Jeremy Blachman's Weblog: 2012

Friday Night Lights

Over here you can watch a 3-minute segment from the Today show about Friday Night Lights, which returns tonight with the first of four new episodes, the last four of the season.  Really, it's the best show on television.  I hope it gets renewed for next year.  Especially after reading a bunch of the pilot scripts for shows that could end up replacing it.  :)

Show Business

First off, for anyone following: my grandma went home from the hospital today.  Still taking it easy, but it seems like she's doing fine.  Thanks to everyone who e-mailed their concerns.

Thanks to a friend, I had the chance to see a screening tonight of a documentary called "Show Business," following four Broadway shows from the 2003-04 season from development to opening night to the Tony awards.  Liked it a lot.  Avenue Q and Wicked are the stars of the film, and they also follow Taboo and Caroline or Change.  Donald Trump will like this film, since it paints Rosie O'Donnell (who was one of the producers of Taboo) in a somewhat-unflattering light, although mostly just through a montage of newspaper articles and news coverage and not actually showing anything negative she did, whatever that was.  Lots of behind-the-scenes footage of rehearsals.  Lots of interviews with the creators of the shows, some interviews with actors, a bunch of roundtables with theater critics.  A heck of a lot of "B-roll footage" -- montages of other shows, crowds in line, opening night parties, etc.  Thought it did what it was trying to do about as well as it could be done.  I've seen Wicked and Avenue Q, but never saw Taboo or Caroline.  Had I seen none of the 4 musicals, I'm not sure the film would have been as interesting, but I'm pretty sure the audience they'll be going for is an audience that has seen at least a couple of the shows.  Hard not to like movies where writers are the stars, kind of.

Speechwriting for the President

Really interesting Times article about the President's speechwriters and the upcoming state of the union speech.

Book Thoughts: This Is Your Brain On Music

Fascinating.  Really cool book.  Daniel Levitin was a record producer and became a neuroscientist.  So he's pretty uniquely qualified to write a book about how the brain processes music.  There's some basic stuff on music theory that you can skim if you've taken any music classes, but then he goes into how we process pitch and tempo and rhythm, and how we can tell one instrument from another -- and how a synthesizer can mimic those sounds....  It's all written for a popular audience -- it just felt like a nice opportunity to skim the surface of what a guy like Levitin, researching Music and the Brain, spends his days thinking about, and what some of the key ideas here are.  Interesting stuff.

Larry King Doesn't Use The Internet

Amusing bit from Larry King Live -- video here.

Last night CNN’s Larry King confessed to Roseanne Barr that he’s never used the Internet. King expressed doubt that the Internet was a viable political medium because “there’s 80 billion things on it.” When Barr said she liked the Internet, King acknowledged that “I’ve never done it, never gone searching.”

Barr said King would love the internet if he tried it. King replied, “I wouldn’t love it. What do you punch little buttons and things?”

A few links and brief reviews

Really interesting (short) interview in the Times with author Alain de Botton.  I had to read some of his stuff for a law school class on emotions and psychology and the law, and it was a little too highbrow for me, but I took another book of his, Status Anxiety, out of the library last week and am hoping to get to it at some point.

Saw the shows Smoking Bloomberg, Flight of the Lawnchair Man, and Captain Gravy's Wavy Navy at the New York Musical Theater Festival in the past week.  Captain Gravy would be a cool show to see especially if you've got kids you want to expose to theater -- it's basically a cartoon on stage, with some nice music and colorful characters.  I think there's a Friday and Saturday show still to go.

Read "The Reach of a Chef" by Michael Ruhlman the other day.  I'll add it to the sidebar.  It's a nice book about the celebrity chef culture, a bunch about Thomas Keller (Per Se, where two friends of mine ate this past weekend for their 2nd anniversary and enjoyed) and Emeril and Mario Batali and a bunch more chefs.  I liked it a lot, it's a good read if this stuff appeals, but I don't have a lot more to say about it.  Also read Anthony Bourdain's "The Nasty Bits" last week but forgot to blog about it.  "Kitchen Confidential" is Bourdain's hit book.  I liked that one a lot.  This one is a collection of columns.  It wasn't bad but read Kitchen Confidential instead.  Or The United States of Arugula, or Heat, or The Omnivore's Dilemma, or The Reach of a Chef, all of which I found more enjoyable.

I think that's the last of the food-related books on my reading list, which is probably a good thing because mostly they just make me hungry.

I did get to try a dessert last week at a place called Room 4 Dessert, which was written up in the New Yorker a few weeks ago.  Interesting.  Sesame flavored gelato and raspberry foam and something else I can't remember.  Strong flavors.  I'd go back, but I'd get something else, and I'd hope that once again someone else was paying, since $12 is expensive for a few spoonfuls of dessert.

