Jeremy Blachman's Weblog: 2012

The Growing Creepiness of Pandora's Music Recommendations

I've got a humor piece up on The Bygone Bureau today-- "The Growing Creepiness of Pandora's Music Recommendations"-- and they've got an awesome illustration to accompany it. Check it out: http://bit.ly/wLVVBY

Books 2011

The "What I'm Reading" sidebar tells me I've read about 65 books this year.  The six best, as I skim the list:

Mindy Kaling's Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

Candice Millard's Destiny of the Republic -- I promise, it makes James Garfield's life and murder far more interesting than it sounds like it will be.  I'd see the movie.

Tina Fey's Bossypants

Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother -- Probably the book I had the most conversations about this year.  I expect my wife and I will raise our kids considerably differently from how Amy Chua describes raising hers, but her book (and related WSJ columns) got us talking about what we think worked and didn't work about our own parents' styles, and Chua's book, whether you agree or disagree with anything she says, is a quick, compelling read.  Although, now 10 months later, the one thing that sticks the most is about the standards she held her *dogs* to -- disappointed that she couldn't train them to be more intelligent....

Michael Levy's Kosher Chinese -- Memoir of an American teaching English in rural China.  I would caution potential readers that he eats some crazy stuff in this book.

Bill Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life -- I wouldn't say it's the Bill Bryson book I've enjoyed the most (that would be I'm A Stranger Here Myself, his collection of notes about returning to America after a couple of decades away), but he can make anything awfully readable, even a tour around his bathroom.  It's long, probably longer than it needed to be, but still pretty darn satisfying.

The New Republic: Fact-Checking the Candidates on... Everything

I've got a piece on The New Republic's website this morning, satirizing the fact-checking that goes on for the Republican presidential debates.  Will it be too long before they're not just fact-checking the debate answers, but the backstage candidate banter beforehand?  A quick excerpt:

Rick Perry: “Good evening, Mitt.”

FACT: Merriam-Webster defines “evening” as the period between sunset and bedtime. The sun had not fully set when Governor Perry made this statement.

Mitt Romney: “You too, Rick. Nice tie.”

FACT: In an independent study conducted by our partners at NeckwearSurveys.com, only 21 percent of likely voters rated Perry’s tie in the “nice” category, with 17 percent calling it “fair,” 36 percent calling it “blue,” and the remaining 28 percent undecided.

Check it out.

 

Mindy Kaling's Book Is Really Good

Just read Mindy Kaling's book, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

It's really good.  It's a set of essays about her life and her often very funny take on things like the types of fake women who populate romantic comedies and what a guy should do to be great.  Structurally it is not dissimilar to Tina Fey's recent book-- and I liked Tina Fey's book, but I liked Mindy Kaling's even more.  There's an honesty to it, aside from being very funny.  It feels like a human being wrote it.  A funny, genuine human being.  Highly recommended.

Thai Sticky Rice

I like Thai sticky rice.  I thought it would be easier to make at home than I have discovered it is.

I did buy the right kind of rice.

But I am reluctant to spend any money on a bamboo steamer that I will use three times and then throw into a cabinet and never touch again. 

I am also terrible at deciding I want rice hours in advance, so that it can soak.

Last week, I tried a microwave method I read about, involving putting the dish of rice inside a larger dish of water, so it could steam.  Not great.

I read about a method using a regular steamer insert (which I have) and cheesecloth (which I don't).  Unable to find cheesecloth (I admit I didn't search too hard), I came up with a substitution.  This evening, I will be attempting to steam sticky rice by wrapping it in sterile gauze that my wife took from the hospital. 

Yum.  Maybe it will work.

Game 3 NLCS Preview, or at least a parody of one

Fangraphs just posted a short (two-minute) parody video I made, making fun of baseball announcer cliches in the context of the Cardinals/Brewers NLCS game three tonight.  Check it out.

[Edited to correct: Did I really just type Phillies instead of Cardinals?  I lose some amount of credibility if I can't even remember which teams are playing in the game I am parody previewing...]

James Garfield

One of the best books I've read all year.  Candice Millard's Destiny of the Republic, a book about the assassination of President James Garfield.  Here's a sentence no one has ever written before: I am a big James Garfield fan.  I ghost-wrote a book chapter about his assassination back in law school, and did a bunch of reading in order to do that... and discovered that Garfield was a pretty brilliant guy, who might have been a terrific President had he not been shot by a crazy person pretty soon after he took office.  Millard read everything I read, and about ten times more, and has used all of that research to put together a highly compelling, highly readable book.  The medical storyline -- Garfield would almost certainly have lived if he'd been shot in Europe, where Joseph Lister's ideas about keeping wounds clean and sanitizing medical instruments had taken hold in a way they simply hadn't yet in the U.S., and had the doctors simply not inserted their dirty fingers into the bullet hole, repeatedly, he would have been fine -- is probably the most interesting of all, but the entire book is really quite excellent.  I highly recommend it.

