Into the Great Wide Open

Into the Great Wide Open: I've always been a big Tom Petty fan.  At the end of the 80's and in the beginning of the 90's he changed his style from his previous heavier, more metal sound [1] to a cleaner, poppier sound.

The first album to come out this way was the solo effort, Full Moon Fever in 1989.  The most notable song from that one is Free Falling.

Two years later he reunited with the Heartbreakers to continue the sound on Into the Great Wide Open. [2]

There's nothing about this album that I don't like.  Every song is a keeper from the opening track (Learning to Fly) to the last (Built to Last).

I would try and tell you about a few favorites, but then I'd just have to go track by track through the whole album, because I literally like every single one of them.

Just do me a favor and give it a listen.

Into the Great Wide Open: A+

[1] - Note I did not say he was metal.  I said the sound was more metal.
[2] - Wildflowers finished up the trio of albums in '94.  His first greatest hits also came out during this stint.  It included the new song, Mary Jane's Last Dance which has the same general sound.

 

Super Stick Man Golf

Super Stick Man Golf: Noodlecake Studios makes computer games.  In particular they make games for cell phones.  In even more particularness they make Super Stick Man Golf.

I came upon this game while searching through the free games section of the app store on my iPhone.  The game evidently wasn't always free, but I guess having made enough money on it the folks at Noodlecake decided to start giving it away.

Whatever the actual reason, I thank them heartily because I love this game.

No seriously, I love it.

Okay, not actually love love it, but I love it as much as you can love any collection of 1's and 0's being used to represent a small stick man whacking a tiny white circle around an increasingly bizarre set of courses.

The game itself is simple enough.  You are a stick man.  You play golf.  You try to get the ball into the hole in as few shots as possible.

There are approximately 37 or so courses in the game.  Each is nine holes.  They are supposedly grouped according to difficulty, but I suspect they are more grouped according to some other characteristic.  [1]

Like all good games there are achievements to earn.[2]  Things like getting a hole-in-one or ending a course at ten under par or better.  There are also some goofy achievements related to some of the enhancements you can unlock. [3]

The enhancements are mostly special balls.  The ice ball will freeze a water hazard and thus allow you to avoid losing two strokes to a bad shot.  The sticky ball will adhere to any surface (besides water) and allows you to take your next shot hanging from the ceiling if that's what thrills you.  The super ball flies ten times farther and is consequently on fire.  etc.  etc. You get the idea.  There are also a couple of enhancements that change the course instead of the ball.  Like the hazard swap that makes all the water traps on a hole into sand traps and vice versa.

You can put up to seven special enhancements into your "golf bag" for any course.  Thus, you have to choose wisely.  Though a perfectly good way to play is just to take seven mulligans.  They let you undo your last shot and try again.

Anyway, back to my undying love for this game.

How much do I love it you ask?  Well let me tell you how much I've played so far.

The first time through I just played all of the courses and unlocked all of the enhancements and earned all of the achievements.[4]  Some of which are not easy.  Of course, I did all of this without using any of the enhancements save the mulligan.

Having done that I played all of the courses again until I had scored a gold star on all of them. [5]  Again, I naturally did this without using any enhancement except the mulligan.

Now I'm going through course by course and determining what is the lowest score you could get using the enhancements and then I am attempting to get that score. [6]  For instance, I've gotten a -36 on the Purple Haze course.

If you are dying to know how I'm playing each course.  Don't worry, I've got a chart I'm working on that will tell you which enhancement to use for each hole and what is the best score you can achieve.  I'll publish it once I've finished.

You might think I have a problem.  It's not a problem.  It's love. [7]

Super Stick Man Golf: A+


[1] - There are a couple of pretty tough courses in the 'beginner' set and some of the 'advanced' set are downright easy.  I'm willing to bet that they are actually pretty much grouped according to when they were made.
[2] - Okay like all games lately, good or bad.
[3] - Like sinking the flaming super ball into a water hazard.  More on that later.
[4] - Except for the multi-player ones.  Our relationship is a private one.
[5] - A gold star means you scored ten under par or better.
[6] - I'm calling it a success if I get within four strokes.
[7] - A love that will never end.  Or anyway, won't end until Super Stick Man Golf 2 comes out later this year.  Color me excited.

