The Pawling Daily News

Fri, 14 Jan 2005 15:32:36 GMT

One of my favorite TV programs of recent years, the loopy Japanese cooking show "Iron Chef", is being re-launched in the US, and the premiere of the new series, titled "Iron Chef America" airs on Sunday night on the TV Food Network. I'll definitely be watching, but with some trepidation. Two of my favorite food celebrities, Mario Batali and Alton Brown (his recipe for Thanksgiving turkey is ace), are apparently involved, as are two of the original Iron Chefs, Masaharu Morimoto and Hiroyuki Sakai. And the premise seems to be the same - two chefs, aided by a team sous-chefs, have an hour to prepare a multi-course meal in "Kitchen Stadium" based on that week's chosen theme ingredient. The winner is chosen by a tasting panel, composed of foodies and other celebrities. But several elements appear to be missing this time around. First off, the Japanese series featured a strange host by the name of Chairman Kaga, who, according to the voiceover at the beginning of the program, had the original vision for the show. That was all bunk, of course. Kaga was just an actor dressed up like a Japanese cross between Liberace, Johnny Cash and Elvis. There was a great moment at the beginning of the old show where you would see Kaga turn toward the camera and, with a strage smile on his face, take a bite out of a whole yellow pepper. The way the chefs rose into kitchen stadium was also amusing. Then there's the matter of the theme ingredient. The Japanese version would feature strange fish and vegetables, e.g. "Squid Tentacle Battle". Try making a dessert out of squid tentacles - I dare you. I can't imagine an American audience finding that very appetizing. But that wasn't really the point of the old show. It was all about inventiveness and presentation. Some of the dishes looked wonderful, but a lot of it was just bizarre. It also seems that they've done away with the Japanese reporting team. One of the most enjoyable elements about the original show was listening to the English voiceovers for the banter between Fukui-san, the host, and Ota, his reporter down in Kitchen Stadium. So I don't really expect the new series to hold a candle to the old one, but I'll check it out anyway. The appeal of the original "Iron Chef" series was never the food - it was cultural. You have to wonder whether the good folks at the Food Network understand that.

Wed, 05 Jan 2005 17:39:47 GMT

A MYSTERY SOLVED Have you ever experienced one of those moments when something that has been irking you for years finally gets resolved in your mind? Maybe it's a line from a film that you can't quite place or a song whose lyrics you can't quite figure out. Well I had just such an experience today, and however small or insignificant it may seem, it brought a smile to my face. Here's the backstory. In about 1988 or 1989, Marna and I were driving from Boston to New York and listening to the local Boston alternative radio station. A loopy little song (apparently) called "Headbutts" came on, and I remember us laughing out loud at the sheer insanity of it. But the DJ never ID'd the artist, so the name of the performer has been a mystery to me all these years. I remember searching for the song a while back and coming up empty. Today, while poking around the WFMU website, I stumbled across the tune, and it's apparently by John Otway and Wild Willy Barrett, from an old Stiff recording (the legendary 1970s-1980s British label that was home to Elvis Costello, Nick Lowe, Ian Dury and the Blockheads and Wreckless Eric, among others). Here is a link for your listening pleasure. Click on the John Otway/Wild Willy Barrett clip near the bottom. I love the part about the three hippies saving the whale in a force ten gale: "Headbutts"

Tue, 04 Jan 2005 13:21:25 GMT

The State of California has launched a Megan's Law website, where, by entering a city of zip code, you can view detailed information on registered sex offenders in your area. A quick search using my childhood zip code returned about a dozen names. If the photos aren't enough to frighten the hell out of you, the details they provide on each sex offender will - aliases, tattoos, distinguishing marks, rap sheet. I shudder to think what a New York equivalent site might return for our area. Scary but, sadly, probably necessary.

Mon, 03 Jan 2005 22:02:05 GMT

After we managed to get the kids safely in bed last night, we watched Chariots of Fire, which I had recorded on Tivo earlier in the evening. Marna had never seen it before, and I remember only vaguely seeing it in Pasadena when it came out, in 1981. The Vangelis score, so widely praised at the time, seemed kind of jarring, hearing it now. I kept having to fiddle around with the remote control to get it right. The Vangelis music would cut in at a high volume, I'd amp it down, then the dialogue would start and I'd have to turn it back up again to hear the actors. One of the things you need to be careful about with a home theater system is the big sweeping soundtrack. With some of these epic movies it can be a problem. We closed the living room pocket doors so as not to wake up the kids - we sure didn't want Kieran toddling downstairs, not after a fairly exhausting weekend of following him around, dealing with his tantrums and cleaning up his messes. Ben Cross, who plays the self-confident, chip-on-his-shoulder sprinter Harold Abrahams in the film, is quite good (whatever happened to him, I wonder), but the movie as a whole seemed a little slow and soulless and you feel that it may have been overrated at the time it came out. I hadn't realized that one of my very favorite actors, Ian Holm, plays Abrahams' coach, Sam Mussabini. As always, he is excellent. John Gielgud is appropriately creepy as the anti-Semitic master of Trinity College at Cambridge (Abrahams, as you may remember, was Jewish). Lots to do this week, as I'm back at work. Ugh.

