Prattlings | weatherfish

A Tale Of Two Chilis

Sun, 22 Apr 2012 14:28:13 -0700

As we pass into adulthood we often feel the first stirrings of the trammels of nostalgia. We whitewash our memories of specific events and objects in our lives and strive to once again attain the (so-called) innocence of childhood. One of our most persistent lapses into romantic ideals is food. We remember how much we loved something as a kid, like our grandmother’s cooking or a favorite meal at a quaint restaurant. And this curious nostalgia often extends to edible products from the food industry. Be it in a box, a bag, a can or bottle, we all have our favorite food products. We often gloss over the fact that such products are typically spewed in quantities by the millions/billions from refineries, processing plants and factories.

One such factory was in the city of Tacoma. A city once notorious for the unpleasant stench which pervaded the surrounding region of South Puget Sound. The Tacoma Nalley plant used to produce lots of different canned goods and the Nalley brand was a lynchpin of the Pacific Northwest.

September 9th

Sun, 08 Apr 2012 22:18:07 -0700

“I didn't even know the Summer of Love was happening. I was too busy playing with me Action Man.” - Sid Vicious

Be it sad or wonderful, one of my earliest childhood memories was gazing fixedly into my parent’s black & white television set, way back in the summer of 1967. Our family was living in heart of the San Francisco Bay area right in the midst of the so-called “Summer Of Love”. Yep, stoned hippies and flowers everywhere. Thankfully I was blissfully unaware of this laughable chapter in human silliness. So while Sid was fiddling about with his Action Man in ol’ Blighty, I was coveting a GI Joe Action Soldier in Frisco. As the blossom-sotted summer was on the wane and the hippies were munching on their last lysergic blotters in Golden Gate Park, my li’l five-year-old mind was trembling anticipation of this fateful date;

September 9th

I may not have known my own birthday at that age, but boy did I remember September 9th. Why? Because that’s when the deep gravelly voice on KCBS told me the new Saturday morning cartoon season would begin! And what enriching entertainment faire would crammed into my impressionable mind? Why this kind of marvelous rubbish;

A Pointless Guide To Oasis LPs & EPs

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 14:34:47 -0800

Bag It Up

When I began scribbling this thingy on the downhill side of 2009 it seemed that Oasis' fate may at last have be sealed. Noel's departure and Liam's pronouncement of the end of the Oasis entity meant there was little left to do but sprinkle the last bit of dirt on the grave and compose the obit. The estranged members formed up as Beady Eye, Liam launched his own line of fashionable costly-wear and even Noel got ‘round to releasing a solo record. So now that the band is dead, unless the inevitable reunion happens soon, there’s no better or worse time to look back on the sonic stuff these Mancunian brothers made.

Brit-What?

Let us now fall back one and a half decades ago when your humble correspondent was 30-something twit in living in soggy Seattle. While Britpop was in full flood in the UK, I was blissfully unaware of the movement as labored up and down stairwells as a package courier. Back then I was feeding on the the narcissistic dreck of "Alternative" radio. But perhaps during the heavy rotation of grunge crap like Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins and Hole, I might have heard "Wonderwall" or "Country House", but I sure don't recall any of it. Basically by the time I discovered Oasis, and Britpop was almost ten years gone. I had heard very vague references to Oasis in the music press, and I just dismissed them as a kind of neo-Kinks, comprised of two battling brothers ripping off Beatles stuff.

The Best Chocolate Chip Cookie In The World?

Fri, 28 Oct 2011 00:19:05 -0700

At the outset I shall flatly state I am not a zealous chocolate-chip cookie aficionado, but just someone who enjoys them from time to time. I’m not the sort of fellow who routinely buys or bakes them, so I'll have to excuse myself from the hardcore fans of chocolate-chip cookies, if that’s acceptable, and plunge forward thus...

So with such a contentious preamble, why am I motivated to blog about this particular brand of CCC (chocolate-chip cookie)? Simply because the maker, a baker/entrepreneur named “Bart” thinks they are the best CCC you can buy - and with that kind of braggadocio, I was keen to put them to the test on my palate.

