The Followspot

Blogrolls, foodie sites and Lewis Black rants about milk and water

Ellen has suggested we put up blogrolls so I've been assembling a list that she would call a proper gallimaufry. Everybody has the NYTimes, Digby, Talking Points Memo, Daily Kos and the rest of the usual suspects. But how many include a blog dedicated to the finer points of pizzaria pizza by the slice?  Or Bear's Battlestar Blog, written by Bear McCreary, the composer of Battlestar Galactica's music?

I have a lot of sites bookmarked. A lot. I visit most of them only rarely, if at all, so it's been fun to rummage through the forgotten stuff in the attic. I'm including several sites on the blogroll because they're worth a look-see.

You can tell a lot about a person by the stuff he or she keeps -- hidden in the closet, stuffed in a totebag, ripening in the back of the fridge or populating a bloated Favorites folder. So it's rather personal to admit that along with dozens of news and political commentary sites, I've bookmarked loads of recipe/foodie sites, obsessive fandom television sites, and a hodge-podge of quirky backwaters I've stumbled upon that were somehow amusing or profound. The signs of an undisciplined mind and too much food and sloth are revealed. Sigh. 

Which brings me to this gem I found while rummaging around (Warning: NSFW due to very naughty language and a lot of it.):

Attention, all epicures...

I must update the "Bacon Explosion" post of a few days ago with an exciting discovery:

Baconnaise!

If this product doesn't make the inventors a fortune, I don't know what will.

It's not cheaper by the dozen, or for 14 either

When are we, as a species, going to grapple with the fact that perpetuation of our time on Earth will probably require a whole lot less of being fruitful and multiplying? When will we, as Americans, see that the cult of "LIFE" at all costs will mean more unneccessary death and suffering?

I thought the news earlier this week that a California woman had given birth to octuplets (8! Count 'em! 8!) was a testament to everything that is both right and wrong about our health care system. As the story has developed, I think it's also an alarm warning of our inability to adapt to changing circumstances.

Only the physicians' skills and superior facilities commonly available in America enabled the safe delivery of what can only be termed a litter. The babies were nine weeks premature and range in weight from one pound, eight ounces to three pounds, four ounces. One is still receiving assistance breathing. Before the birth, the mother had been hospitalized for bed rest for seven weeks. A team of 46 doctors, nurses and hospital staff prepared for and attended the birth.

And therein lies the problem that we're all paying for: Forty-six medical professionals were needed for one pregnant woman. That woman required nearly two months of hospitalization before the main event. For an undetermined amount of time, eight premature infants will be hospitalized in intensive care.

The almost universal response in the media is one of celebratory joy. A few get to interviewing fertility experts about the questionable wisdom of such a high-risk pregnancy -- way down at the end of the piece. None that I've seen question the morality of burdening society and the planet with such flamboyant fertility.

Yet there are still women in this country who can't get adequate prenatal care. There are infants in this country who suffer and die because they don't have health insurance and the first time a doctor sees them is in an emergency room.

But this stupid, selfish breeding machine is praised for having the damned nerve to hog so many medical resources. She declares that she's "ecstatic" about the "miraculous experence." There is nothing miraculous about in vitro fertilization and implanted embryos. It's technology.

Yesterday it was reported that mega-mom already had six children before she had the embryos emplanted. What the hell? Is there any combination of human genes that deserves that much representation in the pool? On top of that, she lives with her parents. Call me old-fashioned, but is there a father/husband around?

What do doctors say?

"Who am I to say that six is the limit?" said Dr. Jeffrey Steinberg, medical director of Fertility Institutes, which has clinics in Los Angeles, Las Vegas and New York City. "There are people who like to have big families."

Dr. James Grifo, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the NYU School of Medicine, added: "I don't think it's our job to tell them how many babies they're allowed to have. I am not a policeman for reproduction in the United States. My role is to educate patients."

"There are people who like to have big families." Yes, there are, and nobody is saying that it's time to re-examine our priorities, particularly not the doctors running the lucrative fertility clinics.

There are infertile couples desperate for children that can't afford fertility treatments. There are children languishing in the foster care system who desperately need parents. Yet there is a doctor who thinks it's ethical to give a mother of six, living with her parents, implanted embryos.

We all love our own. Perhaps, though, it is time to start loving not just well, but wisely. If we human beings can't learn to limit our collective and individual fertility, nature will do it for us. Wars over resources, new plagues spread by globalization, widespread famine, environmental degradation -- isn't it time we used our so-called "big brains" instead of our lemming-like tendencies to overpopulate? Must we applaud such selfish, extravagant rights to reproduce until the inevitable population collapse?

Gee whiz. Wine prices are in free-fall too

Bloomberg.com says that premium wine prices have come down, substantially. For example, at famed New York wine seller Sherry-Lehmann (not to be confused with Lehman Brothers), a 2005 Cheval Blanc which once sold for $1,600 a bottle is now a cut-rate $995. 

Now the story gets sad:

“No one’s buying the what-the-hell wines,” moans John Ragan, beverage manager of New York City’s Eleven Madison Park.“ Guys from Credit Suisse, whose offices are in the building, used to order a couple of bottles of wine at lunch. Then they’d say, ‘Oh what the hell,’ and order a $500 or $1,000 bottle.”

