I’m loving the new cooking channel, where people actually cook instead of compete or visit diners. My favorite show so far is Two Fat Ladies, with two fat Brits who tool around in a motorcycle and a side car. The commentary as they cook is priceless and resembles a Monty Python sketch:
“I’m larding the monkfish with anchovies. Look at my lovely larding knife.”
“A wonderful weapon.”
“Yes. Stick it in the burglar.”
Just brilliant.
*** Update ***
“I like rich food. None of this nonsense about yogurt. This is cream.”
and
“I like having vermouth around for cooking. I’m not tempted to drink it and it has a wonderful flavor.”
bodacious
How old IS that show??? I know one of them passed away many YEARS ago!
Neutron Flux
They used to be on PBS, I think.
ETA, my info button tells me this show was recorded in 1996.
sbjules
I adore the “Two Fats!” I gave my neighbor CDs of 5 of their shows as a birthday present some years ago. Luckily she lets me borrow it occasionally.
What is this new cooking channel?
bjkeefe
Hello, all,
A while back, DougJ put up a post whose content, and comments, irritated me. Sorry for the late response, but I have a truly marvelous rebuttal to it and them. Unfortunately, the bounds of this comment box are too small to contain it.
[/fermat]
So, if you like, see here. And respond there or here, should you be so motivated.
Thanks.
flavortext
The Los Angeles Times continues to circle the drain:
trueblood
Two Fat Ladies actually used to run on food network, back when it was a network centered around cooking shows.
Citizen Alan
The show ended in 1999 after the death of Jennifer Paterson at the age of 71. Perhaps ironically, she did not die of heart failure or any of the other ailments associated with bad diet, but from lung cancer (she was a heavy smoker) which went undiagnosed until not long before her death. Of course, her diet may have contributed to her demise, but her co-host, Clarissa Dickson Wright, is still going strong at 63.
Bob T
Heh heh – Two Fat Ladies. I haven’t seen those Brits in years. Sadly, the Cooking Channel requires me to get the “next tier” of the cable programming, something I’m not willing to pay for. (Bitch of the night: that “next tier” also includes NASA TV, for which we taxpayers ALREADY PAID FOR…and Time-Warner charges extra….sonofabitch.)
OK, better now. Off to pan-sear some ocean scallops, get some frites going, and grille that white corn-on-cob.
ellaesther
Incidentally, would you like to know a excellent antidote to worrying too much about the world at large and Israel/Palestine in particular?
Co-chairing a block party.
Holy crap I have not been this physically exhausted and emotionally satisfied in a very long time. Everyone had fun, the kids were adorable, occasional pouring rain didn’t drive us apart into our homes but rather on to my porch, in cramped and cozy fashion. A grand success!
And I believe I may now fall straight over from it all. Oh.Mah.God.
PS Happy Lily Day! What a lovely thing.
eric
@flavortext: “lockstep liberalism? really? REALLY? we just watched the GOP lockstep themselves to ZERO votes for a jobs bill, a health care bill, a financial regulation bill…and a democrat gets accused of lockstep liberalism for siding with democratic constituencies that espouse democratic ideals. (let’s not get into the fact that she ain’t that liberal) we are not just fucked, but we are getting the rusty pitch fork over and over again.
eric
Cat Lady
If Patsy and Edwina had a cooking show in their dotage, it would look and sound like Two Fat Ladies. Where are they now?
frankdawg
I love 2FatLadies! Yes, they used to be on Food net – I think that cooking is owned by FN because they have access to all the cooks from FN & run some of their old shows. I hope they don’t go down the same hole FN has.
I am not a Mario Batali fan but did you catch him on The Daily Show? He had a great line about that *sshol* Ramsey & his screaming. “I think a chef screaming at his cooks is his own self-loathing coming out for not having prepared them for what was coming.” Having worked in kitchens I really like to think of that when I think of a couple a guys I worked with.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Hilarious scene on Ozzy Osbourne’s old MTV show (an infrequent guilty pleasure… infrequent, I say): His TV was stuck on Two Fat Ladies, and he couldn’t figure out how to change the channel, he ran looking for his wife in a panic. “Sharon, ‘air’s two great fat fBEEPkin’ BEEPs on my TV makin’ bread! Iss ‘e fBEEPkin’ bread makin’ channel! an’ I cant fBEEPkin’ change it!” all that intercut with scenes of the TFL’s cheerfully makin’ fBEEPkin’ bread.
jeffreyw
Mmm…ribs.
Violet
I love Two Fat Ladies! Their enthusiasm for cooking and eating is so contagious. Love their show!
@Cat Lady:
Lolz. Maybe there’s an idea for a show in that. It would involve a lot of alcohol.
jeffreyw
Mmm…strawberry pie.
Bob T
@ frankdawg:
I agree with Batali’s line regarding Ramsey. 100%. I’m an old line/prep cook/ sous chef turned astrophysicist. (go figure)
I cannot stand to watch Ramsey in the kitchen…makes me wanna run to a belltower with a sniper rifle waiting for his sorry ass to be put out of his own misery. (OK, not really, but you get the point.)
robertdsc
@jeffreyw:
Add that to cleek’s pie filter, lol!
Jeffro
Dana Milbank, of all people, calling for maybe a pitchfork & torch or two:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/04/AR2010060402701.html
Plenty of room on the left (and the sacred Center) for Dems to take the ball and run with it…if they can still remember what running feels like…
Brick Oven Bill
Cooking with Cans. Simple recipes that can be made from easy to acquire foodstuffs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6n32r9nt9s
Cat Lady
@jeffreyw:
Needs whipped cream, ice cream, or creme fraiche. Also.
debit
@jeffreyw: God, that looks so good. Now I want ribs and I have none. You magnificent bastard, you.
Nicole
I loved Two Fat Ladies.
Spent Saturday at the Belmont- figured it’s my last trip to the track before the baby comes (bummer; will have to bring diaper bag next year. Yay factor: will be able to get a Belmont Breeze w/souvenir glass again). I dared to try the dime superfecta, figuring it was more fun with less financial risk that the $1 trifecta I was planning on doing (a $38 bet with 6 horses, versus a $60 bet with 5). And then discovered the incredible pain that goes with having the first three horses and not the fourth. And I’m really annoyed that one of the premier races in the country had two horses with “Dude” in their names run in the money.