Sushi

Sushi:  I wouldn't call myself a culinary adventurer.  Andrew Zimmern has nothing to fear from me.  For instance when a friend of a friend offered me some straight from Scotland haggis, it didn't take me long to say, "no thanks".[1]

However I also wouldn't call myself a culinary recluse either.  I'm usually more than willing to try new things, I'm just not desperate to find the next comestible highlight in the backwaters of the barely edible.

Which brings us to sushi.

My first and only [2] experience with sushi came about when I was in the last year of studying for my undergraduate degree.  As part of our requirements for our degree, I and a female classmate were both
interns at a law enforcement agency in Atlanta.  The semester was almost over and it was our last days of interning.

She didn't have to come in until later that day but arrived around noon and asked if I wanted to go out to lunch to celebrate the end of the semester/interning/college/etc.  Unfortunately, I had already eaten, but in the spirit of day, I said I'd be glad to go with her and provide company. [3]

Since I wasn't going to eat, she decided to go get sushi.  In the interest of full disclosure, the sushi bar in question was actually attached to a food court in an upscale mall nearby.

You sushi defenders are now saying things like, "well of course it wasn't very good.  If you'd only have gone to a better restaurant!

That is not the case at all.  We, in fact, went to this place instead of a to a just as easy to get to nearby sushi bar, because she had been to both before and said this was in fact as good if not better than most of the sushi bars she'd been to. [4]

So back to the story.  She got a plate full of sushi stuff.  Don't ask me what type of sushi it was.  I don't know and at this point frankly don't care.  Because the drinks from the sushi bar were small and limited, I got us both extra large drinks from one of the food court restaurants.  They weren't quite 55 gallon drums, but close.[5]

We chatted while she ate and then she asked if I'd ever had sushi.  I admitted that I hadn't.  She offered some of hers.  I declined.  Not because I thought it would be bad, but I'd already eaten and she didn't have that much of it and I didn't want to eat her lunch.  I explained as much.  She said she didn't mind and offered again.[6] So I said, okay.

As I was saying at the beginning of my tale.  I've eaten my share of less traditional food.  I've at least tried food from many places around the world and have enjoyed most of it.  I've eaten some strange things.[7]  And while I haven't loved or even liked some of it [8], I've never had something where, if it was the only thing available to eat, I would have starved.

Until that day.

That bite of sushi is the only morsel of food that I've ever eaten that I had to actively stop myself from throwing up.  My gag reflex was trying to work overtime and my brain was desperately trying to play it cool and keep a lid on things.

What I wanted to do was eject the stuff from my mouth.  But I also didn't want to completely offend and/or turn off the lovely co-intern across the table.  An internal debate between my brain and my stomach proceeded that went something like this:

Brain: Swallow that!
Stomach: Not ever!
Brain: Do you see that girl across the table?  Well we'd like to see her again.  Do NOT blow this.
Stomach: I don't care about the girl across the table.  Remember that lunch we ate about a half hour ago?  If you don't want to see it and the sushi on that selfsame girl.  I suggest you do something!

Meanwhile, I had instantaneously broken out into a cold sweat and my face had become pasty white as all blood retreated from the area.

I attempted to slyly and calmly spit the offending item into a napkin without literally losing my lunch.[9]

I then proceeded to drain my entire giant drink in one long swallow.

Things hadn't gotten much better internally.

Having watched this entire proceeding, she offered me her drink and pushed it across the table.

I proceeded to drain her entire drink in one long swallow as well.

At this point the wild look in my eyes subsided as the battle between forces of upchuck and 'smile-as-you-suffer-through-it' turned slightly in favor of the latter.

I'm proud to say I ultimately did not spew forth that day though it was mighty close.  Of course, I never saw the girl again either.  [10]

Thus from that day forward I have never had sushi again.

When people ask me why and I tell them this tale inevitably I then get barraged with comments like,

"Well what type of sushi was it?"
"If you tried such-and-such, I bet you'd love it!"
"You just don't know what you're missing?"

My response is always the same.  Who cares!

When you come microns away from making a technicolor rainbow, the last thing you do is go and experiment to see if you can identify exactly what brought you to the brink.

I don't eat sushi.  My life is no less full for this fact.

