Senin, 29 Agustus 2016
Risky Baking: It's Hard to Make a Perfect Bagel Without Lye - New York Times
You know what happened: I lost. And paradoxically, the panel picked a bagel from a transplanted East Coast baker: Dan Graf, the 32-year-old owner of Baron Baking, based in Oakland, Calif.
I was in bitter denial. I tried Mr. Graf’s recipe, which was published in The Times in 2012. I baked bagels using both of our recipes. I preferred mine to his.
My bagel, a result of combining techniques from over a dozen recipes online, in cookbooks and in YouTube videos, was admittedly complicated. (I destroyed and repaired my stand mixer twice while experimenting with it.)
But I believed it was worth it. I liked the crunchy crust from boiling the bagels and baking them at a very high heat; I liked the tangy flavor from the sourdough starter.
Mr. Graf’s recipe — a combination of high-gluten flour, salt, water, malt powder and yeast boiled in a solution of salt and baking soda and then baked — was simpler, more straightforward. It resulted in a chewier crust and a nice crumb, but his bagels had a slightly yellow tint and a bitter aftertaste from the baking soda.
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I invited Mr. Graf to meet me at a cafe, where, aficionado to aficionado, we could swap our creations and politely judge each other.
Mr. Graf, a brawny-looking bearded man with glasses, called my bagel “phenomenal,” adding, “If I saw that in a store, I would buy it.” He also complimented me for the extra punch in flavor from the starter. But he noticed some cracks on the bottom half of my bagels and recommended flipping them in the oven to prevent them from drying out.
Then I ate a Baron bagel. It had a pretzel-like brown crust, a delightful chew and a rich, nutty flavor. His bagels were perfectly shaped and shiny, like something that could be on the cover of Bon Appétit.
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“Yours are definitely better,” I said. He did not disagree.
I asked Mr. Graf whether he had changed his recipe. He said no, but added that the version he offered to The Times was tailored for home kitchens. For more flavor, he mixes a starter and lets it sit for about 28 hours. This serves as a base for the dough. After the bagels are rolled and shaped, they ferment in the refrigerator for another 20 hours.
And he uses a secret ingredient: lye, or sodium hydroxide, in the water, a chemical base used for boiling pretzels, making soap and cleaning drains (that last phrase being one you don’t want to see in a sentence about food).
A tiny amount of lye dramatically increases the pH level of the water, Mr. Graf said, which results in the crispy brown crust. But use too much — or boil it in the wrong kind of pot (a stainless steel one is required) — and it could be poisonous.
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“There is that liability there of, like, ‘Oh, don’t poison yourself,’” Mr. Graf said. “It’s really caustic.” So his home recipe instructs the baker to boil the bagels in salted water. (A Times reporter revised his recipe in 2012 to include baking soda, a common alternative to lye.)
Here I was trying to perfect the bagel and working with a G-rated version of his recipe. “It’s the tragedy of the food commons,” he said, referring to the simplification of home recipes.
I was determined to try lye. By coincidence, I had dinner days later with a friend who had an unopened bottle in his closet. My friend had gone through a pretzel-making phase and had hoped to experiment with boiling in lye, but never had the guts to open the bottle labeled in red: “Poison: Causes Severe Burns.”
I took the bottle home. The next morning, I drank a cup of coffee and put on my safety gear.
Mr. Graf told me in an email to weigh the water and the lye so the chemical accounted for 0.15 percent of the solution. Using a kitchen scale, I weighed a pot with 2,200 grams of water (a bit more than a half-gallon) and determined I needed about 3 grams of lye, which amounted to a small pinch. (For safe measurements, brave bagel makers should always weigh the lye with a scale). I dropped the lye into the stainless steel pot of water, brought it to a boil and added the bagels. The water turned a disturbing yellow.
But after I transferred the bagels to the oven and baked them for 20 minutes, flipping them halfway through the cooking, I knew my quest had come to an end. The bagels came out exactly how I wanted them: crunchy and brown with a glossy sheen, a nice chew and soft inside. Not nearly as perfect as Mr. Graf’s, but exceptional for a bagel from a home kitchen.
That day, some friends dropped by for brunch. Not one of them was poisoned. We fantasized for a moment about quitting our jobs and opening a bakery.
But then we remembered Mr. Graf, and that his establishment delivers bagels to grocery stores and restaurants throughout the Bay Area, including a nearby Whole Foods, and that he could give Ess-a-Bagel a run for its money.
Recipe: Baron Bagels
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Baton Rouge Woman Writes Letter to the Media Saying Everything Americans Have Been Waiting to Say - Independent Journal Review
Heather Cross’s entire family lives in Louisiana, but she’s called Baton Rouge home since 2002.
Image Credit: Heather Cross
She’s lived through Hurricane Katrina and now the historic flooding that has affected the state in the last two weeks. Cross tells Independent Journal Review that the two major weather events are similar, yet very “different”:
“Hurricane Katrina was also very devastating, but in a totally different way. Plus, the sheer geographic area affected in ways big and small is way broader [this time]. I think maybe 50 percent of the state has been affected by flooding and waters are rising in some places.”
To put things in perspective, Cross says she’s from the Lafayette area and both of her hometowns, which are an hour-and-a-half drive from one another, have been devastated by the flooding.
After seeing the national news reports, or lack thereof, Cross took to Facebook to express her outrage over the media’s coverage of the historic flooding.
The Baton Rouge-based attorney notes that she made the post before Donald Trump and President Obama announced they were coming, separately, to the area. She wrote:
“Dear CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, ABC News, CBS News, Good Morning America, the Today Show and whatever other news organizations professing to employ people who refer to themselves as Journalists:
cc: all Facebook Friends (as promised)
FYI There is a flood in Louisiana.
You’ve met us before. You came and camped out over here during a very painful period in our existence about a month ago. You went into a neighborhood you’ve never been in, in a state it’s quite possible that you’ve never visited (despite that you are ‘very well-travelled’). Although, I realize you are sophisticated, and accepting of ‘other’ cultures, you managed to pass judgment on an entire community in your own country, who were mourning and struggling to figure out – what the hell just happened – and where do we go from here – all of us (well most of us) – in good faith. You didn’t offer help, you didn’t offer support, you offered criticism – and then you left.”