But still a nice day. Belmont is a beautiful track and it’s always a huge party on Belmont stakes day. Some truly terrible hats, though.
jeffreyw
@Cat Lady:
Yup it does.
Bad Horse's Filly
@debit: Hey I didn’t know if you caught it, but I did post your Gazpacho recipe the other day: Debit’s Gazpacho
I think as soon as the Farmer’s Market has tomatoes, or my own produce the plentiful harvest I keep imagining, I’m going to make it.
Cat Lady
Aackk! I’ve conjured BOB!
Cat Lady
@jeffreyw:
Everything is better with whipped cream and cat hair. Not that cat hair’s never not an option. :-D
jeffreyw
@Cat Lady:
Mmm…whipped cream on strawberry pie.
Cacti
The worst thing Food Network ever did was getting rid of the chefs and replacing them with home-ec teachers.
BethanyAnne
@Cat Lady: Ugh, I thought he had stopped coming around here. Shoo!
Anya
Oh, Lord, someone on thread yesterday conjured up BOB.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Cat Lady: I’m suddenly craving creme anglaise on chocolate cake. After the ribs, of course. And maybe some chicken.
Bad Horse's Filly
Is it wrong that I secretly lust after Ming Tsai?
Oh, wait, did I say that out loud?
Keith G
@Cat Lady: Yeah, W.T.H?
Bad Horse's Filly
John, did Lily enjoy her happy adoption day burger?
Cat Lady
@jeffreyw:
You rock my pie-less world. I got free strawberries from the supermarket today, so as FSM is my witness, I will be pie-less no more!
demkat620
I am too tired to think of anything. God what a day. Soccer with the kids ended with the cops being called because a coach went after an 11 yo kid.
I was shaking by the time I got home. Nobody got hurt but jeebus, what do some of these adults think?
debit
@Bad Horse’s Filly: Squee! I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. It’s a staple in my house during the summer and somehow we never get sick of it.
I’m also waiting on my garden to start producing tomatoes. I talk to my Early Girl. “Come on, honey, grow, please?”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@demkat620:
Good fucking god. That just beggars belief.
Cacti
@demkat620:
When I was in little league, an opposing coach once took a swing at my Dad (who was my coach).
Cat Lady
@Keith G:
Sorry. My BOB-fu is FAIL.
Violet
@demkat620:
How awful! Did he go after him physically or verbally? Or both? That poor child. What did they do to the coach? How traumatic for all the kids there. And parents.
Cain
Did someone say BoB’s name three times? He just showed up!
Dude.. why do you haunt us with the crazy?? WHY?
I spent 5 hours weeding today… very satisfying. I let my old house (now turning into a rental property) kinda go, and now I’m paying for it hard. Still so much work to do..
cain
debit
@demkat620: Good lord. That poor kid. I hope this doesn’t turn him/her off playing. And I hope the coach is fired, but forced to apologize first.
@thread: I made my chicken salad with rosemary sandwich on sourdough and I eated it. And it was good. And maybe I gave a tiny bit of chicken to my dog in honor of Lily Day. (But I still want ribs.)
Bad Horse's Filly
@debit: My Early Girl has two tomatoes…now I stare at them everyday to see if they’ve grown any. I’m going to be pathetic when it comes time for them to actually ripen.
MagicPanda
@demkat620: Sounds horrible. I myself had a rough day with the kids, but it was just the normal screaming and not wanting to go to bed. No cops. *whew*.
jeffreyw
@Cat Lady:
Let Flickr be your witness, else it didn’t happen :)
Bad Horse's Filly
Oh, and I have a pretty picture from my ride today. Long’s Peak and the Lake.
Yutsano
And with that line, Dana Millbank and his career were never heard from again.
The Cooking Channel will be worth it for two words. Jamie. Oliver. I could watch that man cook liver and onions and it would make me want to scarf it down.
debit
@Bad Horse’s Filly: Lovely! I love my local trails, but you really can’t get away from the feeling of being in the city. This summer I plan to make use of the maps on the Rails to Trails Conservancy site and have some nice, long rural rides.
And I wish my cellphone took pictures as nice as that.
El Cid
Anyone else here watch MasterChef Australia? That program is a god-damned amazing achievement.
IndyLib
@jeffreyw:
That looks incredibly yummy. We’re going to a strawberry farm to pick our own tomorrow and then heading to the 7 Mile flea market south of Milwaukee, which is supposed to have a really nice farmers market. I would kill for some decent fresh veggies, the stuff I’m finding in the store has been crap so far this spring.
jeffreyw
@IndyLib: Yeah, still too early for good local stuff. The veggies at the supermarket suck. Seeing some good peppers, and some sweet corn looked pretty good, the peppers were from Mexico, not sure where the corn came from.
frankdawg
@El Cid:
Can’t say I have heard of it – is it available on US cable someplace?
debit
Okay, this trail looks like a likely prospect. I’m not up for the whole 110 miles, but it looks like a good day, or even weekend trip.
IndyLib
@Bad Horse’s Filly:
What a gorgeous pic. It makes me homesick. I love the green here in lovely southern WI, but I miss the mountains. That’s a lot of snow still up there for this time of year.
frankdawg
@Bob T:
Mario tells an interesting story about a jerk who used to berate him in front of customers – he walked out during the rush but not until he had dumped a ton of salt into the guys two mother sauces.
My revenge was watching my tormentor set himself on fire while flambeing before an audience. Since he insisted that I not do anything without his command I just stood there & watched his pants melt to his leg.
IndyLib
@jeffreyw:
We had some decent corn last week, I’m pretty sure it came from Florida. Can’t wait for fresh local corn, but it will be a while. I found quite a few farms between here and Milwaukee that do berries and peas. Don’t ask me why the peas with the berries together, but I love me some fresh peas, so I’m waiting anxiously for the end of June.
Cat Lady
@frankdawg:
LOL. Karma’s a bitch.
Michael
My thing about the fatties was that they always seemed to stir their food gross, and the camera close-ins didn’t make me want to eat their creations.
I love “Good Eats” and “Chopped” (I learn a lot from each of those).
Now, as for tonight, I pulled out my Gordon Ramsay “Fast Food” (a Christmas gift from my 20 year old daughter), and made a nice summery cucumber/avocado soup to serve with a light accompaniment of hot Abrusseze and some goat cheese served with water crackers. Perfect!
