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I called Brad Miller's Raleigh office just now. I told the lady who answered that I think Miller is doing a great job and I hope he keeps doing it, especially on health care. And I really hope he isn't being intimidated by the crazy people.

She sounded really grateful to hear a positive voice. She said no one ever calls to say attaboy, they only hear from people who are angry. I told her that I had to call when I heard about the threats because I wanted them to know that there are a lot of North Carolinians who support Miller and support health care reform. I said I thought it was a bullying tactic, and the screamers don't represent the majority, and she said she agreed & she thinks Miller knows it too.

I'm really glad I called. I almost didn't because I'm not in his district. I did admit on the phone that I'm not a constituent but I live only a few miles outside his district and I think he's great.

If you are appalled by violent intimidation tactics against elected representatives, and you're worried that your rep. might give in to the fear, please call and thank them for supporting health care reform. You'll make a big difference to some poor staffer who has to listen to abusive phone calls, and your message might actually get to the rep.

Democratic Congressman Brad Miller receives threatening calls, including death threat, over health care bill.

Clearly the calls must have come from dissatisfied voters acting in isolation. It couldn't have anything to do with a coordinated astroturf campaign to work people up into a frenzied rage and then set them loose on public meetings, for the purpose of disruption and intimidation. After all, inciting people to near-violence never leads to threats of violence.

The weird thing is, Brad Miller isn't all that liberal. He couldn't be to get elected in a district including six rural North Carolina counties plus Wake. I hope Miller isn't letting the "Scream Real Loud Movement" intimidate him.

July 30 movie: Green Fire. Lesser Stewart Granger vehicle about an emerald mine, costarring Grace Kelly. They were clearly trying to recreate the magic of King Solomon's Mines, and clearly failed. It's not a bad movie, just not high on my list of Stewart Granger must-sees.

July 25 movie: A Night at the Opera. I tend to prefer the Marx Brothers' paramount movies; in general I think there's too much plot getting in the way of the story in their MGM movies. So I don't watch the MGM movies as often, which is a crying shame when we're talking about A Night at the Opera. Okay, it's true, there's too much plot, especially in the second half. But so many funny bits! The one where they shove all those people into the stateroom, the one where they argue about the contract ("you can't fool me! There ain't no Sanity Clause!"), the one where they're hiding from the hotel detective and keep moving the beds from one room to the next, the final chaotic chase around the opera stage. So much funny.

July 24/25 movies: The Saint Strikes Back, The Saint in London, The Saint Takes Over, The Saint in Palm Springs. I can't possibly do a separate write-up for each Saint movie so I'm going to cover them all in one post.

The Saint was a detective series starring George Sanders. Every movie is basically the same. There's a murder, Sanders is witty and urbane, he makes quips, drinks cocktails, solves the crime, usually exonerates a pretty girl who was wrongly suspected, he makes fools of local law enforcement, and then lets them take the credit. There. Now you've seen The Saint.

It's worth watching if you like George Sanders, which I do. The series, like many, started strong and then went downhill. I would recommend starting with The Saint Strikes Back and The Saint in London, Sanders' earliest efforts as the Saint (though Louis Hayward played the character first). I thought both were pretty good, London especially. I probably would not watch The Saint in Palm Springs again, might watch The Saint Takes Over if nothing better was available.

Jul 21 movie: Satchmo. Seems like just a couple of weeks ago I was celebrating being caught up on the movie list for the first time in ages. And here I am again, with over 20 movies to right up. I'm nursing a headache tonight and am tired of lying around doing nothing, but not really up to doing something. So let me get to the movies.

Satchmo was, as you might guess, a documentary about Louis Armstrong. I complained a lot about the other music documentaries we watched recently. Well this one was everything I wanted. 2 hours long so they had room to get into some depth; lots of concert footage; interviews with people who had known him and performed with him. Best of all it was written by music critic Gary Giddins, whose enthusiasm for great music is infectious. Giddins wrote the definitive book on the first half of Bing Crosby's career. He said years ago that he was working on a second book, about Bing's immense contribution to the development of radio. I hope he finishes that book.

