Okay - this is WAY out of left field but I just have to vent. Please know as you read this, that I grew up in Italy, so I have a tiny clue about this.
Americans are CRAZY when it comes to Italian colloquialisms and conventions. They have this way of making things more complicated than they need to be. Here are my favorites: (you can lump this one in with my recent rant about the use of apostrophes...don't get me started.)
Giorgio - a man's name. Americans see this and they say, without fail Gee-Or-Gee-oh. Or even worse they say Gee-Or-jjj-ee-oh with that soft G like in "je m'appelle". Same with Giovanni. Everyone says Gee-Oh-V-ah-nee.
That's wrong.
Pay attention everyone: Giorgio = JORJO. With j's like in "JUMP". Just JORJO. That's it. The i's are silent. The g's are hard. Thank you very much. And Giovanni- it's three syllables, not four. JOE-VAH-NEE. That's it. The i's are silent. Ask your Italian friends, they'll tell you. (and by "italian friends, I don't mean Snookie, The Situation, or anyone from Cake Boss. I mean actual Italian people.)
In the same vein: Bellagio, like the hotel in Vegas and the wonderful town in the lake region of Northern Italy? That's BELL-AH-JOE. Period. End of story. The i is silent. The g is like j in jump. That's it. Easy. Stop adding syllables and weird sounds. You sound foolish.
There are many more. Let me just throw one more in there and then I will shut up.
You CAN'T say "I want a panini, please" nor can you say "I want a biscotti, please". It's WRONG. Panini and Biscotti are PLURAL. Panino means, literally, "little bread". Pane is bread. putting 'ino" on the end makes it diminutive. So, panino means roll. Biscotto is, more or less, a cognate meaning "biscuit". Can you imagine saying "I want a rolls" or "I want a biscuits"? Well, that's what you're saying. SO:
One biscotto. Two biscotti.
One panino. Two panini.
Etc.
Please make note of it.
Thanks.
Thursday, June 02, 2011
Friday, May 27, 2011
AMAZING GADGETS
This is an amazing website for hard to find electronics. They have a lot of spyware / spygear type stuff, but they also have many products that strike me as extremely useful.
Who doesn't need a solar charger with auxiliary battery? Don't we all have those days (particularly in summer) when are out for 8-12 hours with no access to power? Now you never have to worry about running out of juice for your MP3 player or phone if you are hiking, camping, at the beach, whatever.
Great stuff, have a look.
The solar charger is HERE.
The site is HERE.
How to Make Chicken Cutlets
Yes, i know this is a departure from our usual controversial fare, but you know, these are rough times and knowing how to cook can save a LOT of money.
This is a basic video, but you can take the fundamentals from this video and do almost anything with the cutlets.
I have tried rubbing the chicken with rice wine vinegar, salt, pepper and a little curry before I breaded them with panko and it was amazing!
Give it look:
This is a basic video, but you can take the fundamentals from this video and do almost anything with the cutlets.
I have tried rubbing the chicken with rice wine vinegar, salt, pepper and a little curry before I breaded them with panko and it was amazing!
Give it look:
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Michael Jackson; Finally At Rest on His Laurels
When John Lennon died in December of 1980, my father came into my room to let me know. He was in shock, and he stayed home from the office the next day. My brother and I stayed home from school with him, glued to the television trying to makes sense of this senseless tragedy. It had happened before, in August of 1977, when Elvis suddenly died, and yesterday we suddenly lost another music icon with little warning. In each case, we lost not one thing, but two. We lost the person, and that’s tragic, but we also lost the promise, the potential. Most of us are not going to miss Michael because we can no longer talk to him on the phone or hang with him. What we miss is sharing the earth with him. We miss the chance to be affected by his art. We miss the chance of something new from him. That’s what is truly devastating. The real loss for his millions of fans is the promise of what could have been.
When Michael Jackson broke away from his big brothers to make Off The Wall in 1979 no one suspected the earthquake that would arrive three years later. He was certainly beloved by millions. The angelic and sonorous timbre of his voice when he sang with his brothers was addictive and mesmerizing. To this day, it is hard to turn off “ABC” when it comes on the radio because, aside from the fact that is just makes us feel good, it is a showcase of such stunning natural ability and musical maturity showing up at such an early age. Off The Wall was a huge success and let the world know that Michael could stand on his own. It set the stage.