Shawn Green

First time I've ever thought this about a baseball book, I think-- certainly a baseball book written by a former player-- retired outfielder Shawn Green's new book is worth reading even if you couldn't care less about baseball.  I mean, you'll enjoy it more if you like baseball and know who he is, and maybe I'm overstating things, but I really do think it's good enough that it doesn't even matter.  He writes about struggling to find balance and peace in the act of hitting a baseball, about to trying to balance his work life and personal life, about letting go of his ego and the mental traps keeping him from consistent success.  It's certainly as revealing of a professional athlete's personality and thought process as any baseball book I've read, and entirely absent all of the standard athlete autobiography tropes.  Recommended.

Iowa Republican Debate

I watched the Republican debate on Fox News the other night.  I don't know why presidential candidate debates draw me in as much as they do.  I don't follow a ton of political news, or at least I don't think I do.  I don't read Politico, I don't watch cable news on TV, I tend to be about as interested in political news as I am in business news, which is to say, I'll read stuff once in a while, especially long-form pieces that grab me (a Rolling Stone profile of Michele Bachmann, sure; a Michael Lewis book, absolutely), but the day-to-day isn't something I pay attention to.  Until I see that there's going to be some kind of debate, between anyone, anywhere.  Is it the live-ness of it?  Is it the chance for someone to say something incredibly stupid, or, conversely, incredibly eloquent?  Maybe.  I mean, I'll watch baseball games live but for as many times as I've tried to DVR something to watch it later-- a playoff game, etc-- it has never happened.  I have no interest once I know the world has continued on its axis after the game has finished.  If something extraordinary had happened, I would have heard; since I didn't hear, nothing extraordinary happened.  So why bother?  Chuck Klosterman wrote a nice piece on Grantland a couple of months ago about why live is the only way sports can be watched, and I'm probably repeating some of his points here, so go there and read his piece and then you can come back.

But the debate-- yeah, where was I?  I don't know why I'll take two hours to watch a debate between eight people I'm almost definitely not going to vote for.  I'd read a long New York Times magazine piece a few weeks ago about Jon Huntsman to make me curious to see how he presented himself.  The consensus from the handful of blogs I read afterwards was that he was the only moderate / centrist / reasonable person up there, and a moderate can't win the Republican nomination-- but none of them seemed to react the same way I did to one of the things he said.  He seemed to be the only one up there who supports civil unions, and he said something like, "I believe we have a problem with equality, I think civil unions are appropriate, I'm in favor of them--" seemed sensible enough so far, and then, "but that's just what I think, people can disagree, and I understand that, I'm just telling you what I think."  Wait a minute.  If he's saying it's an issue of equality and he supports civil unions because he thinks there's a reason to support them-- doesn't it completely undercut that support to say that it's fine, I believe it, but you don't have to, you can believe whatever you want?  At least Rick Santorum draws a line in the sand-- "I'm pro-life, it's a moral issue, there should be no exceptions, let's criminally prosecute doctors who perform abortions, etc etc etc."  And maybe Huntsman is merely acknowledging the reality that he can't get the nomination if he loses the vote of anyone who doesn't support civil unions-- but it makes the whole exercise seem sort of pointless, not that a candidate debate isn't pointless for twelve other reasons, I guess.

Mitt Romney pulled the same "I can't admit to having a centrist position on anything" move with health care, basically saying that, sure, his Massachusetts plan looked like Obamacare, and people should have to have a health care plan if they can afford one, *but that's just what worked for Massachusetts, and other states should be able to decide what works for them.*  Excuse me now-- did I miss a memo where illness is different in Massachusetts than in other states?  People go to hospitals in Massachusetts but nowhere else?  Here's what I don't get about the debate over mandates in health care, and forcing people to have some sort of health insurance-- public, private, whatever, this is different from a government health care debate-- if you are sick-- and everyone will get sick eventually-- you go to a hospital and you will be treated.  In an emergency, you will be treated.  And that money will come out of taxpayer money.  Why is some Medicaid-like system, that poor people qualify for anyway, not just considered the baseline for everyone, and taxes charged appropriately to cover it for anyone above the Medicaid qualification level?  Michele Bachmann was saying absurd things about how government can't force people to pay for a good or service.  Um, we don't let people opt out of garbage pickup and get their tax money back?  I can't call the government and say I don't want police or fire protection, so send me back some taxes.  Why is health care different, at an emergency level?  Why is it OK to incentivize people not to see doctors and wait until they have enough of an emergency that they need to go to a public ER and be treated there?  We require car insurance if you want to drive a car-- I don't get what is fundamentally terrible about requiring health insurance if you can afford it, since we're providing it for people who can't anyway.  I understand there are practical implications-- cost, capacity of doctors, etc, public vs. private plans-- but in principle, why is this so objectionable to every candidate who was on the stage?