Anyway, if you want to learn about Louis Armstrong I highly recommend this movie. We think it was done originally for PBS; it's available on Netflix.

This article about the cancellation of Guiding Light is spot on, I think, on the appeal of soaps. It's the only format where you can watch characters live their entire lives day in, day out. I've been watching the ABC shows on and off since 1980 and there are characters I saw born who are still on the shows, now married with children of their own. I've seen these people grow up, sometimes literally -- in a couple of cases there's never been a recast and the same actor played the toddler 20 years ago and the adult today. Sure their lives are crazy, full of histrionics and bizarre plots. It's soap opera!

She gets a couple of things wrong though. First, a small thing: she speculates that the attempted conversion of soaps to HD flopped because the raw ugliness of standard video matched the raw ugliness of soap plots. Well that's an interesting idea, which kind of hinges on soap viewers being idiots. I have a much less kooky explanation: HD looks like ass on a standard TV. I bet most people who watch soaps don't have high def TVs. I remember when All My Children suddenly started looking like ass on my (standard) TV, and I remember when it went back to normal a few months later. I should have realized it was HD; I just didn't put it together. That's a trivial point, I know. It's just a pet peeve of mine when TV critics assume that everyone in the country has HD and therefore HD is an improved experience for everyone.

Second, she says that the pitfall of soaps is that you have to watch every day. "Miss a few episodes of a soap," she says, "and you've lost the thread completely. It becomes a cycle -- the more you miss the less interesting subsequent episodes are." This is completely wrong. So wrong that it makes me wonder if she has ever watched a soap, though she writes with some familiarity about Guiding Light. Daytime soaps are written so you can watch 2-3 times a week and easily keep up. Once you're familiar with a show, you can skip two weeks and barely miss a beat. I've stepped away for half a year or more, and needed only a couple of weeks to get back up to speed.

Soaps are designed that way. Think about it: a show that had to be watched every single day would never succeed. Most people don't want to invest that much time in a TV show. And even for those who do, real life intervenes. The people creating soaps know this. They learned how to do this long before VCRs and now DVRs, back when if you missed a show, you missed it. They fill the shows with repetitive "as you know Bob" dialogue to help sporadic viewers keep up. Characters repeat plot points and thumbnail descriptions of their relationships constantly. And a barrage of advertising in magazines* and during the shows lets viewers know what day to tune in for key events like a wedding, popular couple reuniting, villain getting their comeuppance, etc. If everyone watched every day, there'd be no need for that.

I think the author's larger point is correct though, that the era of soaps is over. It's been clear for a long time that ABC's goal is to move the soaps off ABC and onto the Soapnet cable channel. Which will mean massive budget cuts, which will likely mean the departure of many of the characters I really like (the ones who've been around for a long time, so they have higher salaries). Plus, I know you'll roll your eyes when you read this, but the writing quality will go way down. Believe me when I say there's plenty of room for dis-improvement. I watched Port Charles; I know what truly bad soap writing looks like.

I'm not looking forward to this happening to the shows I follow. I'm a bit sad to learn that Guiding Light was cancelled even though I never watched it. It's been on the air for more than 70 years, and still includes one member of the original family from the show's first years.

(In case you're wondering, I watch 2 shows, All My Children and One Life to Live. I probably wouldn't if not for the DVR. Skipping commercials, a show only takes 40 minutes. All My Children takes less time because I also fast-forward plot-lines that I'm not interested in. And I can save them up and have a show marathon while I'm doing some repetitive task like filing my CDs.)

*Correction: I'm not sure if the magazines technically count as advertising. Because they aren't ads in regular magazines; they're soap magazines with cover stories about what's going to happen when, which actors are coming and going, show recaps, and etc. Some soap mags are produced by the networks but I don't think all are.

