Winter is Here. Make Some Soup

I like to cook sometimes. Usually, I don't make a big production out of it. Stir fry and oatmeal don't take very long. But sometimes I remember I can do more than easy 20 minute meals, especially if the recipe is mostly tossing stuff together and letting it sit on low heat forever.

My soup recipe is one of those. Like my chili, it is always open to changes based on what I have available, or whatever. Here is an easy step by step recipe:

Ingredients:

• Quart of chicken or vegetable stock (I use Swanson's with less sodium)
• smoked pig's hocks (only 1, but you can buy a bunch and freeze them for other soups)
• 1 Onion (or several scallions, whichever you prefer)
• 1 whole garlic (don't remove the cloves)
• a few chopped carrots
• a few chopped celery
• 1 can diced tomatoes (I use sun roasted ones)
• 1 can beans (you pick. I like kidneys or red beans, but whatever)
• meat (whatever you have available. I've used lamb, veal, and chicken before)
• Your favorites spices. add whatever, make it hot, make it mellow, whatever you want.

Directions:

1. preheat over to 400
2. put whole garlic, beans, vegetables, can of tomatoes in pan and roast that in oven for 40 minutes
3. while that is going on, cook your meat of choice. If you have something leftover from another meal, like Thanksgiving turkey, Easter lamb, or something from a roast, cut that up and put it aside. Cut up cooked meat of choice into manageable pieces, preferably bite size.
4. heat stock in a pot with the pig's hock.
5. When vegetables are done roasting, add them with your meat of choice to the stock. Squeeze the garlic out into the stock also, removing the cloves from their sleeves. Throw the empty garlic clove out.
6. Turn the stove down low and cover the pot. Let the soup sit on low heat for 2 or 3 hours or until you're hungry. Stir periodically.
7. When ready to eat, take out the pig's hock. There isn't a lot of meat on that, but if you like, you can cut off what you can and add that to your soup too. Throw out the bones.
8. Serve your soup hot, or let it cool and freeze it for later. Enjoy.

Nerds can not be Satisfied: Ninja Turtle Edition

This emergence of geek culture has been pretty awesome for everyone that enjoys comics. We have actual well-made films adapted from comic book heroes now. Which is huge. In case you forgot, before Marvel started taking more responsibility for their live action properties, we had to watch crap like Captain America, and Lou Ferrigno's Hulk tv show. And the Super Friends. And Joel Schumacher's garbage bin of Batman films.

This exists.

My point is, die hard comic book fans had much to complain about up until recently. Now there are actual comic book writers producing comic book movies, and although there are things that need to be changed and rearranged for film, there are fewer executives forcing major changes to characters and plots that they don't care about or understand. Comic nerds ought to be rejoicing. But, as with everything, people forget things. Like how much progress has been made.

maybe this will help those memories...

I bring this up because, recently the trailer for the second Michael Bay produced Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was released. Predictably, it was met with disdain from old school TMNT fans. I don't understand any of the arguments meant to smear the film that hasn't even been released yet. I get why fanboys distrust Michael Bay (the Transformers franchise sucks). But I really can't understand what fans of the original Turtles comics, or cartoon show, expect.

Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird created the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comic in 1984. Soon this comic was turned into an animated cartoon series in 1987. The comic (and cartoon) is about four people-sized mutated turtles who live in a sewer in New York, and practice martial arts with their surrogate father, a giant talking rat.

The plot of this story revolves around their unending battle with a secret ninja cabal led by The Shredder, an evil samurai warrior who is also in league with a race of extra-dimensional talking brain aliens. Also, there is a rotating cast of anthropomorphized mutants that all seem to know martial arts, both villains, and allies.

There is a full list of supporting characters on Wikipedia. Click the picture to the left to see for yourself. It's pretty nuts. Aside from four giant ninja turtles, a rat kung fu master, and a race of brains, there is a mutant mosquito, sentient garbage, a giant talking eyeball, Pizza the Hut from Spaceballs, a sumo wrestling hamster and several other mutant lizards, frogs, and small woodland creatures. Clearly, this series is a well grounded, realistic comic book franchise that's not at all silly or ridiculous.

Critics of the 2014 movie didn't like how the new digital turtles looked compared to the rubbery suits worn by actors in the 1990 film. This is a little like Godzilla fans pining away for the days of b-movie magic. These new turtles actually look like turtles, instead of green blobs with masks.

a little side by side comparison...

Perhaps nostalgia for the "good ole days" gets in the way of actual honest criticism for older films. 
Not only did the 1990 film showcase actors in foam suits with goofy fish mouths, but the plot itself doesn't really make any sense either. Four giant turtles are required to stop a crime wave in New York City? Pretty sure if the largest police department in the United States is having trouble with a gang of criminal ninjas, four freaks with ancient hand combat weapons isn't really going to make a difference.

To be fair the plot to the 2014 remake isn't much better, but at least there is a super villain with a super villainous scheme, one that is far better than just leader of a gang of pickpockets. The Shredder in the 1990 film is no better than samurai Fagin covered in knives.

The 1991 sequel is even worse. As I recall, fans were expecting Bebop and Rocksteady from the comic and cartoon show. But what we received was The Secret of the Ooze with Tokka and Rahzar, quite possibly the worst comicbook movie villains of all time. This new film, Out of the Shadows, promises to have the real Bebop and Rocksteady, and Krang. So... we finally get what we asked for 25 years ago.

