If Winamp really meant to upgrade us all to Pro for free, presumably for using Android, and perhaps realizing they'd have to cripple standard to make Pro worth buying, then I am happy boy.
As a long time supporter of Winamp on desktops (among non-open source competitors), I am psyched to have the equalizer feature on my Evo 3D.
Will it roll back to standard tomorrow? I hope not. They should capitalize on this. Winamp is the best music player on Android, integrates flawlessly with the desktop client, and has no bloated or inutile features.
I support whipping the llama's ass in spite of being vegan (I hearken to the economics and sustainability arguments the most, and free upgrades are coherent with this).
So, at the end of the day, it's a great app in the lite/free version. Pro support for no apparent reason is rad.
Try out Winamp on your phone, maybe you'll get the full version.
Friday night, after one day of marinating over the book, and another day getting excited about cooking things from it, and a lunch of ear-marking my copy with post-it flags, we sat down with my copy of Vegan Pie in the Sky: 75 Out-of-This-World Recipes for Pies, Tarts, Cobblers, and Moreby Isa Chandra Moskowitz & Terri Hope Romero, and pounded out some Tasty.
I had done much of the pre-shopping Thursday night, but by the time I got home, and realized that I didn't have a rolling pin (yes, this was my big debbie-downer), I panned off cracking open the book and baking. That said, I did read Ghost World instead while Thursday night NBC murmured on in the background; not a bad way to go to get along.
Out of the gate, the book itself is a great package. Beautiful layout, organized flow, great pictures of everything. Simply, utterly edible in and of its CMYK self. I can't wait to bust the binding and have a handy dandy friend to lay and coax me back to the task at hand.
It's a good weight in both the paper stock for being in the kitchen as well as for not being some cumbersome tome or flighty flit of pamphlet. If you're familiar with the prior two volumes (cookies and cupcakes), you will be at home here.
At last. Friday night rolled around, my cook book was inordinately flagged ("Why didn't you just flag the ones you don't want to make?"), and we stopped off at the coop to get some final ingredients (for one thing, Miss Kristin made it clear that it is imperative moving forward to use unbleached a/p flour; but also for coffee, silken, cookies, etc). While we were there, I told Beth she should come over for some baking and Miss Kristin gave her directions. This time I did not as much mean it when I said I would be massacring some pie crusts.
The Digs:
Crusts - (2) Buttery Double (pastry-style) Crust; (1) Oreo Crust (Variant of Graham Cracker crust)
I wanted to ensure a representative sample of both recipes and difficulties. As a complete n00b to baking pies, and making crusts, I wanted to knock out some standards, and have more than one go at the classic buttery double crust. So we did the BCG Cheesecake in the Oreo crust, the other two in buttery doubles (the cherry having a sugar-kissed lazy lattice top crust, the blueberry having a slotted vent whole crust).
The Banana-Chocolate Cheesecake filling was mad-easy, as was its oreo crust; with a food processor and a few minutes to pound out that crust, you will have a quick-setting, quicker-vanishing cheesecake. A key component of many of the cream based recipes is soaked cashew, so there is the required prescience of having a solid amount already soaked.
(Soak 2-3 cups ahead and yer gold)
Aside from that, everything about the Banana-Chocolate Cheesecake was rapidly made, chilled, and consumed with a gravity-defying ease.
The fillings for the other two pies were equally straightforward. The dough for the crust was the more intimidating aspect. I have made a handy amount of pizza dough in my time in a lot of shapes and styles. But pizza is so forgiving, almost to the point of apathy. ["You don't have yeast? You're going to make me chug Genny Cream Ale to get me all gassy? OK. Fine. Whatever. Yes. I will still taste great. Go to hell."]
So I mixed up a nice solid double batch of the buttery double crust dough. Miss Kristin recently got a pastry knife so this task was a bit easier than I was accustomed to (insofar as I cream butter and sugar, which takes a minute). I also sifted the flour something like three or four times. And we refrigerated everything to do with the dough.
We were excited and paranoid like a bunch of high school kids smoking weed in their dad's pot closet
But when I would start to take that paranoia and externalize it, to doubt and double-doubt myself, I just turned to the introductory sections of the book. A great cookbook has something that makes it more than an indexed collection of 3x5" cards in a fancy binding with shiny pictures. A great cookbook has not only a voice, anybody can have a voice (donkey!); but a voice that will talk you down from the ledge. Vegan Pie in the Sky, in line with the rest of the collection, has a great voice and uses every conceivable opportunity to exercise it.
