Recipe For a Great Cook

I’ve had many people tell they can’t cook. I’m not the best cook, but I know how to cook and for my tastes, I consider myself a good cook. I was very fortunate – I had three people who taught me how to cook. These three people were my grandma, my dad, and my grandma Lee’s neighbor, The Major.

I'm here to help (Source)

Many people will go on about ingredients, temperatures, recipes, and preparation techniques being the most important things about cooking. Some overly sentimental people will tell you the most important thing is the love you put into the food. While those are all important (though the jury is still out on the love thing), they aren’t the most important. You can have all of those things and still mess it up if you are lacking the most important aspects of cooking:

1.     Patience

2.     Imagination

3.     Bravery

Full Disclosure: This did happen once...(Source)

My grandma embodied patience. She taught me how to wait. When to check on things and when to leave them alone and let them cook. She taught me to take the time to prepare the ingredients from a meal properly. She taught me stirring and letting things cook to savory perfection. Patience is the hardest for me to learn and I still struggle with it today; this is why I am only a good cook and not a great cook. But patience is the difference between having a moist and flavorful chicken breast as opposed to a dry and tasteless thing.

My father exudes imagination in everything he does, and cooking is no different. My dad is always ready to try a new recipe or just throw things together and see what happens. Not everything turns out perfect, but some things do and if there were no experimentation, we would miss out on those great dishes.

The Major wasn’t called The Major for nothing. He had been in the military and I never knew his real name, he was always introduced as The Major. He only taught me one dish, orange chicken, but the lesson in bravery may have been even more important than the dish itself. It was an instance and that one instance has stuck with me ever since. We needed some eggs and he taught me to crack the egg and empty its contents with one hand. My first egg fell on the floor. He didn’t get mad about the mess, we just cleaned it up and I tried again and this time I got it in the bowl.  Such a single, simple moment, but it taught me not to be afraid in the kitchen. Being careful is important, but not being afraid of messes, sharp objects, open flames, and errors is also important.

Be Patient: They’ll be done when they’re done.

Be Imaginative: Feel free to experiment and create new combinations.

Be Brave: Don’t be afraid of failing, just clean up and try again.

This took all day to make, the recipe for the
potatoes is my own design, and it was delicious

You Sunk My Battleship!

I was walking along and all of a sudden I saw a poster for Battleship. I had heard about it and seen the posters before, of course, but this was the first time it really hit me: there is a movie coming out based on the game Battleship. I’ll admit, this complete revelation came out of nowhere, walloped me a good one, knocked me on my ass, and, just to make sure it really sunk in, hit me with a lead pipe. As I lifted my bruised self from the pavement under the watchful eye of the Battleship-Revelation, it finally sunk in that this was really happening. On May 18, Battleship will be in theatres and my only question is: Why?

Near the Wilshire/Vermont station

So what I got from watching this trailer is that aliens hid in the ocean because they could. And then they attack, because why not? Then we fight back… with boats. Yeah, that was pretty much what I got from it.

Who knows? Maybe it will be a great movie with a great plotline and not just some thin shadow with a bunch of special effects that is desperately trying to capture the audiences’ sense of nostalgia by forcing it into the ill-fitting frame of a board game.

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I will admit now – I’m not a huge movie person. The last two movies I saw in theatres were Hunger Games a few weeks ago and The Muppets back in November. Both were movies I knew I would enjoy. Hunger Games because of the books and Muppets because of all the memories that tied to them. I also admit that I’m not super-snobby about movies. I’m not lamenting how everything is a sequel, a remake, or filled with FX instead of plot. What I am saying is that maybe not everything needs to be made into a movie.

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Time to switch gears to the videogame industry and the crash in 1983 Follow me, trust me, I’m getting to a point. Anyone play ET on the Atari and think this is what caused the videogame crash? It wasn’t the cause, merely a symptom. ET was like the achy shoulder in a much, much larger flu. Basically anything was being made into a game. It wasn’t just Atari making games, they had little control over their systems and pretty much anyone could make a game for their system and did. Also a lot of games were being rushed into completion.

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With the videogame market being inundated with so many low-quality games that were just made to be made, the game industry in the U.S. sank for a while. Now lets get back to the movies and my point. My thought is that, in some ways, I can see the movie industry paralleling the gaming industry of the 1983. It’s expensive to go to the movies but most of us are a fairly forgiving audience…up to a point. Battleship feels like a movie being made simply to be made and it almost feels that this may be the beginning of the inundation of movies made to be made.

