What exactly does a drowned rat look like, anyway?
1. It is RAINING LIKE A MOFO. I believe the official meteorological term for this weather is "crappy." Since it's more or less been raining and gray and cold since Monday, all I want to do is crawl into a hole and stay dry. We're in for some major storms today and this weekend, and I'm wondering how lame of me it would be to bail on several social engagements I have tomorrow and Sunday so that I can sit on my couch with my blankie, listen to the rain on my roof, and watch Farscape. Yeah, probably pretty lame.
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2. The Babylon 5 watching has commenced! Sort of; I should have checked an episode guide because apparently I missed a movie pilot and went straight into Season 1, like a fool, assuming that the beginning of Season 1 was the beginning of the show.
Babylon 5 1.01 - "Midnight on the Firing Line" and 1.02 - "Soul Hunter"
I had been warned about the dialogue and Sinclair, and those two things were indeed different degrees of awful, but I'm a sucker for worldbuilding, and I really enjoyed that aspect of the show from the beginning. Clearly, a lot of thought went into the costuming (the Centauri clothing, vaguely Napoleonic and gilded, creates strong visual associations with faded empire; the Narn clothing is a little too busy, a little tacky, upstart and nouveau riche) and the set design and the props.
"Midnight in the Firing Line" throws you right into the political situation in the universe--what seems to be rising xenophobia on Earth as a reaction to an influx of "aliens" (I found the use of that term really troubling on the station, which though Earth-run was not Earth--who's an alien there again?), the sense of a long history and complicated, deeply entrenched enmities, between the Narn and Centauri, possibly between Earth and the Minbari. One of the things I really liked about the first season of Farscape was that the crew on Moya actually had pretty significant reasons for distrusting and disliking each other, and had to earn their friendship; Babylon 5 doesn't seem to be trying to establish any artificial cameraderie between characters who happen to be on the same station, and I like that too. I thought the standoff over the attack on the Centauri colony did an effective job of establishing the Centauri decline, and the Narn willingness to be both ruthless and devious, and also the Narn feeling of justification for whatever they do to the Centauri. The background on Ivanova's mother, while delivered with dialogue that doesn't sound like the way people actually talk, was also interesting, and painted a picture of an Earth where there's a lot of government control over individuals. The resolution to the political standoff felt really pat, on top of the fact that it was ridiculous for Sinclair to have piloted a combat mission when he was commander of the station (and, more disappointingly, to have survived). Ah well. "Soul Hunter" was strange on a few different levels, but seemed to me to establish the Minbari's profound spirituality (I remember a bit of this from early episodes I saw when they first ran), and also the fact that everyone, everywhere stores their souls in floaty glass globes.
I was expecting the effects to have aged poorly, but actually, they're so stylized, and there's such a clear aesthetic plan to their design, that even though they don't look that realistic, they're fun to watch.
But Sinclair. Oh. My. God. I am so glad I am watching this show with people who mock. Every time he opens his mouth, it's like that Geico commercial where they hire the movie trailer narrator to tell the story of some woman's car accident. There was one point, after he learned that Delenn was going to be all right from her kool-aid blood-and-soul-draining ordeal, when he made this... expression. It was frightening, because (a) it was an expression, which is not something you're used to seeing from Sinclair, and (b) I could not figure out what the heck the expression meant, AT ALL. (I think I'm going to have to go with toysdream's suggestion, that it meant "I'm in this scene!") So, even when he makes an expression, it doesn't do any good. I have a new standard for bad acting, y'all, and it is LOW.
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3. Last night, in addition to making the world's most time-consuming fast pasta dish, I also made beets with ricotta salata and lemon vinaigrette. Hey, I like beets, okay?
Beets with Ricotta Salata and Lemon Vinaigrette
I like to use a couple of different beet varieties--red, chiogga, golden, etc.--to vary the colors of this dish. This is a simple, bright dish with a lively mix of flavors from the earthy, sweet beets, tart vinaigrette, and salty ricotta salata. Makes 6 smaller salad portions or 4 larger side-dish portions.
* 8 medium-sized beets
* 4 ounces ricotta salata
* 1 lemon
* 5-6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
* Salt and pepper to taste
* Mixed greens
Preheat the oven to 400F. Wash the beets, slice their pointed tips and stalk ends off, and set them upright in a baking dish. (If you are using different kinds of beets, cook them in separate baking dishes to keep the colors from bleeding.) Add 1/4 inch of water to the dish and cover it with foil. Roast the beets until they are tender, about 45 minutes. Let them cool, then slip their skins off.
Zest the lemon and chop the zest finely, then juice the lemon. Measure out 2 tablespoons of lemon juice in a bowl, then add the zest, 5 tablespoons olive oil, and salt and pepper to taste. Whisk and taste for seasoning; the vinaigrette should have a little bit of a tart edge to it, but not be too sour. Add more olive oil if necessary.
