Let's Get Ready to Rogue

Heading down to Fresno this weekend for my third Rogue Festival.

Nice to see The Fresno Bee remembers me.

"Dr. Who on Holiday"

(discovered via KFJC's Norman Bates Memorial Soundtrack show)

What's geekier than KLF's 1988 "Doctoring the TARDIS," a novelty mashup of the theme to British Sci-Fi series "Doctor Who" and Gary Glitter's "Rock and Roll (part 2)" that went to #1 on the UK charts?

What about Dean Grey's 2005 mashup of KLF's 1988 hit with Green Day's "Holiday"?

Take one instrumental TV theme, combine one novelty rock anthem primarily used now for NBA team entrances, and Green Day's growly punk pop energy. Might be geekier, but it actually improves upon KLF's version.

Hear the MP3

Watch the YouTube Video

(from Dean Grey's American Edit album featuring mashups of Green Day's entire American Idiot album, which lasted an entire 10 days on the Web before the lawyers from Warner Brothers served up a cease-and-desist order. Boing Boing was all over the American Edit event, but I ignored it, not being a fan of Green Day. So, consider this a late entry.)

The Best Mac and Cheese Ever? Really?

Tom has been blogging for, what, five days?, and already he is presenting what he says is the best mac and cheese recipe ever.

Dried mustard? Hot pepper sauce? Eggs?!?

If he'd gone all nutmeg on me I would have telephoned the Brooklyn Police to have him hauled away, but as it is I'm left thinking there's something funny in that Hudson River water they drink out there.

Because I am that kind of friend I will inform Tom that the best mac and cheese ever can be found in Issue 3 of Martha Stewart's Everyday Food magazine (May/June 2003).

Ingredients:
- 1 pound shredded white cheddar cheese
- 8 ounces cream cheese
- 1 1/4 cups whole milk
- 1 tablespoon melted butter (plus more for greasing baking dishes)
- 1/2 pound elbow macaroni
- 1/4 cup storebought or 3/4 cup homemade bread crumbs
- salt and pepper

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Butter four 14-ounce ovenproof dishes. In a small bowl, toss 1 tablespoon of melted butter with breadcrumbs and 1/4 cup cheddar.
2. Cook macaroni; drain.
3. In a large saucepan over medium heat, bring milk to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low; add cream cheese, cut into cubes. Stir until melted, 2 minutes. Gradually stir in the remaining cheddar until melted, 5 minutes. Add the cooked pasta, salt and pepper. Toss to combine.
4. Divide the mixture among prepared dishes. Bake until bubbling, 10 minutes. Remove from the oven; sprinkle with the breadcrumb mixture. Bake until golden, 10 minutes more.

Ok, so the recipes do share the preposterous level of cheese (3/4 pound against 1/2 pound macaroni). And here the whole milk and cream cheese take the place of Tom's evaporated milk and extra butter.

I still don't get what's with the eggs. Just make carbonara for crying out loud.

The 2007 Skander Halim Memorial Movie Survey

Mike D'Angelo's 12th annual statistical mind@#$% ranks the best of the year in film, as judged by a hand-picked cadre of internet-enabled cineastes.

Follow the link to the winners, but then head back down the blog for #s 2 through 20, in the categories: Picture, Director, Actress, Actor, Supporting Actress, Supporting Actor, Screenplay (no distinction between original/adapted), Scene, and the best film everyone saw back in 2004 on the festival circuit but has yet to see U.S. theatrical distribution.

This year Mike has YouTube working for him, so most of the year's best clips are available for viewing.

DAve's Street Styles

[via Wooster Collective]

Local street sticker artist DAve launches an after-school arts workshop for middle-school and high school students in San Francisco.

Tax-deductible donations accepted through fiscal sponsor Youth Speaks.

Frameable Fruit Crate Label Art

Box of Apples offers a gazillion high-quality fine art prints of vintage crate labels.



Wow. One more reason to build that addition to the house.

method: omop

The crazy, cool folks at method have introduced their response to the swiffer: the omop

Ergonomic curved pole, non-toxic floor cleaners, washable microfiber mop pads, and biodegradeable/compostable sweeping cloths. Like all their products, Target-demographicked design.

They know exactly how to get me to want one.*



*Or two, since they sell a different model specifically for wood floors.

"Whatever it takes"

The New Yorker goes behind the scenes at "24". The show's producers were recently visited by the dean of West Point, who argued that the show's morality, particularly in regards to torture, is damaging his ability to teach his students ethics and the law.

The NYT discovers PreFab

weeHouses, Modern Cabana, and more in the NYT real estate section.

Spectacular Self-Indulgence

Tom Carpenter leaps into blogdom with a bang.
Six (6) posts in his first day, including five embedded videos.

And a link to Blognabbit in the sidebar.

Yay!

Useless Account: SIGN UP NOW!

Useless Account is a shiny Web 2.0 site that allows you to create a username and account.

And to edit that account.

Yup, that's what you can do at uselessaccount.com.

It's awesome.

The Machine is Us/ing Us

Via Boing Boing, a four + minute video by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Kansas State University, about the ways in which the internet is changing us as we are changing it.

Ethicurean: Chew the Right Thing

New favorite blog, which documents the growing enlightenment of foodies toward food consciousness.

Inspired by Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, Bonnie Azab Powell rounded up some friends also interested in thinking about food, and created a collaborative blog on sustainable, local, organic, and/or ethical food choices.

I like the multiple perspectives from different foodsheds (Berkeley, Austin, Seattle, plus reports from readers) on restaurants, farmer's markets, and farmers. I also like the recipes and the essays grappling with how to make meals more local, or more in line with sustainable agriculture.

But what I really like is the News roundup: several times a week the team posts links to headlines in the media about our food supply chain. You'd think that might be hard to sustain. But these folks comb the news for health stories (trans-fat; E. Coli outbreaks), trade policy (Genetically modified crops, the impact of NAFTA on corn, Japanese bans on American beef), consumer issues (package labelling), agriculture (the Farm bill, the citrus freeze), and intersection of all these issues with big business, Wal Mart, Archer Daniels Midland, and global warming... why some weeks there's more food news than foodie essays.

And on top of that, their tag line cracks me up.