Bad Horse's Filly
@IndyLib: Last week it was completely covered. We’ve had a wild, unusual spring here. I must say I’m really enjoying my move, I wanted to be closer to the mountains with lots of riding trails and I have not been disappointed.
Yutsano
@Bad Horse’s Filly: When I was still dating the Canadian hockey player, he got a serious look at by the Colorado Avalanche. We discussed the possibility of relocating to Denver together, but he developed visa problems (he had some legal issues as a juvenile) and it never came to pass. I did get excited at the idea of living in Denver as I have never been. I had a good friend in college who got married the same weekend as my cousin (I ended up going to neither) and he just became a dad, so I may yet get down there. It will require a new gig though, as my current work time off policy is draconian, to put it mildly.
Steeplejack
@Bad Horse’s Filly:
No, not at all. He’s not my, er, cup of tea, so to speak, but he and Jacques Pépin are my current go-to gods for amazing but simple and quick concoctions. Both their shows are amazing.
El Cid
@frankdawg: Not yet. But it damn well should be. Check the bit torrents for xVid versions. It’s on 5 nights per week in Australia, and is the highest rated show outside a couple of sports and events that Australia’s ever seen. This season (2nd) they’ve been through 41 episodes so far, and I swear, each time you can’t wait for the next.
LikeableInMyOwnWay
Wow, I haven’t read the thread, but the Two Fat Ladies was on for 4 years starting in 1995. One of them died. It was a great show.
Saw every episode.
fucen tarmal
holy crap! the miguel cotta vs yuri foreman fight, goosebump inducing wave up the back of the spine, omg they are letting him fight!, action….so good i put down the internets and just watched for an hour, dumbstruck.
Cat Lady
@IndyLib:
Pass the Peas.
Cat Lady
Ham ‘n’ Eggs.
james hare
I’ve been thinking about the spill, and I haven’t seen this angle brought up.
Would you have wanted George W. Bush in charge of the response?
Yutsano
@james hare: No. SATSQ.
Gravenstone
Cooking Channel is the former Fine Living Network, and is a Food Network property. So perhaps FN is trying to recapture some of their early chef-centric focus.
Tattoosydney
This weekend is Portuguese Christmas cake time – the Bolo-rei, or King Cake. (Here’s a picture of my last one.)
My recipe is shamelessly adapted from “Traditional Portuguese Cooking” by Maria de Lourdes Modesto – the Julia Child of Portuguese cooking.
It’s generally made in the two or three months around Christmas, because it’s too good to only have once a year. It’s slightly bready, light and fluffy, with the cake not too sweet, to contrast with the sweetness of the dried fruit and sugar lumps that are studded throughout it and on the top.
It’s absolutely delicious and well worth the trouble. The Portuguese traditionally put a small gift (very small I imagine) and a dried bean into the cake – whoever gets the bean has to bring the Bolo-rei next Christmas.
A bread machine to take care of the kneading makes it much easier.
You’ll need:
5 cups of plain flour
30 grams of yeast (instant is ok. This seems like a lot of yeast, but the mix is quite dense and needs a fair bit to make it rise)
2/3 of a cup of melted butter
1 cup of sugar
about 4 cups of glace fruit, dried fruit and nuts (the most traditional ones seem to be pine nuts, candied orange peel, raisins and glace cherries, but I have used macadamias, dried apricots, glace peaches, dried pineapple, dried cranberries – in fact almost anything, as long as you have a good mix of about four or five or even more different things)
half a cup of sugar lumps
4 eggs
grated peel of 1 lemon
grated peel of 1 orange
half a cup of port or sweet wine
a level dessert spoon of coarse salt
A couple of teaspoons of jam or jelly dissolved in a quarter of a cup of water
Put all of the fruit and nuts in a bowl with the port and marinate, preferably overnight.
Beat the butter, the sugar and the orange and lemon peel together till light and fluffy, then fold in the eggs one by one.
Then add the flour, your yeast (after starting the yeast if you aren’t using instant) and the salt.
Knead it all well, or put it in your bread machine so it is well kneaded – you’re trying for a soft, elastic dough that forms into a nice ball. If it’s too hard after a few minutes of kneading, add a little bit of warm water, but not too much.
When it’s properly kneaded, add half of your fruit and nut mix and mix it all together – it will be a bit claggy. Put it all in a bowl and leave it to sit in a nice warm place for five (yes, five) hours.
The dough will rise, and possible even double in size, but if it doesn’t rise that much don’t worry too much.
Preheat your oven to hot – I usually go for about 180 degrees C (about 350 degrees F).
Put some baking paper on a tray, and dump the cake mix onto it – this recipe makes one huge cake or two medium ones. Make hole in the middle of the mix with your fingers, so you have a ring – I usually put a very small bowl in the middle so it keeps its shape.
Then tip your sugar lumps into the remainder of the fruit mix, stir it round a bit so the sugar lumps absorb the port and break up a bit, then put all of that on top of the cake as decoratively as you like, pressing it down into the cake mix a bit with the back of the spoon.
Put into the oven and bake for about 30 to 45 minutes. Unfortunately the timing window is a bit variable – keep an eye on it as it may burn if the oven is too hot or you leave it for too long. You want it to be quite brown without burning.
After you have taken it out of the oven, brush it with the diluted jam while it is still hot.
For a truly decadent experience, spread slices with Doce de Leite – Brazilian style caramel made from condensed milk (Dulce de leche is the Spanish equivalent).
tavella
Doubt it would have made much difference. There’s not much the government can do about the leak itself, either for fixing it or screwing it up more, and the Obama administration has been about as supine before the corporate in regard to spill reponse as a Bush administration would have been.
Yutsano
@Tattoosydney: Sigh. I wish that I weren’t the Great God of Death for yeast. That does sound fantastic there. Come stai?
@Gravenstone: FN along with DIY and HGTV are all owned by Scripps Networks, which has been a very successful media company since the mid 90’s. I’m not entirely certain if they’re connected to the book publishing company, but it wouldn’t surprise me.
Violet
@james hare:
Or John McCain? Since in reality, it was going to be either him or Obama who would win the election and be in charge at this point in time. George W. Bush was leaving office at the end of his term no matter what.