So, unless you live under a rock you probably heard about "the Beer Summit," at which President Obama, Vice President Biden, Henry Louis Gates and James Crowley sat down to have a beer together last Thursday. Don't worry, I'm not going to rehash the endless pontificating about what it meant for race relations in America (answer: nothing). Instead I have an observation about the brands of beer consumed, and the press coverage thereof.

First of all, it's ridiculous that with everything going on in the world, so much time was spent discussing what particular beer each man drank. Couldn't that time have been better spent talking about health care, or the situation in Iran? I read that a group of over 100 demonstrators had been imprisoned and tortured into false confessions (excuse me, coerced using harsh interrogation techniques into providing questionable intelligence) and the Iranian government is planning a round of show trials. I'd sure like to know more about that. But who am I kidding, we're talking about TV news here. Beer brands it is!

I heard a lot of bitching and moaning about Obama drinking Bud Light. Both from right wingers complaining that Bud Light is now owned by a Belgian company and Obama should buy American (to which all I can say is, really? Because Obama drank it, Budweiser is now un-American? Good luck with that), and from left wing yuppies who sound crushed that Obama would drink a crappy beer like Bud Light.

I have to admit that I was puzzled by the choice of Bud Light. Of course I know that there's no accounting for taste, and no way to predict what someone will like, especially someone I've never met. But still, set aside the fact that he's president and ask yourself: A Chicago mover and shaker, law professor, wasn't born rich but doing just fine now, eats healthy, likes fine food, favorite bottled drink is Black Forest Berry Honest Tea;* what beer does he drink? It's not Bud Light.

Well I finally heard an explanation that makes sense: Budweiser is union made. Miller is also union made (and is even worse beer than Bud, or so I hear from people who drink beer). Coors, which the Fox & Friends yahoos were proposing as a better choice for the President to drink, is not union made. Also, the owner of Coors is a major Republican donor.

Of course I don't know for a fact that Obama drank Bud Light because it's union made. But I remember last fall, the official campaign website said all over that everything they sold was union made. So it's obviously something he's thought about.

This got me to thinking. Well first of all, it must be tough to know that every single thing you do in public will be analyzed and judged like a statement of some kind. Second, does this count as a dog whistle? As you know Bob, a "dog whistle" is a statement by a politician meant to appeal to a particular group, while anyone not in the target group misses it entirely. The first time I ever heard of the concept was George W. Bush in 2000, dropping phrases from evangelical hymns into campaign speeches and debate responses. Most people didn't even notice, or if they did shrugged it off as an odd turn of phrase. Evangelicals heard it and thought, "He's one of us."

So does a Democratic politician drinking Bud Light count as a dog whistle? Most people won't even notice, or if they do, will wonder why the heck Obama would choose to drink such bad beer. People who care about buying union made are more likely to notice. Are dog whistles speech only, or can they be an action as well?

*I read that Obama liked Honest Tea during the campaign, but didn't remember the flavor & had to look it up. I'm really not an Obama stalker, really.

We have a smoker! I got it for Georg for his birthday. Instead of a freestanding smoker (which costs a lot and is one more thing to be stored, a perennial problem in our tiny house) I got the Smokenator, a gadget that fits inside a Weber kettle grill.

It's basically a metal divider which contains the charcoal on one side of the grill. Which has the dual effect of making the heat indirect, and reducing air to the charcoal so it burns more slowly. In the top of the divider is a water pan, which keeps the meat from drying out. It also included a thermometer which clips to the top of the grill and an extra grill rack in case you want to smoke a lot of meat at once.

I found out about the Smokenator on Amazon -- I was looking at stove-top smokers, which are simply a rectangular pan with a rack inside, you put sawdust in the bottom of the pan, put the meat above on the rack and put the whole thing on the stove for four hours. That seemed like it would only really work for food that can be quickly smoked like small pieces of fish and chicken. Because who wants to have the stove on for four hours in the middle of summer? And it seems like you'd also end up with a house full of smoke, which would be a real a problem since we don't have an exhaust fan over the stove.