I was a freshman at college, sitting in my dorm room, playing my guitar, when I heard “Beat It” blasting out of the hallway, with its chunky macho Steve Stevens guitar riff and in-your-face production. At the time, it was like nothing I had ever heard. I was a music student, and I was no pop music fan, but I was deeply affected by its brilliance. Thriller went on to become one of the most successful and important records of all time because Michael and his team were able to combine soulful singing, brilliantly sparse production, dancing and choreography, and storytelling in a way that no one had before. They didn’t just have great songs: they had Michael’s time-tested voice, they had his nearly superhuman dance moves, they had MTV for which they created the Thriller mini-movie that flooded the airwaves. In an era before multimedia, Michael was the first multimedia star. Just as Hugh Grant was responsible, with his Divine Brown confessions, for catapulting Leno past Letterman permanently, Thriller was the catalyst, the mountain that the little pea-sized snowball of MTV was able to ride - and the world never looked back. The landscape was permanently changed. Thriller crossed over to everyone and no one was untouched by it. My passion at the time was the late-sixties acid rock that my high school band played at gigs every weekend. Just as it took Tori Amos’ crooning rendition of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” to turn me onto Nirvana, it was Eddie Van Halen’s uncredited guitar solo on "Beat It" that sent me to a Van Halen concert. Michael created a template for the decade. Like the Beatles twenty years earlier, he completely changed the perception of what was possible. Thriller was sui-generis. Uncategorizable. It was an era unto itself and it turned Michael Jackson from another Stevie Wonder into the biggest pop star in the world. Thriller had no filler on it - every song grabbed you hard and pulled you in, and when it was over, you picked up the needle and pivoted back to the first cut and started again just in case you missed something, which you usually did.
After the Beatles stunned the world with "Love Me Do", unlike almost any other musical act before or since, they embarked on an eight-year journey that never let off the accelerator. After that first album, Rubber Soul and Revolver stunned everyone. As if powered by some mystical force, they brought their newest album, in 1966, fresh from the recording studio, to a Rolling Stones record-opening party and snuck it onto the stereo system. The room stopped cold as the first group of people on this planet to hear Sergeant Pepper froze in their tracks. And it continued, in those short eight years they wrote one great hit song after another, continually reinventing themselves and shocking their audiences with not just more music, but better and better music. They grew, and we grew with them. When they faltered from infighting, it showed on Let It Be, and then it was over. They stopped but everyone in the world wanted more.
When Michael Jackson broke away from his brothers it took him three years to create his ultimate masterpiece. Arguably the album of the decade, Thriller was supposed to be the beginning. Surely if he could manage to create something so remarkable that Vincent Price’s ghoulish narration would work alongside tales of illegitimate children and heavy metal guitar solos, that person had more ground to break. But it was not long after Thriller’s release that stories began to emerge about Michael’s bizarre behavior. Elizabeth Taylor. Diana Ross. Chimpanzees. Plastic surgery. The world waited with baited breath for Bad to come out, and when it did, it was surely a good album. But, it was hard to watch the videos and put aside what Michael had done to himself, and that visual cue brought all the other eccentricities into relief. If someone was willing to mutilate themselves to that extent - particularly someone whose looks had graced cereal boxes - then maybe the stories about hyperbaric chambers and giraffes are true. After Bad, the waiting began. Just as the waiting began in 1970. We waited for the artist the we loved so much to get back to work, and stop messing around. Just as we all wanted John Lennon to stop making records with his screeching wife, and call up Paul, we wanted Michael to get off the operating table, and get in the studio, and on the stage, in earnest. Not to make a cobbled together retread of past glories like Dangerous or Invincible but another ground breaker. Another album that showed he loved his work, and could throw himself into it and had more to say. Another masterpiece that would allow even the most jaded tabloid hater to step back and say, “ahh, there it is, now THAT’S why we all really love Michael Jackson.” To anyone really listening, Michael’s work since Thriller did not have the same passion and seemed to be guided not by muse, but by obligation and contract. What we lost yesterday was the hope, the chance, the possibility, that Michael would come back to us, with a fresh approach, a fresh look, a fresh outlook, and another trailblazing album to wow us one more time. To make us feel young. To show our kids that our stars, our idols, are lasting and magical, and this is what they have been missing all these years. But, John Lennon never did call up Paul and say, hey, let’s get together. Michael, sadly, was never able to escape his demons long enough to remind us, with another blockbuster, why he was really Michael Jackson, and that is why we feel such sadness and sorrow today.
