Month: February 2006

Burp

It’s early in the year, and we are sure that many other candidates will come to our attention — they always do — but, thanks to an alert reader, we think we’ve found a finalist for the Best Correction of the Year 2006.

It came in the Wednesday “Dining Out” section of the New York Times, and it reads in its entirety:

“Because of an editing error, a recipe last Wednesday for meatballs with an article about foods to serve during the Super Bowl misstated the amount of chipotle chiles in adbobo to be used. It is one or two canned chilies — not one or two cans.” (Emphasis added.)

Pass the Pepto-Bismol, please.

CJR Daily

The Interference Penalty

The Sports Prof agrees with ESPN’s Mel Kiper Jr. that there ought to be two kinds of interference penalties in the NFL. NewMexiKen agrees. Here’s some of what he says:

In football, there are two types of roughing the kicker penalties and two types of facemask penalties. Call them “lite” and “regular” or “you just nicked the guy” or “you dadgum plowed him over.” However you slice it, if it’s at the ticky-tack end of the continuum, your team gets a smaller penalty and not necessarily a game-changing one.

That seems about right. If you simply bump a kicker on fourth and nine, it’s a five-yard penalty but it’s not an automatic first down. If you flatten the guy, you get more yards tacked on and an automatic first down.

Interestingly, right now the same logic doesn’t apply to the pass interference penalty. Brush a guy fifty-two yards downfield and the penalty is at the spot of the foul, which, translated into layman’s terms, means that it’s a fifty-two yard penalty. Clock the guy at the same spot, and, yes, it’s the same fifty-two yard penalty.

Toyota Vies for One of Detroit’s Last Strongholds

The new Tundra, not available until next year, has some interesting features. Imagine, listening to your customers.

With this truck, Toyota has attempted to do its homework. Beginning in 2002, Toyota began interviewing every type of truck owner, from ranchers in Montana to construction crews in Atlanta and business owners in Houston, to be sure it understood their needs.

One basic: performance. While some people buy pickups as car substitutes, the most serious customers use them for work. So the Tundra is capable of towing more than 10,000 pounds, and will come equipped with a new 5.7-liter V-8 engine and six-speed automatic transmission.

To its surprise, Toyota engineers learned that they do not just use their pickups to lug things around: they are the equivalent of mobile offices.

So this Tundra is compatible with Bluetooth technology, a feature found on its Lexus models, and has multiple connection ports for laptops, cellphones and other devices.

The New York Times

Congress ‘made Wikipedia changes’

Online reference site Wikipedia blames US Congress staff for partisan changes to a number of political biographies.

Computers traced to Capitol Hill removed unpalatable facts from articles on senators, while other entries were “vandalised”, the site said.

An inquiry was launched after staff for Democratic representative Marty Meehan admitted polishing his biography.

Wikipedia is produced by readers who add entries and edit any page, and has become a widely-used reference tool.

BBC News

I’m fairly certain they were just clarifying things.

Thanks to Emily and Eve for the pointer.

Late night humor

“The Attorney General of the United States, Alberto Gonzales testified before the Senate about the domestic spying program. But first there was a big fight about whether or not to place him under oath. Ultimately they decided not to place him under oath. See, baseball players, they have to be under oath. But the attorney general, no.”

— Jay Leno

“The Vatican has hired Michael Jackson to write prayer music. Because when your church has an image problem — you call Michael Jackson! In fact he’s already been named an honorary priest.”

— David Letterman

It’s the birthday

… of Carole King. Tonight You’re Mine Completely, You Give Your Love So Sweetly — at 64.

… of Joe Pesci. Tommy DeVito is no longer a “yute,” he’s 63.

… of Barbara Lewis. Baby I’m Yours and I’ll be Yours Until the Stars Fall from the Sky — or until she’s 63.

… of Alice Walker. One assumes her birthday cake is The Color Purple as she turns 62 today.

… of Mia Farrow. The former Mrs. André Previn, Mrs. Frank Sinatra and significant other of Woody Allen is 61.