While I was trying to make up my mind I saw reviews for the Smokenator, which sounded like it would work better for us. Someone was selling it on Amazon but I googled and found the maker's own website. Bought it direct from him because I figured he'd probably make more that way, though the cost was the same to me either way.

So I gave it to Georg yesterday and he's trying it out today, with country style ribs and potatoes. Of course we won't know until dinner time how well it really works, but it seems to be doing the job so far. Ribs only take four hours, maybe next time we'll try something more involved like pork butt or brisket. Brisket is the holy grail of smoking so maybe we should work our way up to that.

Along with the Smokenator I also got Georg a barbecue cookbook which is geared towards competition and has all kinds of good advice. The cookbook author (a barbecue champion) says good brisket is all about technique and you really have to practice and take lots of notes if you want to get good at it. Practicing means lots of brisket so I have no problem with that! The cookbook also suggests finding a good local butcher shop and befriending the butcher. I think this would be more critical if you were going into competition and were going to need to order mass quantities of meat repeatedly during the year. We're not ever going to need, say, 20 racks of ribs and 5 whole briskets, so we don't need to know the butcher's ordering schedule in advance. Then again, we're already friendly with one of the meat guys at Whole Foods (in fact I told him last week I was giving Georg a smoker). If tonight's ribs turn out well, maybe I'll take him one tomorrow. That is if we have any left over!

[ETA: The country ribs turned out great! Wonderful smoky flavor. They didn't even need sauce. The meat was tender but not falling-apart tender, which is how I prefer it. We had a little trouble regulating the temperature, nothing too problematic. For a first effort it was a smash success. I think we just need practice. Lots and lots of practice.]

This afternoon we stopped in at Southern Season for the end of their annual inventory sale. The high ticket items (All Clad pans, canned truffles, things like that) were pretty well cleaned out. We found a few nice things though. I bought a small pie pan, which I've been wanting for a long time. It takes an awful lot of fruit to fill a regular pie pan, and then it takes the two of us almost a week to eat the pie.

So I got a small pie pan, and used it to make a plum pie this evening. The recipe called for lemon zest, which I didn't have, so I grated in some ginger. Unfortunately I didn't have a recipe for a small size pie, and didn't know how much thickener to use. I tried to estimate by decreasing the proportions in a regular sized pie recipe. I must have gotten it wrong because the pie turned out really runny. It was basically plum soup with a piece of crust on top. On the bright side it tasted really good. The ginger gave it a nice sharp flavor.

Maybe it will thicken more overnight. Or not, in which case we'll have plum soup again tomorrow.

july 30 movie: Gold Diggers of 1933. Skipping ahead to tonight's movie, the delightful Gold Diggers of 1933. Coincidentally, a couple of weeks ago Kevin wrote into my show and requested Ginger Rogers singing "We're In the Money", which is the opening number in this movie, and I was crushed that I didn't have it on CD because it's such a fun number. Then TCM showed it a few days ago so I could record it and get the song for my show! Thanks TCM!

This was an early Busby Berkeley musical, with racy pre-code situations and dialogue. Here's an example:

"I look better in clothes than any of you. If Barney could see me in clothes --"
"He wouldn't recognize you."

The movie features incredible, deliriously strange numbers, like "Petting in the Park" (which I've written about before) and "The Forgotten Man." This time I'm including a clip of a quiet, sweet moment: Dick Powell serenading Ruby Keeler & accompanying himself on piano. Be sure to watch to the end, when Powell and Keeler blow kisses to each other. So adorable!

link if you don't get the right video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBkE6TOmMEU

I wasn't sure if Powell was really playing the piano in that clip, though it sure looks like it. While Googling to find out if he played piano, I discovered that he grew up in the same small town as my first boyfriend: Mountain View, Arkansas, population 2,876. Back then my boyfriend told me that no one famous had ever come from Mountain View except Grandpa from Hee-Haw. (Grandpa had a restaurant right down the road from the shop where my boyfriend's parents made mountain dulcimers.) How could he have neglected Dick Powell? Powell's childhood home is on Main Street, and I was right there in the late 80s! We went to the town square, I probably walked right past Powell's house. I wish I had known. Well, I didn't know who Dick Powell was back then, but don't confuse me with facts.