She continued, saying this is a community that has been in turmoil in recent months, all while under the scrutiny of the national media:
“Oh you came back, a few weeks later, a lunatic, who also had never been here, showed up and murdered three of our finest citizens. In broad daylight. In the middle of town. You came back. With more criticism. More speculation. More side taking. When in the community I live, we were basically all on the same side. We’re all in this together. I hate to pull a hashtag, but seriously #unBRoken.
Not one person I watched on the national news during the weeks following Alton Sterling’s death, or the murder of three police officers gave my friends, my family, my neighbors – any credit or the benefit of the doubt. Nope. The entire news media looked for someone to blame. Depending on what network you watched the target of blame was Sterling himself, the cops, the South, the guns, the whatever. Not one person I watched on the national news assumed that the whole city was by and large, and in good faith, just trying to wrap our brains around what happened, and trying to make our city whole again.
I think you people are stone cold silent about this flood, because really, there’s no agenda to push. There’s no side to take. There’s nobody to blame. So even though you don’t seem in the least bit curious, here’s what’s been happening around here since you left.”
Cross went on to praise the Cajun Navy, as well as other citizens who’ve stepped up to help the community in their time of need, which should be the real focus of the story:
“While it was still raining, a spontaneous, private, and well-meaning navy of ordinary people assembled themselves. They were black, white, Asian and otherwise. They weren’t protesting anything. They got into their own boats, spent their own money, spent their own time, risked their own lives. Black people saved white people. White people saved black people.
Nobody asked what color you were before knocking on your door. These are not first responders on some list somewhere. These are a bunch of guys who like to hunt and fish and as a result own flat bottom boats and they assumed that the actual police and other first responders, not to mention their fellow citizens – could use a little help. So they just showed up. Nobody told them to. They wanted to.”
Image Credit: Josh Herman, used with permission.
She tells Independent Journal Review she wouldn’t wish what happened in Baton Rouge to her “worst enemy.” Citing the school, road and office closures, Cross says life has totally changed for her and her neighbors:
“The neighborhoods that people live in are gutted. Mansions to simple, middle class homes — rich and poor — are all affected. It’s not like you can live in a house which got inundated with water. It smells terrible, there’s no sheetrock, it’s literally dangerous.
Lots of them, and I mean lots, [of homeowners] did not have flood insurance. And these are RESPONSIBLE homeowners. They did everything right. They didn’t have the insurance because they weren’t in places that ever flooded.”
According to ABC News, more than 60,000 homes were damaged in the historic flood.
Cross explains that the media’s coverage of Baton Rouge, in general, tends to show Southerners as a “bunch of uneducated hicks,” which, especially in such a tragic time, is painful to see.
She has a few suggestions for journalists:
“What the media could do in the future, when covering any aspect of the South, would be to put their preconceived notions about it aside. To maybe not start with a hypothesis about what it’s like to live here, but instead, to meet the people who live here, and give them the benefit of the doubt, and then develop the hypothesis.
There are definitely racial issues ongoing in the South that need attention, I’m not saying ‘don’t talk about it,’ I’m just saying that we have come a long way and most Southerners are in good faith.”
Image Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Roughly 102,000 survivors have registered to receive federal aid for everything from home repairs to cleanup work. Thirteen people died during what’s now being called the “Great Flood.”
Cross says she has seen the most heartbreaking and heartwarming things in the past two weeks and her love for her city has only grown stronger.
Minggu, 28 Agustus 2016
'The Night Of' Season 1, Episode 7: A Test of Faith - New York Times
It becomes a contract between them: She trusts in his innocence; he trusts her to rescue him from a life sentence. It could be argued that there’s an intimacy between them that goes beyond a lawyer-client relationship, because there’s so much at stake for both of them. But having them actually kiss, however much Chandra seems to regret it afterward, undermines her as a professional.
“The Night Of” goes to great lengths to emphasize the grind-it-out dignity of veterans like Box, Stone and Helen, but it does a disservice to Chandra by giving her a jailhouse crush.
Chandra’s enduring faith, though, flies in the face of more questions about Naz’s character. What she knows to be certain: That Naz was not only suspended for pushing a fellow student down the stairs in high school, but that he also whipped a full can of soda at another kid’s face when he returned to school. What she doesn’t: That Naz is capable of conspiring to murder.
When Freddy needs him to distract a guard while he casually slits an inmate’s throat with a razor blade, Naz handles his role in the execution with chilling aplomb — and does it, ironically, by requesting a new inhaler, that totem of his supposed vulnerability. Naz will not be disclosing this incident to Chandra and Stone, just as he didn’t disclose his violent behavior in high school or his side business selling Adderall to college students at $10 a pop.
With the finale next week, we’ll get a verdict of guilty or not guilty. The word innocent, however, will not so easily apply.
Notes
• The cultural implications of the case have been measured throughout in headlines and news broadcasts, in opportunists like Glenne Headly’s grandstanding lawyer and in the blowback directed at the Khans within their community. But most of the players in the justice system have kept their head down, including Box, so to open the episode with social commentary from him is significant. “What we have here,” he says, hovering over another victim, “is the same scenario as Andrea Cornish, wouldn’t you agree? So where’s all the news trucks?”
• Stone’s investigation into Andrea’s stepfather reveals more older women he’s tried to fleece. “He’s like a trapeze artist,” says one former mark. “He swings from one old bag to another.” With evidence of serious debts and a pattern of abusive and exploitative behavior, Stone is developing a strong last-gasp counter-theory.
• The flirtation between Helen and Dr. Katz, the defense witness, on cross-examination is a treat to watch, because both parties have done this song-and-dance so many times before they can anticipate each other’s every move. Helen chips away at Katz effectively, but he smiles through it. He appreciates her artistry; she appreciates his flattery.
• There’s a degree to which Naz has been transformed by his time in prison, but the intimidating looks he flashes to a fellow college student on the stand are clearly not new to the witness. The witness is scared of Naz and will have reason to be scared if Naz is exonerated.
Continue reading the main storyThousands of strange blue lakes are appearing in Antarctica, and it's very bad news - ScienceAlert
Scientists have confirmed that thousands of pristine blue lakes have appeared on the ice sheets of East Antarctica, and it’s got them very worried.
The problem? They’ve seen this kind of thing happen before. Greenland’s ice sheet has been disintegrating rapidly, losing a whopping 1 trillion tonnes of ice between 2011 and 2014, and research suggests it’s because of these lakes.