I wonder if this isn’t going to end up being yet another example of the Obama rope-a-dope strategy. Right now the pundits are screaming bloody murder. Obama isn’t emotional enough, he isn’t playing Daddy, he isn’t playing Aquaman and going out there to stop the oil leak himself, etc.
But they can’t keep up this level of outrage indefinitely. It gets boring. People get burned out. So eventually the press will move onto another tactic. At that point, his coolness under pressure might be seen as a plus.
suzanne
God.
My husband and I are in the final throes of moving, and all our dishes and food are packed up, so it’s been takeout the last few days. I actually just ate food from Filiberto’s, despite not being even slightly drunk.
Listening to you all discussing delicious food is almost torturous. But that’s why I love this blog, right? ;)
bjkeefe
I’m kind of fascinated that I’ve gotten no response to my earlier comment (#4). Not even so much as a “tl;dr.”
Is it because the posters in this open thread only want to talk about food? Or was my response, to the earlier BJ post, that far beneath your notice? Or is it too old to care about?
No prob if it is a dead issue as far as you all are concerned. But I’m just curious why I haven’t even gotten a peep.
BethanyAnne
@bjkeefe: I skimmed your piece, but I’ve never watched any bloggingheads, and didn’t much read the dougj article… so I didn’t have much to add :)
MikeJ
@bjkeefe: Three weeks ago doug said something annoying, but you don’t say what. You responded to him somewhere else rather than here.
From looking at the url, Doug said something about bloggingheads, which I despise because it stretches 90 seconds worth of reading into 15 minutes of having to listen to people who aren’t very good speakers and look at people who aren’t very telegenic.
Why on earth would I want to go look at what he said, and then somewhere else to find out what you said when I’ve never heard of you and don’t particularly care what you have to think? Which isn’t meant to be as mean as it sounds, but I’ve got no reason to care, so why would I waste all that time to hunt down those links about something I probably don’t give a shit about anyway?
Yutsano
@bjkeefe: Well, when you start out a long diatribe with this caveat:
aren’t you just admitting that you’re arguing just for the sake of it?
Tattoosydney
@Yutsano:
I’m well – I now have three enormous cakes sitting on my kitchen bench cooling (cherries, dried strawberries, pine nuts, macadamias and glace peaches). Yum.
It’s a rainy Sunday afternoon here – but all is right with the world at the moment.
And you?
@El Cid:
I find myself unable to watch Masterchef – some of the cooking segments are wonderful, but two of the three hosts make me want to claw out my eyes, and there has been a bit too much crying and not enough cooking this year.
Tattoosydney
@Yutsano:
Yeast doesn’t work for you, or yeast tries to kill you?
Yutsano
@Tattoosydney: They do sound fantastic I must say. Back to the grind tomorrow, not sure how much I’m looking forward to that. Most likely not much. Otherwise the housework is mostly done save the kitchen, and I did make some fairly decent brownies. I’m out of walnuts now however. I shall have to rectify that situation soon.
@Tattoosydney: yeast trembles at the very mention of my name. Even in their dormant state they quake as I pass them on the market shelves. Bread, yeast cakes, doughnuts, if it involves the microscopal fungi I can find a way to screw it up. I’ve tried everything, I’m resigned to baking powder and Irish soda bread.
Tattoosydney
@Yutsano:
That’s a very special talent you have there.
Tattoosydney
Kylie Minogue and an enormous bisexual orgy. Woo!
ETA: (and double woo because the words “bisexual orgy” don’t set off the spam filter)
bjkeefe
@BethanyAnne: Thanks for acknowledging. And for taking a moment to have a look, even if the topic had no relevance to you.
@MikeJ: Thanks also for acknowledging. Perhaps I should have given a sense of what I was talking about, but I did not think it, as I never do, that it is too much to ask for readers to click, or at least hover over, a link. (Try right- or middle-button clicking, if you dislike being taken away from where you’re at at the moment, perhaps.)
As to your never having heard of me and not caring what I think, that’s fair.
@Yutsano: Heh. I’m hard-pressed to think of a better reason to justify the existence of the entire blogosphere, but … each cat his own rat, as the saying goes.
I will state that I expected readers, particularly those who frequent this site, to be able to sense the tongue-in-cheek aspect of that preface. I beg your pardon for perhaps making unwarranted assumptions.
Yutsano
@Tattoosydney: I also just realized I used an incorrect noun form in my reply to you. I must be in one of my English is a flexible language moods. Or I’m just not paying attention, either option could be viable at this point.
Since they are soaked in quite a bit of alcohol, do the cakes have a decent shelf life?
@Tattoosydney: This, perhaps, explains a few street closures in the downtown area? Or is that Melbourne? Oh and I don’t get the white elephant exactly.
MikeJ
@Tattoosydney: That explains the giant floating symbol of the Republican party overhead.
Yutsano
@MikeJ: HA! Win!
Tattoosydney
@Yutsano:
These ones last for about a week or a week and a half – they’re more bready than cakey, so not a huge life span. Mind you, I’ve never had one last more than a few days.
I understand it’s LA.
I’m not sure about the elephant either.
Yutsano
@Tattoosydney: Watched it again, you’re correct that it’s LA, although you really can’t tell until the very end there. I was kicking myself because I THOUGHT it looked familiar. I get the white horse, that’s pretty obvious, the white elephant metaphor escapes me however.
Tattoosydney
@Yutsano:
“triumph of Aphrodite, entering preceded by wild beasts led in chains by Cupids, the white elephant and all – what a field for the plastic art!”
[Charles Kingsley, “Hypatia”, Chap. XX]
Apparently.
(Her new album is called “Aphrodite”.)
fucen tarmal
@Tattoosydney:
wow i clicked play on that at the same time i flipped on
“showgirls” on the tv, in terms of forced and over the top sexuality that leaves me amazingly not turned on, it was like pink floyd and the wizard of oz.
the song itself isn’t horrible for its genre however.
Yutsano
@Tattoosydney: Fascinating about how we get lost in the various metaphorical devices in the video and not the radiance that is Kylie herself. She looks nothing short of fantastic. Plus dare I say she’s having some fun there.