Watching the debate can't possibly make anyone less cynical about politics than they already should be-- there was no intellectual honesty, there was pandering and rehearsed talking points and a lot of nonsense that either these candidates don't actually believe, or they do, which is the scarier option.  None of them explained how a President can create jobs, even though they all said they would-- and instantly!  Not that this is a new thing for a presidential candidate to say, but, still, I don't know.  I don't know why I watched.  Same reason people watch car racing, I guess.

Carmageddon

I may not be in LA, but I can still write something about the closure of the 405 this weekend.  Check out my piece on the LAWeekly arts blog, "Armageddon 2: Carmageddon / The Unproduced Screenplay about the closure of the 405."  Link here.

I've got a humor piece up on McSweeney's today-- wanted to share the link, despite my blogging delinquency. It's called "Technology-Enabled Congressional Sex Scandals of the Future." Pretty much exactly what that title makes it sound like it's about. Inspired, like the previous post, by Anthony Weiner-- whose Congressional district I should have already mentioned that I'm proud to have grown up in.... Okay, proud may be the wrong word.

Very short excerpt/teaser from the piece: "...affair with a short-circuiting robot prostitute..." I am not sure whether that is the appropriate excerpt to tease the piece. If you read the piece, and have a better suggestion for what sentence will make people want to click/share/read, I'm all ears...

Here's another very short excerpt: "When revealed on HuffGoogleFaceBeast..." Perhaps that one is more enticing.

Check it out: Link to McSweeney's piece

Anthony Weiner's Twitter Scandal

[Wrote a satirical piece about Anthony Weiner's Twitter scandal... just thought I'd post it.]

WASHINGTON (AP) — Representative Anthony Weiner of New York denied yesterday that he sent a lewd photo from his Twitter account to a female college student but did little to calm the media storm when he said he could not say "with certitude" that the man in the photo wasn’t him.

“You know, I can’t say with certitude. Pictures can be manipulated. Pictures can be dropped in and inserted. Pictures can be partially manipulated and partially inserted. Something in that picture could have been partially inserted into the young woman who received the picture. I can’t say with certitude.

“I take pictures all the time. I take pictures in my underwear, and I take pictures out of my underwear. We all do. I have a lot of underwear. It’s hard to remember if the underwear in the picture is underwear that belongs to me, underwear that partially belongs to me, or underwear that belongs to someone else that I may have been wearing. Perhaps it is my underwear and someone else was wearing it. Perhaps it is someone else’s underwear and I was partially wearing it. Perhaps it isn’t even underwear at all.

“My underwear is fairly easily manipulated if you know how to manipulate underwear. I have underwear on my computer and off my computer. I take pictures of my computer wearing underwear. If this was a picture of my computer wearing underwear that I had sent to another computer, wearing a different pair of underwear, this would be an entirely different issue.

“It’s a terrible thing that this poor woman got dragged into it. Did I personally drag her somewhere and show her my underwear? Who knows. She may have been manipulated. She may have been dropped in and inserted into my underwear. She may have been partially inserted into my underwear, using a camera that is also a Twitter account. I may have taken a picture of my underwear dragging her somewhere and showing her how to use Twitter. My underwear is particularly computer-savvy.

“The real issue isn’t whether I’m the person in the picture, whether I wear underwear, or whether I am a buyer and seller of other people’s underwear on Twitter. This was a prank, a hoax. My underwear plays pranks on me all the time. My computer plays pranks on my underwear. My Twitter account plays pranks on my refrigerator. If someone else played a prank, while manipulating my underwear, would this really be an issue?

“This is not worthy of a federal probe. It’s not worthy of any kind of probe. Was there a probe in my underwear? Did the probe belong to me? If it turns out there’s something larger going on here, we’ll take the appropriate steps, which may in fact include the purchasing of a larger pair of underwear.

“I was wearing underwear. I deleted it. Should a Congressman always wear underwear? It’s a difficult question. I can’t say with certitude.”