A team of UK researchers has analysed hundreds of satellite images and meteorological data taken of the Langhovde Glacier in East Antarctica, and found for the first time that between 2000 and 2013, nearly 8,000 of these lakes had formed.
Some of these formations, known as supraglacial - or meltwater - lakes, appear to be draining into the floating ice below, which could have serious consequences for the stability of the entire ice shelf.
Ice shelves are thick, floating slabs of ice that form where a glacier or masses of ice flow down a coastline, whereas an ice sheet is a massive chunk of glacier ice covering an area of land greater than 50,000 square kilometres (20,000 square miles).
There's plenty of reasonable doubt on The Night Of , lost amid the bullshit - A.V. Club
There’s a whole lot of reasonable doubt to be found in tonight’s episode, but my goodness do you to have to wade through an ocean of bullshit to find it. The Night Of hasn’t bothered to sermonize about how the entire lives of both defendants and victims are put on trial, because simply showing it happen is more than repulsive enough to make the point. Who gives a shit if Naz sold some Adderall at a hefty markup? Who gives a shift if Andrea bought drugs off that waiter? I realize these shouldn’t exactly be treated as rhetorical questions, given drugs did play some role in their one night together. But neither sets of questions are raised as part of some coherent explanation of what happened. Rather, everything rests in the implications: Naz did it because he’s an evil drug dealer, while Andrea was mixed up in drugs, which I guess means she might have run afoul of a dealer or something. Which could have happened! But the justice system requires neither side to offer anything so specific, and indeed they aren’t incentivized to try. All the prosecution and defense are there to do is paint an overall picture of guilt or innocence—or, more accurately, non-guilt—and a whole lot of vague gesturing and insinuating is all just fine in pursuit of the chosen goal.
It’s particularly galling when Helen Weiss tries to catch out the defense’s own forensic pathologist. There’s a chumminess between the two of them, a sense this is all ultimately a game they are playing. That doesn’t mean either ignores the gravity of the situation, as both are dead serious about making their points. But the two acknowledge they have been doing this long enough to know how this all works, and with that comes once again the unstated but definite admission that it’s never about what’s actually true, but rather about who is more persuasive in claiming something to be true. Now, I’m not naïve enough to claim this is some grand revelation—I’ve been making this point throughout these reviews—but I want to give The Night Of credit for pissing me off about this all over again.
All the little details matter here. There’s the fact Weiss uses the specter of O.J. Simpson and some kind words at some stupid dinner party to cast doubt on the pathologist’s credibility, rather than actually addressing the veracity of his findings, give or take the bit about the missing knife. There’s the fact the medical examiner damn well knows there’s no way to tell how Naz got that wound, but he happily gave the State’s preferred answer at Helen’s request. Maybe worst of all is the examiner’s offhand remark when Chandra brings up his own earlier errors, that the man he wrongly put in prison might be back for some other crime. Maybe he was innocent of that specific crime, but surely he will be guilty of something eventually, right?
We’re seeing precisely that play out with Naz, and his role in Freddy’s murder of Victor represents one of the cleverest, most heartbreaking bits of business we’ve seen on The Night Of. After the inhaler is largely ignored for much of the miniseries—you’d be forgiven for thinking the trip to Rikers had somehow cured Naz of his asthma—it comes back in a big way tonight, as Chandra and Stone finally realize that Box broke the chain of evidence and gave the inhaler back to Naz. That’s enough of an excuse to call Box back to the stand, and Chandra suggests why he might have wanted to give back that inhaler, that it didn’t fit with the image he needed of Naz as a brutal, remorseless killer. She probably cedes a bit too much to Box’s apparent decency when she volunteers the possibility that this was just a subconscious motivation on his part, as it’s not difficult for him to parry such a weak charge. But the possibility is now out there, and no sooner does The Night Of connect the inhaler with Naz’s innocent appearance than it uses it as the crucial distraction in Victor’s murder, something Naz participates in without any apparent qualms. Maybe the inhaler would have exonerated him before, but now it very definitely makes him an accomplice to an all-new grisly murder.
But it’s only the text of Box and Chandra’s back and forth that informs the final scene. The subtext of Box’s testimony offers something else, and it links to a point the show has been making at least as far back as Stone called him a subtle beast. It’s implicit in Chandra’s initial, more persuasive line of questioning, in which she runs down all the suspects she and Stone turned up and asks Box why he never followed up with any of them. Box was never looking for the guy who did this, but a guy he could convict of the crime. Maybe breaking the chain of evidence and giving Naz the inhaler would have helped ease some nagging doubts about his only suspect. Maybe it was part of his larger strategy to win Naz’s trust before extracting a confession—and if that’s the case, I don’t believe for one second that Box really puts more stock in evidence than he does in a confession, considering he undermined the former in pursuit of the latter. Either way, it doesn’t matter: Box’s job on 300 or so occasions has been to clear cases, and he’s done that successfully all those times by following the path of least resistance.
The past of least resistance, it’s worth noting, doesn’t normally involve a trial, and this case never would have gotten to that point if not for Naz throwing a curveball at the last possible moment. We’ve seen enough of Box to recognize his doubts—if not necessarily of Naz’s guilt, then at least of the particularly monstrous light Weiss has sought to show him in—and “An Ordinary Death” ends with him once more looking uneasy at the end of his retirement party. If Naz had just taken that plea deal, Box would have put those doubts to rest a long time ago, but the whole point of a trial is to consider doubt, to determine whether there really is no plausible other way Andrea’s murder could have happened.
Box valued easy certainties during his investigation, and he repeatedly neglected to ask questions that could have undone those certainties. He didn’t push with an obviously shaky suspect and ask the questions that might have led him to Duane Reade. He managed to find all those eyewitnesses yet somehow missed the world’s creepiest mortician (which, my goodness, that’s saying something). And he automatically treated Andrea’s stepfather as someone to comfort, never once bothering to account for his whereabouts on the night in question—at least not as far as we’ve seen—nor doing the kind of digging that has Stone hanging around the gym all day. The way Box handled things was probably the right strategy, but it suddenly feels like there’s a real chance that the last case of his career is about to come undone. The fact that Naz’s actual guilt or innocence is pretty much irrelevant to that point underlines just why “An Ordinary Death” is such a powerful episode.
