Obama has to deal with an annoying man.

Video.

Was it that guy's goal to piss Obama off and get him looking bad on camera? I'd say Obama kept his cool and handled it well, but I'm sure there will be people who will say this is Obama losing his cool. To that, I'd say: If this is Obama losing his cool, Obama is very cool. Perhaps a better question is whether Obama is too cool — too bland and unemotional to enthuse us. But we've already gotten overenthused at Obama. Some day, we'll look back on these scenes and puzzle over the enigma of Obama.

Damn, that guy was annoying. He was a bit like a Sacha Baron Cohen character... except he was not funny.

NOTE: I've replaced the embedded video with a link. People continue to have problems with Redlasso video — I think because it's high-quality video.

Pick a movie to design a meal around.

That was the challenge last night on "Top Chef," which this post won't spoil, but there are spoilers at here, where I read about it. (I haven't watched this season of "Top Chef." Maybe I'll catch up with it later. Is it good this time around?) Anyway, Jim Hu, at the link, thinks the contestants made pretty lame movie choices. They should have been less literal, more creative, and more cleverly knowing about the content of a good movie. His choices:

Wizard of Oz: Rainbow trout with artichoke hearts and a poppy seed crackers.
Spartacus. Escargot... and oysters.
Duck Soup. Perhaps an exception to the obviousness rule, but how can you not do this?
The Godfather: Fish baked in parchment.
The main entree could be Dances with Wolves Buffalo steaks. Or you could do Silence of the Lambs, but only if you serve the lamb with fava beans
Citizen Kane Rose sorbet

Commenters, surely you have some ideas! Me? Well, my favorite movie already is about dinner: "My Dinner With Andre." To be creative and knowing, we'd have to get past the potato soup and squab and come up with something from inside the stories Andre tells. Maybe something covered in coarse salt to represent sand — Andre eats sand in the Sahara Desert (and laughs). [ADDED: Actually, he doesn't laugh: "We weren't trying to be funny. I started, and then he started, and we just ate sand, and threw up. That was — that was how desperate we were."

Let me go on to the rest of the favorite movies I list in my Blogger profile:

"Aguirre the Wrath of God." This should not be an opportunity to serve Spanish or Brazilian food. I'd be all about the seaweed. (When they're really hungry they pull algae out from between the logs of the raft.)

"Crumb." The first thing I think of here is a drawing of a can labeled "[unwritable word] Hearts." Next, I think of Maxon Crumb ingesting a long strip of cloth dipped in water (to clean out his innards). Let's skip this movie.

"Grey Gardens." Paté on crackers!

"32 Short Films About Glenn Gould." Pills!

"Limelight." Hmmm. Limes? No, the lime in limelight is not the fruit.

"It's a Gift." Kumquats!



"Dr. Strangelove." To drink: nothing but distilled water. [AND: Pure grain alcohol!] Food: a big buffet table. And every night: a food fight. That's our restaurant gimmick: We encourage the patrons to throw food.

"The Grave of the Fireflies." In this movie, a Japanese animation, children starve. Must skip.

"The Nights of Cabiria." Too easy of an excuse to make Italian food. Nothing specific comes to mind.

"Fast, Cheap & Out of Control." Well, we can't serve lions or mole rats. Robots are not edible. We'd have to come up with some way to make topiary shapes out of things.

"Slacker." Sorting through my memories of this movie, I'm just seeing a lot of coffee.

IN THE COMMENTS: The name Ted Turner comes up, and there's a suggestion that his movie would be "Soylent Green."

Late afternoon in the Oceania room.

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

"We'll be 8 degrees hotter in... 30 or 40 years.... Most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals."

Ted Turner has become a deranged old man.

"For those of you who carry just a wallet, how the heck do you do it?"

Dr. Helen got sick of carrying a purse, but finds it hard to edit down to just a wallet. She asks for advice. I was a staunch purse-avoider for many years. I was over 40 before I started carrying a purse and even then, I did it only some of the time. So I'm almost an expert.

First, get a very slim wallet. Dr. Helen links to the one she bought, and I can see from the picture that it is way too bulky. It's made of thick, pebbly leather and folds over twice. Ugh! This beautifully designed wallet by Comme Des Garcons is the best slim wallet I've ever encountered. Yes, I wish it were cheaper, but it's a beautiful design. When you're wearing pants with decent pockets, you can carry that in one pocket and your keys in the other.

But if you need anything more — cell phone, lipstick — it's might get too bulky. A jacket can add some pockets, but the best solution is really a very small purse with a thin shoulder strap. And that's probably more comfortable and free than stuffing things in your pockets. The right kind of tiny purse with your essential things can be put inside a larger handbag, so that it's easy to switch from heavy to light. For example, I love this big bag, and I can put my laptop, papers, multiple pairs of glasses, cameras, books and everything in it, along with the much smaller bag that is easily taken out and used separately.