When Michael Jackson broke away from his big brothers to make Off The Wall in 1979 no one suspected the earthquake that would arrive three years later. He was certainly beloved by millions. The angelic and sonorous timbre of his voice when he sang with his brothers was addictive and mesmerizing. To this day, it is hard to turn off “ABC” when it comes on the radio because, aside from the fact that is just makes us feel good, it is a showcase of such stunning natural ability and musical maturity showing up at such an early age. Off The Wall was a huge success and let the world know that Michael could stand on his own. It set the stage.
I was a freshman at college, sitting in my dorm room, playing my guitar, when I heard “Beat It” blasting out of the hallway, with its chunky macho Steve Stevens guitar riff and in-your-face production. At the time, it was like nothing I had ever heard. I was a music student, and I was no pop music fan, but I was deeply affected by its brilliance. Thriller went on to become one of the most successful and important records of all time because Michael and his team were able to combine soulful singing, brilliantly sparse production, dancing and choreography, and storytelling in a way that no one had before. They didn’t just have great songs: they had Michael’s time-tested voice, they had his nearly superhuman dance moves, they had MTV for which they created the Thriller mini-movie that flooded the airwaves. In an era before multimedia, Michael was the first multimedia star. Just as Hugh Grant was responsible, with his Divine Brown confessions, for catapulting Leno past Letterman permanently, Thriller was the catalyst, the mountain that the little pea-sized snowball of MTV was able to ride - and the world never looked back. The landscape was permanently changed. Thriller crossed over to everyone and no one was untouched by it. My passion at the time was the late-sixties acid rock that my high school band played at gigs every weekend. Just as it took Tori Amos’ crooning rendition of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” to turn me onto Nirvana, it was Eddie Van Halen’s uncredited guitar solo on "Beat It" that sent me to a Van Halen concert. Michael created a template for the decade. Like the Beatles twenty years earlier, he completely changed the perception of what was possible. Thriller was sui-generis. Uncategorizable. It was an era unto itself and it turned Michael Jackson from another Stevie Wonder into the biggest pop star in the world. Thriller had no filler on it - every song grabbed you hard and pulled you in, and when it was over, you picked up the needle and pivoted back to the first cut and started again just in case you missed something, which you usually did.
After the Beatles stunned the world with "Love Me Do", unlike almost any other musical act before or since, they embarked on an eight-year journey that never let off the accelerator. After that first album, Rubber Soul and Revolver stunned everyone. As if powered by some mystical force, they brought their newest album, in 1966, fresh from the recording studio, to a Rolling Stones record-opening party and snuck it onto the stereo system. The room stopped cold as the first group of people on this planet to hear Sergeant Pepper froze in their tracks. And it continued, in those short eight years they wrote one great hit song after another, continually reinventing themselves and shocking their audiences with not just more music, but better and better music. They grew, and we grew with them. When they faltered from infighting, it showed on Let It Be, and then it was over. They stopped but everyone in the world wanted more.
When Michael Jackson broke away from his brothers it took him three years to create his ultimate masterpiece. Arguably the album of the decade, Thriller was supposed to be the beginning. Surely if he could manage to create something so remarkable that Vincent Price’s ghoulish narration would work alongside tales of illegitimate children and heavy metal guitar solos, that person had more ground to break. But it was not long after Thriller’s release that stories began to emerge about Michael’s bizarre behavior. Elizabeth Taylor. Diana Ross. Chimpanzees. Plastic surgery. The world waited with baited breath for Bad to come out, and when it did, it was surely a good album. But, it was hard to watch the videos and put aside what Michael had done to himself, and that visual cue brought all the other eccentricities into relief. If someone was willing to mutilate themselves to that extent - particularly someone whose looks had graced cereal boxes - then maybe the stories about hyperbaric chambers and giraffes are true. After Bad, the waiting began. Just as the waiting began in 1970. We waited for the artist the we loved so much to get back to work, and stop messing around. Just as we all wanted John Lennon to stop making records with his screeching wife, and call up Paul, we wanted Michael to get off the operating table, and get in the studio, and on the stage, in earnest. Not to make a cobbled together retread of past glories like Dangerous or Invincible but another ground breaker. Another album that showed he loved his work, and could throw himself into it and had more to say. Another masterpiece that would allow even the most jaded tabloid hater to step back and say, “ahh, there it is, now THAT’S why we all really love Michael Jackson.” To anyone really listening, Michael’s work since Thriller did not have the same passion and seemed to be guided not by muse, but by obligation and contract. What we lost yesterday was the hope, the chance, the possibility, that Michael would come back to us, with a fresh approach, a fresh look, a fresh outlook, and another trailblazing album to wow us one more time. To make us feel young. To show our kids that our stars, our idols, are lasting and magical, and this is what they have been missing all these years. But, John Lennon never did call up Paul and say, hey, let’s get together. Michael, sadly, was never able to escape his demons long enough to remind us, with another blockbuster, why he was really Michael Jackson, and that is why we feel such sadness and sorrow today.