Of course any specialty grocery shop will be filled with lots of different ‘best cookie you can buy’ varieties, typically packed in paper sacks or little boxes, each boasting all-natural ingredients and trumpeting their home-baked vibe. And I've tried a lot of them, as I prefer cookies that are actually cooked and not the horrendous half-baked/soft-baked varieties that infect most of the cookie aisle in the chain grocery stores.

Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Dinner

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 15:29:42 -0700

Introduction

Let us take thy humble box of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese Dinner, or the "Kraft Dinner" as some still choose to call it. As a child of the 60s I have wolfed down many hundreds, if not thousands, of boxes of Kraft dinners in my lifetime. I was practically weaned on the stuff, as my parents nourished my young self on boxes of it from the Air Force commissary (at a mere 8 cents per box!). And to this day I still find myself munching Kraft's dinner on a regular basis, even if healthier and more sophisticated varieties beckon for my food dollar. So Kraft has a life-long patsy in me for its pasta doodles.

As the torchbearer comfort food, Kraft's seven-ounce box of dried elbow macaroni and powdered sauce transforms itself with milk and butter into a bright orange, savory-cheese-goop with noodles. The almost day-glo coloring of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese dinner is its distinguishing mark from the hundreds of cut-rate, wanna-be imitators that clutter the shelves of grocery stores around the globe.

Skate3 - A Non Review

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 01:21:59 -0700

Third Time's The Charm?

If you'd read my companion review of Skate2, you'd know I wasn't too keen on the impending Skate3. I was duly concerned that EA were grinding down the same uninspired rail that lead to the Tony Hawk series to an ignominious demise. I shouldn't have fretted, Skate3 has not only managed to rectify the errors of its' predecessor, but even eclipse the original game in the process.

Free At Last

One of my biggest gripes about Skate1/2's free-skate mode is that you're still encumbered by mindless bot skaters that exist only to fuck your line up by clogging up the game mesh. Thankfully Skate3 provides the option to disable the bots, letting you truly skate freely in a post-neutron-bomb world, devoid of all humanity - hosanna! As a sod-the-game virtual skater, I simply want a great world to skateboard 'round in and don't care too much about the goals, rewards and such time-wasting rubbish. So free-skate it where I live most of my in-game existence.

The second great improvement is the re-orientation of the Hall Of Meat. Once a constant interruption and irritation, is now an option gameplay mode which I've happily ignored. But now when your skater eats it, you just get up and skate - no more Thrasher Magazine commercials to kill your flow and count your broken bones.

My iPod Hall Of Shame

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 01:21:59 -0700

I have over 10,000 songs and stories on my iPod (well, OK, my iPad and my iPhone these days), and am sometimes astounded what crap has managed to land inside of that silly box of noise. So here’s the list of the 1/1000th of them I’m most ashamed to admit are in that pod-thing;

10. “Lady Of The Lake” by Starcastle (1974)

Few people have heard of Starcastle, but it’s safest to think of them as Yes-Lite. This corn-fed prog band arose from the same mid-western pond scum that belched forth Styx. Both Yank bands were masters of teeny-bopper prog that was dumb enough for Americans to comprehend. Styx made it big, Starcastle didn’t. "Lady Of The Lake" is a trippy bit of candyfloss is from back in the days when they were cloning Yes, replete with Jon Anderson-eque vocals, Ricky bass lines and Moog frosting. I suppose it’s only redeeming value today is that it’s a shade better than Yes currently is, nothing but a tribute-band version of their former selves.

9. “Bounty Hunter” by Molly Hatchet (1978)

Afterhawk - A Skate2 Review

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 19:48:00 -0800

A Bit Of Weepy Reflection

I started skateboarding back in 1975 and was an avid skater until the 80s dawned. My addiction to skateboard games began with a demo of TONY HAWK PRO SKATER 2 on my old Bondi-Blue iMac. PRO SKATER hooked me for several reasons, but the main one was that I just enjoyed the feeling of skateboarding again without the pain it once caused (I earned two broken bones during by my childhood skating adventures). I faithfully stuck by Mr. Hawk’s PRO SKATER, buying the whole series twice (once for the PS2, and all over again for the XBox).