Sun, 02 Jan 2005 04:33:28 GMT

A very happy New Year to all of you. So far so good. We celebrated with the kids last night. They went to bed well before midnight, of course, but not before Kieran downed half a bottle of "champagne" (Martinelli's Sparkling Cider) by himself. His college years should be interesting. Marna and I stayed up past midnight for the first time in several years and watched the amusing but slightly ridiculous Love Actually, with Hugh Grant (!) as the Prime Minister. It's one of those movies, like Robert Altman's Short Cuts, that tries to weave together six or seven story lines that intersect at some critical point. I think they could have done without one or two of the plot lines and made a better movie, but it was decent enough entertainment for a New Year's Eve. Today, we took down the tree and did various odds and ends around the house. I managed to slip out, sans enfants, to A&P for an hour of serenity. What a lovely grocery shopping experience! Virtually nobody there, the shelves newly stocked, short lines at the registers - small pleasures I know, but if you'd been at A&P on December 24th (or at our house for the past two weeks), you'd know how welcome and rare the peace and quiet is, Muzak and all. No college football for me today, for the first time in years. I have no horse in the race this year and couldn't care less. All of this BCS nonsense only makes it worse. I did watch the end of Liverpool-Chelsea match, which saw my Blues prevail - rather fortunately - thanks to a deflected goal from Joe Cole, and maintain their five point lead over Arsenal. You get the feeling the gods are on Chelsea's side this season. About effing time. A few late additions to my list of best pop albums of 2004: First, a lovely new album, Weightlifting, by Scotland's long-lost Trashcan Sinatras. This is their first disc in more than eight years, having suffered through bankruptcy and series of other difficulties after their former label, Go Discs, went belly up. This new album is a beautiful little slice of jangly pop. "All the Dark Horses", "Country Air" and and "What Women Do to Men" are alone worth the price of admission. Second, The Streets' A Grand Don't Come for Free is quite unlike anything else I've ever heard. It's essentially a British welfare class rap album, but only in the loosest sense. It's really much more pop poetry, a bit like some of The Kinks' best work. The arc of the album traces a few weeks in the life of Mike Skinner (The Streets' songwriter and "singer"), who begins by losing a thousand pounds (he later finds out it has fallen down the back of his television) and suffering a series of other mishaps, meets and breaks up with the love of his life, feels betrayed by his mates, and manages to come out the other side in one piece. Listening to it, I laughed out loud in places. The beats are so basic and almost incidental to the lyrics at times, but still strangely appropriate. Unlike a lot of Skinner's American rapper counterparts, he never takes himself too seriously and he avoids coming off as some sort of poser. Totally, refreshingly original.

Wed, 29 Dec 2004 13:30:04 GMT

The death toll from the massive Asian earthquake continues to rise. It now stands at over 50,000, and I've seen some estimates that it could total more than 100,000 when all is said and done. Just mind-boggling. As usual, the New York Times does a great job of explaining what happened with an interactive feature on its website (subscription required). Some absolutely gut-wrenching photos as well.

Mon, 27 Dec 2004 16:19:32 GMT

I awoke this morning at 6:45, walked down the hallway to my office and peered outside to see how much snow had arrived overnight. We only got about an inch of fine, powdery snow - the kind that's easy to shovel. I pulled on my boots, a hat, gloves and and a coat and went outside to clear it away, while Marna and her folks got the kids ready for their return to daycare after a long holiday weekend. They made a point of saying as little as possible to Kieran about the snow. Once he gets wind that someone might be outside shoveling, he immediately wants to be part of the action, breakfast be damned. Marna and her brother Dan are off to Manhattan today to visit the recently re-opened Museum of Modern Art (easy on the flash animation there, people!) with my sister Jen, who is taking the train down from my father's place in Connecticut and hanging out with them for the day. I'm working this week, but I'm going to try to get down to the City to have dinner with them this evening. Christmas was a lot of fun. For my birthday, on the 21st, Marna and Dan pitched in to get me a Sony home theater system. Dan and I spent the better part of Friday putting it together and figuring out the wiring. With a TV, CD player, DVD player, VCR and Tivo all going into the unit, it took us a long time to untangle the complicated nest of old wires and cables and put the new ones in place. Dan, with his engineer's mentality, made sure that all of the slack on the cables was neatly gathered together with zip-ties. We also had to figure out how to best connect the rear speakers. In the end, we decided to take the speaker lines through the basement (not a problem, as holes had already been drilled by the cable and satellite guys). The new system sounds superb, and it's nice to be able to dispose of our old set-up. Yesterday we bought rear speaker stands to complete the installation and got Madeleine the new Harry Potter DVD. After dinner, we got the microwave popcorn going and watched the movie together. I thought for sure that the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher was going to turn out to be the bad guy, but the movie throws you a (somewhat confusing) curveball at the end. I miss Richard Harris as Dumbledore - the new Dumbledore doesn't hold a candle to him. Still, the movie's lots of fun, has a great soundtrack, cool special effects and killer sound - it was a good choice to test out the home theater system, which came through with flying colors. On Christmas Day itself, we traditionally drive up to my dad's place after opening our gifts in the morning, and this year was no exception. But one of my siblings needs to start having kids, pronto. Between stocking stuffers, Pawling gifts and Connecticut gifts, Madeleine and Kieran were positively swimming in Christmas presents. Thankfully, a lot of it was badly needed clothing, but there were also a lot of books and toys as well. The pick of the gifts this year has to be Kieran's mini John Deere lawn tractor. Mom saw it, and knowing how much Kieran loves to ride on "mow-mows", as he calls them, thought it would be the perfect Christmas present. Amazingly, it didn't require nearly as much assembly as we had anticipated. We let him ride it around the basement a little bit on Christmas, then I took him out in yard for a real road test yesterday morning: I spent a good hour following him around the yard and trying to teach him how to steer. The ground was frozen, so it was a bit of a bumpy ride for the little fella, but he had a wonderful time. We're not going to be able to get him off the thing when springtime comes. I took advantage of Jen's visit to raid her CD collection, importing stuff into iTunes like a madman. In addition to the new Elliott Smith album, which I really wanted, I got Joe Strummer, Steve Earle, The Plimsouls, Devo, X and much more. Thank God Jen has good taste in music - she could have been into Céline Dion and Shania Twain!