Italian Beef
My friend Jonathan turned me onto Portillo’s, a Chicago chain originally famous for hot dogs. I asked him what to get and he suggested the combo sandwich, which is a combination of Italian beef and sausage. I’ve since gone back many times and never wavered from this selection - just don’t forget to add cheese fries.

So I found a recipe on allrecipes.com (which appears to be the best recipe site out there) for Italian beef, citing a certain Chicago chain as the inspiration. Was this, perhaps, Portillo’s??? No. Not even close. Don’t get your hopes up. But it is a damn good beef sandwich, an Italian version of the French dip, and it’s dead simple to make. It requires a crock pot, but I’m finding this is an essential single guy kitchen appliance. So get one if you don’t have one - they’re cheap.
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Game 4, July 18th, 1972

    Fischer        Spassky
    White          Black
1.  e4    (0:07)   c5    (0:00)
2.  Nf3   (0:07)   d6    (0:00)
3.  d4    (0:07)   cxd4  (0:00)
4.  Nxd4  (0:07)   Nf6   (0:00)
5.  Nc3   (0:07)   Nc6   (0:00)
6.  Bc4   (0:08)   e6    (0:01)
7.  Bb3   (0:08)   Be7   (0:01)
8.  Be3   (0:16)   0-0   (0:02)
9.  0-0   (0:16)   a6    (0:02)
10. f4    (0:18)   Nxd4  (0:03)
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If you liked that, here’s more Yvonne Strahovski.

I know, I need one of those boxes of baking soda for the freezer (there’s one in the refrigerator and most of my frozen food is in sealed bags), but that doesn’t help me right now. Then I thought about how fresh ice doesn’t taste bad, as it doesn’t have time to absorb the odors. Maybe a little while freezing, but ice freezes from the outside in.

So I tried a simple experiment: I threw in 2-3 times the ice I needed in a colander and ran it under water until it shrunk to about half volume. Amazingly, it worked! You can actually wash the stink off of ice. Now my iced tea tastes like tea and not Shaq’s jock after a trip to The Stinking Rose and a playoff game. Huzzah!

I know this seems completely obvious, but I’ve never witnessed anyone doing this or talking about it, so I thought I’d throw it out there.

I was wrong. On many counts.

First, it’s not TV, it’s HBO, who has no problems with profanity or nudity. In fact, they put boobies right in the opening title sequence.

Second, it stars Anna Paquin, who I adore. What can I say, she is adorable. She’s also a blonde in True Blood, and Alan Ball had fun with a Lolita sunbathing homage.

And third, yes, it’s written and directed by Alan Ball, who wrote American Beauty. I saw that 4 times in the theater, as I was so impressed with the writing. OK, sure, Thora Birch and Mena Suvari’s revealing portrayals might have had an influence. But it takes a brilliant writer to get actresses to be so… revealing.

Anyway, it’s a great show, so be sure to catch a rerun of the pilot before the next episode airs Sunday night.

90210
I was surprised to find out how well I could compare - in Chuck Klosterman-like¹ detail - this new series to the original. I was also surprised that the original debuted 18 years ago (I’m old). Anyway, the kids are more attractive (apparently, no producer has an unattractive daughter who wants an acting career) and have more money this time around. And, of course, by “kids” I mean hotties 18-23 years old. So this generation of teenage viewers will have an even bigger inferiority complex than we did.

I have to say, I was a bit disappointed with the first episode, considering that the creator of the original series was involved along with Freaks and Geeks producers Jeff Judah and Gabe Sachs. Freaks and Geeks is the best HS series of all time, and this is, well, not. They also have Jessica Walters, who played Lucille Bluth on Arrested Development, which is probably the greatest sitcom of all time. Her character is similar, but the dialogue is such a pale, whitewashed version of Lucille’s it’s distracting. Please pay Mitchell Hurwitz whatever he wants to write her lines. Or just let Jessica channel Lucille and say whatever comes to mind; anything to punch it up.

Bones
Dunno how they’ll replace Zack Addy and I think it sucks they have to. Maybe they’ll follow the lead of House and 90210 and replace him with some hot babe.

True Blood
I wasn’t sure about this until I discovered a) it’s on HBO and b) it’s got Anna Paquin. If I were an X-Man, my mutant power would be the ability to have sex with Rogue without dying. Great success!

Entourage
Sex, drugs, and alcohol. And mansions. And supercars. And, occasionally, Seth Green.

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Lena Heady and Summer Glau. Two great tastes that taste great together. Now please replace Brian Austin Green with anybody. Maybe Jason Priestly or Ian Ziering.