I did see there was an alternative video in the YouTube list. Fascinating how they can film it in the US but not show it here due to this country’s delicate sensibilities. Sigh. Why couldn’t we have been founded on a penal colony like the rest of the Crown’s colonial adventures?
wmsheppa
@Yutsano: Given the choice between Puritans and convicts, who would you rather get rid of and put further away from you? Clearly Britain blew that decision.
fucen tarmal
@wmsheppa:
the “christianmingle” add that was bracketing the bottom of the video tattoosydney linked says it all, she may be a goodwife in town, and something else entirely in the next town over…
Yutsano
@wmsheppa: I guess I really shouldn’t complain. My family came to this continent to minister to convicts exiled from their native lands. Granted that place of exile was Quebec, and we ended up breeding like rabbits (try being the great-great grandson of a Catholic priest with a Sioux wife he bought, the things you can get away with when Roma isn’t watching) so all in all things pretty much worked out. It might just explain my attitude not quite matching the US norms regarding sexuality and sex.
Incidentally, penal colonies were started because Europe’s prisons were too crowded and the kingdoms chose to simply deport rather than build new prisons that cost money. Just easier and cheaper to send them off to wherever and wash their hands of the problem. Made parole a bit of a bear though.
Steeplejack
@bjkeefe:
I, for one, clicked on your link, read your piece and concluded that, since I do think that Bloggingheads is pretty much worthless, and that you didn’t advance anything compelling enough to make me reconsider, I didn’t have a reason to respond. But, since you ask . . .
1. You wrote:
I read the thread at the time–but have not gone back to ferret it out–and my recollection is that several, if not many, commenters talked about their experiences of watching a “diavlog.” Participating in the forums? Meh. Is that proof of legitimacy something?
2. Then you admit that Bloggingheads devotes “entirely too much air time to utterly useless gasbags.” No argument there.
3. “Another of the most frequent justifications given by the Juicers for hating on the site, if memory serves, is The Mickey Connection.” Long explication follows, which nearly puts me to sleep, because this sounds like some argument a long time ago in a galaxy far away. Yeah, I know who Mickey Kaus is, but I don’t see his taint all over Bloggingheads, and I don’t care about the ancient history. But thanks for bringing me up to date.
4. “If I recall correctly, another of the complaints in the Balloon Juice thread was along the lines of ‘Who wants to sit in front of a computer for an hour, watching low-res video, that in any case is just two heads, talking?'” Amen to that, bro’. Then you add:
So even you aren’t paying much attention most of the time. You like Bloggingheads as background while you’re on the computer? Fine. I’ll take music, baseball or, as I’ve said many times here, the Humidity Channel on cable TV.
5. You write:
Golly, that’s sort of the reason I read Balloon Juice, but the difference is I don’t have to sit through a boring video beforehand.
Look, spoken dialogs–sorry, diavlogs–are a relatively inefficient way to convey information. Very low bandwidth. In the time it takes me to listen to two diavloggers bloviate back and forth for 30 minutes, I can read several multi-thousand-word essays that represent much more time on their authors’ behalf to hone, direct and support their argument. Yes, there is some entertainment value in seeing the person behind the writing and how they interact with another person behind some other writing, but I don’t think it contributes much. It’s just green-room chatter. (But, yes, there are always exceptions. Rare exceptions.)
So, yeah, I don’t care much for Bloggingheads.tv and didn’t feel moved to respond to your piece. Now I have spent more time than that responding to your piece about your piece. Wow, I think I just blew my mind (as Colbert would say).
And, by the way, what the fuck is a diavlog?! It sounds like a dialog that has been injected with steroid-y levels of pomposity.
Finally, could you use a tinier font on your site? You do realize that “page space” on the Intertubes is basically limitless, so there’s no reason to format your stuff smaller than the fine print of a credit-card statement? Just sayin’. (And, yes, I was able to horse it up with the zoom-mo in my browser, but WTF?!)
And the Bloggingheads.tv site itself sucks. I clicked a link there to see what is currently on the front page, and now, 10 minutes later, it is still grinding away, and it hasn’t downloaded any actual content, just the templates and ad bullshit on the sides. And I have a very fast Internet connection. So there’s that. Good times.
Okay, all my vitriol has been purged. Feel better now.
In conclusion: sometimes silence doesn’t mean that your awesome material hasn’t reached an audience. Sometimes it means that it reached its audience and was found not awesome.
Steep + 39½
Yutsano
@Steeplejack: You left out the fact that the whole post was little more than a blatant blogwhore. I was more or less ignoring the matter until the original poster whined. Then I fell for it. Let’s just say when you admit your argument is bullshit from the get-go it doesn’t elicit a lot of sympathy.
Steeplejack
@Yutsano:
What you said. I sort of let that part slide as I worked myself into a rant about the other stuff. Which I was prompted to do because the second post was like a retro-recursive-blogwhore because the first one hadn’t worked. Ugh.
Gonna see if I can get to +50 tonight. Don’t think I have enough rum. Or tonic water. One or the other.
Yutsano
@Steeplejack: Okay fess up: what did your liver do to you before you went on this shock and awe campaign?
Steeplejack
@Yutsano:
My strength is as of ten because my heart is pure.
Actually, (a) I exaggerate my consumption for rhetorical effect, and (b) my liver does seem to have certain supernatural properties. There’s nothing like rainwater and pure grain alcohol, Mandrake. Purity of essence. POE.
bago
Glitch mob rocks!
http://yfrog.com/14mryz
Yutsano
@Steeplejack: Fair warning: I did go to a drinking school. We excelled at the art of the drink, to where the Irish are mad at us for stealing their title. It’s in a small town literally in the middle of nowhere. Not a lot else to do on Friday nights but knock a few back. Our alums were the best though, there was a parking lot next to the stadium. On football weekends it was like there wasn’t a drinking age.
Steeplejack
@Yutsano:
Pfft! I didn’t have to go to school to learn how to drink.
Yutsano
@Steeplejack: Ahh. An amateur. I shall take that fact into account.
Steeplejack
@Yutsano:
Heh. Puh-leeze.
bjkeefe
@Steeplejack: Thanks for your reply. A few quick responses to your points (following your numbers):
1. To me,
(emphasis “a”) does not count as a fair assessment of the site. It’d be like evaluating Balloon Juice from one post. And maybe it’d be, I dunno, a cooking one, who knows? How much would you respect my assessment of this site, in that case?