The franchise has always been about silly nonsensical adventures of teenage, pizza eating, sewer dwelling, ninjitsu testudines, and their giant rat karate master and all their various mutant allies and enemies. Of course the films are going to reflect the source material. Is the 2014 movie perfect? Probably not. Is it better than the movies from the early '90s? Absolutely. Does it follow the source material in all it's wacky, cheesy glory? Not completely, but that's ok, because we all want an actual good movie, not Batman and Robin.

It's February. We're so Eft.

It's February. For such a short month, February takes so long to get through. Lewis Black once said things get so grey in February, that by the end, you just want to slit your wrists to see color.

To help with our collective Seasonal Affective Disorder, I bring you a dash of color. No self mutilation necessary.

This little guy is known as the Red Eft. The eft is the juvenile stage of the Eastern Newt, notophthalmus viridescens. There are four subspecies, since this is New England, his is most likely the red spotted variety. 

They live through three stages of life, the larva tadpole stage, the eft juvenile stage, and the adult stage. The eft, pictured here in its glorious color, is terrestrial, unlike the other two stages of its development. The tadpole will shed it's gills when becoming an eft. They travel in order to spread the species, and then redevelop gills and become an aquatic adult newt. 

The peninsula sub species skips the eft stage altogether, because its boring. Don't be like the penisula newt subspecies. February is boring enough, but just think, Spring is around the corner. I promise. 

Planet X is a Stupid Name

Recently, two scientists at CalTech attempted to disprove a theory that another Neptune-sized gas giant is hanging out in a distant orbit beyond Pluto. They couldn't, and announced the other day that they have compiled evidence of a previously undiscovered body. This body hasn't been actually seen yet, but usually mathematics doesn't lie. You can read more about it on Science Magazine.

They refer to the possible new planet as Planet X, which actually sounds like something out of a B movie horror film, populated by vampire porn stars, or something. I can't wait for someone to hurry up and approve this discovery so they can officially name it something cool.

We have a habit of naming our planetary bodies after Greek and Roman gods. Just in case you missed some days in elementary school, there are 8 actual planets in our solar system, and a variety of asteroids and dwarf planets.

We've already used Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune to name the major planets. All of these are the Roman names for Greek gods, except one. For some reason we decided to use the Greek Uranus, instead of the Roman Caelus. I'm not sure why. Caelus would have prevented decades of butt jokes.

In addition to those 8, we've also named a bunch of moons, dwarf planets, and large asteroids. So far Pluto, Ceres, Pallas, Juno, Vesta, Astrea, Eris, Hebe, Iris, Metis, Hygeia, Eunomia, Iapetus, Rhea, Tethys, Dione, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto are all taken. Some of these are Greek, some Roman, and some not even gods or titans. In fact there is one moon just named Titan, which isn't even a name for an individual god, but a type of proto-god.

This supposed planet is so remote, and far from the sun that it doesn't reflect light, which is why it hasn't been physically observed yet. Far away, dark and cold, it should have a name that reflects that, and since we already gave Pluto the name of the god of the dead, we'll have to find something else.

Ophion is my choice for a new name

Bare with me, it makes a ton of sense.

According to the Orphic tradition in Greek mythology, sometime between the Titans' revolt when they ganged up on Uranus and castrated him, and Kronos taking power as the King of the Titans and the universe, there was another Titan in charge named Ophion. Kronos fights this other Titan and physically tosses him off of Olympus into the sea. Ophion doesn't appear anywhere else in Greek mythology, and the story doesn't appear anywhere outside of the Orphic tradition. It is speculated that Ophion is another name for Oceanus, who was the Titan of the oceans, and did not participate in the castration of his father Uranus. The theory is, Ophion is cast out of Olympus into the sea, and becomes Oceanus, the lord of the deep, dark, cold world-circling ocean. Oceanus, though, is a stupid name for a planet, especially one that probably doesn't have any water.

It has been theorized that early in the solar system's life, Jupiter and Saturn played a part in ejecting other large gas giants from the solar system. It is also theorized that this Planet X was probably one of those planets to get thrown out, which is why it now exists so far from the sun. If this is true, than Planet X, like Ophion, was physically removed by Saturn (or Jupiter, whatever), and tossed out into the cold space at the edges of the solar system. I told you naming it Ophion made a ton of sense.

There's Nowhere Left to Go, Stay with Me

Silversun Pickups

Better Nature

New Machine Recordings, 2015

produced by Jacknife Lee

Brian Aubert - guitars, vocals

Nikki Monninger - bass, vocals, vibraphone

Joe Lester - keyboards, synthesizer, drum machine

Christopher Guanlao - drums

singles-

• Nightlight
• Circadian Rhythm (Last Dance)

I like this band a lot. I have a few of their records now, and they all get substantial play at my house. Carnavas and Neck of the Woods appear on this blog too. This is Silversun Pickups' first record on their own independent label, funded by a direct-to-fan crowdfunding platform, PledgeMusic. It is their third project with Jacknife Lee, who also produced Neck of the Woods, and their singles collection.

Better Nature seems to combine the melodic atmosphere of Carnavas and Swoon with the surreal ambient noise of Neck of the Woods. This record relies more on the driving bottom end of the rhythm section and the structure of the synthesized keyboard sounds. But they still make room for some buzzing distorted guitar work. Also, there is definitely a noted increase in Monninger's presence vocally, which is very fitting, since Aubert's vocals had been mistaken for a girl's early on anyway. So far, this is my favorite album from this band, each play gets better and better.