We just got back from an incredible dinner at Panciuto in Hillsborough. It was a "community dinner," everyone sat around one long table and the food was passed down the table on platters. Panciuto's regular chef was joined by Phoebe Lawless of Scratch (the pie lady from the Durham farmer's market). I think this was one of the best Italian meals I've eaten. Here's the menu:

Starter: Spicy Scilian Rusks and prosciutto (this was kind of a crispy thick cracker with a peppery/anise flavor, topped with a thin slice of prosciutto)

Breads:

• Sardinian parchment bread (very thin flatbread)
• Farinata (triangles made of farina)
• Foccacine al griglia (don't know what that means, it was a grilled bread much like naan)
• the breads were served with a fresh tomato spread

Dinner:

• Torta di zucca e riso (a savory crust filled with rice and shredded zucchini. Had a lemony flavor. Maybe the best thing all night.)
• Cheese with gooseberry jam (this is the one thing we didn't get, the platter was empty by the time it got to where we were sitting. I saw it on someone else's plate, it was that Italian cheese with whole peppercorns in it, which I love, but there was so much other wonderful food that I don't mind missing it. We can get that cheese at Whole Foods.)
• Seared Cobia scallopine with cipollata, Sungold tomatoes and oregano vinaigrette (fish, perfectly cooked)
• Ditalini (homemade pasta) with eggplant, tomatoes, basil, guanciale, breadcrumbs and ricotta salata (rivaled the torta for the best dish of the night)
• Salad greens with tomatoes, watermelon, mozzarella and basil
• Pattypan squash (the salad and squash sound plain compared to everything else, but they were wonderful)

Dessert:

• Toasted corn gelato
• Grappa infused peaches and blackberries
• Zabaglione
• Semolina-olive oil cake

Study: Abstinence-Only Lunch Programs Ineffective At Combating Teen Obesity

"It's not the government's place to step in and tell my kids about food and how it's okay in moderation or whatever," said Woodbridge PTA member Steven Bray, a father of two students. "My son's going to learn how to eat the same way I did--by watching monkeys do it at the zoo."

--The Onion (of course)

We had a great time at the WXDU outing to the Durham Bulls tonight. They had gotten one of those boxes in right field with tables and chairs instead of bleachers. And we were under a roof! It ended up not raining, but it sure looked like it was going to so I was relieved to see the shelter.

It was a pretty exciting game: the Norfolk Tides took an early lead, then the Bulls had a blowout fifth inning, then the Tides rallied in the 8th but weren't quite able to come back. The final score was 7-5 Bulls.

The funniest thing tonight was the drunk people in the box in front of us. They had a keg, and were working really hard at emptying it, so much that about half-way through the game I asked Georg if he thought they were satirically imitating drunkards, or were they actually plastered. He couldn't tell and neither could I.

It became clear that it was drunkenness, not satire, when one of them shoved a peanut up another one's nose, and he couldn't get it out. It wasn't so much the peanut going up the nose that gave them away; accidents do happen. It was the reaction: everyone in the box thought it was uproariously funny, except the guy with the peanut in his nose, who calmly explained to the woman who had done it that she owed him and was obligated to get the peanut out. Her reply: "I didn't know it would go so far up!"

He kept trying to give her a napkin (how that was supposed to help get a peanut out of his nose, I don't know) and then the two of them tried to find a pair of tweezers. They couldn't find anyone with tweezers, imagine that. Eventually one of the other drunks convinced the peanut guy to close the other nostril and blow out, dislodging the peanut. (It wasn't in the shell and wasn't stuck in there; it had just gone far enough up into his nose that he couldn't reach it.) That got the peanut about halfway out, and instead of pulling it the rest of the way out he sat there while all the other drunks took photos of the peanut hanging out of his nose.