Fringe
Fox replaced X-Files with Bones, but removed the supernatural part. I guess they want to replace it more directly? Could be interesting.

SNL
You know they’ll bring back Tina Fey to play Sarah Palin. My prediction: Terminator: The Sarah Palin Chronicles.

House
I like the new cast, especially the hot, young, bisexual doctor. There’s just something about her. Something hot, young, and bisexual. Also, Kal Penn is cool. And so is House, for that matter.

Smallville
Final season - ACK! And Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum) is gone! And apparently Lana Lang. At least we’ll get to see Kristin Kreuk in the Street Fighter movie. And I hear there will be more Justice League action this season. Let’s hope for a spin-off.

Californication
I haven’t seen this yet, but it’s next in the Netflix queue. Combined with Dexter, it finally makes Showtime justifiable.

Heroes
It sucks that last season was truncated, but hopefully this one will make up for it. Just getting to watch Hayden Panettiere again will be nice, although I miss that cheerleader outfit.

Knight Rider
Ehhhh. I don’t know. I really doubt it. Maybe. But almost certainly not.

The Office
Duh.

The Simpsons
King of the Hill
Family Guy
American Dad
Just happy none of these were canceled (again).

Dexter
Just finished season 2 on Netflix. It’s weird; as the character becomes more human and relatable, his actions become more repulsive. So his motives/needs aren’t so clear now. I hope they work on that this season. But overall, great show.

Chuck
Yes, more Yvonne Strahovski. Also, please bring back Rachel Bilson.

Life
I got into this when I was without a TV and the writer’s strike had me watching stuff I missed. Very glad I caught this. Interesting characters. Hot babes.

Life On Mars
About all I know is that Harvey Keitel stars, and that’s all I need to know to give this a shot.

30 Rock
Duh, Part Deux.

1. ”You used to [not] be able to tell the difference between hipsters and homeless people. Now, it’s between hipsters and retards. I mean, either that guy in the corner in orange safety pants holding a protest sign and wearing a top hat is mentally disabled or he is the coolest fucking guy you will ever know.” -Chuck Klosterman

I was listening to the soundtrack for the Broadway show “Wicked.”  It is based on the premise that the Wicked Witch of the West was really not evil, just a  misunderstood soul.   Wow.  They are taking one of the iconic evil figures from literature and giving her a second look, an alternate-universe history that makes her, well, nice¹.   And that’s not right.

Taking this alarming trend to its pinnacle, could it be far behind for Hitler to make a comeback?? 

(NOTE: the following are satirical comments.  Do not mistake them for reality; they are just an artifice to make a point.  That is how satire works.) 

After all, Hitler was really nice to his dogs. And he did put all of the German people back to work on that really cool roadway, the Autobahn.  Did I mention that he created the Volkswagen?? That picture of Hitler and his gang of killers parading around on a convertible Wolkswagen has got to be the coolest, most disturbing image of the war. ²  So except for the 6 million people he killed, Hitler was a really nice guy.  Really. 

(NOTE: the satire has now ended.  Back to reality.)

But we all know that the winners of a war write the history books, so they can adjust the facts to suit themselves.  There are many instances of Allied atrocities in WW2 that should have been tried as war crimes.  I am thinking of the conventional bombing of the German city of Dresden, or the firebombing of Japanese cities.  The latter killed a whole lot more people than the atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki (better left for some other article).  But a lot of terrible things happen during a war; it’s just distasteful to try to justify them as being necessary for a greater good.  It’s so much more honest to say what is really inside: the enemy is inhuman and we’re  scared sh*tless; we need to kill as many of them as possible before the war ends.  Afterwards,  we have to go back to being human beings and play nice again.  Or whatever passes for “nice” between bellicose nations.

So back to the Wicked Witch of the West.  The play does a good job turning the Oz universe on its head.  As with many revisionist works, there are problems with it, since it changes a couple of  really key points that clash with the world that Frank L. Baum created.  Similar to those Star Wars prequels that cannot exist in the same universe as the original Star Wars movies.  But these are nits, and you can still enjoy the Wicked concept if you ignore them.  Just don’t expect me to change my worldview: The witch is still evil. (Don’t forget, she did try to kill Dorothy.  And her little dog, too.)

1. What is next?? Darth Vader used to be a nice guy that made some  wrong choices??
2. Except for that other disturbing photo, showing thousands of his dead victims from the concentration camps.

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot -albeit a perfect one - to get an “A”. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work - and learning from their mistakes - the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

Unfortunately, I find myself all too often in the perfectionist camp, holding not dead clay but detailed sketches of ideas never pursued. I highly recommend reading more excerpts from Art & Fear. It sounds like good advice for life in general.