For the Rest of Us!

Hallelujah!  I found my holiday blog muse!   Instead of Christmas, I thought I’d focus on its alternatives at this time of the year.

Hannukah.   The Jewish equivalent of Christmas, though it falls on different days each year.  It commemorates a Jewish revolt in 165 BC against the Seleucid (Syrians) which restored the Second Temple in Jerusalem. 

It’s 8 days, with a candle lit on the Menorah for each day.  Remarkably, there IS a Channukah “Christmas special”, although it’s very cynical: Adam Sandler’s animated feature “Eight Crazy Nights”.   On “Saturday Night Live”, “Channukah Harry” (John Lovitz) covers for a sick Santa and brings the disappointed children clothes, dreidels and chocolate coins. 

Saturnalia.  There is some dispute as to whether this Roman holiday, occurring around the winter solstice, was expropriated by early Christians for Christmas.   This was a fertility festival devoted to the god Saturn (from which we get the planet’s name and Saturday).  It was several days of partying and debauchery in which roles were reversed (masters served slaves, etc).  I suppose this is the type of festivity which The Golden Bough covered at length (a pagan fertility festival) but as of today I can’t recall.

Festivus.  The fictitious winter solstice festival celebrated by the Constanzas on “Seinfeld”, featuring an aluminum pole, “airing of grievances,” and “feats of strength.”  It takes place on 12/23, originating from Dan O’Keefe’s family in 1966 (O’Keefe was one of the show’s writers).  In essence it's a parody of Christmas meant to satirize the commercialism and pettiness which the otherwise Christian holiday sometimes suffers - turning it into something even more bizarre and grotesque, but still funny.  But people have been poking fun at Christmas for ages, e.g. "Christmas with the Kranks" (John Grisham's rare venture into humor, he's actually pretty funny) and the National Lampoon film (considerably darker and less amusing, to me at least).

Junk Food and Snacks

I’m running low on holiday inspiration this year, so I’ll go with this.

Ideally we should stay away from junk food, but somehow we can’t always resist.  I’ve already discussed fast food; this variant is the kind you can eat at home.  Snacks might be another word.  What else would you call what you eat between meals?  Late at night after dinner?  Mid-morning between breakfast and lunch?  Anything short of a full meal, or short of maintaining a diet solely three meals a day; forgive me if I’ve forgotten whether the Internet Health Nazis claim we should be eating only three meals or whether we’re allowed to snack whenever we’re actually hungry, regardless of what the clock says or how recently we’ve eaten.  Anyhow.

For that matter, the IHN’s will insist that our “snacks” be only fruits and vegetables.  Enough with that.

Candy/bars.   Preferably with chocolate, but Twizzlers, Skittles, Starburst also qualify.   Gummi bears, sour worms, gummi colas, Sweet Tarts, and Sour Patch Kids are also sweet and nice.  Of the chocolate variants, Milky Way (US variety), Bounty (coconut and milk chocolate, much better than Mounds), and Caramello are my favorite.  Add in Flake from Cadbury.   Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups and M&Ms are also excellent sources of junk nutrition.

Popcorn.   Forget microwave popcorn or Jiffy Pop.  I’ll stick with Smartfood, the cheese flavored popcorn that beats all others, including other cheese popcorns.

Potato Chips.   Utz, Lay’s, Ruffles, I like most of these, including the Carolina BBQ flavor and sometimes the crab flavor.  In Brazil they have meat-flavored Ruffles (“sabor de carne”), which taste like ruffled chips dipped in steak juices, and taste about as delicious as you might imagine.  Aside from a few bags at the local Mobil station quickie-mart – and nowhere else, even on the Ruffles website – they are only in Brazil, maybe Romania too.

Tortilla Chips & Salsa.  This was something I started eating in college.   Heating a metal can of Frito-Lay Jalapeno & Cheddar cheese (the Utz version isn’t nearly as good) is also a nice dip.  At first I couldn’t handle spicy salsa and just got the medium, until I developed a tolerance and even Tostito’s Hot is not hot.  Now I’m up to Mrs. Renfro’s Ghost Pepper.   As for the chips, the blue corn is nice, but I prefer Tostito’s Lime flavored chips the most.  A bit messy and dusty but delicious – and they’re still delicious by themselves if you run out of salsa, which can’t be said for most plain chips.

