Tuesday Media Roundup #30

 Movie talk  No Responses »
Apr 292008
 

The Forbidden Kingdom – Jet Li & Jackie Chan, fun story, cool fu! If you haven’t seen this yet, what’s your problem?

DCI 2008 Countdown – Since I’m a band geek I tend to go for these drum & bugle corps shows. This was a theater event showing the best shows of recent years and some things to look forward to from this year’s shows.  Unfortunately it was filmed in standard definition and then blown up so it was fairly blurry. It was still mostly good enough and I am looking forward to the upcoming season (The Blue Devils are putting together marching mini-taiko drums!).

Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium –  This movie was fun and afterwards I learned that the writer/director, Zach Helm, also wrote Stranger Than Fiction. Knowing that you start seeing similarities between the two: an accountant that is being troubled by the super-natural, Dustin Hoffman, and a slender woman with short dark hair.

Lars and the Real Girl –  This was good but it wasn’t the comedy that the trailers made it out to be. Sure there are humorous bits, but most of it is a fairly serious journey.

 Posted by Douglas at 8:43 pm

Santa Cruz Roller Girls vs Redding Angry Beavers

 Santa Cruz  No Responses »
Apr 152008
 

This past Saturday was the second match for the Santa Cruz Roller Girls and it was clear that they practiced a lot on their weak spots after the first match. For the first half Candie Hooligan and Heather Headlocklear were the jammers most of the time which makes sense since they ended up being the strongest jammers in their first bout. The biggest improvement was in the pack though. From start to finish the roller girls controlled the speed and who could get through. The Beavers were kept to a crawl most of the time and prevented from getting into a scoring position. The second half Santa Cruz switched to mostly playing the alternates since they had an 80-point lead and it was nice to see other members of the team out there and still dominating.

I was glad to see the track was bigger so the skaters got to get up more speed. The half-time show was kids from a local dance studio and of those I think the pop-lockers were the best.

The only negative from the night I think was the officiating. There were a number of penalties that weren’t called against Roller Girls and at one point the Angry Beaver’s jammer called off the jam but referees weren’t paying attention. As a result one or two Beavers ended up in the penalty box for play that was continuing that shouldn’t have and the Roller Girls, I think, got some points out of it that they shouldn’t have.

I look forward tot he next match on May 10.

 Posted by Douglas at 10:21 am

A different primary

 Food, Funny!, politics  No Responses »
Apr 082008
 

Yesterday a different contest popped into my head, one between Brocolli Obama and Celery Clinton. I was surprised to find no reference to it on the internets.

 Posted by Douglas at 9:41 am

Dutch-processed cocoa update

 Food  No Responses »
Apr 042008
 

I tried Trader Joe’s but they had nothing but drinking chocolate. Then I remembered Staff of Life and decided to try there so we went there this morning. On the bottom shelf of the baking section are cans of cocoa. Those are sweetened or natural cocoa. Looking over to the right one shelf (still on the bottom) in a wicker tray are bags (hand-filled) of cocoa with and without alkali. So there is dutch-processed/alkali cocoa in Santa Cruz. It has no stated brand, it was filled from some bulk source though it was not available in the bulk bins as far as I could tell, and apparently it has an expiration date of July 5, 2008.

 Posted by Douglas at 9:12 am

Natual cocoa vs Dutch-process cocoa

 Food, grrrrr  No Responses »
Apr 022008
 

I lose. So there was this really great looking cake that I was hoping I could have for my birthday.  We went to the store (New Leaf) and picked up all the ingredients we were missing except there was no dutch-process cocoa. No problem, we can get it at another store later. Savemart didn’t have it, surely the gigantic Safeway will have it… nope. Shopper’s corner must have it, no but they have a wider variety of natural cocoa. Deluxe Foods in Aptos has a huge selection let’s check there! Another strike. The New Leaf downtown carries different things than the one on 41st, they might have it… no. Cost Plus it turns out is dutch-process cocoa minus.

We can’t just use natural cocoa and expect the same result because dutch-processed cocoa is pH neutral. We could try a work-around by adding baking powder to natural cocoa but that probably won’t come out the same. When did it become so hard to get dutch-processed cocoa? We purchased some without difficulty a few years ago for the first death by chocolate trials. My theory is that since natural cocoa retains the anti-oxidants in chocolate while dutch-processed cocoa destroys them, people are demanding their healthier cocoa and not considering the desserts! I could order it on-line, but it’s not something I thought I would have to order on-line or be able to get on short notice in this area.

 Posted by Douglas at 5:21 pm

Tuesday Media Roundup #29

 Movie talk  No Responses »
Apr 012008
 

Babel – One of those movies where you have several different stories that are all connected. In this case it’s has a global scale of connection. Not like with a global phenomenon or event, but that the people involved reach around the world. If it was just that it would just be an average movie, but the individual stories are interesting on their own and for that I feel it is worth seeing.

A Love Song For Bobby Long –  I could watch these characters in a movie five times this long and I’m pretty sure I’ll be watching this one again several times as soon as I get a copy.

Brigadoon –  I’m converting old video tapes to DVD for my parents and this one was recording while I was doing other stuff so I finally got to see it. I like musicals, but I wasn’t crazy about the songs in Brigadoon. The dancing I liked, the sets and characters I liked. So it’s not my favorite musical, but the story is fun. I really liked how they portrayed triggered memories in the movie.

Janis –  Another conversion for my parents… I liked Janis Joplin, but I haven’t really appreciated her work; this documentary changed that for me. I think the difference is all the live performance footage whereas before I had only heard studio recordings.  It all feels more raw and potent.

 Posted by Douglas at 12:28 pm
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