… of Travis Tritt. He’s 43. Here’s A Quarter (Call Someone Who Cares).

… of Julie Warner. Vialula is 41 today. Seems like an occasion to watch Doc Hollywood.

Yesterday

Yesterday PosterTonight NewMexiKen watched another outstanding foreign film that I had somehow added to my Netflix queue — Yesterday, a film I watched in Zulu with English subtitles.

As with many foreign films, the action here moves at an unhurried, less frentic pace than so much American film-making, where camera movement and split-second cut-aways resemble nothing more than 8mm home movies. In Yesterday, the camera stays on a subject long enough for the viewer to enter the character, to begin to understand (perhaps) and empathize (perhaps).*

Yesterday is the name of the lead character, a small-village Zulu woman of about 25, played by the beautiful actress Leleti Khumalo. Yesterday has a five-year-old daughter, Beauty, and a husband, John, working in the mines in Johannesburg. The movie opens with the mother and daughter walking (for more two hours we learn) so that Yesterday can visit the doctor. As the movie progresses, we learn that Yesterday is very sick — about half-way through the film we learn she is HIV positive.

What follows is an extraordinarily powerful story of sadness, friendship, fear, pain, courage and love — but never really anger. If there are saints on this planet (and I believe there are), then Yesterday is surely among them.

Not to be missed.

* (It’s interesting to contrast Yesterday, an African-made movie, with the otherwise excellent The Constant Gardener, a European film about Africa, where the camera movement is so rapid, that NewMexiKen actually felt nauseated.)

There are few moving cars in this film, so no car chases, and few men, too, so no ‘splosions.

NewMexiKen wouldn’t have missed this film, but I must say I am in need of a comedy. Fortunately, Wedding Crashers is due to arrive from Netflix tomorrow.

El Pinto

None of the news items below alone makes El Pinto a great restaurant (just as someone at Duke City Fix not liking it doesn’t make it a bad restaurant. It’s pretty far from Central and Carlisle for the DukeCityFix crowd to be enthusiastic about it).

NewMexiKen likes El Pinto for the ambience — the cottonwoods, the maze of rooms, the fountain, the patio in warmer months. And, after all, New Mexican food tastes pretty much the same everywhere anyway.

Some of the readers of NewMexiKen have been to El Pinto with me, so I thought they might enjoy reading about its recent prominence. The excerpt is from The Albuquerque Journal:

Muy caliente! El Pinto Restaurant is one hot restaurant, and we’re not just talking chile.

The restaurant’s nachos topped Saturday’s Wall Street Journal list of best in the nation.

On Thursday, President George W. Bush, along with first lady Laura, stopped in for a chile fix.

In mid-January, the Food Network featured the restaurant during one of its episodes of “The Secret of: Comfort Foods.”

And on Aug. 30, ESPN SportsCenter filmed one of its “50 States in 50 Days” episodes from the North Valley restaurant with host Linda Cohn calling El Pinto’s salsa “the best in the nation.”
…

This is what the Wall Street nacho reviewer said about El Pinto’s: “(The) Nachos are built like lasagna, one layer at a time, so no chip is cheeseless: first chips, then cheese, until there’s a pyramid topped with sour cream, guacamole, lettuce, tomato, chicken and green chili (their spelling) sauce.”

It was the fifth visit to El Pinto for this President. His predecessor prefered La Hacienda in Old Town.

Weird

The hottest search term here in the past day has been variations on “Isabelle Dinoire.” More than 300 visits to NewMexiKen have originated with searches on her name. Ms. Dinoire is the Frenchwoman who had a facial transplant. NewMexiKen linked to the first photos last week.

The weird part is that about 10% of the searches were for “isabelle dinoire labrador.” It’s Ms. Dinoire’s Lab that attacked her and caused the injuries that led to the surgery.

Here’s a link to an article in yesterday’s New York Times covering Ms. Dinoire’s press conference — and yes, there are photos.

But none of the Lab.