Isa Chandra and Terri Hope(if it is commonplace to drop a first and a middle name for the one, why not the other with such a nice middle name as Hope?) not only lay out a terrific spread of a lexicon at the beginning of the book, but in each recipe there are waypoints to navigate you through the trip-ups of any recipe. This helps not just because you now know your craft a bit better, and you now know what to watch out for, but also you will know how to pick up the strings and mend what goes awry. It's more of a "don't stress over X, here's the nerd-skinny on it." So, if you're at all like me, basically, a lot of times when a recipe contains some archetypal form, and you are looking to master that form, often you can walk away better-informed by failure than by success. The authors do not let an opportunity slip where they can inform an action or step. They also don't burden the book with cumbersome, extraneous details.
They toe the line between giving you all-the-knowledge-you-ever-need-to-improvise-in-the-face-of-impending-doom AND maintaining a pragmatic focus on the steps at hand with an elegant, soft-touch that leaves you ready for anything.
So when it came time to do the crusts, the real crusts, the ones we had lined up for; once we were all exhaled and had drawn our measured breaths and chilled our hands, we were ready.
We [okay, me] were [was] scared but informed and prepared and eager.
After cutting in the fat to the flour, and mixing the wet ingredients, we made liberal use of the tip to incorporate apple cider vinegar into the crust while dividing the batch into two sets of two half batches (i.e. quartering into four crusts).
The first go at dough (the first two crusts) came out less well than the second (the second two crusts). A few contributing factors to be considered;
I formed first dough (FAIL). Beth made second dough (WIN). Period.
------------------------------------------------
possibly more liquid (a.c.v. + aq.) for second half
nicer, caring-est hands for second half (I'm not saying I didn't care, I may have even over worked it, caring too much; just that Beth might have a better touch, she may have lingered a bit more thoughtful)
more resting time (in fridge) for second half
improper fat distribution with first over second half (i.e. second half had nice marbled fat content, first half appeared to be more homogeneous)
It is quite possible I am not thinking of other independent variables. It is also possible that after I am not on my first pie crust I will be all good anyway. My gut tells me, however, that ultimately, the catalyst or other culpable agent for the superiority of the one dough over was Beth's magic hands.
Pure and simple.
Let me qualify this with saying I am totally nit-picking because the end results was fantastic to eat and easy to make because the instructions were delivered in a way even I can understand, which is not to say in some condescending "dummies..." way but in a down to earth conversational, informational, and practical tone.
Yeah, so the first crust was just a bit less elastic, and a smidge more difficult to work with. These are just the factors which may have skewed the crusts, keep them in mind if you do a comparison. I rolled out a half from each set; the second went much better than the first, and was like a wet, stretchy paper towel in terms of durability and usefulness whereas the one I did was temperamental like a wet newspaper.
At the end of the day, the Buttery Double was not only a pleasure to make, bake, and partake; it was emboldening to feel the power to create crust flow through our fingertips.
So we had three pies, and a desire to double-down and crown each. Three batches of Rad Whip on the triple. Done. Miss Kristin has a knack for the cupcakes and frostings, and she totally hit a grand slam on this one. Not only successfully working a huge batch (which always creates marginal shifts in measurements, I don't care what anyone says), but getting each one to piffy puffy peaks and tasty sets. She was also wholly responsible for the amazing Oreo (Newman-O to be precise) crust, and the maintenance of all the inter-phase materials and serving drinks and watching the dog. (Mostly, I just changed songs on the mp3 player and played with the dog and ate food from Miss Kristin's fridge.)
So the modest $11 cover for Vegan Pie in the Sky is definitely worth it for all the vegan empowerment you can contain.
Each recipe and pie was as amazing to cook as it was to eat. The following night, at the pumpkin carving party, a great fun was had, at which all enjoyed the fruits of our collective labor; I would say it was in honor of the pies, but it was to mimic the massacre of orange faces. I'm guessing for the three of us though, there was a place of honor the pies.
There will be an awakening of personal gods you had not previously known or convened; and it will be good.
There is an archetype of the Great Giving Pie; a Crust for all Seasonings. It showers its blessings and gives us a reason for sweets and savories. If you have never touched this structure in your ego, and want to find that part of yourself come into being, then you need this cook book.
Dig in on a dark night with a sturdy crew. Plot a course (the digs above worked well for an introduction, but I get the impression any collection more suited to your palette will do equally well). Wake up not just the body and the mind, but be willing to awaken your primal, pie-baking Monster. Stock up in advance and be prepared, for here, there be dragons.