Doritos.  These have been around since the 1960s.   I remember in the early 80s, the choices at the commissary were toasted corn (too bland), Taco (very hot, too much for my kid-age taste buds) and nacho cheese, which was just right.  I never liked cool ranch.  The 3D doritos were pretty cool while they lasted. 

Pizza.  I covered this in the fast food blog.  Since no one delivers pizza by the slice, a full pizza counts more as a full meal, even shared among friends.  But I do love the breadsticks, cinnasticks, etc.

Hostess.   Finally these are back, but I’m waiting for the Suzi-Q’s to return.  Twinkies or yellow cupcakes were not my favorites:  Ho-Hos, chocolate cupcakes, and the aforementioned Suzi-Q’s are, though the Suzi-Qs can get extremely messy.  Honorable mention to Drake’s Devil Dogs.  

Albany, New York

My efforts to gain admission to the New York State Bar earned me an interview in Albany, New York, this week.  As yet it’s too early to know if I “passed the audition”, but never having been there, it was another adventure.

Albany is the capital of New York, located about 3 hours north of New York City on the west bank of the Hudson River.  It’s a modest sized city, just under 100,000 (it peaked around 135,000 in 1950).  Troy, Schenectady, and Saratoga are just north of the city, and Glens Falls and Lake George are a little further up.   The city was selected as New York’s capital in 1797, but both Albany and New York City experienced substantial growth in the nineteenth century.  NYC far outstripped it, of course, but Albany remained the capital.

Albany seems like Hagerstown – mostly “olde” – but at least it has some substantially new building, including the Empire State Plaza.  The interview itself was at the Abrams Building, formerly known as the Justice Building, at the Plaza. 

EMPIRE STATE PLAZA

     It seems that when Governor Nelson Rockefeller (1959-1973) took Princess Beatrix of Holland around Albany in 1959, he was embarrassed by how shitty the town was.   So he called up his architect friend Wallace and they ripped off Brasilia (Brazil’s newly built capital city) to come up with this. 

     It’s a “mall” type deal, by which I mean a large rectangular plaza with important buildings at each end and other buildings along the sides forming a large rectangle.  At one end is the state capital building which dates from, and looks like it dates from, the nineteenth century; at the other is the huge NY Museum Building.   Along the sides are various state government buildings, a high rise (42 story) Corning Building, the Egg, and the Justice building.  Due to elevator maintenance, the Observation Deck at the Corning Bldg. was closed.  (“Wally World is closed for renovation!  Sorry, folks!”)

NEW YORK MUSEUM

    This is the huge building on the opposite end of the Plaza, with a large walkway going over Madison Ave.   On the ground floor is the museum itself.  I took my time, killing 2 hours, and breezed through it.  Roving through it counterclockwise, there’s Olde Town Albany, Lumber Land, Native American New York – actually quite fascinating to “see” what New York looked like 12,000 years ago – followed by a huge Civil War exhibition (they’re not ALL in Virginia, it seems), and a big exhibit on New  York City itself.  That included a 1941 subway car and one of the burnt up firetrucks from 9/11. 

Getting there.   I took a plane (thanks, Loni!) from DC through Detroit, as Delta doesn’t seem to have any direct routes from DC to Albany.  Albany itself is at the intersection of 87 and 90.   87 comes up from NYC and continues north to Montreal, whereas I-90 comes to Albany from Boston, then goes to Buffalo, Chicago, and eventually Seattle.  I love how I-80 goes west from NYC and winds up in San Francisco.  Thank you, Eisenhower, for America’s Autobahn!  [Would we have our system if Adolf hadn’t impressed Ike?] 

     I can’t say Albany is worth visiting solely for the Plaza, the Capital, and the Museum, but those three elements pull the town up from merely a dreary capital town.

Austria-Hungary

Oblivious to World War I until my family moved to Paris, France, I recall my 6^th grade teacher, “Ms. G”, giving us the 101 treatment:  on June 28, 1914, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand (upper right) was assassinated in Sarajevo, which was then (1980) in Yugoslavia.   AFF was the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary, a country which ceased to exist in 1918.  It only came into existence in 1867, shortly after the Austrians’ defeat by the Prussians in their short war. 