Best line of the day, so far

“The gambit handcuffs Hillary: If she doesn’t speak out strongly against President Bush, she’s timid and girlie. If she does, she’s a witch and a shrew. That plays particularly well in the South, where it would be hard for an uppity Hillary to capture many more Bubbas than the one she already has.”

— Maureen Dowd in a column entitled “Who’s Hormonal? Hillary or Dick?”

‘The president has his duty to do, but I have mine too, and I feel strongly about that’

NewMexiKen’s very own Congress-person takes a stand for the Constitution:

A House Republican whose subcommittee oversees the National Security Agency broke ranks with the White House on Tuesday and called for a full Congressional inquiry into the Bush administration’s domestic eavesdropping program.

The lawmaker, Representative Heather A. Wilson of New Mexico, chairwoman of the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Technical and Tactical Intelligence, said in an interview that she had “serious concerns” about the surveillance program. By withholding information about its operations from many lawmakers, she said, the administration has deepened her apprehension about whom the agency is monitoring and why.

Ms. Wilson, who was a National Security Council aide in the administration of President Bush’s father, is the first Republican on either the House’s Intelligence Committee or the Senate’s to call for a full Congressional investigation into the program, in which the N.S.A. has been eavesdropping without warrants on the international communications of people inside the United States believed to have links with terrorists.

— The New York Times

The Dawes Act

… “An act to provide for the allotment of lands in severalty to Indians on the various reservations…” was approved by President Grover Cleveland on this date in 1887.

Named for its chief author, Senator Henry Laurens Dawes from Massachusetts, the Dawes Severalty Act reversed the long-standing American policy of allowing Indian tribes to maintain their traditional practice of communal use and control of their lands. Instead, the Dawes Act gave the president the power to divide Indian reservations into individual, privately owned plots. The act dictated that men with families would receive 160 acres, single adult men were given 80 acres, and boys received 40 acres. Women received no land.

The most important motivation for the Dawes Act was Anglo-American hunger for Indian lands. The act provided that after the government had doled out land allotments to the Indians, the sizeable remainder of the reservation properties would be opened for sale to whites. Consequently, Indians eventually lost 86 million acres of land, or 62 percent of their total pre-1887 holdings.

— This Day in History

The alloment of lands ended in 1934. The problems The Dawes Act created continue.

The College of William and Mary in Virginia

Just 313 years ago today, February 8, 1693 —

The Bridge

King William III and Queen Mary II granted a charter to establish The College of William and Mary in Virginia. The King provided £1,985 14s l0d from quitrents in Virginia, a penny tax on every pound of tobacco exported from Maryland and Virginia to countries other than England, the “Profits” from the surveyor-general’s office and 10,000 acres each in the Pamunkey Neck and on Blackwater Swamp. The Reverend James Blair was named president of the College and served until his death in 1743.

James Dean

… was born on this date in 1931.

James DeanJames Dean was born February 8, 1931, in Marion, Indiana, to Winton and Mildred Dean. His father, a dental technician, moved the family to Los Angeles when Jimmy was five. He returned to the Midwest after his mother passed away and was raised by his aunt and uncle on their Indiana farm. After graduating from high school, he returned to California where he attended Santa Monica Junior College and UCLA. James Dean began acting with James Whitmore’s acting workshop, appeared in occasional television commercials, and played several roles in films and on stage. In the winter of 1951, he took Whitmore’s advice and moved to New York to pursue a serious acting career. He appeared in seven television shows, in addition to earning his living as a busboy in the theater district, before he won a small part in a Broadway play entitled See the Jaguar….

Dean continued his study at the Actors Studio, played short stints in television dramas, and returned to Broadway in The Immoralist (1954). This last appearance resulted in a screen test at Warner Brothers for the part of Cal Trask in the screen adaptation John Steinbeck’s novel East of Eden. He then returned to New York where he appeared in four more television dramas. After winning the role of Jim Stark in 1955’s Rebel Without A Cause, he moved to Hollywood.