An update on some stuff from last week: my mom had a follow-up surgery on Monday to make sure the cancer is all gone, and we're waiting on pathology results, hopefully it'll come back clean, and then she'll start treatment.  And my first day tutoring at 826NYC last Thursday was cool, helped a bunch of kids with their homework, found it fairly rewarding, excited to go back this week.

A Times magazine article about satire that I keep meaning to read, but haven't yet.  If anyone else has, feel free to tell me if it's worth reading.

Liked the season premiere of How I Met Your Mother a lot.  Wasn't really into the show for most of last season, until the last couple of episodes, which I watched mostly just because a bunch of friends kept saying they liked the show.  I could see why.  Season finale last year was great, and the season premiere last night just as good.  Check it out if you haven't, perhaps.  I didn't watch the Studio 60 premiere last night, but only because I watched it on YouTube a few weeks ago.  Looking forward to checking out the new episode next week, I think it's the show I'm most excited about this season.

Ignore the dots

I just came across a website trying to entice advertisers with this: "Our book review site attracts more than .4 million page views a year."

You see the decimal point?  Of course you do.  Who are they trying to fool?  Clearly, someone, since the way people who aren't trying to fool people write that number is 400,000.  Not a shabby number.  But, come on, that's ridiculous.  If I was causing any of those .4 million page views, after seeing that, I would stop visiting.  Unless they review my book positively, in which case I'll visit all the time, link to it, and delete this post.
 

Attention Bar Exam Studiers

Don't click on this link, because if you do, you will spend valuable studying time playing an addictive online golf game.  I'm warning you.  Don't click.  My best score is -4.  Really, you won't be able to stop.

Corn Ice Cream

I passed by an ice cream store this afternoon called "Cones" and remembered reading something about them, that they had Corn flavored ice cream.  So I tried it.  It was good.  Tasted like sweet, cold, creamed corn, except in a good way instead of the bad way that probably makes it sound.

A couple of links:
A book about the Red Sox that looks interesting.
A smart and interesting review of The Devil Wears Prada

Quickly...

1. If you come home after dark, and find that the light bulb in your bedroom has burned out, and you don't have a flashlight, you pretty much have to wait until the morning to change the lightbulb.  Or so I'm deciding tonight.

2. I saw the movies Click and The Devil Wears Prada in the past few days, and will write reviews of them soon, but probably not tonight.

3. Take a sneak peek at the new online application form at Anonymous Law Firm and let me know what you think.  I haven't linked to it anywhere else yet, including on the site itself.  Still trying to figure out what I want to do with it.

Oprah

Check this out.  It's a link to a photo of a billboard advertising her show.  I won't give it away.  It's really ridiculous.  And it's real.

Suing For A Tote Bag

A Los Angeles psychologist who was denied a tote bag during a Mother's Day giveaway at an Angel game is suing the baseball team, alleging sex and age discrimination.

Michael Cohn's class-action claim in Orange County Superior Court alleges that thousands of males and fans under 18 were "treated unequally" at a "Family Sunday" promotion last May and are entitled to $4,000 each in damages.

That's not from The Onion, it's from the Los Angeles Times.  It's absolutely true that it sucks to go to a baseball game where they're giving something away, but you don't get it because you're not old enough, no young enough, or the wrong gender.  But it sucks like it sucks to just miss the subway and have to wait for the next one.  Or like it sucks to have to use the bathroom in a restaurant and need to wait because someone's in there already.  It doesn't suck that much.  Just a little bit.

This guy's not a lawyer, but he found a lawyer: "'They claimed they didn't have any more bags, but my client said there was a mountain of bags stacked so high a show dog couldn't have jumped over them,' said Alfred Rava, Cohn's San Diego-based attorney."  This is why people hate lawyers.

What a waste of the court system. 

"By looking at the bag, you can see a 17-year-old male or female would be just as happy with it as an 18-year-old male or female," Rava said. "I don't know why the Angels and Bryman College had a seemingly contrived cutoff for this ageless bag."

Uh, maybe because it was mother's day.  And maybe because it was just a tote bag.

Colbert Report

I really like the Colbert Report's 433-part series on Congressional representatives.  It's funny.

Not as funny: checking my fantasy baseball stats during a Colbert Report commercial break and seeing Matt Cain gave up 8 runs for the Giants.  Against the Cubs!  The 8-game-losing streak Cubs!

Request for a friend

I have a 3L friend whose laptop has died, a few days before finals, and he lost his class notes.  So he's desperate for an outline or notes for his Legal Professions class, taught by Dan Coquillette.  The prof teaches at Harvard and at BU.  I told him I'd post, on the off chance someone who reads this has got something they're willing to share.  I will forward along to him whatever I get, including any e-mails from Prof. Coquillette telling me that, really, people should be a little more discreet than asking for outlines on their friends' weblogs.

I Want To Know What Blogs You Read

Also, what message boards you visit.  In the comments or via e-mail.  Feel free to name your own blog, although I'll ask that you list some others too, if you can.  Thanks.