Austria.  Well known as the homeland of Adolf Hitler (Linz and Vienna) and Arnold Schwarzenegger (Graz), plus the Von Trapps and Mozart (Salzburg).   It was an archduchy as part of the Holy Roman Empire ("The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.  Discuss.").  Remarkably, the HRE only collapsed in 1806, during Napoleon's dominance over Europe.  Austrians speak German, which is odd:  why don’t we say that Germans speak Austrian?   Germany's political strength relative to Austria is fairly recent.  Germany barely existed as an aggregate of various kingdoms and principalities within the Holy Roman Empire, and from 1814-1871 as the German Confederation, only unifying as the German Empire under Prussian leadership in 1871, whereas Austria asserted more political and military strength during this time.  

Hungary.  Hungarians speak Hungarian, a language with little relation to any others besides Finnish and Turkish.   Are the Hungarians the Huns?  The Magyars were a separate group from the Huns, but both groups originated from Central Asia, and Attila’s hordes could have contained many Magyars among them.  The Hungarians themselves claim to descend from the Huns, and Buda (half of Budapest) could be a variation on the name of Attila’s brother Bleda.  As the Roman Empire fell apart, i.e. the Western Roman Empire (the Eastern half survived as the Byzantine Empire until 1453), Central Europe was a mess of tribes and nations with no definite national boundaries. 

Dual-Monarchy: 1867-1918.  The politics behind this merger confuses me.  The leader was the Austrian emperor and the Hungarian king.  The Habsburg dynasty goes back to the eleventh century, although the Habsburgs of 1867 were a new house, Habsburg-Lorraine, originating from Joseph II, the son of Maria Theresa, the last of the original Habsburg lineage. 

World War I.  This was the only major war in which A-H had any role.  Allies with the Kaiser, the Austrians fought against the Russians to the northeast and the Italians to the south, a slugfest of competing incompetence by both sides.   With the exception of the brief victory of Russia’s Brusilov offensive in 1916, neither the Austrians or Russians did much of value, and the Germans wound up with most of the victories.  Rommel served in the mountains of Italy, where he racked up some impressive victories and earned his Pour Le Merite (Blue Max).

     In the aftermath of the war, the dual monarchy split apart and all remaining royal dynasties lost power, with Austria and Hungary becoming separate countries from then on.  Other parts of A-H were parceled out.  Italy received the Tyrol, its northeastern corner;  The Czechs and Slovaks gained their independence (Czechoslovakia); Galicia, the northeastern sector, became the southern part of Poland and the southwestern part of the Ukraine; Transylvania, to the southeast, was given to Romania; and Bosnia-Herzogovina combined with Serbia to become Yugoslavia. 

               

World War II.  Just before WWII, the Nazis waltzed into Austria and annexed it, so from 1938-45 Germany and Austria were united as a single country.  The Austrian army was absorbed into the Wehrmacht.   Hungary was led by Admiral Horthy, until his removal in October 1944, and allied with Nazi Germany during this time.   After the war,   Hungary became a Soviet satellite, while Austria became neutral, outside both the NATO and Warsaw Pact blocs.  

The Sound of Music.   Aside from Hitler and Arnold, the biggest example of Austria in popular culture is “The Sound of Music” – even though “Edelweiss” was written by Rodgers & Hammerstein as an original song.   Captain von Trapp was a submarine captain in the Austro-Hungarian Navy in World War I.   The movie was filmed in Salzburg.

The Long Riders

Another movie-themed blog after the last one, but it’s a good movie: 1980’s “The Long Riders”.  It’s the true story of Jesse James’ James-Younger Gang, which operated in the mid-US in the 1870s.  This movie starts off with Ed Miller’s dismissal, climaxes with the ill-fated bank robbery in Northfield, Minnesota, and finishes up with Frank James’ surrender after his brother Jesse’s death, shot by Bob Ford in his own home.

What makes this movie special?  Well, first off the story is true and compelling.   Second is the cool slow-motion and sound effects when the gang members are dispatched one by one in Northfield.  Third, I like the occasional Civil War references, even if the events take place over a decade later.   Fourth is the scenery, mostly shot in Georgia even if it takes place in Missouri, Texas (one bar scene) and Minnesota.  For some reason it reminds me of this area (Northern Virginia and northwest Maryland).  I could mention the Ry Cooder soundtrack, but I didn’t really notice that too much – perhaps it fit too well into the background. 

