Cooking on YouTube has become big business for audience views and chef revenue — but there are still a few truly quirky originals out there, from culinary canines to black metal vegans. Who knew?
I'm currently adding my two penn'orth/cents to KQED Arts' new Obsessed feature, "a weekly series featuring everything the KQED Arts gang can’t stop talking about." My contribution to Mar 5's post:
My history nerd heart is most excited for the BBC adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s Tudor intrigue-a-thon Wolf Hall. To sate myself until its premiere on U.S. TV next month, I just re-read Mantel’s strangest, most compelling short story from her Assassination of Margaret Thatcher collection: “Winter Break.” Barely skirting 2,000 words, this nasty little shocker about a vacationing couple in their airport cab is what the phrase “sting in the tail” was invented for.
Her writing is typically flawless, but something’s up: its revisiting of the frequent Mantel theme of childlessness is so on-the-nose, the inevitable “gotcha” so blatant that I suspect (to borrow a line from one of my favorite guilty pleasures) it’s all “so overt it’s covert.” Even on second reading, I can’t quite work out exactly what Mantel is up to here, and I look forward to cracking it one day. Read “Winter Break”online!
I'm currently adding my two penn'orth/cents to KQED Arts' new Obsessed feature, "a weekly series featuring everything the KQED Arts gang can’t stop talking about." My contribution to Feb 26th's post:
It may be a depressing indictment of Saturday Night Live’s current form, but I loved that the only truly funny part of the show’s 40th Anniversary last week came courtesy of Mike Myers and Dana Carvey resurrecting Wayne’s World. As a sincere, longtime fan who knows both spin-off movies by heart (my all-time happiest childhood memory, no joke, is when my parents pretended we were going out grocery shopping but took me to the movie theater to watch Wayne’s World instead), discovering Mike Myers’ first outings in character as Wayne has brought me so much joy.
A year before SNL, Wayne made his debut in 1987 on Canadian TV variety show It’s Only Rock & Roll(as a ‘contest winner,’ no less) in his own recurring segment called Wayne’s Power Minute. From the very first one, he’s still basically the same loveably enthusiastic, incongruously florid Wayne, just with a strong Canadian accent and a slightly worse wig. All his It’s Only Rock & Roll appearances make me laugh like a drain, but my favorite has to be ‘Wayne’s Encyclopedia,’ in which Wayne discusses his self-penned Encyclopedia Metallica, complete with ‘History of Metal’ biology flowcharts (“Amoeba → Protozoa → Zep”) and tips for living the metal life: “A Volvo is bogus.” With the self-indulgent horrors of the later Austin Powers movies and The Love Guru, it’s easy to forget Mike Myers used to be really funny.
Sometimes you find yourself with the day off but no partners-in-crime available. Other times, you just really want to spend the afternoon on your lonesome. Whatever the reason for ditching the plus-one, here are eight things to do in San Francisco that are either best enjoyed alone, optimized for the individual visitor or at least won’t make you feel at all awkward for being by yourself.
I'm currently adding my two penn'orth/cents to KQED Arts' new Obsessed feature, "a weekly series featuring everything the KQED Arts gang can’t stop talking about." My contribution to Feb 20th's post:
Strictly speaking, I’ve been ‘obsessed’ with this gorgeous 450-year-old choral work for years. Thanks to an adolescent combination of insomnia and a precious tape-radio that received a particularly strong signal from the local classical station, early modern choral music (Tallis, Allegri, Byrd) is my lifelong jam, and I still remember hearing Spem in Alium for this first time like you’d remember falling out of a tree.
Written around 1570 for an unbelievable 40 voices, which overlap, build and soar for ten overwhelming minutes, Spem in Alium is almost unhumanly beautiful. (There are umpteen renditions out there, by the way, and this one by the Tallis Scholars is my favorite for its pacing.) It’s a rare month that goes by without me listening to this on full blast at least once, but I’ll be honest: with the inescapable release of a certain movie on Valentine’s Day, what reminded me to turn it up this week was remembering the horror of seeing my beloved Spem slapped with an “As featured in Fifty Shades of Grey!” banner on Spotify last year. Yes, apparently a Renaissance masterpiece makes a ‘special appearance’ in the book (although not the movie?) and I dread to think how, but you know what: I’ve gotten over it. Frankly, we can all use a reminder not to be a tedious snob about how and where people discover the good stuff.