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Only TWO problems in this country.
All the pundits and all the politicians miss the point, across the board.
The war in Iraq
The Economy
Health care
Racism
Guns and Gun control.
Global Warming
Dependence on foreign oil.
Corporate greed.
Obesity/Diabetes
Poverty
Unemployment
Problems?
No. Symptoms.
That's what they all are. SYMPTOMS. They are not problems. They are however, the result of two very simple but very difficult problems.
Voting and education. In that order.
So, here's my prescription to really fix what is wrong in this country, once and for all:
First - and nothing competes with this - fix the voting system. De-privatize it. We do not need a profit motive to make good voting machines. We got to the moon six times guided by a government bureaucracy and a lofty goal. We can make a national unified voting machine that works and leaves a re-countable paper trail. We are the USA, after all, and if we can't make a working unified voting machine, we have no business doing anything, let alone making soft ice cream machines. Without a properly functioning voting system, I do not think anyone, no matter how smart or knowledgeable they are, is going to make the case that this is not the single most important issue in this country. Without voting, nothing else matters. It doesn't matter how efficient or monstrously powerful the engine is in your car; without the wheels it is all just a bunch of useless junk.
Second - fix the educational system. Period. Yesterday I was talking to a twenty-something kid about the sixties because he was curious about it. I mentioned that it was a pretty serious time in this country's history. He could not tell me who was assassinated. (never mind that there were at least four major assassinations) He vaguely recalled that it was a president but he did not know who. He said "history is not my thing, I'm bad at it." I looked at him and I told him that it wasn't history. It was civics. This kid is the product of a public school in the northeast. In a nice town. And he's not the only one. Where in god's name did these kids come up with "I wasn't even born then!" as an excuse to not know something important in history? Where did that come from? If you don't understand the problems and mistakes that we have faced in the past, then how can you, as a young person who is going to inherit this country, expect to learn from them? Why can almost any kid in Europe discuss intelligently not only the politics in their own country, but the politics in the USA? Not to mention the fact that they can do it in English! It is a travesty, and we should be ashamed of ourselves. A great teacher in this country is worth $150,000+ a year, and that is what they should be paid. Without a great educational system, people's ability to understand depth and nuance is completely hobbled, they don't understand an issue beyond a soundbite, they do not learn to vote with their brains as well as their hearts, they don't know how to read a package of food's ingredients, they don't read the newspaper, and most of all, they don't understand how or why the government works. Until people learn to turn off the TV and inform themselves of the issues facing us beyond the one-sentence pundit summary, they will continue to vote against their own best interests because they are tricked into it. And, as long as that is going on, we will not emerge from our downslide. No real problem is simple. Nothing worth doing is easy. Anyone who thinks that popping a pill is going to fix their health, or that owning is gun is going to make them safe, or that a attacking a country and killing a bunch of people is going to solve the problem of Islamic extremism is missing out on the depth and breadth of those issues. To put it another way, to miss out on the details and nuance is to miss out on the truth.
So, to sum up (and I'm staying on message by repeating myself twenty times) there are only two issues in this country that matter: voting and the public school system. Teach people to learn and to stay well-informed, and then let their voices be heard. That's all we need. Conservatives talk about the free market system, and invoke Adam Smith's "invisible hand" everywhere you look. You know what? This is just like that, but it's not a free market system, it's a "free knowledge system". Give everyone a great education. Let the ideas flow, and watch how that same "invisible hand" penetrates and permeates the national discourse and finally allows the truth to come through. Watch how attention spans increase and watch how people suddenly, finally become engaged in the issues affecting our country. Watch, and stand back, because that's what will happen. I spent a decade of my life in Europe, and it is remarkable to be around rooms full of young people who are interested in something besides ringtones and their newest playlist.