But the most substantial is the casting of real-life brother actors as real life brother characters:   Jesse James (James Keach) & Frank James (Stacy Keach); Ed Miller (Dennis Quaid) and Clell Miller (Randy Quaid); Charlie Ford (Christopher Guest) and Bob Ford (Nicholas Guest); and Cole Younger (David “Kill Bill/Kung Fu” Carradine), Jim Younger (Keith Carradine), and Bob Younger (Robert “Revenge of the Nerds” Carradine). Of this group, Cole Younger is by far the baddest.

In fact, the whole cast does well:  add in Pamela Reed as Belle Starr, the whore Cole Younger hooks up with, and James Remar as her half-breed husband Sam.   The movie has a darker tone than “Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid”, and NO “Raindrops” song to ruin the mood.  The chemistry between Redford and Newman made that film more like "these are two great buddies who like robbing trains," rather than a western.  

At The Movies

Recently I watched “Saving Private Ryan” in Blu-Ray.   I don’t know why I hadn’t done so earlier, as I’ve had a Blu-Ray player for some time.   Be that as it may, the superior high definition detail was so remarkable and noticeable, that it was almost like watching a completely different film, or seeing the film again for the first time.   The same holds true for “Star Wars” (Episode IV).  I also noticed the same with “Wreck-It Ralph”; late-model animated films really come to life in Blu-Ray format.  It’s incredible.  Not only that, I’ve noticed more films available in this format and the prices dropping dramatically:  $8 for a Blu-Ray at Best Buy?  Gone are the days of having to pay at least $30 for such a movie. 

Of course, I can remember back in the 70’s.   For our birthday parties our father used to borrow a projector and screen, and rent movies in those huge flat film cans.  He’d set up the screen at one end of the family room, and set up the projector in the kitchen poking out through the square hole in between.  You’d have to load the feed reel and the return reel, and snake the film through the winding path between them, definitely a complex undertaking.

The US Embassy (Paris) had a movie night, and we saw “Apocalypse Now” and “Star Trek: The Motion Picture”.  However, the embassy projectionist was not as skilled as my father.

As cumbersome and inconvenient as this whole process undoubtedly was, it still more closely approximates the true movie theater experience than plopping a video cassette or DVD into the player and watching the film on your TV screen.

VCRs.  American movies on the Champs Elysees in Paris came in “V.O.” format (version original) i.e. English with French subtitles.   Going to the Champs for birthday parties was fairly common.  So for my friend Ken’s birthday in 1980, I expected the same.  Except that instead of shepherding the group of boys to the Metro and then to the Champs, Ken’s dad simply plopped a large black plastic cassette into an oversized tape player on top of the TV, and voila:  Buck Rogers played on their TV.   WOW!   “Gee, that’s really neat!”   By the end of the summer 1980 we had our own 300 lb. VHS player, and after a false start, managed to watch the 1976 “King Kong” (commercial release) and “The Odessa File” (taped).

One claimed advantage of VCRs was the ability to watch one show while another was taping.  That assumed you could program the VCR, not an easy task, but by the 90s I had a VCR which was user-friendly enough to make this possible.   I taped stuff that I wasn’t around to watch.  Coordinating that with a cable box, though, became difficult, as the VCR could not switch channels on the cable box.   I didn’t have that problem as I was able to use the VCR itself as the converter box, although that meant just regular cable and no pay-per-view or HBO/Showtime/Cinemax, but back then those channels had no programming I was interested in – we’re talking about the 1990s here.

 

In a recent “South Park” episode, Stan tries to recruit the goth kids to the Playstation 4 group for Black Friday, concerned that without sufficient support, Xbox One will become the standard game system and consign PS4 to oblivion. 

“Like Betamax to VHS”, he warns. 

“What’s Betamax?”  one goth kid asks.

 “Exactly,” replies Stan. 

“What’s VHS?” asks another goth kid. 

Not only did we choose the VHS standard, we don’t know anyone who was a Betamax fan. 

For that matter, remember Laserdisc?   Long before DVDs, these were supposed to be the hottest format.  These were the same size as 12” vinyl (whoops, you do know what vinyl is, don’t you?).   I don’t remember anyone having one of these.   Throw them in the Betamax pile.

Movie Theaters.  Now, for the movie-going experience, there’s 3D and IMAX – sometimes combined.  Remarkably, it doesn’t give me a headache, mainly because they’ve managed to avoid trying to throw shit in our faces and dialed back the intensity to something endurable for 90-120 minutes nonstop.  I like that they’re re-releasing some films in 3D IMAX format.  “Saving Private Ryan” in 3D IMAX?  Bring it on.  “Star Wars” Episodes IV-VI?  What are you waiting for? Come on.