Please let this one be made before the crash  Source

Infinite Undiscovery...Will Remain Undiscovered

Not too long ago, I attempted to play Infinite Undiscovery and I really didn’t give it a fair chance. I have no idea if it was a good game or not because after 20 minutes I stopped playing, put it in its envelope, and mailed it back to Gamefly. In those 20 minutes I got to press buttons (and not to get more text to appear on the screen but for actual gameplay) for maybe 3 minutes. And I’m being generous on calling it 3 minutes. There were so many cutscenes and things to read that I just got annoyed and called it a day. For an actual critique from someone who clearly had more patience than I did, here you go.

I had chosen this game after reading about it (I think in GameInformer, but I’m not exactly sure) because of its unusual name and decided to give it a try simply because of its unusual name with no knowing of pretty much anything else about it. This could be the greatest game ever…but I will never know because I got annoyed with all the cutscenes and textboxes.

A friend of mine once told me that part of dating is figuring out what you will and will not put up with. I’ve found, as I’ve gotten older that this advice applies to pretty much every aspect of life. When I was younger I put up with a lot but as I got older, my propensity to grow annoyed has gotten stronger. In my youth (see early 20s), I would put up with long cutscenes, but now I won’t. They simply have started annoying me and I have outgrown them. Realized that an overly long cutscene is not something I will put up with in my videogame relationship anymore.

A game should be more than just a string of cutscenes where the player gets to intermittently mash a button in between. I’m fine with cutscenes if they’re brief and don’t interfere with the flow of the game. A cutscene should not be so long that I can fix a bowl of Froot Loops (and some have been so long I can even eat said Froot Loops.) The story should be integrated into gameplay with cutscenes being minor and not tedious. 

Was able to eat the whole bowl

 Infinite Undiscovery could be the most fantastically awesome game ever, but I will never know. I don’t know, give it a try – maybe you’ll have more patience than I did.

On the Boulevard of Broken Dreams

I live in Los Angeles. The land of broken dreams. The place where it is so easy to become lost. My heart goes out to them and I want to take them home. I am, of course, speaking of the abandoned stuffed animals and toys. It is hard to pass by and not try to rescue them. They call to me and I feel guilt as I walk on by. 

Huggably, snuggaly lost

I don’t feel that guilt when I walk past a pair of discarded sunglasses, but I do when I see a lost toy. Perhaps I have seen the Toy Story trilogy too often, but I have a feeling I would feel this way even if Pixar had never brought it to my attention. 

Yes, I cried. A lot.

A lost-asaurus

As a child, I had a lot of stuffed animals and toys that were animal-shaped and these became my steadfast friends. My brother was 5 years older than me and the kids who lived around us were my brother’s age and male. They’d occasionally allow me to hang out with them, but mostly didn’t want me around and I was left on my own a lot. I was young and short for my grade and, on top of all that, I was quiet and socially awkward. This did not make for a great combination when trying to make friends. The few friends I did have, I only saw at school. My parents didn’t have a lot of friends outside of work, so there were never any children that I became friends with even out of simple, mutual convenience.

Looking back, it seems like it would’ve been a lonely childhood, but I don’t remember feeling very alone. I had my stuffed animals and, to me, they were alive and they were my friends. So when I see these abandoned anthropomorphic toys, my heart feels a twang. They are lying there and they have no friends and they been unceremoniously ostracized from society without any thought or care. And on some level, I see them as my old childhood friends and see my younger self in them.

Denny's: For Those Times When the Edges of Reality Fray

I feel as though I’ve been here before. Sitting in a Denny’s, looking at the menu and not knowing why I’m here.

I look out the window at people walking. There are people around me in the restaurant. I feel numb. Disconnected with everyone. Even the voices and conversations around me seem muffled, as though we’re not really in the same place. Perhaps they’re not real or I’m not real. Everyone is out of focus and muffled, except the waiter. He blinks in and out of different worlds.

That is what it really is; they have their world and I have mine. They can come out of their world and briefly show up in mine, but I cannot escape from my world into theirs. Occasionally they blink into my world, only to blink out again just as quickly. But mostly they stay in their world with the obscuring barrier separating us.

And, thus, I end up at Denny’s where the coffee flows 24/7 and I can have some breakfast at any time of the day. Denny’s: the place I go when I’m caught in an existential quandary. I start walking and all of a sudden my feet have taken me to Denny’s, perhaps because I am conditioned since this numbness and constant questioning of my own and others’ existence and reality usually comes upon me in the early hours of morning and Denny’s was always one of the few places that was close and open.