Also, made the Blueberry Lemon Corn Biscuit Cobbler (p.84). Super fun, super easy, super tasty. Like every other recipe so far. Planning on getting hot and heavy with the Boston Cream Pie (p.167) either tonight or tomorrow. I'm super glad to be consistently bringing the inner deity out in my kitchen. If you want a hitchhiker's guide for this, Pie in the Sky is your way to go.
The cobbler may seem like the easy way out of making a pie, but there is also the fact that, after cooking dinner and breakfast, sometimes you need a great pick me up for October-feels-like-November days. This recipe has the kind of pick me up that says, "you may not be in the warmest clime, but with me inside you have a kindling energy to last days."
(Note: if, like me, you opt for a 13x9" casserole dish, instead of the recommended 9" deep dish pie pan, I recommend either doublling the recipe, or doing at least the biscuits @ 150% quantity. You get the vibe from it being so spread out that it's less symmetrical than it was designed to be, though it still tastes great)
I was worried I had missed Wilfredlast night, the new show on Fx with Elijah Wood picked up from an Australian show also called Wilfred. I don't know why I was excited. I guess it has to do with having being a fan of Elijah Wood.
Obviously the Lord of the Ring trilogy was huge, but if you keep going through his imdbyou'll see he's got some other favorites and odd credits under his name. I guess he was Kratos' brother in God of War III (yeah, the video game). The stand out for me on the list is Ang Lee's 1997 Ice Storm, where he plays a somewhat oblivious, felicitous youth in an interesting foil to Christina Ricci's precociousness and Tobey Maguire's angsty self-concerned older son (different family). Suffice it to say (spoiler; too soon?), Tobey Maguire's character, is shown to exhibit the frustration that Kevin Kline likewise embodies; whereas despite Ricci's enticements Wood's character and portrayal remain in tune with his young-ness. And then he dies.
Well so this paragon of youth grows up, buys his own house and after getting his law degree, passing the bar, and then subsequently gets fired or something, is self-destructing, and tries to kill himself in the first episode. He's also a narcissist just like Kevin Kline before him; he iterated three drafts of his suicide note. So fucking forgive me I want to watch a show about someone desperately skirting self-annihilation by talking to a human dog. If only we could all be so fortunate.
Review part. The show doesn't pass up any opportunities to make jokes about him being a dog, and a guy, but who's a dog. [We'll have to shake on it][I never learned that trick]. [You don't have arms, well what do you call those (points at arms)][They're legs]. Nonetheless, it's done to punctuate, not carry the show.
The show altogether is funny because it's about a main character giving up on everyone else, giving up giving a shit about them, and just falling back on himself (thanks to his guru, a dog only he can understand). And it's done well. The filming is great and high quality. So far the ensemble of Elijah Wood and Jason Gann (who also acted and co-created the original Aussie version) is characteristically a tense one (they both want to hump Wilfred's owner). Based on the other version one would think the love triangle thing would get played through a bit more, but it looks like it sticks more to the psychology and wit of the situation and the two of them for the plot, with Wilfred's owner showing up from time to time. I'm guessing that aside from the buddy-cop style tit-tatting, it will form itself into a great show. The original version is only 16 eps long, I hope Fx keeps this funded a bit longer than that. Based on the episode last night, I'm down with four humps out of five based just on their introductory session.
How does this fit into PBS? Because it is about skirting self-destruction. duh. It's good to identify with when there's shit blowing up in your face. Not only is the main character in a explosive-shit-rain phase, but he's actually about my age and I have watched him in a bajillion other movies where he's been a strongly identifiable lead.
So what does Prison Break Survival have to do with avoiding self-destruction you may ask. Well god damn it, if you cannot moderate your self-destructive tendencies, you're going to go back to prison or get killed.
yeah. so columbus doesn't pack in the crowds that have the most enthusiastic participation drives, especially in march. so i dont know if it was the fact that it was Akron/Family or the comfortable crowded venue, but despite a lackluster crowd response, there was a penetrating electric feel uniting the crowd.
Wednesday i went with john.a and megan.a to see Akron/Family, with the opening band Delicate Steve. It just so happened that I installed and booted up Songbird on Wednesday. It just so happened that I tethered my phone while I was at work (never happens anymore). and It just so happened that I clicked on the 'upcoming events' add-on, WHICH had been disabled temporarily (deprecated) but I randomly updated despite knowing updating (effectively re-adding) broken addons slows songbird. So anyway, suffice it to say, some great random coicidences, along with downloading Akron/Family's new album two days prior, led to me wanting to go.
