Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Random Subject Generator

1. TOAST: It's great, you know? I came to remember the beauty of toast recently. Lynda and I haven't had a slot toaster for years. In fact, I'm not sure that we've ever had one. So, whenever I've wanted toast in the past, I've done it using the stove's broiler. Ignoring the fact that it probably wastes electricity to heat up the stove coils for toast and then having to flip the bread to get both sides toasty--well, it just doesn't make good toast.

So, as I am wont to do, I consulted Alton Brown (host of Good Eats). He had definite opinions on what constitutes a good toaster, and he even devoted an entire episode to toast-based dishes. I even read in a recent issue of Invention & Technology about the history of toasters.

Did you know that the chemical reaction that causes the sugars in bread to change and make the bread brown is called the Millard Effect? Well, it is.

(For the record, my new toaster--which I recently bought and LOVE is an Oster brand toaster that features two long slots that are wide. That way I can accommodate four slices of regular bread, bagel halves, oddly shaped bakery loaves, almost anything.

2. Sarah's reading is getting better every day.

3. Do you ever think about the fact that the word random has a history? I know that counties have a history, sure. I can think about words having a definition . . . and even a history of usage like what the Oxford English Dictionary provides. But, I hadn't thought about it in the historical sense.

4. Did you know that the Super Bowl is coming up this weekend? It's true! For some people, that means lots of football, lots of chips, and lots of cheese. For others, that means lots of talk about commercials. For the majority of my adult life, I've grown more and more interested in the commercials. AOL has asked viewers to vote on what is the greatest Super Bowl commercial of all time. (You can get to the voting site and see the commercials themselves via this Entertainment Weekly Popwatch page.) I believe that the Apple Macintosh commercial HAS to be number 1. It was THE archetype of the splashy, Super Bowl debut ad that was a mixture of art and commerce. End of discussion.

5. Tonight, to celebrate Lynda's completion of phase one of her hellish project, we went to Graeter's for ice cream. I had a scoop of chocolate almond. It was delicious.

6. Jack Thunder sent me a link to the preview trailer of the new movie Thank You For Smoking. It looks like a good movie. What you might not know, however, is that when the trailer was aired at the Sundance Film Festival, 12 seconds were apparently missing. Director Jason Reitman claims that he didn't know about the missing 12 seconds. Fox Searchlight claims that the missing footage was due to a "technical glitch." But wait! What content went missing? It was a clip of a sex scene between Aaron Eckhart and Katie Holmes. Speculation is now running rampant (thanks to Newsweek) that Tom Cruise somehow forced the deletion. Nothing is proven, of course, but I'm a believer.

7. Sarah is sometimes so imaginative that when I am having conversations with her I don't know where reality ends and fantasy begins. It's true that I don't know all of her friends names, but tonight she was talking about her friend J.C. and I really don't know if that person exists. She was also showing me her notebook that is filled with drawings, "projects," images, and all sorts of other things that defy description. As another example, she often talks of a movie that she has seen called "Coldland." Sometimes when she describes the characters and the action it sounds like she's talking about The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl. At other times, it sounds like she is describing a movie she saw but she has embellished and expanded the plot so much in her own mind that I just don't know if it's true or imagined..

8. Harrison Ford used to be a respected actor. He never reached the level of respect that someone like Dustin Hoffman has. He may not be an "actorly" actor, but he was a rock-solid guarantee of good box office and return-on-investment. He might be the Dustin Hoffman of the action movie genre. But now? Now his current movie, Firewall, is a remake of a movie he made nine years ago. And even worse? He's playing second fiddle to a car in the advertisements.


The text of the advertisement says: See the Chrysler 300 in Firewall. Harrison isn't even mentioned!

2 comments:

lulu said...

I noticed that Firewall thing on TV a few days ago--bizarre! Not much longer now until The Truman Show is our reality.

Sven Golly said...

1. Ah, the beauty of toast. John Barth creates a wonderful character named Joan Toast in The Sot Weed Factor, and she is a sweetheart indeed.
2. Go Sarah!
3. Is the history of 'random' random? Is history random?
4. Essay question on the midterm in HPER 621 (Principles of Physical Education) c. 1988: Is the Superbowl real?
5. Yum!
6. Yawn.
7. Go Sarah!
8. Just for purposes of argument, what HF performance at his best is comparable to DH at his worst? Ishtar doesn't count.