Purchase of the day.

February 12, 2013.

Uno 40th Anniversary Edition Card Game (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $1.01)

Honorable mentions:

Procurve 2910AL-48G Switch (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $25.00)

Procurve 2910AL-48G-POE Switch (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $25.00)

Maxi-Matic EPM-450 Elite Tabletop Old-Fashioned 4-Ounce Kettle Popcorn Popper Machine (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $10.40)

South Of France - Twin Pack, French Milled Vegetable Soap - Lavender, 4.25-Ounces Bars (Pack of 3) (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $1.10)

... and 64 other items purchased — at no additional cost to the buyer — that monetize the sentiment, "Althouse: what a blog!"

"The Uncle Sam machine processes grains one by one, focusing on the transformation of corn into popcorn."

"An explosion that usually occurs en masse is here isolated so that the spectacle can be enjoyed. Satisfaction is at once visual and gastronomic."

ECAL Low-Tech Factory/Oncle Sam from ECAL on Vimeo.

(Via Technabob.)

At the Cheese Curds and Popcorn Café...

... grab a chair.

The anti-war march — today in Madison, Wisconsin.

"Hope is in the street not the White House."



"Who lied? Who died? Who pays? Who profits?"



"Birds not bombs."



"Corporations get handouts/We get shut out."



"Occupy the World."



"U.S. empire abroad requires austerity at home! Bring all troops & dollars home now."/"Still waiting to get trickled down on."



"Soon the poor will have nothing left to eat but the rich."



Following a man in a badger hat and rainbow fingerless gloves, a woman eats from a bag of popcorn:



"The world is a dangerous place to live... not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."



"End the wars," a sign clothes-pinned onto a marijuana flag, held by a man wearing a "No more drug war" T-shirt.



"It's time for peace" (and also time for the Farmers' Market, which is going on at the Capitol Square at the same time the peace march arrives).

Althouse and Meade travel to Wauwatosa to see "The Undefeated."

1. We located the cavernous AMC multiplex within the humongous Mayfair Mall, bought a bag of popcorn bits, and found our way to theater 4 where we chose seats in the crowd of about 50 mostly older people.

2. There was no cheering or laughing during the movie, but in the end there was a big, enthusiastic round of applause.

3. As we left the theater, we encountered a man who asked us if we liked the movie and handed us a glossy card with a picture of Sarah Palin and a list of her political positions: "Drill Now, Strong Defense, Stop Spending." In the sort of way that you say "fine" when a stranger ask how are you, I said "Great!"

4. The filmmakers did not film Sarah Palin, so we see only stock footage of Sarah Palin along with some audio taken from the audio version of her book "Going Rogue." That meant we saw a lot of grainy film that made us wish we could just be home watching it on TV. (Or not watching it.) The old family-movie stills and video were nice, and Meade said they were the best part of the movie.

5. We mostly hear various Palin associates telling us about things, including quite a bit of technical material about how she dealt with the oil and gas business and politics in Alaska. I would have preferred to read about these things, because I couldn't trust that I was getting the story straight. There was never, for example, a professor in his study explaining things in a seemingly neutral way... not that I would have trusted him.

6. Throughout there was a pounding, driving music soundtrack that seemed like it wanted to make sure we were excited, but it was extremely annoying and distracting. There were also metaphorical visuals like black oil pouring into water or bombs dropping or lions chasing zebras. These visuals were undoubtedly intended to add interest and drama, but they seemed pretty amateurish. We glanced at each other and laughed a few times. But the music was no laughing matter. At one point, I leaned over and said, "This music is killing me." If I had been in that movie when I said that, you would have seen a lion leap onto a zebra.

7. The movie tried to make it seem as though the Tea Party grew out of Palin's seeming defeat in the '08 election and the Tea Party was a continuation of the Reagan revolution and Sarah Palin is a continuation of Ronald Reagan. Reagan, Palin, and the Tea Party stand most emphatically apart from establishment Republicans, who are good for just about nothing. A closeup of Mitch McConnell's waxen face makes that rather obvious.