Stray observations
- You know, I really don’t know quite what to do with Chandra and Naz’s kiss. This feels like a touch too dramatic a touch for a show that, as I realize I’m all too fond of saying, is at its best when it sticks to more procedural, realistic territory. I’d maybe feel better if the show had contextualized how (un)common such inappropriate relationships are, but as it is it just feels like an odd note compared with everything else we’ve seen.
- I really could watch a version of this show that’s all about Naz’s parents. His mother’s slow but definite disillusionment with and abandonment of her son is brutal to see unfold but absolutely understandable. As for his father, one wonders how much of his continuing belief in his son is rooted in the sad truth that there’s really nothing else left for him to hang onto, as his life is otherwise imploding almost as badly as Naz’s is, through no fault of his own.
- I enjoyed the Law And Order shout-out. Sometimes a show has to just go ahead and acknowledge the elephant in the room.
Roadies Recap: Willin' to Be Movin' - Vulture
Maybe the glow from last week's excellent episode is still lingering, or maybe Roadies is finally sharpening its focus in the homestretch. That tends to happen with serialized prestige dramas, given that so many of them try to stretch four hours of good material into a dozen. Whatever the reason, "The Corporate Gig" is another modest charmer. Set almost entirely over the course of an evening at a billionaire entrepreneur's birthday party, the episode is comedic without ever turning too silly or broad, and it brings several of the season's major plotlines to fruition in ways that are surprisingly emotional.Written by Roadies' A-team of Cameron Crowe and Winnie Holzman, and directed by the talented Jon Kasdan (whose painfully true 2012 teen comedy The First Time is worth seeking out), "The Corporate Gig" sees the Staton-House Band performing for an invitation-only San Diego crowd at the behest of loaded rubber heir Jack Peltz, played by Duplass Brothers staple Steve Zissis. Peltz runs FunCo, a company that started out making fake vomit and erasers, but has since branched into bra-enhancers and crowd-control bullets.Throughout the episode, the band and crew wonders whether they're sacrificing something essential about themselves by taking this rich guy's money. But Crowe, Holzman, and Kasdan don't treat the job as anything that dreadful. Instead, they gently mock the pretentious goofiness of multimillion-dollar private parties, with their costumed cater-waiters, trampolines, water slides, and fussy clipboard-bearing planners (well-played here by Kate Comer).Against that backdrop, Roadies gets busy being Roadies, moving forward on all the personal crises and relationship dramas that have been the series' stock-in-trade from the beginning — even back when it might've been better for this rock-and-roll show to actually to be about rock-and-roll. Again, it's hard to get too worked up by the important stuff in this episode, like Wes losing his job as Tom Staton's son's nanny, or Rick telling Milo to dump the stalker Natalie for him, or even Shelli returning from her father-in-law's funeral looking so content that Bill hesitates to confess his feelings for her.On the other hand, for the first time since "The City Whose Name Must Not Be Spoken," Reg and Kelly Ann get to spend a lot of screen time together, and their romantic subplot finally clicks. With Kelly Ann haunted after reading a diary entry from her idealistic 16-year-old self, and Reg stunned by the news that his bosses are about reassign him to a canned-goods concern, both parties are in a shaky place when they find each other, drunk, toward the end of the Peltz party.Imogen Poots and Rafe Spall do some of their best work of the entire series, as their characters bond over Billy Wilder movies and blurt out their fears and hopes. Their scenes are filled with marvelous moments and lines, from Kelly Ann admitting that she's never had sex sober to Reg suggesting, "We could swim drunkenly in the nude and celebrate the destruction of who we are." Even the way Kasdan catches the San Diego breeze blowing Kelly Ann's hair back is just lovely, evoking both the magic of the evening and the vibe of the city where Crowe grew up.The two biggest plot developments in "The Corporate Gig" arrive at the end. Chris House is AWOL all episode — to the point where the band finally plays for Peltz as "Most of the Staton-House Band!" — and then he sends a note to Tom announcing that he's done with the tour and the group. In last week's episode, we learned that Tom was planning to disengage anyway. This week, the Staton half of the band maneuvers to steal Shelli away as his personal manager, while also shutting out House loyalist Bill. This major complication will likely play out for good in next week's finale.Then, in the final minutes of "The Corporate Gig," Phil's life flashes before his eyes as he collapses into a swimming pool. One of the smartest moves Roadies has made down the stretch was bringing Phil back, so it's quite a bold move if this is it for him. Last week's "The All Night Bus Ride" showcased Phil's life story, in what was easily the show's finest hour. This week, he appears only sparingly before he (apparently) dies, but he has one of the episode's key scenes, when Peltz corners him and offers to pay for his best rock anecdotes.As the two of them walk off together, Phil talks about his favorite song — Lowell George's "Willin'," originally recorded by George's band Little Feat — while Peltz boasts about his collection of memorabilia. This is what's really at the heart of "The Corporate Gig." It's not about making fun of the Peltzes of the world; it's about examining the modern rock-and-roll food chain. Guys like Phil and Bill facilitate the music (or "bring comfort to genius," in Bill's words). People like Staton and House make it. And then, Jack Peltz pays a lot of money for it, just so he can stick it behind glass in a place where only a select few get to go.That's a poignant theme for a show like Roadies to explore, this idea that authentic musical experiences are now reserved for those who can afford them, and that something as fun and frivolous as a novelty-toy company could develop into an amoral international behemoth. I wish Roadies had been more about these contradictions and artistic compromises all along. But after the past two weeks, I have to admit: I'm eager to see how Crowe and company complete the thought.Encores:Chris's "Welp, I'm out" note to Tom — ending with the phrase "Long May You Run" — is a direct reference to how Neil Young quit his 1976 tour with Stephen Stills, while they were promoting their album Long May You Run. Young disappeared after nine shows, sending this telegram: "Dear Stephen, funny how some things that start spontaneously end that way. Eat a peach. Neil."Kelly Ann calling a piña colada a "Pino Palladino" — in reference to the famed session bassist and recent Who member — is one of the nerdiest rockophile moments on this show so far. I kinda loved it.When Shelli tells Bill that he's not a Buddhist, I don't know if Crowe or Holzman is directly responsible for his answer ("No, I'm not, but it is my favorite of all the religions"), but it's hard to imagine a line that better represents both writers' comic sensibilities. Or Luke Wilson's screen persona, for that matter.At one point in this episode, Reg and Kelly Ann drunkenly sing a verse (or chorus?) of "Janine," which is the most we've heard thus far of the Staton-House Band's most troublesome song. Now we know where the name of the fan-site "The Blue and the Black" comes from: It's a line in "Janine."My favorite musical moment in the episode: the use of Daryl Hall's 2011 solo number "Talking to You (Is Like Talking to Myself)" on the soundtrack. It's the first time I've ever heard that song, and it's incredibly catchy — like classic Hall & Oates.I'm not sure what to make of the scene where Kelly Ann complains about the changing music business to a handsome young man who shrugs that he's fine with it all — with the exclusive gigs, and the audiences who don't clap because they have cell phones in their hands. On the one hand, this dude isn't as obnoxious as some of Roadies' other representatives of industry crassness. On the other hand, I'm mildly concerned that the only reason he's so nice is so that when he tells Kelly Ann, "You have a beautiful smile, you should use it more," it's to be taken as good advice, and not as one of the most condescending things you can say to a woman.Let's give it up for David Spade, who works as the MC at Peltz's party, and gets worried about the yet-to-air finale of his show, Dead Sex, when Bill tells him about the ending that fans would like to see. ("Let's get Aaron Sorkin for day, or that guy who did Hamilton," a panicked Spade later yells into a phone at his co-producers.) In a more tightly controlled show, all the Dead Sex jokes could've been more amusingly meta. Instead they're just kind of bizarre … which is okay, too.