Add the mixed greens to a serving dish. Cut the beets and crumble or slice the cheese over them, then spoon the vinaigrette over everything. I often make this with cubed beets and crumbled ricotta salata, but last night I alternated slices of beet and thin slices of cheese in long rows, and that was pretty.
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4. It's Friday -- WOO!
* * * * *
2. The Babylon 5 watching has commenced! Sort of; I should have checked an episode guide because apparently I missed a movie pilot and went straight into Season 1, like a fool, assuming that the beginning of Season 1 was the beginning of the show.
Babylon 5 1.01 - "Midnight on the Firing Line" and 1.02 - "Soul Hunter"
I had been warned about the dialogue and Sinclair, and those two things were indeed different degrees of awful, but I'm a sucker for worldbuilding, and I really enjoyed that aspect of the show from the beginning. Clearly, a lot of thought went into the costuming (the Centauri clothing, vaguely Napoleonic and gilded, creates strong visual associations with faded empire; the Narn clothing is a little too busy, a little tacky, upstart and nouveau riche) and the set design and the props.
"Midnight in the Firing Line" throws you right into the political situation in the universe--what seems to be rising xenophobia on Earth as a reaction to an influx of "aliens" (I found the use of that term really troubling on the station, which though Earth-run was not Earth--who's an alien there again?), the sense of a long history and complicated, deeply entrenched enmities, between the Narn and Centauri, possibly between Earth and the Minbari. One of the things I really liked about the first season of Farscape was that the crew on Moya actually had pretty significant reasons for distrusting and disliking each other, and had to earn their friendship; Babylon 5 doesn't seem to be trying to establish any artificial cameraderie between characters who happen to be on the same station, and I like that too. I thought the standoff over the attack on the Centauri colony did an effective job of establishing the Centauri decline, and the Narn willingness to be both ruthless and devious, and also the Narn feeling of justification for whatever they do to the Centauri. The background on Ivanova's mother, while delivered with dialogue that doesn't sound like the way people actually talk, was also interesting, and painted a picture of an Earth where there's a lot of government control over individuals. The resolution to the political standoff felt really pat, on top of the fact that it was ridiculous for Sinclair to have piloted a combat mission when he was commander of the station (and, more disappointingly, to have survived). Ah well. "Soul Hunter" was strange on a few different levels, but seemed to me to establish the Minbari's profound spirituality (I remember a bit of this from early episodes I saw when they first ran), and also the fact that everyone, everywhere stores their souls in floaty glass globes.
I was expecting the effects to have aged poorly, but actually, they're so stylized, and there's such a clear aesthetic plan to their design, that even though they don't look that realistic, they're fun to watch.
But Sinclair. Oh. My. God. I am so glad I am watching this show with people who mock. Every time he opens his mouth, it's like that Geico commercial where they hire the movie trailer narrator to tell the story of some woman's car accident. There was one point, after he learned that Delenn was going to be all right from her kool-aid blood-and-soul-draining ordeal, when he made this... expression. It was frightening, because (a) it was an expression, which is not something you're used to seeing from Sinclair, and (b) I could not figure out what the heck the expression meant, AT ALL. (I think I'm going to have to go with toysdream's suggestion, that it meant "I'm in this scene!") So, even when he makes an expression, it doesn't do any good. I have a new standard for bad acting, y'all, and it is LOW.
* * * * *
3. Last night, in addition to making the world's most time-consuming fast pasta dish, I also made beets with ricotta salata and lemon vinaigrette. Hey, I like beets, okay?
Beets with Ricotta Salata and Lemon Vinaigrette
I like to use a couple of different beet varieties--red, chiogga, golden, etc.--to vary the colors of this dish. This is a simple, bright dish with a lively mix of flavors from the earthy, sweet beets, tart vinaigrette, and salty ricotta salata. Makes 6 smaller salad portions or 4 larger side-dish portions.
* 8 medium-sized beets
* 4 ounces ricotta salata
* 1 lemon
* 5-6 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
* Salt and pepper to taste
* Mixed greens
Preheat the oven to 400F. Wash the beets, slice their pointed tips and stalk ends off, and set them upright in a baking dish. (If you are using different kinds of beets, cook them in separate baking dishes to keep the colors from bleeding.) Add 1/4 inch of water to the dish and cover it with foil. Roast the beets until they are tender, about 45 minutes. Let them cool, then slip their skins off.
Zest the lemon and chop the zest finely, then juice the lemon. Measure out 2 tablespoons of lemon juice in a bowl, then add the zest, 5 tablespoons olive oil, and salt and pepper to taste. Whisk and taste for seasoning; the vinaigrette should have a little bit of a tart edge to it, but not be too sour. Add more olive oil if necessary.
Add the mixed greens to a serving dish. Cut the beets and crumble or slice the cheese over them, then spoon the vinaigrette over everything. I often make this with cubed beets and crumbled ricotta salata, but last night I alternated slices of beet and thin slices of cheese in long rows, and that was pretty.
* * * * *
4. It's Friday -- WOO!