8. There were some pretty good montages of Palin antagonists saying mean things about her. They seemed insane (and misogynistic), in part because we weren't seeing any of her supposed gaffes. It would have been interesting to explore how well the attacks matched up with her missteps, but it was nevertheless entertaining to see all that stuff strung together. Entertaining like a good YouTube video. But this, of course, is a movie in a movie theater...

9. ... which I saw for you, dear readers. I hope this list of 9 items pleases you.

"a 2 A.M. snack of grilled cheese sandwiches, brownies and popcorn..."

Offered to the guests at Chelsea Clinton's wedding....

It's nice to think that the hyper-glamorous affair went humble and comfy as the night wore on. Or am I being a chump to consume this PR that's intended to make people — face it, women — think the Clintons are just folks?

Amazing popcorn...

... + popcorn dog.



On the opening day of the Farmers Market, here in Madison, Wisconsin.

"That's fried mush, baby! You're a Hoosier now."

1. Meade makes mush ... apropos of all that grits talk in the Whole Foods threads (1 & 2). And yes, we bought the corn meal mush at Whole Foods.

2. Enlarge for details — but don't think you'll be able read the papers. I've blurred out all the text.

3. To answer the question I'm sure is coming first: Yes, the bacon is Nueskes. And you can't buy that at Whole Foods.

4. Answer to that other question: Ate Berries in the Canaries.

5. Note the hinge defect. Unpropped, the thing lies flat. I've heard of the much-rumored Apple tablet, but the Air should not pretend to be one.

6. That stool is a Swopper. (Buy one: here.)

7. Popcorn.

"Susie, one of the longest borders on earth is right here between your country and mine. An open border."

"Fourteen hundred miles without a single machine gun in place. Yeah, I suppose that all sounds very corny to you."

"I could love being corny, if my husband would only cooperate."

***

DVD — "A Touch of Evil" — screened as the sky behind the TV darkened to a tornadic yellow-green and 2 large bowls of popcorn were consumed. It's a wild movie, and here's my favorite scene:



My favorite thing in the movie is the figurine of a chipmunk on the table there. It made me think of the evil "woodland critters" from "South Park":

"What do you think playground bullies grow up to be?" "Right-wing Republicans."

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich answers a question.

Actually, when I decided I was going to blog this little interview, I planned to feature this line about why our drilling for more oil isn't a good solution to high gas prices:

When you consider that the oil we pump goes into a global oil market, offshore drilling makes no sense. We take the environmental risk, but we’d have to share the negligible price gains with Chinese consumers and every other user around the world.

He's right about that, isn't he? I love the way lefties sometimes get bracingly chauvinistic. Suddenly, it's screw the rest of the world!

Oh, I know... the gains are only negligible anyway. But read the whole interview. Reich is obviously happy that the high gas prices are pushing people into mass transit at long last. If the environment is your primary concern, of course you don't want more domestic drilling, and, what's more, you welcome the high gas prices that make people consume less.

I'm calling Reich a lefty, but I note that he lives in Berkeley (where he's a professor of public policy) and he says "here I am on the right of most arguments."

And this is good. He's asked about whether he dated the college-age Hillary Clinton:

To call it a date is an exaggeration. She and I went out to see Antonioni’s “Blow-Up.” The only thing I remember is that she wanted what seemed to me to be an extraordinary amount of butter on her popcorn.

Yes, very tasty! Yes! I like it! I like it! Go on!



You know, if a woman indicates she wants extra butter, that means something:

Only an economist could go on a date and study trends in butter consumption. Isn’t that a kind of wonky thing to remember?

Yes, it is. I recall the extra butter costing more.

If the man balks at giving her extra butter on her popcorn, if he seems to calculate the expense, I think she can make some predictions about what any sexual relationship will be like. Later, when Bill took Hillary to the movies — maybe it was "McCabe and Mrs. Miller" — I bet Bill was all come on! Double extra butter! And Hillary fell in love. I wish I could find a clip of that scene where Julie Christie pigs out on eggs in front of Warren Beatty and he therefore knows she's quite the woman.

