Cream Substitute

I did just a bit of Internet prowling to get to the bottom of the FFH&H issue, and I found that I am no longer as troubled by the ingredients of the make-believe coffee potion as I am the reasoning behind it. It's not really half & half. It's a substitute for half & half. Same consistency. Same taste. Different stuff.

Okay, fine, whatever. But why call it FFH&H if it's no halves are involved? Why not just call it creamer?

I'm sure the answer is that you can supposedly cook with FFH&H, and nobody would ever attempt to use fat free creamer in a recipe. It's just kinda weird, because nobody really calls half & half by it's real name. We call it cream. But H&H is anywhere from 10 to 18% fat. Cream cream can have as much as 30% fat. So the fact that H&H would want to swing the other way when it's so often mistaken for its chubbier counterpart is completely mystifying. Decide who you want to be, H&H. Break away from your ana complex and embrace your true identity.

And suddenly I'm tempted to put Prince and the NPG in my playlist, but it ain't happening.

Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3

I have to admit, the technical side of blogging scares the nasty out of me. I can't tell my enclosure links from my MIME Types. So I have no idea if what I'm attempting to do will work. (Nope! Oh well.)

I also have no idea how in the world a grocery store can in good conscience sell a product called fat free half & half. I get the whole fat free creamer idea. But how is it possible to make fat free half & half? It's supposed to be half cream, half milk. Now sure, the milk can be skim . . . but how can you arrive at fat free cream? It's . . . cream! That's supposed to be all kinds of fat.

This is not me being difficult. This is me being completely stumped. I stared at the carton in the refrigerator section of my local grocery store last night with mouth agape. Fat. Free. Half. &. Half. This is impossible. It's like fat free bacon. Or fat free grease. Or fat free . . . fat. I don't even want to think what's in the other half posing as cream. And yet I am. I can think of little else.

Agh.

Do Not Swallow

What happens when you mix Listerine with Kudos? Beautiful blog overload.

Is It Just Me?

Or is it weird that I spontaneously burst into dance now that I'm home all the time. I'll occasionally catch myself doing it, which makes me afraid that many times I don't catch myself doing it. But it's true. I'll just be walking up the stairs, I'll get to the top, and the next thing I know I'm throwing a Michael Jackson kick in the air, pounding my chest with a flick of the wrist, and finishing off the flourish with a "hee hee" and a mini gasp.

Who's bad?

I am, I guess. I don't know if that means I'm happier at home or that I'm going crazy at home. For now, I'll stick with the happy theory.

Eye of the Beholder

This is Addison dropping the camera rather fortuitously . . . or artistically. The photo has not been altered, manipulated, or otherwise messed with in any way. I actually have no clue what's going on in this picture. Kinda fun, yeah?

Here He Comes

When we headed to IMAX to see Speed Racer, I expected it to be a good birthday present - a little popcorn flick that would demand very little intellectual or emotional investment. I wasn't expecting it to be the best movie ever, nor was I expecting it to change my life. I was hoping for something in the "not completely terrible" category.

What I found, at the end of 2 hours and 15 minutes of hyperkinetic kaleidoscope visuals dancing before my eyes like a semi-animated rave, was a smile I couldn't wipe from my face and the distinct memory of saying, "Awesome," to myself about three dozen times. I liked the story. I really liked the dialogue. I loved the scrolling close-up scene transitions that mimicked the cut-and-paste animation effects of the cartoon with a souped up CGI twist. But what absolutely enthralled me was the way the fighting and racing scenes were choreographed with the same reckless disregard for reality employed by little kids everywhere.

If you've ever laid on your bed and daydreamed an action sequence featuring race cars that flip and jump at will, if you've ever directed a scene where a matchbox car in distress can scale your bedroom walls, or if you've ever pitted action figures in a brawl where gravity and probability are not present, then Speed Racer may look incredibly familiar.

If you've ever seen the cartoon, the familiarity will breed complete awesomeness. John Goodman is Pops Racer. And I don't mean he plays Pops Racer. He is Pops Racer. All the actors do a tremendous job acting as if they were drawn on screen. Matthew Fox's deadpan Racer X is a stroke of genius that most critics dismiss as stale. The critics are so wrong.

This movie really was awesome. It ticked me off to read the reviews, because the reviewers were all so helplessly out of touch. The ones who claimed they had seen the cartoon as kids obviously had not. The ones who didn't claim to have seen the movie should be cut in half by a Mach 5 buzz saw.

Happy birthday to me. Speed Racer rocked.