Currently they are on tour supporting that new album, called "S/T ][ : The Cosmic Birth and Journey of Shinju TNT." it's an epic beast of a listen. A lead up press release from their label Dead Oceans had this to say, “S/T II: The Cosmic Birth And Journey Of Shinju TNT .” In a press release from Dead Oceans, an account of the “arrival of the album” was given; “Opening it revealed a sincere but poorly made diorama of futurist swirling spaces filled with toy astronauts and dinosaurs, four blown out song fragments on a TDK CDR in a ziplock bag, three pictures, a track list written in crayon, and a typewritten note from Akron/Family. A post-it on the bag declared that the band refused to send the full album to anyone but the vinyl pressing plant…”
The opener, Delicate Steve, is quickly becoming my new at-work listening music, and anywhere else. I've logged 82 listens since yesterday. They have a great studio album. But live (and unlistened to previously, for me) they had a warm dynamic on stage. They are all very young, and on the one hand it seemed like college kids with degrees in [band], and on the other they had an aneseptic garage or basement party feel. The album doesn't highlight the lead guitarist's work as much. Nor does it really capture the sound from the stage. From the studio they sound more like Ween, but more on the side of building rather than "challenging" compositional structure. Live, the Ween element was there, but there was also an early Dinosaur Jr. doing surf rock thing happening too.
The band worked incredibly well together and each one hopped to the next queue with an unremitting energy. The soprano-alto lead guitar, which is more of a tenor-alto on the record, nailed every note with a precision and lack of mercy that you almost ended up feeling bad for what at times was strung to sound almost like a toy guitar. The drummer / percussionist was the most visceral, as opposed to technical, of the group. But his work was the hardest; keeping every piece from being some disembodied riff. The drumming comes across more prevalent on stage than off, mostly due to his hunched standing over his cauldrons of noise. They keys are more dominant on record than on stage, but this may have been due to the slowness of the sound board.
Once they had finished, Akron/Family came on and played for about 100 minutes straight through. One thing megan.a mentioned, that we also picked up on, was the lack of interludes between songs. The band would thread 3-5 songs together, in an effortless meld. Amazing and epic as this was, it seemed a poor fit for the performance space. Whether because of the low turnout (when we saw Bon Iver there it was packed to the balcony with people chilling out against or on any surface available), or the crowd's temperance itself, the space Akron/Family was creating was being partially lost.
About 2/3 of the way through the show, they broke out into "Another Sky" and during the chant of "WHOA-Oh-oh-oh-Oh-oh ohh ohh" the crowd just wasn't playing along. Maybe it's because it's the first week in March, or was there a final that week, or that the performance space is almost completely black, but few among the crowd got into it. Not at first anyway. Eventually about 30% of both sides of the room were hooting along, then the singers divided up the room into the stage left and right sides doing offset competing chants.
Beyond the crowd's lackluster performance and enthusiasm, the band was great. Down to just three now, both the bassist and guitarist now have podiums, draped with pretty linens, of doodads and noise makers to play with. Their spotless execution and nasty grinding out of songs like "Silly Bears" and the like, as well as the weird and the transcendental, called to inner animal spirits; it's everything in me to not feel like growling and running around on four legs.
I got a chance to talk to the "delicate" Steve of Delicate Steve. He was in the back by the sound board, where we were standing, at the latter half. Delicate Steve had gotten up on stage for a brief jam session with Akron/Family. Seemed like a good guy. I gave him a recommendation to check out Buckeye Donuts if they were hungry after the show, since its decent, open late and was right across the street. Here's me: "you should check out Buckeye Donuts, they a good gyro, falafel..." "they have donuts too right?" "oh, yeah, good stuff."
April 9th Night. Octopus Project is playing this bar called Outland on Liberty.
Interestingly, that bar has quite a bit of backstory if my Urban Mythology serves correctly. This is their third location, after however many incarnations per location. It began as a gay bar (get it, 'out' land), and then became a goth bar (get it, because they're an 'out' group as opposed to an in-group), or vice versa (i kinda forget, Janelle told me about it awhile ago when we went).
Anyway. Octopus Project, who are good and weird and my cup of tea, are playing and they're being billed under Explosions In the Sky (based on the last.fm entries around 4/9). now Octopus Project is great, and theyre playing under Devo all the way up until ACL; but seriously come on. underbilled to Explosions? what a boring ass band. And no i havent listened to them for more than the past two days when i found out about this. but ive listened to 3 of their albums. they are boooooring.
now i have friends who might very well like that kind of snooze fest. but here's what i propose.
>> Octopus Project + Black Moth Super Rainbow + Delicate Steve <<
Obviously the stars aligned for someone like me to be born nigh 31 years ago, they can do it again in commemoration of my birth to bring these bands away from their prior engagements to play for my birthday in some shitty bar that has trouble keeping its doors open.
5:42PM