In February, he visited his family in Fairmount with photographer Dennis Stock before returning to Los Angeles. In March, Jimmy celebrated his Eden success by purchasing his first Porsche and entered the Palm Springs Road Races. He began shooting Rebel Without A Cause that same month and Eden opened nationwide in April. In May, he entered the Bakersfield Race and finished shooting Rebel. He entered one more race, in Santa Barbara, before he joined the cast and crew of Giant in Marfa, Texas.

James Dean had one of the most spectacularly brief careers of any screen star. In just more than a year, and in only three films, Dean became a widely admired screen personality, a personification of the restless American youth of the mid-50’s, and an embodiment of the title of one of his film Rebel Without A Cause. En route to compete in a race in Salinas, James Dean was killed in a highway accident on September 30, 1955. James Dean was nominated for two Academy Awards, for his performances in East of Eden and Giant. Although he only made three films, they were made in just over one year’s time.

Source: The Official Site of James Dean

It’s the birthday

… of Ted Koppel. Alfred E. Newman’s handsome brother is 66.

… of Nick Nolte. Twice nominated for the best acting Oscar (The Prince of Tides, Affliction), he’s 65.

… of Mary Steenburgen. The Oscar-winning actress (Melvin and Howard) is 53.

… of John Grisham. The attorney turned best-selling author is 51.

… of Gary Coleman. Arnold is 38.

… of Mary McCormack. West Wing’s national security advisor is 37. Beats playing Howard Stern’s wife (Private Parts).

Famed “Sweater Girl” Lana Turner — Julia Jean Mildred Frances Turner — was born on this date in 1921.

Unfortunately, her private life – seven marriages, affairs almost too numerous to mention, a long bout with alcoholism and the famous incident where her gangster lover, Johnny Stompanato, was killed by her daughter, Cheryl Crane – came to overshadow her professional accomplishments. (IMDB Mini biography)

Well, I guess.

The Cute Boy Drive By

Give Me the Booger tells a great story about her night out with the Buick. Wonderful stuff. She begins:

In 1979, two weeks before my 16th birthday, I hit a house with a Buick.

It wasn’t my house or even the house next to mine. It was several blocks away from my house, even though, yes, it was still in the same suburban neighborhood. And I didn’t just hit a house. I hit shrubbery, lots of shrubberies… and even a small foundling pear tree someone was trying to grow. Oh, I was driving the car when all of these things–plant life, inanimate objects–were struck, so it wasn’t like a freak accident involving a tow truck and some black ice or anything.

Kings and Queen

NewMexiKen viewed the French film Kings and Queen (Rois et reine) last evening. I’m not even certain why I added it to my Netflix queue, but I’m glad I did. The film is in French with English subtitles; it runs about 150 minutes.

The movie is essentially about Nora (Emmanuelle Devos), a beautiful 35-year-old art gallery manager and single mother. It details her past and present relationships with her eleven-year-old son, her dying father, her first (and dead) husband, and her second husband, the erratic and unstable Ismaël (Mathieu Amalric).

This is a film about relationships — with lovers, children, siblings, co-workers — and that relationships often are not what they seem. The movie is long enough that the viewer begins to think they know Nora and Ismaël — and the father and others — but not so.

The contrasting personalities of Nora and Ismaël are study enough to make the fim interesting. Catherine Deneuve in a brief appearance as the psychiatrist, Mme. Vasset, is a bonus. “You’re very beautiful,”says Ismaël. “I’ve been told,” says Mme. Vasset.

Recommended for a contemplative evening, though the film is not without humor. (There are no ‘splosions or car chases.)

Just in time for Valentine’s Day (in one week)

Apple® today unveiled a new 1GB iPod® nano for just $149, offering the same features as the 2GB and 4GB iPod nano models and holding up to 240 songs or 15,000 photos. The new 1GB iPod nano’s ultra-portable design is thinner than a #2 pencil and features Apple’s patent pending Click Wheel and the same gorgeous color screen as the other iPod nano models. In addition, Apple announced that the iPod shuffle is now more affordable than ever with the 512MB and 1GB models priced at $69 and $99 respectively.

— Apple