No! No! This NEEDS to be seen!

I posted this on the Facebook Machine yesterday. Didn't get a lot of feedback. And I'm not posting it IN ORDER to get feedback, but I really REALLY feel strongly about people seeing this. So I'm posting it again. Over here. On Blogger. Which I really only rarely use.

It's a weird video. I'll be the first to say that. This gal posts posts in which she doodles math, basically. And she's a 'personality.' And her singing is weird. But this post is FASCINATING. She talks about modernist composers use of 12 tonal scales (is that the right word?) and what that has to do with art, creativity, math, pattern recognition. All the interesting stuff!

So watch it. Or don't! See if I care.

Don't wanna watch that? Fine. I bet you'll watch this nonsense.

(Oh Jack Black, I can't stay mad at you.)

A Season of Sequels

I've put a lot of thought into this and I think the hubris of the evil Galactic Empire is best exemplified through the second Death Star, the one that was under construction in 1983's Return of the Jedi.

Yes, this is what I do in my spare time. Choke on it.

Think about it. The Battle of Yavin (where the first Death Star was destroyed - duh!) took place only a few short years before the debut (and subsequent destruction) of the second Death Star (Battle of Endor). With the Empire's defeat at Yavin, which, remember, was so very catastrophic and unexpected that Grand Moff Tarkin refused even considering evacuation AND where the only survivor of the roughly 1.5 million on-board escaped by accident, you would think that the Empire would have applied those "leassons-learned" to their super-weapon design in the future.

No sir. They just built a bigger mousetrap, because that was really the biggest problem with the first Death Star: it was about 7 times too small a target. And as everyone knows, a gigantic two meter exhaust vent was a little too excessive. I mean if an untrained farmboy could hit it with a proton torpedo well... So they decided to fix that by...wait a minute...they still had gigantic shafts that led through the superstructure of the space-station? Right to its volatile easily-explodable core? Big enough to fly freighters through?!? Aw for Pete's sake!

So the Empire just kept chugging along with nary a thought of changing course in spite of overwhelming evidence that it would be good to change everything about what went wrong before. Wait for it...

Hang on. It even kinda looks like the unfinished second Death Star. Weird.

I've been at it again. I should have known that once Meridth pointed out during the last debacle I had with the dreaded McZoo that I'd be better served if I had a McRib instead of mere bacon to represent pork, I'd have to try it again...this time at full magnitude! So there I was again, eyes resting upon those sundry cartons, each a small treasure chest of cardiac distress. Each taunting me, ever taunting!

NEVERMORE!

They really forced my hand with this one. November was McRib month. For the first time in many years the McRib would be available nationwide (and I mean WIDE) at your local neighborhood McDonalds. It wasn't going to last though. Just a narrow window to squeeze my engorged body through to become one of the elite: a Full-on McZoo veteran.

So I engaged the target.

Ugh! Unbelievable!

That photo says it all, the greasy discarded bread discs, still glistening with unholy nectar. I can't believe I'm finding myself here again. What is wrong with me?!? There has to be some support group for this...



So let's do the math: that's a 1/3 pound Angus burger at the bottom, then the McRib patty, a grilled chicken slab, and a Fillet-o-the-Fish on top. And a red onion. For flair. It may seem incongruous to the entire spirit of this ill-advised exercise to select the grilled chicken in lieu of its fried and breaded brethren. I admit, it's the road less traveled.

Fast-food and a Robert Frost reference. Who loves ya baby?

And brother, that made all the difference. Meridth asked me at half-time how it tasted and I was (and am) ashamed to say it's extraordinarily delicious. So much better than the McZoo I. I'm forced to conclude that it is because the Fillet-o-your-Fish and the southern-style fried chicken I had with the first McZoo simply overloaded the grease-center of the taste-bundle at the apex of my spinal column. (I looked it up on wikipedia.) This time around with the Fillet-o-Phish as the sole "breaded/fried" entrant, I got the blendation of greasy-beefy, sauced-an-mold-injected, faux-healthy and breaded/fried. It's all about balance, friend.