'The Night Of' Season 1, Episode 7: A Test of Faith - New York Times
It becomes a contract between them: She trusts in his innocence; he trusts her to rescue him from a life sentence. It could be argued that there’s an intimacy between them that goes beyond a lawyer-client relationship, because there’s so much at stake for both of them. But having them actually kiss, however much Chandra seems to regret it afterward, undermines her as a professional.
“The Night Of” goes to great lengths to emphasize the grind-it-out dignity of veterans like Box, Stone and Helen, but it does a disservice to Chandra by giving her a jailhouse crush.
Chandra’s enduring faith, though, flies in the face of more questions about Naz’s character. What she knows to be certain: That Naz was not only suspended for pushing a fellow student down the stairs in high school, but that he also whipped a full can of soda at another kid’s face when he returned to school. What she doesn’t: That Naz is capable of conspiring to murder.
When Freddy needs him to distract a guard while he casually slits an inmate’s throat with a razor blade, Naz handles his role in the execution with chilling aplomb — and does it, ironically, by requesting a new inhaler, that totem of his supposed vulnerability. Naz will not be disclosing this incident to Chandra and Stone, just as he didn’t disclose his violent behavior in high school or his side business selling Adderall to college students at $10 a pop.
With the finale next week, we’ll get a verdict of guilty or not guilty. The word innocent, however, will not so easily apply.
Notes
• The cultural implications of the case have been measured throughout in headlines and news broadcasts, in opportunists like Glenne Headly’s grandstanding lawyer and in the blowback directed at the Khans within their community. But most of the players in the justice system have kept their head down, including Box, so to open the episode with social commentary from him is significant. “What we have here,” he says, hovering over another victim, “is the same scenario as Andrea Cornish, wouldn’t you agree? So where’s all the news trucks?”
• Stone’s investigation into Andrea’s stepfather reveals more older women he’s tried to fleece. “He’s like a trapeze artist,” says one former mark. “He swings from one old bag to another.” With evidence of serious debts and a pattern of abusive and exploitative behavior, Stone is developing a strong last-gasp counter-theory.
• The flirtation between Helen and Dr. Katz, the defense witness, on cross-examination is a treat to watch, because both parties have done this song-and-dance so many times before they can anticipate each other’s every move. Helen chips away at Katz effectively, but he smiles through it. He appreciates her artistry; she appreciates his flattery.
• There’s a degree to which Naz has been transformed by his time in prison, but the intimidating looks he flashes to a fellow college student on the stand are clearly not new to the witness. The witness is scared of Naz and will have reason to be scared if Naz is exonerated.
Continue reading the main storyThere's plenty of reasonable doubt on The Night Of , lost amid the bullshit - A.V. Club
There’s a whole lot of reasonable doubt to be found in tonight’s episode, but my goodness do you to have to wade through an ocean of bullshit to find it. The Night Of hasn’t bothered to sermonize about how the entire lives of both defendants and victims are put on trial, because simply showing it happen is more than repulsive enough to make the point. Who gives a shit if Naz sold some Adderall at a hefty markup? Who gives a shift if Andrea bought drugs off that waiter? I realize these shouldn’t exactly be treated as rhetorical questions, given drugs did play some role in their one night together. But neither sets of questions are raised as part of some coherent explanation of what happened. Rather, everything rests in the implications: Naz did it because he’s an evil drug dealer, while Andrea was mixed up in drugs, which I guess means she might have run afoul of a dealer or something. Which could have happened! But the justice system requires neither side to offer anything so specific, and indeed they aren’t incentivized to try. All the prosecution and defense are there to do is paint an overall picture of guilt or innocence—or, more accurately, non-guilt—and a whole lot of vague gesturing and insinuating is all just fine in pursuit of the chosen goal.
It’s particularly galling when Helen Weiss tries to catch out the defense’s own forensic pathologist. There’s a chumminess between the two of them, a sense this is all ultimately a game they are playing. That doesn’t mean either ignores the gravity of the situation, as both are dead serious about making their points. But the two acknowledge they have been doing this long enough to know how this all works, and with that comes once again the unstated but definite admission that it’s never about what’s actually true, but rather about who is more persuasive in claiming something to be true. Now, I’m not naïve enough to claim this is some grand revelation—I’ve been making this point throughout these reviews—but I want to give The Night Of credit for pissing me off about this all over again.
All the little details matter here. There’s the fact Weiss uses the specter of O.J. Simpson and some kind words at some stupid dinner party to cast doubt on the pathologist’s credibility, rather than actually addressing the veracity of his findings, give or take the bit about the missing knife. There’s the fact the medical examiner damn well knows there’s no way to tell how Naz got that wound, but he happily gave the State’s preferred answer at Helen’s request. Maybe worst of all is the examiner’s offhand remark when Chandra brings up his own earlier errors, that the man he wrongly put in prison might be back for some other crime. Maybe he was innocent of that specific crime, but surely he will be guilty of something eventually, right?