Alanis

It has been a long time since Alanis Morisette did anything I really liked. She has been in that exploratory phase where her music is more about her own personal inquisitive journey than actually pleasing the ears of anyone listening. And that is fine and dandy with me. I got no problem with making music that communicates your innermost expressions regardless of what anyone thinks . . . I just won't listen to it. But this song from Alanis (which apeared on an episode of House M.D.) pleases my ears quite a bit. (Also, there's a spot at about 3 minutes, 15 seconds into the video where it looks like Hurley from LOST is singing along. Keep your eyes peeled for that one.)

Aaaaand . . .

I'm giving advice all over the place tonight. Oh, and my kids are cute. There's a great story and photos somewhere . . . maybe tomorrow.

Did You Ever Wonder?

Why do they call them soothsayers? I'm not sure this will help, but it's worth a look at diction addiction.

20 K

I was there. Just four days before, I had been to Wrigley to see the Cubs beat the Cardinals in extra innings . . . extra foggy innings. Oh, and then right after I got engaged. The following days provided a strange blend of crazy emotions and dusty, strenuous, sledge-hammer-swinging work. So I kind of had a headache. And a backache. And a holy-crapache. So I left work early on Wednesday and caught the 1:20 at Clark and Addison.

I knew Kerry Wood was pitching. I had watched on TV and knew he had nasty stuff. But I didn't know the festival of feats that awaited me.

There were about 15,000 people there. The bleacher ticket cost $6. I sat down in left center about an hour before game time. Warm. Bit breezy. Overcast. Awesome.

The first pitch from Kerry was a ball. And I wasn't the only one not quite prepared for the nastiness of his stuffiness. Sandy Martinez, the catcher, wasn't either. The high fastball buzzed right by his glove and hit the umpire in the face mask. That pitch caught everyone's attention, and from that point on, Kerry served up a feast of jaw-dropping strikes. The Astros put eight balls into play. Eight. Most of the time they just took turns watching and whiffing.

I have to say, I'm not one of those guys who can tell the speed and the type of pitch just by watching from the stands. Usually they all look like fastballs to me. But this was different. He basically threw three different pitches that day, and I could distinctly recognize each one, every time:

1. Fastball. He was throwing this about 98 mph the whole game. One of them hit Craig Biggio. Another hit the ump. A few of them got fouled off, and others turned into ground ball outs. The one hit the Astros got that day could have been called an error on Kevin Orie. It was a slow ground ball from Ricky Guttierrez that the third baseman just plain missed. The rest of Wood's fastballs were hitting the catcher's mitt so hard, they made a crack so loud, I thought they were making contact with Louisville Slugger. Then Martinez would spring up from his crouch and fire the ball back to Wood or sling it on down to Orie. Even from across the green expanse of the Friendly Confines, I could see these fastballs were blazing. You could practically hear the whizz of disgruntled air sputtering off the ball and smell the smoking leather rising off the catcher's mitt. Nasty.

2. Slider. All of Kerry's sliders looked like fastballs when they left his hand. The Astros were afraid. They were grown men, but I could see their little boy fear in their trembling little eyes all the way from the cheap seats. So when this pitch shot out from Kerry's shotgun of an arm headed straight toward their heads, they were understandably distressed. I could see them flinch. Then the ball would suddenly change trajectory from the batter's skull and swoop harmlessly over the center of the plate. The batters were physiologically incapable of swinging at these pitches.

But it got worse. When he threw the slider so that it looked like a fastball strike, the batter's eyes would grow wide - I could see this from left center, I kid you not. They would uncoil their mightiest swings as this juicy looking meatball of a pitch swept drastically into the far reaches of the left-hand batter's box. Again, I could see aerodynamics take effect as the world of physics changed its mind on where the ball should fly. All academics aside, the ball would wind up as far as three feet away from the end of the bat as the hapless hitters felt their butts head right as their torsos toppled to the left. Miss Jackson. Yeah, nasty.

3. Curve. He didn't throw this one much. When he did, I'm telling you, I could see the knees buckle. I could see the shoulders slouch. I could see the little speech bubble appear over their heads and fill with pound signs and ampersands and exclamation points and percentages. Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen sweeping out the garbage truck in Men at Work. Nastyyyyyy!

I remember who was around me. A guy in a Biggio jersey with his wife . . . also in a Biggio jersey, sitting right in front of me. A guy to the right of me who was using a newspaper for an umbrella as the clouds started spitting on us. Two guys who finally revealed their true allegiance when they broke out their St. Louis Cardinal panchos. I said it before, the place wasn't packed. But it was loud. With every pitch it got louder. When there were two strikes on a hitter, the crescendo was deafening . . . and of course that seemed quiet compared to the explosions after each strikeout. Somewhere around the fifth inning, we were no longer a bunch of fans. We were friends. We were family. We were ecstatic.