Now I’m in a city where there are many restaurants open 24hrs and I can get just about any food I want, but I shun them all. My feet take me to Denny’s, because in those moments (hours? Years?) when I doubt the strength of reality, none of those places truly exist. When I’m too far gone to be reached by anyone or anything else, Denny’s is the only place that can penetrate into my reality and make itself on the same level of existence as I am.

Yes, Grand Slams really are the glue that holds the universe together.

Back In My Day, We Had To Walk All the Way to the TV to Change the Channel...And there were only 99 channels

On October 15 I will be turning 29. I’m not sure how I feel about this. I am very lucky to have a friend who boldly goes into these ages a month ahead and then reports back her findings. Into the abyss; kind of like an age reconnaissance.

            Usually I feel excitement and dread when it gets close to my birthday; right now I almost feel nothing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited about an event occurring on my birthday, Extra Life, but I’m having trouble mustering up anything for the actual birthday. I can tell I feel a little down about it but I can’t seem to connect with it even though I can tell because of some of my sleep habits are going more odd than normal. Perhaps it’s because I feel so far away from most of my friends and family. Perhaps it’s because these last few months seemed to go so fast that I’m having trouble grasping that my birthday is around the corner. Perhaps it’s that I’ve already had 28 of them so what’s one more? I feel numb with an undercurrent. It’s almost like I’ve been shot through with Novocain and the feelings of excitement and dread are hovering, waiting to take hold.

            I always say that birthdays are great because they take me further away from 22. I’ve been feeling 22 again and I’m realizing that 22 was really not that bad. I was angsty, but I’m always angsty to varying degrees. With my recent relocation/ joblessness with mostly school and my writing to keep me busy, I’ve gone back to my 22 personality with a 28 perspective and I realized 22 was not as bad as I made it out to be. At 22 I was very angsty but nothing that bad. Looking back I realized that I spent much of 23 – 27 feeling numb and not really myself, just going through motions because what else was I going to do. I felt much more myself at 22 and I’ve started feeling much more myself now. I don’t feel like I’m turning 29, I feel like I’m turning 22 Part 2 (or is it Part 3 now?) I have to admit I prefer feeling angsty to feeling numb and just going through the motions of my life. It is a horrible to feel absolutely nothing and to feel that you can’t even catch a glimpse of yourself anymore.

            On Saturday I will be turning 29 and I look back and it’s sometimes like watching someone else’s life go past. Some of the events don’t seem as long ago as others and the chronology is all messed up. Everything is disjointed and disconnected.

Pinky and the Brain: Who Really Is the Genius?

“Pinky and the Brain/…/One is a genius, the other’s insane”

            “Pinky and the Brain” is about two genetically altered lab mice who want to take over the world. Brain is the mouse that has a large head and regularly comes up with plans to take over the world. Pinky is Brain’s seemingly dim sidekick who speaks in non-sequitors. The audience is left to assume that Brain is the genius and Pinky is insane, but I assert that it is the other way around.

            Brain may come up with a lot of plans to take over the world but the only time he has come close to taking over the world was by accident when he was taking the night off (“Brain’s Night Off.”) Every other time the pair of mice has come close to taking over the world has been through Pinky’s efforts. Pinky has come closer to securing global domination than Brain.

            Pinky speaks in non-sequitors and seems to often makes very little sense. It is easy to mistake these non-sequitors as Pinky just being dim, but it is more a case of he is on a different level thinking than everyone else.  A lot of Pinky’s responses to Brain’s questions make sense, but they are not the normal response. In “Broadway Malady,” Brain is coming up with a musical and he asks Pinky what rhymes with June? Pinky tells him he’s busy and when brain asks him what he’s doing he lists off an entire list of words that rhyme with soon that describes what he’s doing. Brain asks, “What rhymes with June?” Pinky replies, “No it doesn’t.” This is the genius of Pinky. His responses are very clever but follow a different line of logic.

            Even when he says something that really doesn’t make sense on any level that we can see, he is simply following a different level of logic. When he speaks, it is like it is a part of larger conversation that is going on in Pinky’s head. The only reason he ever almost takes the world is because that’s what Brain wants. It is almost like he has more important things going on in his head than what is going on externally, he helps brain because the friendship is important even though global domination is not that important to him. He also has incredible focus, he is able to help Brain with his plans while still maintaining the internal world that he has created for himself.

Reference:

IMDB (1990 – 2011) Episode List for Pinky and the Brain. IMDB. Retrieved Aug. 28, 2011 from, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0112123/episodes