Yep, balance. It's the peak-level yoga position of meals, right there.

Am I going to hell for this? Maybe. Between all the factory-farm terror, the oppression of the hispanophonic McDonalds workers required to bring me the meal, the amount of exercise I will have to (and already have had to) do to purge my roller-coaster -ride of a body AND the remote possibility that some impressionable thing will read this blog-entry and foolishly try to emulate, or worse still, to top my absurd quest for gonzo-food creation...

Hey kids! Why not top your favorite pizza with MORE PIZZA?!?

...there's certainly a case to be made for my infernal eternal rest. That being said, I regret nothing.

And will never ever do this again.

Why I Need Meridth: A Gonzo Tale

When Meridth isn't around I have the tendency to go off the rails just a bit. When she was in NYC for the summer of 2006 I watched all three (at the time) Terminator movies back to back to back, had a severe case of food poisoning, worked 60 hours a week, ate 1500 Otter Pops and ran seven miles every morning. It was a gonzo summer. Suffice it to say that Meridth centers me in an important stabilizing way and when she's gone, things tend to become pear-shaped, like an ill-formed lump of clay on a potter's wheel...


...which leads us to this peculiar photograph. What is it? What does it mean? What does it have to do with my dignity? It's simple really...


BEHOLD THE McZOO!!

Yes, like the cast-off cigarette butts tossed aside by the wheezing emphysemic, these buns are the husks lesft over in the construction of this...this...monstrosity...this abomination. What is it you ask? What drives a man to so alter the natural constitution of the 'burger' phenotype? What was its unholy aim? It's an elegant theory actually...like the ancients in their construction of the Tower of Babel, I only sought to reach the heavens of deliciousness by melding all the varieties of animal flesh offered on the McDonalds menu into one Voltron-like mountain of meat. How could this be a sin?


So one Saturday last month I rolled up to the drive through and ordered one Third Pound Angus Bacon Cheeseburger, one Chicken Selects Chicken Sandwich, and one Fillet-o-Fish...

(Meridth: "It would have been cooler AND grosser if you had the McRib." Edward: "Don't I know it, but you have to work with what's available and Bacon = Pig. Good enough for me.")


Looking at them all just sitting there with their accusing stares was intimidating. Like the Tell-Tale Heart, I was consumed with madness. Working swiftly and with surgical precision I deconstructed the sandwiches, unveiling their meaty cores and combined them, knitting flesh-to-flesh like a culinary Doctor Frankenstein. And the result was no less monstrous and incapable of being loved.


In his epistle to the Romans, Paul called me out as one of the "inventors of evil things" chasing that stupendous and gonzo line between culinary genius and coronary disaster. I ask you: what was the result?


I was so preoccupied with whether or not I could combine so many different meats, I never stopped to think if I should!

Next month I'm going to try to stick two pieces of each type of meat on one sandwich and call it the McNoah's Ark.

Fall/Winter Ketchup

So we know what you've practically gnawed your fingers to the very bone wondering and wondering about what's been going on in the 'nuts an' bolts' section of our portfolio. I mean we've posted posts pertaining to a number of perfectly timely events, such as the release of stop-motion animated films and...well I guess that's been about it in the last few months. What can I say? Meridth gets excited.

Oh yeah, I guess we posted about that baby thing too.

Anyway, they had Halloween last year; I don't know if you remember. We went to a super keen party with some mates of ours and were subsequently whupped in a make-shift costume contest, although I'd say we did alright, time-constraints notwithstanding. What could we do? One couple was dressed up as Popeye and Olive Oyl. Can you say pwned?I went as a nerd. (I know! Huge stretch of the imagination, that!) Note the dragon tee and Vorpal Sword +3. Not pictured are the specs I'm sporting. Guess I should have turned down the AWESOME on that cowl of mine so you could see it. Meridth went as an Edo Period Samurai. Note the historical accuracies: purple was a very very popular color in those days. And when the fashion conscious samurai was without his obi belt, a polka-dotted scarf from the Gap would have been a suitable substitute.