We’re seeing precisely that play out with Naz, and his role in Freddy’s murder of Victor represents one of the cleverest, most heartbreaking bits of business we’ve seen on The Night Of. After the inhaler is largely ignored for much of the miniseries—you’d be forgiven for thinking the trip to Rikers had somehow cured Naz of his asthma—it comes back in a big way tonight, as Chandra and Stone finally realize that Box broke the chain of evidence and gave the inhaler back to Naz. That’s enough of an excuse to call Box back to the stand, and Chandra suggests why he might have wanted to give back that inhaler, that it didn’t fit with the image he needed of Naz as a brutal, remorseless killer. She probably cedes a bit too much to Box’s apparent decency when she volunteers the possibility that this was just a subconscious motivation on his part, as it’s not difficult for him to parry such a weak charge. But the possibility is now out there, and no sooner does The Night Of connect the inhaler with Naz’s innocent appearance than it uses it as the crucial distraction in Victor’s murder, something Naz participates in without any apparent qualms. Maybe the inhaler would have exonerated him before, but now it very definitely makes him an accomplice to an all-new grisly murder.
But it’s only the text of Box and Chandra’s back and forth that informs the final scene. The subtext of Box’s testimony offers something else, and it links to a point the show has been making at least as far back as Stone called him a subtle beast. It’s implicit in Chandra’s initial, more persuasive line of questioning, in which she runs down all the suspects she and Stone turned up and asks Box why he never followed up with any of them. Box was never looking for the guy who did this, but a guy he could convict of the crime. Maybe breaking the chain of evidence and giving Naz the inhaler would have helped ease some nagging doubts about his only suspect. Maybe it was part of his larger strategy to win Naz’s trust before extracting a confession—and if that’s the case, I don’t believe for one second that Box really puts more stock in evidence than he does in a confession, considering he undermined the former in pursuit of the latter. Either way, it doesn’t matter: Box’s job on 300 or so occasions has been to clear cases, and he’s done that successfully all those times by following the path of least resistance.
The past of least resistance, it’s worth noting, doesn’t normally involve a trial, and this case never would have gotten to that point if not for Naz throwing a curveball at the last possible moment. We’ve seen enough of Box to recognize his doubts—if not necessarily of Naz’s guilt, then at least of the particularly monstrous light Weiss has sought to show him in—and “An Ordinary Death” ends with him once more looking uneasy at the end of his retirement party. If Naz had just taken that plea deal, Box would have put those doubts to rest a long time ago, but the whole point of a trial is to consider doubt, to determine whether there really is no plausible other way Andrea’s murder could have happened.
Box valued easy certainties during his investigation, and he repeatedly neglected to ask questions that could have undone those certainties. He didn’t push with an obviously shaky suspect and ask the questions that might have led him to Duane Reade. He managed to find all those eyewitnesses yet somehow missed the world’s creepiest mortician (which, my goodness, that’s saying something). And he automatically treated Andrea’s stepfather as someone to comfort, never once bothering to account for his whereabouts on the night in question—at least not as far as we’ve seen—nor doing the kind of digging that has Stone hanging around the gym all day. The way Box handled things was probably the right strategy, but it suddenly feels like there’s a real chance that the last case of his career is about to come undone. The fact that Naz’s actual guilt or innocence is pretty much irrelevant to that point underlines just why “An Ordinary Death” is such a powerful episode.
Stray observations
- You know, I really don’t know quite what to do with Chandra and Naz’s kiss. This feels like a touch too dramatic a touch for a show that, as I realize I’m all too fond of saying, is at its best when it sticks to more procedural, realistic territory. I’d maybe feel better if the show had contextualized how (un)common such inappropriate relationships are, but as it is it just feels like an odd note compared with everything else we’ve seen.
- I really could watch a version of this show that’s all about Naz’s parents. His mother’s slow but definite disillusionment with and abandonment of her son is brutal to see unfold but absolutely understandable. As for his father, one wonders how much of his continuing belief in his son is rooted in the sad truth that there’s really nothing else left for him to hang onto, as his life is otherwise imploding almost as badly as Naz’s is, through no fault of his own.
- I enjoyed the Law And Order shout-out. Sometimes a show has to just go ahead and acknowledge the elephant in the room.
Donald Trump Is Going To Be Elected - Huffington Post
Donald Trump is going to be elected president.
The American people voted for him a long time ago.
They voted for him when The History Channel went from showing documentaries about the Second World War to "Pawn Stars" and "Swamp People."
They voted for him when The Discovery Channel went from showing "Lost Treasures of the Yangtze Valley" to "Naked and Afraid."
They voted for him when The Learning Channel moved from something you could learn from to "My 600-lb Life."
They voted for him when CBS went from airing "Harvest of Shame" to airing "Big Brother."
These networks didn't make these programming changes by accident. They were responding to what the American people actually wanted. And what they wanted was "Naked and Afraid" and "Duck Dynasty."
The polls may show that Donald Trump is losing to Hillary Clinton, but don't you believe those polls. When the AC Nielsen Company selects a new Nielsen family, they disregard the new family's results for the first three months. The reason: when they feel they are being monitored, people lie about what they are watching. In the first three months, knowing they are being watched, they will tune into PBS. But over time they get tired of pretending. Then it is back to the Kardashians.
The same goes for people who are being asked by pollsters for whom they are voting. They will not say Donald Trump. It is too embarrassing. But the truth is, they like Trump. He is just like their favorite shows on TV.
Mindless entertainment.
Trump's replacement of Paul Manafort with Breitbart's Steve Bannon shows that Trump understands how Americans actually think. They think TV. They think ratings. They think entertainment.
We are a TV-based culture. We have been for some time now. The average American spends 5 hours a day, every day, watching TV. After sleep, it is our number one activity.
More shockingly, we spend 8.5 hours a day staring at screens -- phones, tablets, computers. And more and more of the content on those devices is also video and TV.
If you spend 5-8 hours a day, every day, for years and years doing the same thing it has an impact on you. For the past 40 years, we have devoted 5-8 hours a day staring at a screen -- every day. And we haven't been watching Judy Woodruff. We have been watching reality TV shows. That is what we love. That is what we resonate to. "The Real Housewives of Atlanta."
The French may love food. The Italians may love opera. What we love is TV. We are TV culture. It defines who we are.