And:
Having shown some evidence of being familiar with them would have led me to assign more credibility to whoever did, yes.
2. A bit of quoting out of context, but I’ll let it slide.
3. Sorry the “explication” (prefer explanation here) about Mickey Kaus bored you. It seemed, as I said in my post, to be one of the prime complaints about Bh.tv, so I thought I should be detailed in my response to this aspect.
4. In fact, I am paying attention. Sorry if it wasn’t clear, but my point there was that I mostly listen to the diavlogs, even though I am streaming the video. This was to illustrate my larger point: that one does not need to sit and stare at the screen to get something out of these diavlogs. Hard as it may be to believe, I actually am capable of listening to a conversation while doing other things.
5. I certainly do take your point here. I myself spend much more time reading than I do watching (or listening, for that matter). Still, an hour a day, a few days a week, spent listening to people talk about something I might care about makes for a nice change of pace.
For the record, diavlog is a portmanteau, from dialog + vlog (video blog). It’s not intended to be pretentious. Just Bob Wright’s droll sense of humor, I expect.
Sorry my blog’s font was too small for you to read. If the 39½ wasn’t the cause, then I would suggest a tech problem on your end, due to, perhaps, an inadvertent press of the control key plus the hyphen key, or something of that nature. Because, in fact, the font on my blog is slightly larger than most of the sites I read regularly, due to my own aging eyes, and because among my known readers are several quite elderly people. None of whom, by the way, have ever registered a similar complaint. Should you ever revisit, I’d be curious to hear what the result would be were you to press the Ctrl and zero keys simultaneously upon arrival, to reset the Zoom to the default. (I’m assuming you’re using Firefox here; if not, there should be obvious choices in your browser menu to do the same thing.)
Finally, as far as my reaction to the “silence” goes, fine. If none of you had any interest in my response, that’s on me. I should have been around to post it as a comment in the original thread, and I should have made my post, wherever it lived, more interesting. In my own defense, I would say that I did put some thought into it, and (until now, at least) I thought at least a few Juicers (besides you) would have found it worth a look, maybe gotten a laugh or two from some of the inside jokes, and maybe had something to say.
To those (imaginary?) others who by your estimation found it “not awesome,” I would say: sorry my response was of no interest, but would it really have cost to type out one sentence to say so? But, again, no biggie. Sorry to have wasted everyone’s time, if indeed I did.
I have a sneaking suspicion I hit a sensitive spot or two in at least a few of you, though. Just a guess. But maybe it is the case that everyone in this thread is different from everyone in DougJ’s original Bh.tv thread.
So, anyway, thanks for reading, and thanks for taking the time to type out your thoughts.
Oh, and …
@Yutsano: Sorry, no. That’s pretty weak sauce, to boot. If I was really trying to “blogwhore,” I’d have been posting links to my blog here starting years ago, don’t you think? What’s the matter, you don’t have the chops to make up original insults, so you gotta resort to your CliffNotes of Clichés?
Enjoy your cocoon.
bjkeefe
@Steeplejack: I forgot a point. As far as your report on the site’s performance goes — that you went to visit it, once, and it didn’t load properly … well, I just hope you’re not in any sort of R&D or data analysis business.
You know how many times I’ve clicked over to this site and had it grind away, appearing to do nothing? It happens. It happens to every site, from time to time. But what would you say if I told you after the first time that, meh, it sucks?
Just sayin’.
Bill E Pilgrim
@bjkeefe: Okay, well I looked at your post, and wasn’t going to respond but since you ask nicely and seem to really want some:
First of all, my basic take is that a lot of commenters, and the poster, expressed the fact that they don’t care for watching Bloggingheads TV much.So the idea that expressing a preference warrants a “rebuttal”, as you call it, does seem a little odd to begin with. (“I don’t like anchovies!” “Well, I refute that claim!”
However okay, so some of the posts gave more detailed critiques about why it wasn’t worth their time to watch, and you wanted to respond to those and defend it. So what caught my eye was this:
“At least one commenter even went to the trouble of visiting the site’s About page, to “prove” that Bh.tv exists, evidently, as little more than an additional outlet for the blatherings one might politely call Kausfiles”
Right. Well, that was my comment. I recognized it when you mentioned the about section, which I dimly remember visiting to see who had started the Bloggingheads thing. Here however is what I actually wrote:
“This is from Bloggingheads TV’s “about” section:
Bloggingheads.tv was started in the fall of 2005 by Robert Wright, Mickey Kaus, and Greg Dingle. Wright and Kaus, both journalists, had long been attracted to the idea of pontificating on TV, but so far few if any TV producers had seen merit in this aspiration”
(and my comment continues)
Wanna-be TV pundits wondering why no one wanted to invite them to talk on TV, even though other online figures seemed to be on TV all the time. And that’s not even being mean, it’s their own description of themselves.
___
A whole bunch of points I would object to there. First, “went to the trouble of visiting the site’s About page”.
I went to the site’s About page to see who founded it. There I found their own description, which I quoted in their own words, and then paraphrased. As I said, I don’t think even they would object to the paraphrase since it’s pretty much what they wrote, which was self-deprecating and sort of humorous. Your saying that I claimed to “prove” anything about it being about Mickey Kaus, scare quotes or not, is disingenuous at best, and dishonest at worst. I wrote nothing about how often Kaus is on or that it’s an outlet for him. Or anything about him.
The point is, that was a quote from their own page about their mission statement. So if you’re disputing that, it’s really a problem you have with their own claim, in which case I’d prefer that you just “rebut” them and leave me out of it ;)
There’s more, but if I detailed the other things, those would take even more space here, and then you’d have to critique those points (BTW since your post did actually contain a lot of sort of accusations, it does warrant rebuttal. Whereas if you’d just written “Oh I like BHTV, myself”, it wouldn’t) and on it would go forever.
But hey listen, DougJ, John, and many of the commenters write things here that I disagree with all the time, so the basic concept doesn’t elude me.
srv
Krugman declares a lost-decade is coming.
Reagan proved deficits don’t matter. Except when a democrat is in the White House.
asiangrrlMN
I love Two Fat Ladies. They were so full of vim and vinegar (more likely vodka).
