i had all but given up on the bond franchise but i finally got around to casino royale and i was pleasantly surprised. the excess was trimmed, the camp took a vacation, and the bond humanized. hope they can maintain the proper mixture next time around which imdb lists as nov 08.
marathon thread
What began five years ago as one publication that tried to tell the citizens of Ojai, Calif., everything they ever wanted to know about the food and wine in their community has turned into a network of 33 Edible magazines across the country. Each of them offers readers culinary news tailored to where they live.
via adman
Anybody (Dave?) watching the Santoro / Blake? Wow.
I've had this page open in a distant browser tab for some unknown length of time and just now finally got around to reading it. Pretty interesting "
beyond organic" Virginia farmer:
“Opting out” is a key term for Joel, who believes that it would be a fatal mistake to “try to sell a connected, holistic, ensouled product through a Western, reductionist, Wall Street sales scheme”—by which (I think) he means selling to big organic supermarkets like Whole Foods. As far as Joel is concerned, there isn’t a world of difference between Whole Foods and Wal-Mart. Both are part of an increasingly globalized economy that turns any food it touches into a commodity, reaching its tentacles wherever in the world a food can be produced most cheaply and then transporting it wherever it can be sold most dearly.
But unlike pit masters who rabidly guard their secret sauce recipes, fry cooks are an open book. All work with the same four elements: soft-shell clams, a dipping liquid, a coating and oil. According to almost all the cooks and owners I met the liquid is usually evaporated milk, and the coating is nothing more than some combination of flours: regular, corn or pastry. Most places use canola or soybean oil, which are high in unsaturated fats. Only Woodman’s and Essex Seafood, in Essex, Mass., still fry clams in pure lard.
Revelers paint Spanish town red in giant tomato fight
video
factoids**Rudy Giuliani, according to FEC filings, is worth as much as $70 million.
**Note that when news broke this summer that Giuliani had resigned from the blue ribbon Iraq Study Group, it was because he was too busy collecting six-figure checks for his guest speaking gigs, the ones that sprouted up in the wake of the 9-11 attacks and the ones that earned him nearly $11 million in 2006; $1.7 million in just one month.
Burner -- The netroots is flexing its muscle in an on-line fundraiser for Darcy Burner. In just a few days, her Actblue total has gone from a few thousand dollars to $96k, with thousands of contributors. I got in early with the largest contribution I've ever made to a political campaign (by far) based on her willingness to say that Dems need to show a little spine.
Susan Sarandon on the
technology behind the Wachowski brother's next film - Speed Racer:
They're using some high def thing that comes with guards and it's beyond anything I've ever…. I saw 10 minutes before I left, they did a special thing for me cause they're just wrapping and having a party tonight, they were still working after I left. They're doing something where they're layering film so that the front and the back are in focus like a cartoon and they're also doing two dimensional and three dimensional stuff and mixing and everything is very, very saturated with some new kind of film, so they actually have to treat the actors in some way so we can hold our own with the background. So it's every color that wasn't in The Matrix is seriously in this film.
I've been opposed to a Hilary Clinton candidacy for a long time. I don't think she's very electable, and even if elected, I don't think her foreign policy will differ much from the neocons (although her domestic policy and judicial nominations would be a lot better, so of course I'd vote for her if she's the Democratic nominee. But then again, I'd vote for a yellow dog if it was the Democratic nominee so this isn't saying too much.)
Anyway, I've been meeting some people lately who are slightly more to the right politically than I am used to meeting. And I'm struck by how much they *hate* her. I mean, I knew this, but I'm still struck by actually seeing the emotion. They really loathe her. And it's making me come around a bit on Hilary's campaign. It might not be very mature of me, but these people will - how to put it politely? - crap their pants if she gets elected president. And it's harder and harder for me not to hope just a little bit for that spectacle.
Plus she's going to be the nominee so I've got to find something good in there. Clinton vs. Romney; you heard it here 1,453,876th
Another
NYC panorama pic, this time from the annoyingly named Top of the Rock.