Bridesmaids

Funny movie.

Recommended.  Better than the trailers made me think it would be.  Went to see it in large part because I know Ellie Kemper from college, and think she's terrifically talented and has a huge, huge career ahead of her.  And my wife and I both thought the movie really worked and was very entertaining.  I can nitpick-- it felt to me like there must have been tons of scenes that were filmed and didn't make it in-- the movie jumps from scene to scene, there are plot threads that are established and then dropped, the emotional journey of some of the characters didn't quite make sense to me-- but in the end, it didn't really matter, because not only was a lot of the movie very funny, but it did hang together for me, I thought Kristin Wiig was really terrific in the role, the script was smart, the big moments were earned, and the whole thing just really worked.  Great, very winning performance by Chris O'Dowd, who I've seen in the (terrific) British version of The It Crowd, a sitcom about computer help-desk workers that I highly recommend....  Can't imagine this doesn't end up very high on a lot of end-of-year lists of the best comedies.

London

My wife and I are in London -- have been here for 4 days, heading to Paris this afternoon for 4 more days, then back to New York.  Turned out to be a neat coincidence that we were here over the Royal Wedding -- I thought it would just make everything closed, crowded, or difficult, but it turned out to be pretty cool to see the huge crowds of people gathered in Trafalgar Square and Hyde Park watching it on huge TV screens, and to see the (very orderly and well-controlled) celebration.

We've noticed that every time we say we don't see [whatever] here in London, we almost immediately then see a bunch of examples contradicting our claim.  "We haven't seen many ice cream shops."  And then we turn the corner and there are three.  "We haven't seen Mexican food."  And then we do.  "We haven't seen any piles of garbage on the street."  And there they are.  "No pizza places."  And then we see one.  "They don't seem to have homeless people."  And there they are.  Yesterday we were talking about how there aren't the kinds of situations in the U.S., like the Royal Wedding here, where people just gather in the streets, celebrating as a country-- not really July 4th, maybe sports team ticker-tape parades but that's in one city, and a much smaller percentage of people, not really the Presidential election or inaugurations, the Obama celebration in Chicago limited to one city (and one political party)... so, nope, we concluded, Americans just don't have reasons to gather in crowds like that.

And then, of course, we have the images this morning of Ground Zero and the White House in the middle of the night, after the bin Laden news.

McSweeney's Piece: Before You Take This Medication...

I've got a humor piece on McSweeney's today: "Before You Take This Medication...."  It's a parody of medication warnings.  Check it out!

http://bit.ly/eNvXAP

Blogging / London / Paris

I know I haven't posted in way too long.  I've been keeping the "What I'm Reading" sidebar updated, but that's about it.  Working on a screenplay that I've been bogged down in for a little too long, playing around with another novel, trying to build an audience for a secret blog that's out there, and keeping my fingers crossed about some other stuff.  But I did want to quickly post, in case anyone is still out there checking, in RSS or wherever, since I can't imagine anyone actually coming to the page after so long with no posts... but my wife and I are going for a week to London and Paris next month.  Thought I'd see if anyone had any recommendations for, I don't know, anything.  Food, cultural stuff, cool places to walk around.  We're actually (by accident) going to be in London the day of the Royal Wedding, which should mean lots of stuff is crowded and/or closed, and explained why it was harder to find a hotel months in advance than I expected it would be (didn't realize the date of the wedding when booking the trip).

And now, highlights from a few posts I would have written recently if I was not completely out of the habit of writing blog posts on here:

** I'm confused by The New York Times' decision to put up a paywall, and yet put up a paywall with so many holes that no one who doesn't really want to pay has to pay.  I'm especially confused by the "free for the rest of 2011" offer that has gotten sent to most of the Times readers I have e-mailed with about this.  I suppose in theory it's to make the transition to paying more gentle-- but I don't know what the Times gets from erecting a paywall after two years of saying they're going to erect it, and then making it free for another 10 months to the people most likely to have a reason to pay.

** Funny stuff in Mike Sacks's new book of short comedy pieces, Your Wildest Dreams Within Reason.  My favorite is a set of cartoons about putting together IKEA furniture.  Sacks has a book of interviews with comedy writers that I keep wanting to read and then not taking any action that will help me read it, like buying the book.

** I wish I was at Yale Law School and could check a dog out of the library for 30 minutes to play with.  Or I wish I had a dog.  In the abstract sense.  I don't actually wish I had to walk a dog and take care of a dog.  But it would be nice to have a dog around the apartment who did not have an excretory system.

** Every season of Top Chef is exactly the same, and yet I still watch.