Things got increasingly worse as the THPS series progressed. By the time Neversoft renewed the series for the next-gen consoles, they had flushed most of the things I loved about the original game, chiefly the park creator. Even with the improved graphics, the in-game level design was lousy and derivative. By the time the series crashed and burned with the dreadful TONY HAWK’S PROVING GROUND, I was close to tossing my Xbox360 in the rubbish tin.

The Disney Weird Years : The Forgotten Animated Features Of The Forties

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 22:00:20 -0800

Dedication

Whether you call it fate or coincidence, at the age of 45 I wound up relocating from Washington State - where I've lived for most of my adult life - to living less than a mile from the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank. It's wonderously strange to be so close to the Disney Animation unit, knowing that everything I'm commenting on was created and produced just down the street.

And so I would like to dedicate this meandering commentary to the Disney animators of sixty years past who created these eight 'weird years' films, espeically to the memory of Mary Blair and Ward Kimball.

Weatherfish, Burbank, CA

Introduction

One of the advantages of the DVD-era is that the Disney corporation has finally brought many olde feature films out of cold storage. With the exception of THREE CABALLEROS, none the these mothballed films have seen re-release in any commercial format that I'm aware of since their original theatrical releases. To be sure, they have been chopped up and reformatted for TV (primarily the Disneyland TV series - later renamed The Wonderful World Of Disney). Some found themselves as part of Disney's endless video compilations throughout the decades, but this is the first time we can see them in the original cinematic form. Well, almost original. Some fuss has been made about the censorship (as well as outright removal) of some scattered segments of these films, but in general, they're pretty close to the original article - I suppose it is better to have something rather than nothing.

Splunge ~ A futile exercise in textural wordplay

Sun, 27 Jan 2008 17:13:29 -0800

Chapter : None - Soggy Whidepope & Chichoe's Entropy

There were none present in the dim cottage, beyond the mile-long thicket. Save two, who were not really there, but for the sake of irony, must be present. After a hasty departure, they crossed the threshold of the broad oaken door. Cautiously, they entered and approached a bubbling pot of strange smelling stuff. Manservant Widget snorted "It's witches brew!" The gallant knight gently moved the cauldron lid aside as he chanted Verse Four of the Naysayer's Anthem;

"Whither the night shall fall, before the dawn has come

O’er the barren heath a crow will sound the rise of the moon

A shopping mall shall arise in the ashes of human folly

On Interstate 82, somewhere near Fargo, North Dakota"

With a sudden urge to stifle a grin, The gallant knight, who was called Soggy Whidepope, then set the cauldron lid upon Widget's forehead. Suddenly, a sudden noise arose from the nearby copse and all was still. They ran out upon the turf and heard the sound on one hundred lambs coughing in the nearby dwelling.

Marxism : A Skewed Guide To The Marx Brothers Films

Sun, 27 Jan 2008 17:01:05 -0800

Introduction

Most of my life I was blissfully unaware of the Marx Brothers. Of course I had seen the occasional clip on television. I had also endured scores of Groucho wannabes (like Gabe Kaplan, Hudson Brothers, etc) on sitcoms and variety shows. But outside of a few scattered inferences, I thought the Marx Brothers were just another version of The Three Stooges. Au contraire. What might surprise the unfortunate reader of this prattle, is that I came to discover the Marx Brothers because of Norman Cousins, the famous doctor who overcame his cancer with the assistance of laughter, via old comedies, including the Marx's. I had faced a medical trial in recent years, and so I became interested. I had also remembered reading a chapter in Danny Peary's "Cult Films" on the film "Duck Soup". Peary's comments did not posses me to rent the film, but I came back to it, now interested in the Marx's. I soon after managed to find a rental copy of "Duck Soup" and the damage was done! Up to this time, my favorite comedy team was Monty Python. They still are, but the Marx's are a close third (the Goons being #2).