to rain.

So yeah.

20

06 2009

A really good thing.

The video for a single by my friend Dave Jay.

Got a really good thing from oceanwarmair on Vimeo.

19

06 2009

New review: The Blood Shed (2006)

17

06 2009