Damn. All three of my FH were on the thread tonight, and I missed it. And, TS, thank you for posting the vid so I could see my guilty pleasure again. Yum yum yum.
@srv: Isn’t that the case with everything?
@Bill E Pilgrim: You. So gentlemanly in your discourse, while delicately inserting the stiletto. Nice.
asiangrrlMN
@Bad Horse’s Filly: If it’s wrong, then I don’t want to be right.
@Steeplejack: I love Pepin, too, because he’s so low-keyed about everything. I liked your diatribe, too, but I worry about your liver!
demo woman
IMO Two Fat Ladies was a show about cooking with grease. In the US, it was originally aired on PBS and The Food Network. The show was witty but didn’t provide me with recipes that I would try.
My memory is fading but I don’t remember The Exxon Valdez oil spill defining Papa Bush’s administration. There were complaints about the government’s handling of the clean up but not complaints about who was at fault. Did the news media constantly talk about Bush’s lack of emotion?
Michael
Just trust the IDF. They might edit the recordings designed to inflame Jewish feelings, but they’re still accurate.
Honest!
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/idf-clarifies-go-back-to-auschwitz-recording-edited-but-authentic-1.294432
Bill E Pilgrim
@asiangrrlMN: You’re too kind as usual.
Though I do like the dashing figure I cut when seen through your description! Remind me to chat you up when feeling out of dash.
Cheryl from Maryland
Ymmm, fresh strawberries. Think I will go to the fridge to get the farmer’s market ones I bought yesterday and have them for breakfast. The farmers tell me this is the last week for strawbs, but next week will be raspberries.
JoJoDancer
Originally Posted by bjkeefe
Done.
Let the flamethrowing begin!
And other B’head people should feel free to jump in over there, of course.
Ah, well. I guess I’d have to call the experiment an epic fail, except that it’s not important enough to merit that modifier. Got one long response (from “Steeplejack,” which was mostly negative, and not at all original), a few short ones of no significance, and a couple of weak attempts at insults.
I hate to say it, but at this point, the Althouse commenters are superior to the Balloon Juice commenters.
Okay, that goes a little far.
debit
@bjkeefe: I don’t recognize your handle as that of a regular commenter here, so I ignored your initial blogwhore. Why should I care what you think about a post I don’t even remember? And if you have a problem with something DougJ said, I believe his email is right at the top of the page.
But whatever, it was one comment, so I ignored it. Then you came back and whined that people had the nerve to talk about what they wanted instead of what YOU wanted. And when someone did give you the attention you were begging for, you were rude and dismissive in response. What are you, a teenager?
numbskull
@bjkeefe:
Dude, you put up the original post (#4) at 10:15 pm on a Saturday night (my time, anyway), and you tell us your expectations for a deep, intellectual adventure with the readers here were not met.
Huh.
I’ll try to do better next time… :)
That Other Mike
@Yutsano: If you want a long lasting alcoholic cake, you can’t go wrong with the traditional xmas fruitcake. They usually get baked about this time of year, and then hidden in cupboards; the best part, though, is that you haul them out about once a month or so and feed them with booze. Basically, it involves poking holes in the top and slowly pouring a cup of brandy over until it’s absorbed; I’ve known many people who have fed enire bottles of brandy to their cakes. Slap some marzipan and heavy icing on it and eat with a thick slice of sharp cheese – it works, trust me.
It’s about the only thing I actually like about Christmas.
El Cid
@srv:
Plus, it’s a lot more fun for the upper classes when the working and middle classes are taught the lesson that they’re going to be desperate and controllable for the foreseeable future, and that the decline they’ve been on since the mid-1970s was only the beginning.
I guess it’s time we have a more Brazil-of-the-1970s-&-1980s society, with gleaming urban centers and well-guarded mansion areas, a tiny professional class to serve the upper classes, a vast majority of scared workers from poor to middlin’, and a largely unemployed underclass.
They’ve been waiting to teach us all a lesson since the 1930s and especially the 1960s, and I guess the Reagan revolution wasn’t near enough.
slightly_peeved
@Tattoosydney:
I can’t watch the local version after getting hooked on the British version (Masterchef Goes Large) when I was living in London. Each heat had 6 contestants, and the same format – cook something with a group of ingredients you’re given, cook a lunch service in a restaurant, cook your best 2 course meal. The best at all 3 went through. In the quarter-finals and semi-finals, they started the more interesting challenges – cook for an army brigade using army supplies, cook for the staff of a shift at Buckingham Palace – but no-one ever got “immunity”, they just removed or kept people purely on the basis of their potential to become a professional chef. No drama, just awesome food.
scav
bjkeefe. proof that flashers now come back and whine about not getting reviews of their performance. whew, there are still surprises to be had in this world.
slightly_peeved
If you can’t fit a “truly marvellous” rebuttal inside a comment, it isn’t truly marvellous.
And if you describe your own rebuttal to an argument as “truly marvellous”, you’d probably describe your own shit as “fragrant with all the promise of spring”.
Good writing is brief and clear. Read Strunk and White, then come back here.
Comrade Darkness
@Citizen Alan:
Interesting meta study in the times the other day indicating its probably not the saturated fats that get you, but the processing done to many saturated fat products, like mass salt and nitrates.
Allergies made us quit this stuff a few years ago, which I continue to be happy about, not the least of which because we’ve been finally losing weight.
There are other increased risks from red meat, like cancers, but that’s not what the meta study was looking at.
So, despite smearing lard all over her food, the dear thing didn’t have a coronary. God, I loved those ladies, so unapologetically involved in enjoying food.
Comrade Darkness
@That Other Mike: A spritzer. Open the fruitcake lid weekly and spritz it. Well, that’s what we do. Maybe I just like the aerosolized booze.
My mom found the fruitcakes during a visit and I explained about their treatment. Next day, what do I catch her doing?
Ash Can
@ellaesther: Hurrah! Block parties are awesome. The kids can go wild, running willy-nilly around the yards and tearing around in the street on their various wheeled vehicles without fear of cars, and the grownups can relax and indulge to their hearts’ content without worrying about who’s going to drive home. BTW, since you were already posting at 9:22 CDT, it means you just had a moment to do so before the bags tournament started, right? ;)
@Bad Horse’s Filly: Ming Tsai is scrumptious, and he was simply adorable when he guest-starred on Arthur.
arguingwithsignposts
@bjkeefe:
My response to your piece was something to the extent of tl;dr: someone is wrong on the Internet!