Sushi - F-------- [11]

[1] - Haggis, if you were unaware, is Sheep's stomach filled with stuff that look about like what you'd expect to find in a sheep's stomach.
[2] - Because that's not telling of how this is gonna go.
[3] - I'd also be lying if I didn't say that she was very cute and the possibility that we might see more of each other outside of school would have been agreeable.
[4] - She evidently ate the stuff on a regular basis.  She actually later went and got a part time job at a sushi bar just so she could get the stuff more often and cheaper.
[5] - Nickel difference!
[6] - She loved sushi so much she was essentially acting as a sushi ambassador.
[7] - Among other things: opossum, alligator and these strange white sausages in Paris that I later found out were stuffed with intestines.
[8] - I've never been able to get behind Indian curries.
[9] - I succeeded in getting it to the napkin.  I failed completely at the sly part.
[10] - When an ambassador offers you delights from their country and it takes all of your willpower not to yak, the possibility of future relations between countries tend to dry pretty quickly.
[11] - For the record, that's and 'F' with eight minuses behind it.

Pinatas

Pinatas: I want you to close your eyes and think of a pinata.  Picture a blindfolded child swinging a bat at the pinata.  The pinata moves out of the way as the person at the end of the rope makes it jump about wildly.  The child swings again and again.  The Pinata continues its merry dance until the randomness of its erratic movements and the swinging of the bat brings the two into destructive contact.  The Pinata explodes and a shower of treats rains down on the ecstatic children below.

Now open your eyes and face the reality of a Pinata.

They never, and I do mean never, explode into a shower of treats. [1] The children all line up and each take their swings, but even if they should make contact the Pinata holds firm.  Like a sadistic piggy bank refusing to give up its coins.  Eventually the kids and the adults get tired of the whole endeavor.

First, they stop pulling the rope at all, but even hanging still it doesn't produce any results.

Next the blindfold is discarded.  The children's interest is renewed, but rapidly wanes as even the benefit of sight produces no better results.

Ultimately we end with the pinata lying on the ground as one of the larger kids (or even an adult) beats the thing like the proverbial horse.

Should someone actually get lucky enough to breach the pinatas exterior while it is still airborne, no explosion of candy results.  Instead, if you are lucky one or two sad pieces of candy slide out, but no more.  More likely nothing falls out and the hole just serves as mockery while the pinata continues to hold fast. [2]

But before we completely turn away from the concept of a pinata in disgust.  Let's look at a few more facets of the endeavor.

First of all, who is really getting any joy out of the thing?  In reality the only ones are the adults as they laugh at the children swinging wildly and ineffectually.  In other words, this is mocking our youngsters while they fail at a task they have no hope of completing.

Secondly, about half the time the children end up getting the last laugh as one of the "helpful" adults in the area [3] ends up taking an essentially deserved shot to a vital area as little Billy starts swinging wildly before they can get clear.

And thirdly, now-a-days pinatas are made to look like our kids TV and movie heroes.  Not the villains, mind you, because that would make sense.  So instead of having them beat the tar out of evil doers and villains, we have them beat the tar out of Superman or Elmo or Curious George.[3]

In conclusion, while I would love to regale you with tales of pinatas past and multi-colored torrents of confections erupting from within, sadly I cannot.  Instead I can only tell you of one Dora.  Who having done nothing more offending than explored where her curiosity would take her, ended up with her head hanging high overhead while her decapitated body lay on the ground taking repeated blunt force trauma from a five iron.

Pinata perfection.

Pinatas: F

[1] - Or a shower of anything for that matter.
[2] - It's only a flesh wound.
[3] - Most likely its the one who spins the blindfolded kid around before letting them loose with a blunt weapon
[3] - Take that you simian freak!  And tell that yellow hatted man if he knows what's good for him he won't show his face around here!

Birthday Cake

Birthday Cake:  I went to my niece's birthday party today and it got me thinking about Birthday Cake.  This is the dessert that is supposed to be the piece d'resistance of the birthday celebration.  The culmination of a party full of activities.  The final capstone of the event.  And yet generally speaking birthday cakes are, simply put, bad.