Finally, don't think so much about how annoying the big bag is. Look at the problem in a positive way. It's interesting to try to figure out ways to do all sorts of things more efficiently. The handbag issue is just one example of the many things in life that could be simplified and improved. It's good to develop your awareness of this and to enjoy thinking creatively about how to become more efficient. For example, think of how encumbered you are by the project of consuming several meals a day — all that shopping, cooking, chewing, cleaning up. The equivalent of the skinny wallet here is the Posh Spice approach to food — no meals, just a restricted set of snack items. Posh has chosen soy beans, pretzels, diet Coke. I think you could put together a much better selection, like maybe smoked almonds, carrots, and latte.

Travel light!

ADDED: Dr. Helen blames women for the lack of pockets in women's clothes. She states that women are "slaves to fashion." Eh. Some are. Some aren't. Here's her evidence:

Try going to the opening of a local Sephora (a make-up store, for those of you who aren’t “in the know”) and watch the parade of women swoon and swarm through the store as if they are on a drug-induced high. Then take a look at the puzzled faces of the men or boys they’ve dragged to the place while they watch the mysterious behavior of these women who are practically foaming at the mouth about make-up and tell me that this fashion — along with a lust for purses — is anything but the desire of the women themselves doing the longing.

But I've been lusting and longing for beautiful women's clothes with well-designed pockets for decades. That doesn't cause it to be in the stores. I think free markets work pretty well, but I still don't believe what is in the stores equates to what we really want.

But I must say, I was in Sephora the other day (to spend $22 for lip balm — "sweet and tart blackcurrant oil cushions the lips with plumping fatty acids"), and the women were in some crazy dream world. One woman raves to another that this cosmetics line is all natural, and the other oohs with excitement and surprise. But some women had in fact dragged men along with them, and way these men looked made me want to slap them back to consciousness and shout at them to get the hell out of there. I'm not saying that men must be very masculine or that there's something wrong with a man who actually wants to go into Sephora and buy something. (They have plenty of men's products, and beautiful salesladies will eagerly help you select great gifts for women.) But these particular men looked as though they had atrophied into mere appendages of women. They were willingly and weakly standing there discussing the women's products. They were placidly accepting their diminished existence. That's how I saw it anyway.

Hillary as Obama's benefactor?

Maureen Dowd explains:

Obama had not been hit hard until this campaign; he sailed through his Senate race. Without Hillary, he never would have learned to be a good debater. He never would have understood how to robustly answer distorted and personal attacks. He never would have been warned about how harmful an unplugged spouse can be. He never would have realized how a luminous speech can be effective damage control....

Hillary has clearly raised Obama’s consciousness about the importance of courting the ladies. Touring a manufacturing plant in Allentown, Pa., Tuesday, he was flirtatious, winking and grinning at the women working there, calling one “Sweetie,” telling another she was “beautiful,” and imitating his daughters’ dance moves by twirling around.

Later, at a Scranton town hall, he went up to Denise Mercuri, a pharmacist from Dunmore wearing a Hillary button. “What do I need to do? Do you want me on my knees?” he charmed, before promising: “I’ll give you a kiss.”...

At the Wilbur chocolate shop in Lititz Monday, he spent most of his time skittering away from chocolate goodies, as though he were a starlet obsessing on a svelte waistline.

“Oh, now,” the woman managing the shop told him with a frown, “you don’t worry about calories in a chocolate factory.”

Wait, is she toughening him up or feminizing him? And is the feminine stuff nauseatingly stereotyped?

Footnote: Lititz, Pennsylvania is the ancestral home of my paternal grandmother.

The Singles Map.

In case you want to pick where to live based on the supply of singles of the sex you prefer, Richard Florida has the info depicted nicely on a map. That map is telling me to get out of New York City — and back to Madison.

By the way, this idea that you should go where the sex ratio is best is called "the Jan and Dean rule":



I'm not sure which one is Jan and which one is Dean. I'm going to assume it's Jan on the left, because we read left to right, and moviemakers were probably trying to help us. But the first few seconds of that video are quite interesting, and I don't mean just as a study of nonactors not even trying to act. Why does "Jan" already have his 2 girls? It doesn't fit the dialogue (unless the point is supposed to be that Jan is an idiot and girls find Dean hopelessly unattractive). I think it's because without the girls, the dialogue would make Jan seem gay.

Which reminds me: Florida's map leaves you on your own to figure out the extent to which an oversupply of one sex means a lot of gay people choose to live there. But he's already telling us that New York has a huge oversupply of women.

Footnote: Richard Florida did a Bloggingheads recently.