Which leads one to wonder, with Châteaux Lafite and Latour prices slashed, whether soon we'll be shopping at Trader Joe's for One-Buck Chuck?

Sourcing pieces of the pig

Chiaroscuro says I've "gone all gourmet." Yeah! So to follow up on my piggy piece below, here's a great source for guanciale, lardo -- both items truly hard to find, even online -- and supernal (a foodie adjective if ever there were one) cheeses.

My son makes a pilgrimage to Murray's in Greenwich Village whenever he's in New York. With the new "salumeria" addition to their second shop in Grand Central Station, this is the go-to source for the best of the best.

Amazingly, all things considered -- a little guanciale goes a long way -- their prices aren't bad. And they usually have a number of items "on sale."

For online ordering: Murray's.

I'll see yer bacon and raise ya...

Guanciale! 

Lardo!

Get 'em here (in Iowa yet)!

Pity the Porcus

It is the pig's sad fate to be so very succulent and fragrantly irresistable. As Emeril says, "It's a pork fat thing."

Today's NYTimes reports on a recipe that's been sweeping the Internets. I must have been sleeping or otherwise occupied to have missed this:

This recipe is the Bacon Explosion, modestly called by its inventors “the BBQ Sausage Recipe of all Recipes.” The instructions for constructing this massive torpedo-shaped amalgamation of two pounds of bacon woven through and around two pounds of sausage and slathered in barbecue sauce first appeared last month on the Web site of a team of Kansas City competition barbecuers. They say a diverse collection of well over 16,000 Web sites have linked to the recipe, celebrating, or sometimes scolding, its excessiveness.

Oh my. Is this merely another instance of America's dedication to excess, to following our jaded appetites down the porcine path to obesity? Or is it a four-pound meat anchor that comforts us in stormy economic seas? Does it even taste good? Who cares? It's bacon, dadgummit.

Do be sure to read the Times piece, including the slide show (!) and the step-by-step path the recipe took to internet notoriety. Five thousand calories, 500 grams of fat and 390,000+ page views. That's some pig.

 

An Eternal Trek, Together

News comes today that Gene Roddenberry and his wife, Majel Barrett Roddenberry, together will boldly go where no one has gone before.

Gene Roddenberry, wife to spend eternity in space

LOS ANGELES – The creator of "Star Trek" and his wife will spend eternity together in space. Celestis Inc., a company that specializes in "memorial spaceflights," said Monday that it will ship the remains of Gene Roddenberry and Majel Barrett Roddenberry into space next year.

The couple's cremated remains will be sealed into specially made capsules designed to withstand the rigors of space travel. A rocket-launched spacecraft will carry the capsules, along with digitized tributes from fans. The Roddenberrys' remains — and the spacecraft — will travel ever deeper into space and will not return to earth.  [...]

After Gene Roddenberry died in 1991, his wife commissioned Celestis to launch a part of his remains into space in 1997. She died Dec. 18, 2008.

Anyone who hasn't been deaf and blind to American popular culture of the last forty years knows that Gene Roddenberry was the optimistic visionary behind the Star Trek franchise. It's the true fan geek (guilty!) who knows it was Roddenberry's wife, Majel Barrett, who was in many ways the true voice of "Star Trek."

Majel was "Number One," the first officer of the Enterprise on its maiden voyage in the series pilot, "The Cage." The NBC suits hated the idea of a pushy woman (and the producer's girlfriend) cast in a position of authority and so she was demoted to playing Nurse Chapel in the original series.

Her Trek role with the most range was as the overbearing, emotionally needy Betazoid mother of "Next Generation's" Counselor Troi. Barrett infused the character of Lwaxana Troi with humor, infuriating smugness, and a thoroughly human desire to love and be loved. She chased nearly every man who crossed her path, from Captain Picard to Odo, "Deep Space Nine's" changeling constable.

Those characters were behind her, but her continuing role as the Voice of the computer in every iteration of the USS Enterprise will be impossible to substitute with any satisfaction for the fans. When Majel Barrett died last month, I knew an era of our culture had closed. Bon voyage, Majel and Gene.

 
Majel and Gene on the bridge of the USS Enterprise

President Obama!!!

For the first time in eight years the opening notes of "Hail to the Chief" caused me to swell with a sense of pride, patriotism and pleasurable anticipation. The family gathered. We cried — tears of happiness and relief.

Now we are going to have the Inauguration Day brunch we've been planning since November 4: cinnamon-loaded French toast (no more of that faux "freedom toast," thank you), maple syrup, crisp bacon. And we'll raise a glass of Champagne to the First Family and what they mean to us on this, a day for the history books.

Welcome to The Followspot

We, your humble correspondents, lately of The Broad View, have decided to put away politics — at least as a main focus — for now. We've been at it for a lifetime (or so it seems) and it is time to make room in our writing lives for reflection on the other adventures of mind, body and spirit that engage us, each and both.

As I write this we are but twelve hours from the inauguration of Barack Obama — and what we hope will be a new era of enlightenment for the country and for its bushwacked citizens. We are grateful to leave the deep thinking and keen analysis of political events to the likes of Digby, RJ Eskow and others in the liberal blogosphere whom we so admire.

The Followspot is a work in progress — we intend a gallimaufry of observations about books, shorebirds, the kitchen, movies, mortality and...well, you get the idea.

We hope you will join us on our journey of exploration.

—Ellen and Chiaroscuro