So pumpkins:
that's mine on the left. It wasn't a good Halloween for me I guess cos I also got whupped it the highly ritualized and traditional pumpkin carving contest. Meridth's pumpkin was brill...
...particularly at night. But then again......the other Meridth's pupmkin was almost equally wicked. Tha's right: in the time it took me to paint and carve that crappy Jack Skellington-meets-a-'97-Goth-convention train-wreck, Meridth carved two turbo-cool pumpkins. I lose.

Next: AQUARIUM DAY!

Monterey is home to Monterey Bay. (Or maybe it's the other way around, but...) And Monterey Bay is home to Monterey Bay Marine Preserve. And because of the Monterey Bay Marine Preserve they built the Monterey Bay Aquarium. Which is the location Meridth and I went on the second Saturday of November last year. Pretty rad.

How rad you ask?This rad. Oh, unconvinced? What would you say to...

...footage of cute roly-poly otters?

What?! Have you no heart? What about......still photos of a roly-poly young fish enthusiast? Meridth is really good at taking surreptitious photographs of innocent bystanders. She's like a hitman with a 6-megapixel handgun.

Anyway, that was way fun and I could post boat-loads of pictures about it. I won't. Suffice it to say that the otters were ultra-cute, the jellyfish were stunning and the sharks were really rather intimidating. The day's only down point came as a small booth were they told us about the unethical behavior displayed in the commercial tuna fishing market. Serious bummer cos I love a tuna sandwich.

What's next...uh...T.giving!
Meridth's super-cool team came up and down from sundry CA locales for a veritable bender of game-play......and...uh...other hijinks.

RADAR was pretty much in hog-heaven. Between my brother-in-law's gnarly toes and Nick slipping him random bits of bird-flesh all weekend, we turned into the biggest McKean Fan around.

Up next: musing on silent films.

So we all knew that Meridth was cool. I mean, she's been pulling-off those Tina Fey glasses since the Clinton Administration. Then along comes the Lon Chaney classic "The Unknown" in a NetFlix envelope one afternoon and I finally get it: Meridth is the coolest gal ever. There. I said it.

Now watch out what you read about this movie before you spool it up on your DVD device. A well-placed spoiler will do just that--spoil a great moment in the history of celluloid. (Since y'know, I know you guys all dash out of your houses like gang-busters to snatch up all the books, movies, comics, vacation pamphlets, candy bars and dinner rolls we suggest to you. Gosh, it's great to have minions like you!) That said, it bears mentioning that 1) the movie is about an armless knife-thrower in a freak show. 2) It ends with horses trying to dash a man to bits. And 3) the choices made in the movie are just so eerie and narratively fitted and fan-freaking-tastic that you'll just want to proselytize for the film; to get out and talk with people about it, get it out there for people. Wow!

Chistmas rolled in about two weeks after we saw The Unknown. It was a rather low-key affair this year since we just hung out here with RADAR and an XBOX 360. Meridth and I have been adapting various British Christmas traditions into our oeuvre. THis year we tracked down some classic Christmas Crackers (pictured below) so we got some schmarmy cereal-box-bottom toys, a snap of gunpowder and wrinkly paper crowns. Yeah. Go England. Way to celebrate. Ours sadly didn't state on the packaging that they were "awesome." We had to come to that conclusion on our own. Which we did, shorly before snapping this candid at about 12:07 AM Christmas morning.(Oh what?! Yeah? We were still up that late on Christmas Eve. Yeah, we opened our presents 'on' Christmas...it was after twelve anyway...who are you to judge? We had a busy day, alright? Those zombies on Dead Rising weren't going to kill themselves. Seriously!)

Seriously? Are you bored yet? Is this entry too long? Look, it's late and since we're pretty sucky at ketchup maneuvers, we'll let this one end here with a "to be continued" thingy. Maybe invoke a bit of a Zeigarnik Effect. Yeah. Look THAT one up...

End transmission.