And Cubs' turns at bat couldn't end fast enough. We didn't want to see them hit. We didn't want to see anyone hit. We wanted to see Kerry pitch and watch the Astros look like idiots.

And they did. The ninth inning was electric . . . I felt what literally seemed like static electricity dancing across my skin. First hitter was a pinch hitter . . . maybe Daryl Ward. He struck out. We went nuts. One of my buddies (whom I had never met) yelled out something about a National League record. Then Craig Biggio grounded out and we all booed. Jerk didn't have the decency to swing and miss. Then came Derek Bell. He watched a strike. Then he fouled off a pitch. Then Kerry threw a slider. Bell swung pathetically and didn't come within a yard of it. The place. Went. Nuts. High fives all around. Hugs. Strangers were hugging! I didn't hug anybody. But I gave plenty of high fives, yelled like crazy, and eventually filed out politely into the euphoric streets of Wrigleyville.

The game flew by. Seriously, it went so fast that when I got back on the El after the game, I only got charged for a transfer. Kerry had taken less than two hours to strike out a major league record 20 men. When I got home to my apartment (in Chicago at the time), I immediately turned on the TV to watch the news. The phone rang. It was my mom.

"Did you see the game?" she asked.

"Yeah," I said calmly . . . "FROM THE BLEACHERS!"

The whole thing was like an early birthday/timely engagement present from God. Just plain freaking awesome. And now it's been ten years (two of which I just spent writing this). Thanks, Kerry. Thanks, God. Thanks, Heather. That was awesome.

Musical Ripoffs . . . The Price Is Stevie

I gave up trying to make a playlist work within a post. So I started yet another blog exclusively for musical ripoffs. There's also a new advice post, if you're wondering.

Soccer Hoodlum: Updated with link to year-old video

It's soccer season again. It's hard to get any good action shots from the game because there is very little action in the game itself. In today's game it took an average of 12 seconds to score a goal and about a minute and a half to get the kids back to the center and ready to go. They play 4-minute quarters, so . . . the best action takes place in warmups. The top picture is Addison during a drill when the kids were pretending to be airplanes. Addison is a very jazzy and intense plane. In the second shot, Addison is pretending to walk like a duck . . . during the walk-like-a-duck drill.

He's getting really good at soccer.

UPDATE: If you really want to see some Addison soccer action, check this out.

Overheard . . . Suspicious Minds

On Friday, Addison's pre-school will be learning about emotions. Heather was prepping him for what they'll be studying, and he asked what emotions were. Heather listed a few: angry, sad, happy . . . and then he interrupted the list with this question:

"What about suspicious?"
I don't know. Is that an emotion? I say yes. And just for fun, this is a drawing of the recliners in Addison's friend's basement. Maybe my favorite drawing ever.

Oh Heavenly Day

For Addison, it doesn't get much better. There were firetrucks at the Dunkin' Donuts/Baskin Robbins. Honestly, for me it doesn't get much better than the fact that there exists such a place as a Dunkin' Donuts slash Baskin Robbins. But you open up a firetruck, turn on the flashers, and let Addison roam around in it while wearing his own fireman garb . . . that's top notch. But get out your notcher and engrave another one on top of THAT, because he still got to have a chocolate Dunkin' Donut with sprinkles AND a scoop of chocolate ice cream, scooped by a real live firefighter.

Dude.

Dig

1. Jason Castro - Forever in Blue Jeans. Yeah, I liked it. I like him because he's not trying to be anything more than, well, anything more than forever in blue jeans.

2. David Cook - I'm Alive. Yeah y'are. And a little smug. But still, not the worst performance ever.

3. Brooke Why'd - I'm a Believer. As in "Why'd you think you could sing that song, Flo?" Because she's corny and she knows it. Corny, cheesy . . . corn dog with cheese.

4. David Archuleta - Sweet Caroline. Um . . . I loved the fact that he performed this as if it were the theme song to his sitcom. I don't know . . . He mixed it up a bit. I don't know. He's missing something . . . just no strength in his voice half the time, like he's got a loogie waiting to fly.

5. Syesha Mercado - Hello Again. And . . . goodbye. She's not a bad singer, but I feel like I'm stuck in a disco.

Intermission - Paula, seriously, that was awesome. You're going to make a wonderful drunk grandmother someday. And Neil, you're the bomb.

6. JC - September Morn. Here's what I like about this guy: I don't think you should have to look like you're trying super hard. He doesn't. I mean, he's not exactly trying to win this contest, but he's not offending the crap out of me.

7. DC - All I Really Need Is You. I never got the chance to slow dance in the '80s. I almost just did. I'm sorry, I couldn't disagree with the judges more on this one. I think Cook is good, but I thought that song was total cornball. I didn't think it sounded anything like anything that would come out today. Sometimes when you change the style of a song it works great. But the language in that song is not that rockin'. You can't utter the words "I must conclude" whilst rocking. It just doesn't fit.