In the 1950s, early television was allowed, with many restrictions, to be an observational guest at political conventions. They were quiet "flies on the wall," carefully and quietly commentating on what they saw way down below. They did not get involved in the process. Today, they ARE the process. Today, political conventions are nothing but carefully directed TV shows. Likewise "debates." They exist only to entertain a TV audience. TV and entertainment now dictate everything political. It is a never-ending show. The biggest reality show on air.
And Donald Trump is great TV.
He knows how to entertain.
He understands ratings.
Hillary Clinton is crap TV.
She may be smarter, better prepared, a better politician. It won't matter. She is terrible entertainment.
That's just how it is. Depressing, but true.
He is Kim Kardashian. She is Judy Woodruff.
Who gets better ratings?
Who would you rather watch for the next four years?
Honestly...
In 1825, the great French gastronom Brillat de Savarind said, "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are." Today, in America, we can safely say, "Tell me what you watch, and I will tell you what you are."
And what do we watch?
It isn't "PBS NewsHour."
As previously posted in TheVJ.com
This Blogger's Books and Other Items from...
iPhone Millionaire: How to Create and Sell Cutting-Edge Video
by Michael Rosenblum
Donald Trump Is Going To Be Elected - Huffington Post
Donald Trump is going to be elected president.
The American people voted for him a long time ago.
They voted for him when The History Channel went from showing documentaries about the Second World War to "Pawn Stars" and "Swamp People."
They voted for him when The Discovery Channel went from showing "Lost Treasures of the Yangtze Valley" to "Naked and Afraid."
They voted for him when The Learning Channel moved from something you could learn from to "My 600-lb Life."
They voted for him when CBS went from airing "Harvest of Shame" to airing "Big Brother."
These networks didn't make these programming changes by accident. They were responding to what the American people actually wanted. And what they wanted was "Naked and Afraid" and "Duck Dynasty."
The polls may show that Donald Trump is losing to Hillary Clinton, but don't you believe those polls. When the AC Nielsen Company selects a new Nielsen family, they disregard the new family's results for the first three months. The reason: when they feel they are being monitored, people lie about what they are watching. In the first three months, knowing they are being watched, they will tune into PBS. But over time they get tired of pretending. Then it is back to the Kardashians.
The same goes for people who are being asked by pollsters for whom they are voting. They will not say Donald Trump. It is too embarrassing. But the truth is, they like Trump. He is just like their favorite shows on TV.
Mindless entertainment.
Trump's replacement of Paul Manafort with Breitbart's Steve Bannon shows that Trump understands how Americans actually think. They think TV. They think ratings. They think entertainment.
We are a TV-based culture. We have been for some time now. The average American spends 5 hours a day, every day, watching TV. After sleep, it is our number one activity.
More shockingly, we spend 8.5 hours a day staring at screens -- phones, tablets, computers. And more and more of the content on those devices is also video and TV.
If you spend 5-8 hours a day, every day, for years and years doing the same thing it has an impact on you. For the past 40 years, we have devoted 5-8 hours a day staring at a screen -- every day. And we haven't been watching Judy Woodruff. We have been watching reality TV shows. That is what we love. That is what we resonate to. "The Real Housewives of Atlanta."
The French may love food. The Italians may love opera. What we love is TV. We are TV culture. It defines who we are.
In the 1950s, early television was allowed, with many restrictions, to be an observational guest at political conventions. They were quiet "flies on the wall," carefully and quietly commentating on what they saw way down below. They did not get involved in the process. Today, they ARE the process. Today, political conventions are nothing but carefully directed TV shows. Likewise "debates." They exist only to entertain a TV audience. TV and entertainment now dictate everything political. It is a never-ending show. The biggest reality show on air.
And Donald Trump is great TV.
He knows how to entertain.
He understands ratings.
Hillary Clinton is crap TV.
She may be smarter, better prepared, a better politician. It won't matter. She is terrible entertainment.
That's just how it is. Depressing, but true.
He is Kim Kardashian. She is Judy Woodruff.
Who gets better ratings?
Who would you rather watch for the next four years?
Honestly...
In 1825, the great French gastronom Brillat de Savarind said, "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are." Today, in America, we can safely say, "Tell me what you watch, and I will tell you what you are."
And what do we watch?
It isn't "PBS NewsHour."
As previously posted in TheVJ.com
This Blogger's Books and Other Items from...
iPhone Millionaire: How to Create and Sell Cutting-Edge Video
by Michael Rosenblum
Sabtu, 27 Agustus 2016
'The Night Of' Season 1, Episode 7: A Test of Faith - New York Times
It becomes a contract between them: She trusts in his innocence; he trusts her to rescue him from a life sentence. It could be argued that there’s an intimacy between them that goes beyond a lawyer-client relationship, because there’s so much at stake for both of them. But having them actually kiss, however much Chandra seems to regret it afterward, undermines her as a professional.
“The Night Of” goes to great lengths to emphasize the grind-it-out dignity of veterans like Box, Stone and Helen, but it does a disservice to Chandra by giving her a jailhouse crush.
Chandra’s enduring faith, though, flies in the face of more questions about Naz’s character. What she knows to be certain: That Naz was not only suspended for pushing a fellow student down the stairs in high school, but that he also whipped a full can of soda at another kid’s face when he returned to school. What she doesn’t: That Naz is capable of conspiring to murder.
When Freddy needs him to distract a guard while he casually slits an inmate’s throat with a razor blade, Naz handles his role in the execution with chilling aplomb — and does it, ironically, by requesting a new inhaler, that totem of his supposed vulnerability. Naz will not be disclosing this incident to Chandra and Stone, just as he didn’t disclose his violent behavior in high school or his side business selling Adderall to college students at $10 a pop.
With the finale next week, we’ll get a verdict of guilty or not guilty. The word innocent, however, will not so easily apply.
Notes
• The cultural implications of the case have been measured throughout in headlines and news broadcasts, in opportunists like Glenne Headly’s grandstanding lawyer and in the blowback directed at the Khans within their community. But most of the players in the justice system have kept their head down, including Box, so to open the episode with social commentary from him is significant. “What we have here,” he says, hovering over another victim, “is the same scenario as Andrea Cornish, wouldn’t you agree? So where’s all the news trucks?”
• Stone’s investigation into Andrea’s stepfather reveals more older women he’s tried to fleece. “He’s like a trapeze artist,” says one former mark. “He swings from one old bag to another.” With evidence of serious debts and a pattern of abusive and exploitative behavior, Stone is developing a strong last-gasp counter-theory.