The single funniest thing I've ever seen at a baseball game may be a pair of drunks trying to borrow tweezers so they can remove a peanut lodged in one's nose.

After cooking something greasy that doesn't stick -- like fried eggs or a grilled cheese sandwich -- in a cast iron pan, the best thing you can do for the pan is let it sit for a few hours rather than washing it right away. The grease coats the pan as it gradually cools and improves the seasoning.

See, I'm not letting my lunch dishes sit because I'm lazy. I'm seasoning the pan.

I've been wondering what HGTV is going to do for programming, now that no one wants to watch "Flip That House!" or "Yes, You Can Afford It!" or whatever the hell they called those shows all about people buying houses for outrageous amounts of money and then turning around and selling them for even more.

Well no one wants to watch those shows now. So how is HGTV responding to the the new era of bankruptcy, repossession & underwater mortgages? Apparently it's Real Estate Intervention, full of painful truths from a scary-looking bald guy. The ad I saw was full of homeowners frowning and saying "That is unacceptable" while scary-looking bald guy says "I tell them the things they don't want to hear!"

Is this HGTV's new austerity? Nah, they're probably just waiting for the economy to bounce back a tiny bit so they can start up again with reruns of "How Much Did That Asshole Pay For That Tacky McMansion!"

Having trouble making the new MT install cross-post to LiveJournal. It's a really old plugin with no alternative (which I do not understand, I can't be the only person in the world using both, and for crying out loud, SixApart used to own Livejournal) and every upgrade I worry that it will stop working. Crossing my fingers!

[eta: It's buggy, but seems to be working. Main problem looks like MT and LJ now define "publication date"/"creation date" differently. Trying to post an entry which is older than an already existing entry makes LJ very unhappy. I'll just have to be careful not to do that.]

The migration to MT 4.3 last night went well! We got my blog and Georg's moved, I got my theme mostly set up and we put Georg on a default theme temporarily. I meant to do more -- work on his theme and get started on moving the Divaville Lounge site -- then I crashed around 11:30. Was suddenly so tired I had trouble finishing a sentence, and that is no frame of mind to be mucking around with code. So I went to bed.

This morning I was feeling lazy and did the Sunday crossword puzzle before my show instead of working. So it's back to it now! There is an actual work-related reason for this upgrade: MT 4.3 has some features I really want for a client site. But the beta is only in MTOS, the open source version. The client site runs on MT Pro and uses enough of the community features that I couldn't get the site to run on the 4.3 beta. Installing the beta on my own site lets me try out the features like true pagination of category lists and comments, and filtering search by author, date or category. I'm assuming the official release next week will offer both OS and Pro versions; am not mentioning these groovy new features to the client on MT Pro until I know for sure, just in case.

Now if they just build rating/voting into the core MT program, that will really make me happy. The only real option for that now is a plugin, which when I installed the plugin on the client site it made the whole site go kablooey. (thank goodness it was a test environment, not the live site!) The plugin author never responded to my request for help even though I paid for the damn thing. Judging from the comments on his site, there are a lot of people waiting for a response from him.

Speaking of migration I have been following @NPRTechTeam on Twitter as they prepare to launch a new npr.org today. They've got 50 people working on it! I hardly ever even go to npr.org and I'm still finding it absolutely fascinating. One new feature I'm excited about is an embeddable a/v player: they're adding the ability for people to embed audio from NPR stories on their own blogs or sites. That will come in handy.

Upgrading Movable Type tonight. Things may get a little weird on the blog for awhile. At least this time I had to sense to copy the database before I started. So I can easily go back if something goes wrong.

[ETA: running in MT4.3, now time to set up the CSS.]

[ETA: the styles aren't perfect, but more or less okay. Now time to migrate Georg's blog.]

This is the cutest thing I've seen in ages:

I'm still humming the music.