And if 3D IMAX isn’t enough an AMC theater at Menlo Park Mall in Edison, NJ, ups the ante with huge seats and a full dinner option.   The tickets are fairly reasonable, though they’re obviously making the money back on the expensive meals.  We watched “Dredd”, but the whole dinner thing was a bit obtrusive:  ordering from a menu and dealing with a whole meal while trying to watch what’s up on the screen.  At home if you try this at least you can pause the DVD; in the movie theater it doesn’t work that way.  Who knows how long that experiment will last, but the theaters in NJ are still in operation.  There are none down in the DC area. 

At the other extreme are the discount theaters, offering older films, in between their major theater release but before the DVD release, for a fraction of the price.  They’re in older theaters and have the standard popcorn deal, nothing 3D, IMAX or THX, but still an excellent value.  

Drive-in Theaters.   These are making a comeback, but slowly.  We saw one movie, “Orca”, at a drive-in theater in the late 70’s in Rockville, Maryland, which of course is long gone.   My impression is that for all the family-friendly vibe the DIT folks tried to pretend to, the DIT’s were a prime make-out zone.  You can’t really make out in a regular theater, and for teens who live at home and have no privacy, the back seat of a car in a dark DIT lot was the best they could do.  With the advent of VCRs and DVDs, we gained the ability to watch films at home in private (which killed the adult theater industry), plus contemporary morals changed and teens suffered less supervision and enjoyed more freedom.  So the DIT revival is probably fueled by baby boomer nostalgia.  

Fringe

This is the Fox TV show which ended its fifth and final season last fall (2012).   It concerns an obscure FBI section, the Fringe Division, which investigates and solves crimes which would otherwise baffle ordinary criminal investigators:  because they’re so damn weird.

The primary character is Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv).  She’s assisted by a “mad scientist” – literally mad, they have to get him out of an insane asylum to begin with – Walter Bishop (John Noble, aka “Denethor” from the Lord of the Rings movies).  Walter’s son Peter (Joshua Jackson – no, I’ve never seen “Dawson’s Creek”) also helps out.   Peter had a colorful criminal history, but his main positive quality is being able to temper Walter’s more quixotic tendencies.  Agent Astrid Farnsworth (Jasika Nicole) assists Walter in the laboratory.  Agent Broyles (Lance Riddick – also in “The Wire”) acts as the team’s FBI supervisor.   Other FBI agents include John Scott (Mark Valley – Brad Chase from “Boston Legal”), Dunham’s initial love interest, and Charlie Francis (Kirk Acevedo). 

The show takes place mainly in Boston, Massachusetts, with the lab being at Harvard, but it skips around a lot.   In particular, they have to go to NYC every now and then to meet up with Nina Sharp (Blair Brown), who works at a mysterious company, Massive Dynamic.  MD was set up by Walter’s former partner William Bell (Leonard Nimoy).   Initially missing, “Belly” (as Walter calls him) eventually shows up and becomes a major character.  

The first season establishes the standard plot: someone, or a group, dies mysteriously, usually in some particularly gruesome fashion.  The Fringe Team is called to the scene, the bodies taken to their lab at Harvard, and Walter gets working with help from Astrid.   After a few more bodies turn up, Walter sees a pattern and solves the mystery.  Decomposing bodies don’t blunt his appetite.  He also enjoys the sensory deprivation tank (as seen in “Altered States”) and takes his own homemade (labmade) LSD.  Compared to Walter White, Walter Bishop is much stranger and less violent, but also considerably more versatile as a scientist and not just a really good meth cook with a really bad attitude.   Heisenberg is better matched against Walternate.  

But there’s a larger “pattern” involved, and Nina Sharp, coordinated through Agent Broyles, sometimes has some hints and clues, but always seems to be holding back.   Eventually things start get even stranger.   A group of bald men, the Observers (why are there no female Observers?  Are they gay?  They're always well dressed), play an increasing role in events.   Peter may be not what he seems.   And there could be other dimensions.  

The most obvious comparison is with “The X Files”, but what I never liked about that show was whatever weirdness encountered was ultimately due to ….UFOs and aliens.   Here the strangeness is less mundane than Ewoks and Roger.  It’s…more weird, and that’s why I like it.