Now, Reich is also very short — 4-foot-10 1/2 — and he notes that he's "much more economically and environmentally sustainable."

I exhale less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. I use up less space. I have a little house.

In the future, you will have to buy carbon offsets if you want to be tall or fat.

Anyway, it's at the end of the interview that we get to the quote that I highlighted above. Reich says that because he was short, he was bullied a lot as a kid.

People frequently tell me in interviews that they were bullied as children. But no one ever steps forward and says, “I was the bully.” They don’t want to admit to being a bully.

This provokes the questions-and-answer used as the title of this post.

As for Reich's answer, isn't it more likely that kids who were bullied grow up to be bullies themselves? You're very short and/or weak, but you're smart and you study... then you figure out how to crush your erstwhile tormentors by winning in business or politics. Right?

As my ex-husband used to say — maybe he's still recycling this line — "Life is 'Revenge of the Nerds.'"

Thanks to all the commenters who kept up the conversation about the West Virginia primary long into the early morning hours.

I set up a post so you could talk while I went out to do a meetup with readers at The Wine Bar at 50 Henry Street. (You should go there if you like drinks and food nibbles.) Thanks for writing so much. Unfortunately, Blogger makes it hard to see the comments after the 200th one. (You have to click as if you were going to comment and then find the word "newer" and click on it.) So please continue the discussion here.

Thanks especially to Palladian, who was at the meetup and then joined the conversation late and way into the early morning hours. (And who gave me some wonderful Champlevé!) Palladian had a great response to something Zachary Paul Sire said:

"I'm not concerned about one tiny blip of a state filled with uneducated poor people."

And I'm not concerned about one crime-ridden blip of an inner city filled with uneducated poor black people.

How does that sentiment sound to you? Sounds like the insipid blurt of a racist asshole? Well it's no different than the sentiments you and the Obamatrons seem to endorse.

Well guess what? The majority of America isn't concerned about one large blip of any city filled with over-educated rich people.

No doubt you are one of the important educated rich people who you seem to think should control the lives of the rubes in flyover land. Well you've got a surprise coming to you, O superior being. It's people like you, and your superior messiah, that have been and will be the eternal losers in the United States. It's the people you mock and disdain as hillbillies and racists that die for your sorry, lazy, worthless little white ass.

Believe me, when Obama is defeated, either before or after the Democratic convention, your premature schadenfreude will seem even more pathetic than it already does.

You're going to lose. And that's a good thing.

Go Hillary!

And a special thanks to my son Christopher Althouse Cohen, who kept up the pro-Hillary side of the conversation, including this:

Let me just sum it all up by saying that, come Election Day in November, I will be watching CNN-HD, popping some popcorn, and laughing as McCain obliterates Obama faster than Hillary could respond to a nuclear attack against Israel.

Things that exploded in Brooklyn Heights recently.

A halogen bulb:



A rat:



Now, calm down an have some coffee.




The rat did not disturb me. I can only think somebody's kitty cat was having a nice meal and had enough. This is no more troubling than the rest of nature. But please don't take it back to your dorm room for cooking in the popcorn popper.

The bulb on the other hand... do you see that hole in the glass? I was 5 feet away from it when it exploded behind my head. It sounded like a gun shot, lit up the room like a lightning bolt, and I had no idea what was going on for a terrifying fraction of a second until I turned around and saw the light fixture smoking.

"'This is a very weird question, but bear with me. But are you around a lot of popcorn?'"

"His jaw dropped and he said, 'How could you possibly know that about me? I am Mr. Popcorn. I love popcorn.'"

"I commend Oprah Winfrey for the very fair and balanced treatment she gave O'Reilly..."

Says Lorie Byrd.

I saw the show (only because I hastily set up a season pass for "Oprah" so I wouldn't miss... Madonna!). It was extremely well-done, with strong participation from audience members. Oprah was gracious to Bill O'Reilly, but still asked hard questions. O'Reilly complimented her for being nice while doing a show with someone she clearly disagrees with. Not like that jerk David Letterman who -- here's the clip -- went on and on about how O'Reilly wouldn't bow down to the moral superiority of Cindy Sheehan.