8. B Dub - I Am . . . I Said. That was good. For me, dog, that was probably the best song of the night.

9. DA - America. Okay, I didn't correctly predict any song choices, pretty bad considering they sang TWO songs each. It's almost like I'm 0 for 10. But this is the closest I came to getting one right. "America" is the other Neil "something bigger, fellow mankind" song. Simon's right, he was clever in going all patriotic. But, all technical merit aside, that was an artistic mess. The terrorists just won.

10. SM - Thank the Lord for the Nighttime. I thank the Lord we're almost done. I like Syesha alright, but just alright. She did a good job, but her voice is never really going to blow people away. Thinking back to some of the voices that have lost on season's past, Syesha doesn't rank among the great ones.

All in all, this show did what it was supposed to do - it revealed the contestants for the not-quite-ready-to-sell-records bunch that they are. I was entertained. I love the songs. It's one of the rare weeks when I think I'll actually like the results show better than the performance show. Okay, no more Neil. Thanks, buddy, this was fun.

I Have My Suspicions

The songs the Idol contestants will sing? I've had a hard time coming up with anything resembling a logical guess for any of the contestants for any of the previous weeks. But this week (did I mention it's Neil Diamond week?) I have some strong hunches about what people will sing. Time will tell how reliable my gut is, but for now here's what I feel coming (in order of strongest feeling to wildest guess):

1. David Archuleta - He's not heavy, he's my brother. This just seems tailor-made for Archie, who is destined, when Simon questions his song choice, to reply, "It's just such a great song with a really positive message. I just think it's a song the world really needs to hear right now, you know? Take care of each other and lift each other up. It's always been one of my favorite songs."

2. David Cook - I'm a Believer. He'll do this in kind of a dark, minor arrangement that will burst into a brighter, less brooding speed rocker.

3. Jason Castro - Red, Red Wine. Randy will say it's not the greatest vocal of the night, but he loved how he made it his own, dog, so that was pretty good. Paula will melt a little and try to say she's crushing on him without actually saying it. Simon will say he played it safe, but at least we know what to expect from him and there's no question he's genuine. Still, he's got to wonder if America is going to get bored with the same performance week in and week out.

4. Brooke White - Play Me. I really don't know what she'll sing. I just know it will be overly thoughtful and underly dynamic.

5. Syesha Mercado - You Don't Bring Me Flowers. It won't make sense as a solo effort instead of a duet, but she'll do it anyway. The judges will like the vocal (and Paul will say she looks great) but they will all be confused as to why she's singing two halves of a song to herself.

In past seasons, the contestants didn't start singing two songs until the final four, which should make this the longest, most drawn out performance episode of the season. I can't wait. There's gonna be a whole lotta Neil, baby, yeah!

Musical Ripoffs . . . Diamond and Dylan

With all the Neil Diamond - Bob Dylan comparisons I've been making, I can't believe it took me this long to post this musical ripoff, which is not my original observation, but an old carpool mate. You can listen in the playlist: "Sleepwalker," by the Wallflowers (feat. Jakob Dylan) and "Solitary Man," by Neil Diamond. Enjoy.

Tiptoe

A florist I am not. I think this is a tulip. As little as I know about flowers, I still like to see them rear their ugly heads . . . mostly because they're not ugly. Anyway, this is the first flower to spring up in our bed this spring. I feel just the smallest rush of excitement at flower #1.

I know. I'm a dork.

Overheard . . . Dear Santa

Today, Addison spontaneously launched into a letter to Santa. It was hilarious because he was just scribbling in lines as he dictated to himself. He started it out with a quote from "A Charlie Brown Christmas," which you can find about 15 seconds from the end of the clip below.

This was the gist: "Dear Santa, how have you been? Please bring my daddy a new bicycle. And bring my mommy some new socks. Bring Colin some pajamas. And please bring me some firetruck clothes." Then he redid the thing on a real piece of paper (although still not with real words) and wanted to mail it to Santa. I think it's on its way to the North Pole right now. Fun. :)

Poll Question, Baby

The poll question is simple . . . yet impossible. You're on American Idol. It's Neil Diamond week. What do you sing? And don't say the question is too hard, because every contestant has to answer it, right? Or are they in two-performance territory? Regardless, you have to pick one song. Well . . . you don't have to. But you're finding it hard to resist, right? Clearly, this is a Neil-friendly audience. So . . . go ahead. Grab a mic. You're on next.

And I couldn't list all the viable choices. So if the four options there don't unleash your doe-eyed, gritty, come-hither growl, post your selection here.