Month: August 2002

Thomas Crown Affair

Ashley Bischoff2 Comments

I watched The Thomas Crown Affair last night (the 1999 version with Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo), recorded off TNT on TiVo. Really, it was disappointing. More below, but there are spoilers.

The basic plot goes something like this: Thomas Crown is a wealthy guy and he steals a painting from his own museum for his own amusement. Then, Catherine Banning, an insurance investigator, tries to prove that he stole it. An abbreviated version:

Catherine: I know you stole that painting.

Thomas: No, I didn’t. Really.

Catherine: Come on, you stole it.

Thomas: Ok, maybe I did. But you’ll never catch me. Hey, how about a date?

Catherine: Sure, I’ll go on a date. But, I'm still investigating you.

[…]

Thomas: You know, I did steal that painting.

Catherine: Just put it back, and we can be in love, eh?

[puts painting back]

Thomas: I love you.

Catherine: I love you too.

Bleh. I was confused about a few things in the film as well. For one thing, why did Catherine have such strong feelings for Thomas all the while antagonizing him and even breaking into his house? And, what's with the ending — why would Thomas surprise Catherine by meeting her on the plane instead of at the heliport as planned?

In some ways, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at the quality, since John McTiernan (of Rollerball and Die Hard With a Vengeance fame) directed it. Then again, he has had a few gems (such as The Hunt for Red October), but it could be that McTiernan is just more of an action-movie director (of which The Thomas Crown Affair is not).

Peeps + Peanut Butter

Ashley Bischoff8 Comments

I was feeling a little peckish after breakfast this morning, so I was looking around the kitchen for a little snack. There’s not much around these days, as I’ve stopped buying cookies and Newtons for the time being.

I still hand plenty of Peeps — resulting from a 90%-off sale at Target after Easter — so I turned my attention to those. I was about to eat one raw, but then I recalled that I may as well nuke ’em. From there, my mind went into overdrive — “What if I could add a topping to nuked Peep to magnify its goodness?”. And, from there, I turned to peanut butter.

I just opened up the jar — reduced-fat, no less — and dunked the helpless Peep in there. I made sure that his little body was covered in peanuttyness. From there, I just placed him on a saucer and nuked him for 12 seconds on high.

Man, you thought nuked Peeps were good? This was spectacular. It was like taking the Peepiness to a whole new level. It was just fabulously delicous. Mmm, I’m going to have to exercise restraint to stop myself from eating too many of these ;).

Raspberry-Walnut Shortbread Bars

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I subscribe to the newsletter for BackOfTheBox.com. As the name implies, the site features recipes found on the back of boxes and cartons.

And, today’s recipe was for raspberry-walnut shortbread bars. The original “box” was apparently Diamond Walnuts, as they’re listed by name as one of the ingredients.

I like both raspberry and shortbread, so that combination sounded pretty tasty from the start. And, walnuts would only tend to improve upon that ;). I was optimistic about my chances of ever being able to complete the recipe as its ingredients were fairly ordinary (walnuts, flour, sugar, butter, jam…).

However, looking more closely, it looks like it could take a while to bake (bake walnuts 8-10 minutes … bake crust for 25 mintutes … let cool for 5 minutes … bake completed-bars for 25 minutes).

So maybe it’s a bit much effort for an everyday cooking jaunt. But, they could work well for a holiday or other special occasion.

How Much Inside?

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David Brake, also known as “the guy that owns blog.org” passes along How Much Inside?, the site that measures how much stuff is inside various things (go figure).

For instance, they answer the burning questions, “How much Oreo Goo is inside a pack of Oreos?” and “How many square inches of Magic Shell are in a bottle?”.

Simply put, magic shell is awesome. It is ACTION FOOD! It forms a hard shell when put on top of ice cream, which protects it from burrowing insects and mites. It is the perfect way to make ice cream more fun & your classmates jealous.

Developed in the 1960s through a collaborative effort between the U.S. Army and Industrial Light and Magic, magic shell was designed to be a bulletproof camouflage coating for armored vehicles. […]

10,000 Fake Band Names

Ashley Bischoff4 Comments

When Brian Whitman was working on a paper on the human evaluation of artist similarity, he needed a way to eliminate bad results — “robots, users just clicking randomly, and people that didn't know the bands presented”.

So, he wrote up a quick script to generate band names for him. Ten thousand names later, they’re now listed on his webpage. Some of my favorites:

  • Track Botanical
  • Toad Shin
  • Roulette Defenestration [you knew I would include that one ;)]