I got about halfway through the post before I started skimming the rest. I can’t remember saying that bloggingheads.tv was totally useless, but I can say I’ve only watched a few of them. And I listen to a lot of podcasts.
And dude, posting a lengthy exposition on why you disagree with the BJ commentariat (whom you mostly don’t bother to read, according to your piece) on a Saturday night is not likely to generate a ton of responses. Apparently the night crew came through for you, though.
Just sayin’
Steeplejack
@arguingwithsignposts:
Thanks. That should have been the shorter me from last night.
Gus
@debit: Cool! That’s some beautiful country.
tkogrumpy
@bjkeefe: If you haven’t gotten a peep,it should be self evident that no one gives a sheet.As for your original inquiry, bloggingheads is not worth the my time. The content takes forever to load, the audio is repulsive, the video is horrible, and I have never had enough interest in any of the dialogues I have sampled to watch the whole thing. I have returned to the site a dozen times, each time with the same disappointing result. Life is short and I was born in 1940. Is that an acceptable response?
frankdawg
@demo woman:
Actually they made a ‘pan-Asian’ beef roast last night that I might try. Rolled roast, browned garlic, onion and ginger. Lemon grass and cilantro on top with a cup or so of coconut milk. That sounds pretty good.
They made a nice meatloaf too but you are right about them being heavy on the fats. I have made a couple of things from their shows & see them as a transition stage from old style UK home cooking & the modern work of Nigella and Oliver. Not sure the US has an equivalent show; Maybe Justin Wilson but that was still a regional food. Sandra Lee if your mom was a really crappy cook & you are not particularly interested in better flavors.
mandarama
@slightly_peeved:
::wild applause::
Your pithy, well-executed comment made enduring the OP’s post(s) worthwhile.
That Other Mike
Everyone needs to be nicer about lard. It’s a wonder fat and should be used more frequently. Insert caveat about excessive use of fats of any kind here.
@Comrade Darkness: Oooh, good idea. I do like a cake which can get you drunk all by itself.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Tattoosydney: Meh. At our bisexual orgies, we don’t keep our undies on.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@bjkeefe: Yawn.
Bruce (formerly Steve S.)
“I’m larding the monkfish with anchovies. Look at my lovely larding knife.”
And regardless of what they were cooking they put bacon, butter, and anchovies in it.
bjkeefe
@Bill E Pilgrim: Thanks very much for your thoughtful reply. Some responses:
1. Regarding your part about …
… I would call to your attention the closing line of paragraph 2 in my post:
That is, you are right that one can not “rebut” a matter of taste, but I also think I was not trying to do that, exactly.
2. On the About page section:
First, I am glad that you picked up on the self-deprecating tone.
Second, I apologize for suggesting that all of the anti-Kausery was due to your one post, and specifically, I apologize for blurring my reference to your comment with another or others that suggested the site existed primarily as another outlet for his bloviating. I should have gone back to check who said what, rather than working from memory. I have added a correction to my post to reflect this.
Third, I agree that the proprietor(s) of Bh.tv is (are) solely responsible for his (their) own About page. Still, I think my observation that it’s outdated is information that is accurate and probably not known by those unfamiliar with the site, and my larger point — that it is unfair to judge the worth of the site, or any site, based largely on what is posted on an About page — still stands.
Finally, I am not going to concede that I was disingenuous or dishonest. Having gone back to look at your original comment, I still think you are suggesting there that Bh.tv has a lot more to do with Kaus than it actually does, and further, this …
… creates a strong implication, at the very least, which I believe I accurately characterized in my post. Although, as I say, I was misleading in suggesting that all of the anti-Kausery was due to you.
In conclusion, I’d be interested in hearing what else you objected to in my post — I did press people here with my follow-up comment (#77) to check it out in large part to get feedback, after all — but if this seems like too small a thing for you to want to spend any more time on, I can certainly understand that. Thanks again for what you did write.
bjkeefe
@numbskull: LOL! Well played.
@slightly_peeved:
My “[/fermat]” in that comment didn’t tip you off, eh? Ah, well, I suppose not everyone likes math-nerd jokes as much as I do. But see here, for example, if you like.
By the way, for the record: In that comment, I spelled marvelous with one L. You are entitled to your own vagaries, but I’d hate for the world to think I shared this particular one. I would suggest for future reference that if you are going to quote someone, you use copy and paste, rather than retyping.
You are entirely correct about my shortcomings regarding long-windedness. I have read EOS many times, and will continue to reread it, but evidently, it is an insufficient cure in my case.
In my own defense, I sometimes allow stuff I write to find its own length, if it seems appropriate, as it did here. This is especially so when posting online, as the reader is free at anytime to click the back button, close the tab, whatever. But, given that my post could be called a sales pitch, you’re right that brevity would have counted for a lot.
@debit: Thanks for your tip. As it happens, though, I was already aware of this option and I did, in fact, email DougJ (and he was kind enough to reply). The reason I also linked to my post in this open thread was because, as I said in that post, I had more problems with the comments responding to Doug than I did with his original post. And more to the point, as I also said in my post, I was hoping to encourage at least a few Juicers to give Bh.tv a second chance, or a longer look.
As for your refusal to read anything by anyone whose name you don’t recognize, I can only say that you have my deepest sympathies.
@tkogrumpy: Yes, it is.
I would say that you are the exception rather than the rule, as far as how much investigation has been done before forming a conclusion, but one could not reasonably ask for any more than you say you gave.
debit
@bjkeefe: I frequently read things written by posters with names I don’t recognize. Those things just have to be interesting.
bjkeefe
@debit: You originally said:
And now you say:
I am unable to determine how you know things are interesting, or not, without clicking the link, but perhaps you have magical powers.
Regarding your word choice at the end of the first blockquote, please see my response above, to Yutsano.
debit
@bjkeefe: Honey, if you have to blogwhore in the first place, you’re not interesting. And now I’m going to stop giving you the attention you so obviously and desperately crave.
bjkeefe
@debit: I am sorry you are unable to think of anything but the most stale of insults, particularly when it does not at all apply — as I illustrated to Yutsano — and now that you’re retreating while repeating yourself, I will bid you farewell.