Oprah's website has lots of coverage of the show:

In his latest number one bestseller, Culture Warrior, Bill warns that America is in the midst of what he calls a vicious culture war between two factions.

Oprah: What is the war?

Bill: The war is between traditionalists like me, and I believe you, too, by the way, who think the country is noble. America's a noble nation.

I like the slickly inclusionary "I believe you, too."

Here's a good example of O'Reilly in full-out stream-of-consciousness mode -- with Oprah getting in one exquisitely specific line:

Bill: You know, we have our military fighting for our country overseas. We at home have to fight for our country. Do you want to be Denmark? Do you want to be Holland? That's what the S-Ps [secular-progressives] want. Anything goes: euthanasia, legalized narcotics, unfettered abortion, on and on and on and on. Look, when you and I were growing up, what kind of music did we listen to?

Oprah: I listened to The Temptations. …

Bill: What are the kids listening to now? Ho's. Glocks. Drugs. We've come a long way, haven't we? … These are the kids at 9, 10 …They know all about it. There's no more Temptations. They're obsolete. How about movies? What did we go to see? We went to see The Blob. Steve McQueen running around going, "There's the blob." We had a lot of laughs. Popcorn. Now they have a chainsaw guy cutting off people's arms. That's what kids are seeing. Oh, we've come a long way, haven't we? This country is under siege.

Oh, no! There's the blob!

ADDED: I'm just checking out the Letterman appearance. Before bringing out O'Reilly, Letterman had a chat with Paul:

It occurred to me: I know very little about anything. I mean, it's not like you have to have a license to run one of these shows. But then when a guy like Bill O'Reilly comes on... I ... I believe he probably doesn't know what he's talking about either. So.. it's just... when you get right down to it, it's a couple of dumb guys out here... just yakkin'.

AND: Dave was prickly but O'Reilly did a good job of going back to humor and Dave would come back too. They kept taking breaks to say they really are good friends, but you could also see Dave -- like a lot of people -- is quite upset about the war. It's appropriate to show real anger there. It's a war. It's no joke. I thought the two of them did a decent job. I liked when Dave said he hadn't read the book, but "What's it about? Sailing?" (You have to see the jacket photo to get the laugh.)

(I note that the show I'm watching from last night is not the same one O'Reilly was talking about on "Oprah," shown in the linked clip.)

A post about handshakes.

Letitia Baldrige, the fabulous etiquette writer, sends a letter to the NYT editor about the recommendation that the "elbow bump" replace the handshake. We all know what people do with their hands and thus that handshakes spread disease. Worries about the avian flu might give us the incentive we need to abandon the old custom of handshaking. But do we need to switch to bumping elbows? Baldrige has the right answer: "simply look the other person in the eye, smile and give a quick nod while saying, 'Nice to see you.'"

Let's do an Amazon "search inside this book" for "handshake" in Baldrige's latest etiquette book: here. Three hits:

1. Ooh, that first hit is to what a "well-mannered child" needs to do. It's very impressive. It would be so cool if kids did all those things. Or would you think the kids were robotic or Eddie Haskell-ish? Actually, I think Eddie Haskell made a very deep impression on the Boomer generation and led to the widespread abandonment of etiquette demands on kids. We're deeply suspicious of a kid who's follows a lot of formal conventions, aren't we? And as for shaking hands with a young child... that's a terrible idea! Kids are most likely to be spreading germs, but, of course, an adult has to be super-nice to any child. You're going to have to shake that little hand.

2. At Hit Two, she's recommending lots of handshaking in the office. "Use a firm, practiced, but not bone-crushing handshake." Aw, can't we just look people in the eye and nod, as you said in that letter? How many of these people have colds and have rubbed their noses with their right hand since that last time they washed up? Anyway, I approve of avoidin gthose crushing handshakes. What's wrong with men that they can even think that would be a good way to shake hands with a woman?