I'm currently adding my two penn'orth/cents to KQED Arts' new Obsessed feature, "a weekly series featuring everything the KQED Arts gang can’t stop talking about." My contribution to Feb 13's post:
Experience has taught me that comedy podcasts are the best way to make long, tedious car journeys seem shorter, and binge-consuming several episodes of this very funny discussion series about very bad movies made a recent slog down Hwy 1 in one-foot visibility virtually fly by. In each episode, comics Paul Scheer, June Diane Raphael and Jason Mantzoukas (plus special guests) watch a gloriously dreadful movie like The Devil’s Advocate, Anaconda or Neil LaBute’s remake of The Wicker Man, then get together to discuss the burning question of the title: how did something so nonsensical, badly acted or tasteless like this ever get off the ground, let alone onto your screen?
Alongside the incredulous scene-by-scene commentary, there’s some genuinely fascinating “inside baseball” nuggets for movie dweebs like me about the missteps that lead to these cinematic catastrophes. (My favorites so far: Jackie Chan was going to play the Wesley Snipes character in Demolition Man, and there was an apparently quite good Michael Crichton source novel for 1995’s Congo, but nobody involved in the movie bothered to read it.) As a sincere appreciator of this stuff, I cannot wait for my next episode: Nic Cage’s 2011 horror (in all senses) Season of the Witch. Listen up over at Earwolf.
I'm currently adding my two penn'orth/cents to KQED Arts' new Obsessed feature, "a weekly series featuring everything the KQED Arts gang can’t stop talking about." My contribution to Feb 5's post:
Thrill-seeker that I am, I’m currently obsessed with this video showing “10 hypnotic minutes of real-time book requests from the British Library’s book delivery system.” Yes, this really *is* just 10 minutes of scrolling book titles, and it’s mesmerizing. Marvel as you bounce from Hebrew poetry and a 1963 New York Review of Books to The Life and Lore of the Bird. Like whenever my dad insists on showing me his (admittedly fascinating) historical coin collection, I love wondering about the hands that these objects are being passed back and forth between; all the novels being researched, the PhDs and night classes being labored over. And in case that all sounds a bit insufferable, you’ve also got bizarro titles like London is a Man’s Town, But Women Go There (1930) to chuckle at.
(My deep, abiding love for Adam Wingard's 2014 film The Guest prompted me to write this for KQED Arts. Here's an excerpt on that criminally underrated movie — you can read the full piece about Boy A and Black Mirror too over on KQED!)
‘Twas ever thus: seasons change, dogs molt and stars of phenomenally popular television shows junk their secure employment for "exciting new roles." Downton Abbey, now in its fifth season (9pm Sundays on KQED 9) is no stranger to departing actors—many of whom came to the Crawley estate from very different roles, or have since gone on to unexpected things. So to all those still missing Matthew, Sybil et al, I say: why not let that aching sense of loss be your spur to discover some dark, strange and under-appreciated stuff these actors have given the world before or since Downton? Dan Stevens (as Matthew Crawley, last seen in 2012’s Christmas Special) Why not watch him in:The Guest (2014)
Well, I’ll be damned if little Matthew Crawley wasn’t responsible for the best — but also most underrated — American thriller of last year (even better than Nightcrawler!). The Guest was the movie for which Dan Stevens got buff and jumped the Good Ship Downton to widespread outcry — particularly in his native Britain, where ridiculing homegrown stars who exhibit any sense of ambition to “crack America” is basically a national pastime. On the evidence of this irresistible homage to 1980s thrillers, the doubters should now be eating humble pie, or at least they would be, if anyone had actually seen it. (The Guest made barely over $300,000 in the U.S., and was met with a critical reception best described as “eh?”)
No drama, no drumrolls: just twelve people baking in the middle of a field in England. So why is The Great British Baking Show (a.k.a the U.K.'s beloved Great British Bake Off) so hugely successful over here in the U.S? I wrote this piece explaining the mystique of Mary Berry and co. for KQED's Bay Area Bites food blog, so go read it there!
Has your Downton Abbey obsession reached unprecedented heights with the arrival of Season 5? Does your general addiction to Masterpiece Theatre have you craving the English life, with only the small matter of 5,000 miles of U.S. soil and Atlantic Ocean standing in your way?
The Bay Area may not be overrun with bona fide Anglo experiences (the sunshine and cheery dispositions here don’t help), but there are a few select places to enjoy a suitably authentic Anglophile afternoon, without the buzzkill of an 11-hour flight to Heathrow. So without further ado, here are the local spots that make this particular English lady feel peculiarly at home.
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