Here are the usual suspects in the birthday cake line-up of offenders:

Sheet Cake of Doom: This was usually bought from a grocery store bakery.  The cake itself is totally unremarkable and forgettable.  In fact, if you stop right now and try to think about what the last giant sheet cake you ate tasted like, I suspect the answer you'll come up with is "????" [1]  It has a thin layer of icing on it that also tastes like nothing.  Of course this monstrosity has two big upsides.  The first is that it is large enough to play a decent game of football on and will feed 900.  The second is that the store will gladly air brushed your tot's favorite TV or movie character on it. [2]

Mount Icing: The cake part of this one could taste fine, it could be great or it could be horrible.  You will never know because it is buried under enough sugar icing to send Paula Deen into a coma.  The cake to frosting ratio is roughly: 1 to infinity.  Unfortunately the icing doesn't taste like anything except sugar.  And because there wasn't enough on it already, it is adorned with letters made of clear colored icing with the textural consistency of snot and the flavor of more sugar. [3]

Ridiculously Expensive Boutique Cake: Whoever paid for this one will be sure to mention where they got it about 60 times.  Of course, you've never heard of the place so even if you are paying attention it won't matter.  It's covered in fondant that is probably adorned with icing flowers, edible beads [4] and other overly fancy decorations.  However while it may be beautiful and look like the cover of a magazine, it has the flavor of the inside of that same magazine.  Also it is as dry as the Sahara.  People will line up for cake, but will rapidly disappear like a David Copperfield  trick [5] once they see the faces of the lucky people who were first in line. [6]

Ridiculously Expensive Boutique Cake That is Overcompensating for the Mistakes of the Previous Cake:  This cake looks exactly like the previous cake except that the cook evidently soaked the inside in a flavorless liquid.  Taking a forkful is akin to biting down on a damp sponge. [7]

The Ice Cream Cake: This cake attempts to wow you by taking out of your hands the presumably tricky game day decision of "do you want cake, ice cream or both?"  Hopefully the purchaser of this delight picked flavors you can at least stand. [8]  But you actually don't have to worry, because regardless of what flavors they say it is, the end result is relatively flavorless ice cream on completely flavorless cake.  If your lucky there are some Oreos crumbled between to two layers so you can discern the difference.  As an added bonus, the cake starts out extra dense so the ice cream doesn't melt straight into it and then the whole thing was put in the freezer for the last 48 hours.  Result?  It's all hard as a brick and requires a chain saw to cut.

The Tasty Cake: This is a myth and doesn't exist.  You may think you remember once having a delicious cake at your cousin Lucy's 14th birthday, but it's really a fantasy you keep in the corner of your mind to keep hope alive.

There are other cake miscreants out there that I haven't mentioned [9] but I believe I've covered the main offenders.  And you can get cakes that aren't bad, but they aren't the great birthday finale that you want either.  For the record when my birthday comes around and the Pook asks what dessert I want, I usually go with non-cake choices.  To me there's something more special about a Cannoli or Seven Layer Dessert than yet another entry in the faceless parade of bad birthday cakes.

Birthday Cake: C-

[1] - Meaning, "I can't remember."
[2] - So you are trading off flavor for being able to argue over who gets to eat Superman's face.
[3] - Later all anyone will remember of this cake is the spelling errors.  "Hapy Birtday. Dog."
[4] - That are "not food".
[5] - But with less smoke and scantily dressed women.
[6] - If you are serving this one, expect to end the party with a lot of uneaten cake or a lot of full dessert plates hidden around your house.
[7] - Depending on what you used the sponge to wipe up, the sponge probably has more flavor.
[8] - What?  Everyone loves Pistachio Ice Cream with German Chocolate cake.
[9] - Like the one with the strawberries or cherries on top that are covered in a syrup evidently made out of Vicks 44D.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Book & Movie)

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Book & Movie):  Stieg Larsson is the Swedish author who wrote the novel and its two sequels.  If you are anxiously awaiting his next novel, you're going to have a long wait. [1]  Hopefully something that you did know is that in 2012 they made a movie out of the novel.  The movie starred Daniel Craig. [2]  The novel starred whoever you pictured in your mind as the lead character.  Since I saw the movie before I read the book, Daniel Craig got the spot by default.