3. Hey, the third hit has a Supreme Court Justice in it! I hit a lawprofblogger jackpot here. Baldrige describes meeting a Justice. She doesn't say which one, but he was the father of her friend, and she was a popcorn-eating college student. She shakes hands with the old jurist, who proceeds to make a big deal out of grimacing and wiping his hand off with his handkerchief. In the anecdote, she makes herself seem rude (for having buttery hands) and him seem cutely, comically crusty. But in fact, if someone shakes your hand and gets something on you, you need to act as though nothing happened and discreetly find an opportunity to wash your hands. Hey, if you thought that person was too sleazy to shake hands with, you should have withheld your hand. Don't be embarrassing them afterwards. I think Baldrige is a little to impressed with this man because he's a Supreme Court Justice. That can't be good etiquette. Equal justice under the law of etiquette, I say (even as I assume Baldridge is right about everything).

By the way, someone just came to the door, and I shook hands and did not wash my hands. So, really, I'm not in the vanguard of handshake abandonment in the real world.

"But in the future, you will physically be inside the experience, which will surround you top, bottom, on all sides."

Says Steven Spielberg, who's apparently invented something movie-like. I'm picturing a helmet of some sort. We go into the theater and a thousand helmets descend individually on each head. Good luck trying to eat popcorn or smooching. On the bright side, maybe people will shut up.

But no, I must be wrong, because this new Spielbergerama will be on the top, sides, and bottom. It's actually a tad frightening! Are you going to inject dreams into our heads, like in "Total Recall"? So what the hell are you talking about, Steve?

"I've invented it, but because patent is pending, I can't discuss it right now."

Feel free to discuss it for him in the comments.

"A History of Violence."

I just saw the David Cronenberg movie, "A History of Violence." Now, I don't purport to do movie reviews here, and that's a particularly good thing in this case, because I don't have a coherent opinion about this movie. I don't even have an opinion as to whether it's a good movie. I'm just giving some bloggish impressions, numbered to give some semblance of order.

There are no spoilers here.

1. Nice that it's only about 90 minutes long. I always get antsy at the movies. 90 minutes is a typical length for a comedy, not a drama. So my question is: Was this a movie of atypical length? Was it a comedy? I was laughing anyway and so were some other people. The violent outbursts felt like very serious, stunning violence, but overall, it was comic, the way "Pulp Fiction" is comic. Yet there were no obvious laugh lines. It was a really interesting feeling of being appropriately affected by the danger and violence, but still finding it funny.

2. It has a dreamlike quality -- and begins with a child's nightmare (at least that's where I came in). No, there are no monsters. Light chases the monsters away. So the child is told. Yet the movie is quite underlit -- what diner has mood lighting? -- perhaps to signify that the tale to be told follows the logic of a dream: threatening characters show up in your ordinary life and you need to escape from them, in one scene after another, where very strange things happen, dragging you out of your normal life; troubling questions arise about your identity and the identity of others around you, as you try different ways to get back home, as you lose your grip on what your home is.

3. It was a low budget movie, I'm assuming. That may explain a lot of the low lighting. The point where I realized they really made this go without the money they needed: Two men enter what is supposed to be a very rich man's mansion and, when each of them steps on what is made to look like a solid marble threshold, it caves way down like a flimsy board.

4. Viggo Mortenson makes a great leading man. Much of the movie is watching his face. I enjoyed that.

5. Maria Bello is not a good actress. She's interesting to look at, but she can't do what is needed in a film like this. Cronenberg tried to cover for her inadequacies by having her do things like run out of the room and throw up off camera or bury her face in Mortenson's shoulder and cry. We'd watch more of him then, instead of her. And by the way, if there's one thing I would like to ban in movies, it's having a character express emotion by vomiting.

6. That was William Hurt? Wow, he got... less attractive.

I haven't read any reviews of this movie. I just saw Mortenson on Letterman and liked him and his clip, and I saw that the film got an 80% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. I guarantee that all six points above were written without reading a single review. Now, I'll read some reviews.