• The flirtation between Helen and Dr. Katz, the defense witness, on cross-examination is a treat to watch, because both parties have done this song-and-dance so many times before they can anticipate each other’s every move. Helen chips away at Katz effectively, but he smiles through it. He appreciates her artistry; she appreciates his flattery.
• There’s a degree to which Naz has been transformed by his time in prison, but the intimidating looks he flashes to a fellow college student on the stand are clearly not new to the witness. The witness is scared of Naz and will have reason to be scared if Naz is exonerated.
Continue reading the main storyDonald Trump Is Going To Be Elected - Huffington Post
Donald Trump is going to be elected president.
The American people voted for him a long time ago.
They voted for him when The History Channel went from showing documentaries about the Second World War to "Pawn Stars" and "Swamp People."
They voted for him when The Discovery Channel went from showing "Lost Treasures of the Yangtze Valley" to "Naked and Afraid."
They voted for him when The Learning Channel moved from something you could learn from to "My 600-lb Life."
They voted for him when CBS went from airing "Harvest of Shame" to airing "Big Brother."
These networks didn't make these programming changes by accident. They were responding to what the American people actually wanted. And what they wanted was "Naked and Afraid" and "Duck Dynasty."
The polls may show that Donald Trump is losing to Hillary Clinton, but don't you believe those polls. When the AC Nielsen Company selects a new Nielsen family, they disregard the new family's results for the first three months. The reason: when they feel they are being monitored, people lie about what they are watching. In the first three months, knowing they are being watched, they will tune into PBS. But over time they get tired of pretending. Then it is back to the Kardashians.
The same goes for people who are being asked by pollsters for whom they are voting. They will not say Donald Trump. It is too embarrassing. But the truth is, they like Trump. He is just like their favorite shows on TV.
Mindless entertainment.
Trump's replacement of Paul Manafort with Breitbart's Steve Bannon shows that Trump understands how Americans actually think. They think TV. They think ratings. They think entertainment.
We are a TV-based culture. We have been for some time now. The average American spends 5 hours a day, every day, watching TV. After sleep, it is our number one activity.
More shockingly, we spend 8.5 hours a day staring at screens -- phones, tablets, computers. And more and more of the content on those devices is also video and TV.
If you spend 5-8 hours a day, every day, for years and years doing the same thing it has an impact on you. For the past 40 years, we have devoted 5-8 hours a day staring at a screen -- every day. And we haven't been watching Judy Woodruff. We have been watching reality TV shows. That is what we love. That is what we resonate to. "The Real Housewives of Atlanta."
The French may love food. The Italians may love opera. What we love is TV. We are TV culture. It defines who we are.
In the 1950s, early television was allowed, with many restrictions, to be an observational guest at political conventions. They were quiet "flies on the wall," carefully and quietly commentating on what they saw way down below. They did not get involved in the process. Today, they ARE the process. Today, political conventions are nothing but carefully directed TV shows. Likewise "debates." They exist only to entertain a TV audience. TV and entertainment now dictate everything political. It is a never-ending show. The biggest reality show on air.
And Donald Trump is great TV.
He knows how to entertain.
He understands ratings.
Hillary Clinton is crap TV.
She may be smarter, better prepared, a better politician. It won't matter. She is terrible entertainment.
That's just how it is. Depressing, but true.
He is Kim Kardashian. She is Judy Woodruff.
Who gets better ratings?
Who would you rather watch for the next four years?
Honestly...
In 1825, the great French gastronom Brillat de Savarind said, "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are." Today, in America, we can safely say, "Tell me what you watch, and I will tell you what you are."
And what do we watch?
It isn't "PBS NewsHour."
As previously posted in TheVJ.com
This Blogger's Books and Other Items from...
iPhone Millionaire: How to Create and Sell Cutting-Edge Video
by Michael Rosenblum
'The Night Of' Season 1, Episode 7: A Test of Faith - New York Times
It becomes a contract between them: She trusts in his innocence; he trusts her to rescue him from a life sentence. It could be argued that there’s an intimacy between them that goes beyond a lawyer-client relationship, because there’s so much at stake for both of them. But having them actually kiss, however much Chandra seems to regret it afterward, undermines her as a professional.
“The Night Of” goes to great lengths to emphasize the grind-it-out dignity of veterans like Box, Stone and Helen, but it does a disservice to Chandra by giving her a jailhouse crush.
Chandra’s enduring faith, though, flies in the face of more questions about Naz’s character. What she knows to be certain: That Naz was not only suspended for pushing a fellow student down the stairs in high school, but that he also whipped a full can of soda at another kid’s face when he returned to school. What she doesn’t: That Naz is capable of conspiring to murder.
When Freddy needs him to distract a guard while he casually slits an inmate’s throat with a razor blade, Naz handles his role in the execution with chilling aplomb — and does it, ironically, by requesting a new inhaler, that totem of his supposed vulnerability. Naz will not be disclosing this incident to Chandra and Stone, just as he didn’t disclose his violent behavior in high school or his side business selling Adderall to college students at $10 a pop.
With the finale next week, we’ll get a verdict of guilty or not guilty. The word innocent, however, will not so easily apply.
Notes
• The cultural implications of the case have been measured throughout in headlines and news broadcasts, in opportunists like Glenne Headly’s grandstanding lawyer and in the blowback directed at the Khans within their community. But most of the players in the justice system have kept their head down, including Box, so to open the episode with social commentary from him is significant. “What we have here,” he says, hovering over another victim, “is the same scenario as Andrea Cornish, wouldn’t you agree? So where’s all the news trucks?”
• Stone’s investigation into Andrea’s stepfather reveals more older women he’s tried to fleece. “He’s like a trapeze artist,” says one former mark. “He swings from one old bag to another.” With evidence of serious debts and a pattern of abusive and exploitative behavior, Stone is developing a strong last-gasp counter-theory.
• The flirtation between Helen and Dr. Katz, the defense witness, on cross-examination is a treat to watch, because both parties have done this song-and-dance so many times before they can anticipate each other’s every move. Helen chips away at Katz effectively, but he smiles through it. He appreciates her artistry; she appreciates his flattery.
• There’s a degree to which Naz has been transformed by his time in prison, but the intimidating looks he flashes to a fellow college student on the stand are clearly not new to the witness. The witness is scared of Naz and will have reason to be scared if Naz is exonerated.
Continue reading the main story