For the movie, the screenwriter stuck very close to the source material.  Which isn't always true. [3]  Which means that every scene in the movie is nearly identical to the same scene in the book.  [4]  What it doesn't mean is that everything that happened in the book is portrayed in the movie.  Large swaths of material [5] are left out of the movie.  But the movie doesn't suffer too badly for it as long as you are fine with missing out on a lot of the motivation and inner thoughts of the characters. [6] Also the bulk of the story line surrounding Blomkvist's trial and what happens later is completely missing.  Which is understandable as keeping it in would have made the movie twice as long.

Of course they could have saved some time by not expanding on the scene in which Salander beats up her social worker. [7]  Watching that scene in the movie just made me cringe.  When I started to get close to that part in the book, I was mentally gearing myself up for the worst, but the book was completely tame in comparison.

I must also admit that in the movie there were a couple of times in which several minutes were devoted to showing us all of the pictures that Blomkvist was sorting through.  I had no real problem with the pictures themselves, I just wish it had been a bit clearer what it was we were looking for.  The book does a much better job of that.

I'm looking forward to reading the second book in the trilogy and I believe that they are making a movie out of that as well . . . checking the Interweb . . . confirmed, but no dates mentioned as of yet.  I will probably try to see the movie when it comes out.  [8]

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo [Book] - A
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo [Movie] - B [9]

[1] - He's dead.
[2] - Yes, he's current James Bond.  Yes, he totally did jump out of a helicopter with the Queen of England during the Olympics. That really happened.
[3] - Lawnmower Man and Running Man to name two off of the top of my head.
[4] - Unless of course you have an over active imagination, in which case all bets are off.
[5] - Could make a really big dress.
[6] - Long scenes of people thinking don't make good cinema
[7] - Granted he had it coming.
[8] - I suspect the Pook will not as she found the first to be too off putting.
[9] - Yeah, I didn't need to see all that.

Ham Steak

[Full disclosure: This one is by request.  Not sure why the Pook thinks I should grade this, but here you go.]

Ham Steak: In case you aren't sure what a ham steak is, it's a giant slab of ham that typically has a small bone in the shape of an "O" just off center.  If that doesn't bring anything to mind, when you get ham with a breakfast plate, it's typically a smaller piece of the giant ham steak whole.  If that still doesn't clue you in to what we are talking about, look at the bottom of this post at the link to the Amazon page where you can buy one.[1]

Given that much of what comes from a pig is so very, very good (bacon and sausage to name the main two [2]), you would think that ham steaks would be right up there at the top with them.

You would be wrong.

I totally agree that it sounds like a winner.  Large piece of pork, typically fried up in a skillet in the same method that makes the previously mentioned bacon and sausage oh so yummy.  Only there's a disconnect somewhere along the way that leaves ham steak falling well short of the gastronomical Utopia achieved by its culinary cousins.

The taste isn't awful or anything.  It's really just kind of salty.  In fact, the number one adjective you can honestly apply to ham steaks is just that.  Salty.  A drink lots of water and still be ready to realize about an hour after you've eaten that your mouth is a desert kind of salty.

Which would again make you think that I'd really go for ham steak as I am usually all for the salty.  But it's a no-go in this case.

In truth I really think the problem is the lack of fat.  Bacon and sausage are awash in the stuff [3] and while a ham steak does have a few streaks of white goodness running through it, it just doesn't compare.

Some restaurants will attempt to bring a dish up a notch by including an enhancer of some sort.  Typically for ham steak this is 'red eye gravy'.

Red eye gravy?

What kind of name is that?

Further, why is it called that?

It is a little red, but I don't know what it has to do with eyes and the fact of the matter is that if it does actually have something to do with eyes, I don't wanna know.

Also it's the sad type of gravy.  The dark runny type that could just as easily be called au jus and have you dunking a sandwich in it.  Which is probably what you should do because it certainly isn't going to stick to a ham steak in any kind of a satisfactory fashion.

The best part of a ham steak is actually the marrow.  This is the small dollop of stuff that is sitting in the middle of the little circular bone that I mentioned earlier.  It's actually pretty tasty, but I suspect that it's probably really bad for you.  Which really brings it right up to the level of bacon and sausage.

Ham Steak: C

[1] - Or Six as it happens.
[2] - Or really the only two.
[3] - And it's good!