Here's a line from one of the less good reviews, by Stephen Witty:

"Violence" -- hailed in some quarters as [Cronenberg's] most "accessible" film -- is, sadly, his least interesting, settling for some genre setpieces and a pair of eccentric performances by villains Ed Harris and William Hurt. As a history of Cronenberg, it's a good introductory lecture, detailing his careful composition, mastery of unease and complicated thematic interests. As a Cronenberg film though, it's figuratively bloodless, without any real body to it at all.

Fair enough.

From Kevin Turan:

It's a measure of Cronenberg's confidence in his material, his cast and his own skill that he purposely opens this ultimately compelling film with a glacially paced sequence of a pair of drifters checking out of a motel at a velocity that only Jim Jarmusch in full "Broken Flowers" mode could love.

Hey, I missed a glacially paced sequence that opened the film. Was I really that late?

Matching her costar's level of commitment, Bello gives her most involving performance, supplying a level of emotional belief that is the film's secret weapon, holding it together no matter where it goes.

Too many male reviewers forgive too much when they love the actress's looks. I give Turan a demerit.

The WaPo's Desmond Thomson:

"A History of Violence" forces us to confront our Pavlovian conditioning to violence, whether we are watching real military campaigns with living room detachment or whooping and hollering for fictional ones. It's not about popcorn heroism or the importance of protecting an increasingly troubled world against hostile invaders. It's just about why we're cheering.

Generic, trite observation. How about a review of, you know, this movie?

Over at Entertainment Weekly, there's praise for the score, which reminds me to say I hated the score, and there's a discussion forum, where I read that audiences hated this movie. Hmm... I wonder why? Was it marketed as a mainstream film, but it's an art film. I don't know. As an art film, it's actually awfully B-movie-ish.

Googling and finding this blog first on the list.

Coming up first for this search is a funny traffic builder for this blog. [ADDED: Whoops, this one isn't first, just the top of a page — it's 41st.]

And this and this one surprise me. [ADDED: Actually, only the second one is first. Top of the page error again. Sorry.]

Here's a subject I know nothing about.

This brings people here every day.

And I'm #1 for "popcorn pajama pants," which is a funny thing to be looking for.

I'm #1 for "student protest photos," interestingly.

Strangely, I'm #1 for "this is not a goddess."

You paid $18 to see "The Wedding Crashers," why?

For the privilege of sitting in the balcony next to people who are eating monkfish and clinking wineglasses. Only the popcorn is included in the ticket price.

"Even without the popcorn, it's definitely worth the money," said David Raphael, a salesman from Boca Raton who, with his wife, Judy, was enjoying a glass of wine at the upstairs bar at the Palace before a screening of "Wedding Crashers." "We pretty much go here whenever we go to the movies. And we pass other theaters to get here."

None of this, of course, changes the fact that Hollywood movies seem to skew younger and younger every year.

"We're a product-driven business, and we don't have any control over the product, unfortunately," [Muvico president Hamid] Hashemi said. "But in all our customer surveys, the unifying factor is: 'Get us away from the kids.' It's the exact opposite of what we're led to believe in this business."

Apparently, people are crazy. If the movie is bad and you want to eat a nice dinner and not be near young people, why not just go to a restaurant? If the problem is that you don't know how to have a conversation that's as good as a bad movie, well, that's pretty sad. You could go to the restaurant alone and bring a good book. Or you could take out restaurant food and stay home and watch a good DVD (which is, I think, what most older folk do).

Bunched pajama pants and popcorn

The Poor Man Cafe links to my "Pajamas Media vs. BlogAds" post and says, among other things:

She doesn’t mention that some people might want to think twice before signing a long-term business deal with a bunch of guys who have spent the last few years explaining how lying and corruption isn’t really lying and corruption and equating disagreement with treason, but that’s what I’m here for. Anyway, long story short, panties become bunched, and Charles Johnson issues a terse rebuttal, which ends with this confidence-inspiring sorta-denial:

I should also mention that we have no plans at all to interfere with or control the content of blogs who sign up for the affiliate program, at either of the two levels.

Oh … good. How reassuring.

Amusingly written, from the left perspective.


Matt Welch just says "BlogAds vs. Pajamas Media Catfight! Bring popcorn."