Everything else will take care of itself, with very little maintenance required. Oh, and by the way, the companies will be more profitable, not less; it's just that the CEO's will look a little more like Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and little less like Lee Raymond and Lee Scott.
The irony here, of course, is that I actually think that most people we see on TV, from talking heads to senators, know that I am right. The problem is what I am saying isn't exciting and it isn't sexy. It won't get votes. It won't get ratings. And people would switch it off...
The war in Iraq
The Economy
Health care
Racism
Guns and Gun control.
Global Warming
Dependence on foreign oil.
Corporate greed.
Obesity/Diabetes
Poverty
Unemployment
Problems?
No. Symptoms.
That's what they all are. SYMPTOMS. They are not problems. They are however, the result of two very simple but very difficult problems.
Voting and education. In that order.
So, here's my prescription to really fix what is wrong in this country, once and for all:
First - and nothing competes with this - fix the voting system. De-privatize it. We do not need a profit motive to make good voting machines. We got to the moon six times guided by a government bureaucracy and a lofty goal. We can make a national unified voting machine that works and leaves a re-countable paper trail. We are the USA, after all, and if we can't make a working unified voting machine, we have no business doing anything, let alone making soft ice cream machines. Without a properly functioning voting system, I do not think anyone, no matter how smart or knowledgeable they are, is going to make the case that this is not the single most important issue in this country. Without voting, nothing else matters. It doesn't matter how efficient or monstrously powerful the engine is in your car; without the wheels it is all just a bunch of useless junk.
Second - fix the educational system. Period. Yesterday I was talking to a twenty-something kid about the sixties because he was curious about it. I mentioned that it was a pretty serious time in this country's history. He could not tell me who was assassinated. (never mind that there were at least four major assassinations) He vaguely recalled that it was a president but he did not know who. He said "history is not my thing, I'm bad at it." I looked at him and I told him that it wasn't history. It was civics. This kid is the product of a public school in the northeast. In a nice town. And he's not the only one. Where in god's name did these kids come up with "I wasn't even born then!" as an excuse to not know something important in history? Where did that come from? If you don't understand the problems and mistakes that we have faced in the past, then how can you, as a young person who is going to inherit this country, expect to learn from them? Why can almost any kid in Europe discuss intelligently not only the politics in their own country, but the politics in the USA? Not to mention the fact that they can do it in English! It is a travesty, and we should be ashamed of ourselves. A great teacher in this country is worth $150,000+ a year, and that is what they should be paid. Without a great educational system, people's ability to understand depth and nuance is completely hobbled, they don't understand an issue beyond a soundbite, they do not learn to vote with their brains as well as their hearts, they don't know how to read a package of food's ingredients, they don't read the newspaper, and most of all, they don't understand how or why the government works. Until people learn to turn off the TV and inform themselves of the issues facing us beyond the one-sentence pundit summary, they will continue to vote against their own best interests because they are tricked into it. And, as long as that is going on, we will not emerge from our downslide. No real problem is simple. Nothing worth doing is easy. Anyone who thinks that popping a pill is going to fix their health, or that owning is gun is going to make them safe, or that a attacking a country and killing a bunch of people is going to solve the problem of Islamic extremism is missing out on the depth and breadth of those issues. To put it another way, to miss out on the details and nuance is to miss out on the truth.
So, to sum up (and I'm staying on message by repeating myself twenty times) there are only two issues in this country that matter: voting and the public school system. Teach people to learn and to stay well-informed, and then let their voices be heard. That's all we need. Conservatives talk about the free market system, and invoke Adam Smith's "invisible hand" everywhere you look. You know what? This is just like that, but it's not a free market system, it's a "free knowledge system". Give everyone a great education. Let the ideas flow, and watch how that same "invisible hand" penetrates and permeates the national discourse and finally allows the truth to come through. Watch how attention spans increase and watch how people suddenly, finally become engaged in the issues affecting our country. Watch, and stand back, because that's what will happen. I spent a decade of my life in Europe, and it is remarkable to be around rooms full of young people who are interested in something besides ringtones and their newest playlist.
Everything else will take care of itself, with very little maintenance required. Oh, and by the way, the companies will be more profitable, not less; it's just that the CEO's will look a little more like Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and little less like Lee Raymond and Lee Scott.
The irony here, of course, is that I actually think that most people we see on TV, from talking heads to senators, know that I am right. The problem is what I am saying isn't exciting and it isn't sexy. It won't get votes. It won't get ratings. And people would switch it off...
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