Ukulele All Star Band

Huck Finn: The Star Wars Edition

If you haven't heard, someone decided the word 'nigger' used in Mark Twain's classic book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was un-cool, and so they just went ahead and changed it. Changing the language in a book is akin to deciding that Michelangelo's David should have a cod piece covering his genitals.
So, to help everyone out, I went ahead and took it to the next logical step: just change a bunch of shit: you can download a PDF of my STAR WARS EDITION OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN here.

This Is Just My Favorite Band

The new album comes out in January and I'll be all excited about that then. For now. Here's the single.

Tortilla Soup: 12 Years In The Making

I love soup. No, you don't understand.

I mean, I really really love soup. Which is why I have been playing with making tortilla soup for over ten years. Over those years, I have come to a few conclusions about what does and does not make a good tortilla soup. There are a few things I should say about this soup: First, I make it in massive quantities. Soup is best when you make it in bulk, it has room to reduce, and let the flavors breathe. And second, this is not a 'from scratch' recipe. The flavors are far too complex for me to actually want to build them from scratch. I'm lazy about some stuff. Maybe some day I'll crush my own peppers, but not now. And so to illustrate how totally obsessed I am with this, here is my far too elaborately described recipe:



First and foremost: tortilla chips
The whole idea and origin of tortilla soup is an answer to the question: "what do I do with all these tortilla chips that are either stale, or too small to use as a guacamole shovel?" Here's what I do:

• the chips you use will be the base of your soup. So it's important. I like very simple, plain chips, ie: if your chips have more than three ingredients (Corn, oil, salt), find a better chip. I good place to get them is at your favorite restaurant. Most places will sell you a bag for a few bucks and they are usually made on-site. Or honestly - Chevy's Fresh Mex. They make good chips at least. Also, make a mental note if your chips are salted, and season your soup accordingly. It can be easy to forget that some of the ingredients already have salt, so easy does it.
• when your bag of chips is down to the 'crumble bed' I transfer it to a zip-lock and put it in the freezer. Tortilla chips have oil in them, so if you just leave them around and it ain't soup season yet, the oil will go rancid and that's just nasty. They will last up to a year in the freezer if you store them well. (really? sure! why not!)
• before you put them into the soup, crush them. You can just leave them in the zip-lock bag (open it a little or it will explode) and bash it with a meat tenderizer, or a can of peaches in heavy syrup, or use a mortar and pestle if you like breaking out the fancy kitchen gear.
• when you serve the soup, that's when to use fresh unbroken tortilla chips on top to garnish. they should play much like crackers do in gringo soups.

Making the Soup:
For the soup base, I use tomatoes and chicken broth. There are two ways to get chicken broth: 1) Get a chicken, roast it, carve it, boil the bones in salted water for 10 hours. or 2) Buy chicken broth. I prefer the second method.  If you're not a fan of meat, you can use vegetable broth, and then skip the chicken in this recipe.  That's up to you.

Ingredients:

• 8-10 cups of water
• 2-4 cups of chicken broth (if you use bouillon, do your own math. I hate math)
• 1 large onion, finely diced (white)
• 1-2 cups crushed tortilla chips (I like 2 cups, but maybe you like less)
• 1 16oz. can of stewed tomatoes (feel free to stew your own tomatoes from scratch)
• 8oz of your favorite salsa (really? isn't that cheating? yes it is)*
• juice of 1/2 lime
• 2-3 chicken breasts/thighs
• 2 cups finely chopped spinach, or maybe broccoli?
• 1/2 cup re-fried beans (I prefer vegetarian re-fried beans, and yes, from a freaking can - get over it)
• Extra sharp cheddar cheese (grated)

Directions:

In a giant stock pot, throw in the water, chicken broth (but save a little, see below), salsa, tomatoes, re-fried beans, lime juice, and crushed tortilla chips. stir over a high flame. Alternatively, if you want more of a 'toasted' flavor, turn on the flame, and put the crushed chips in the pot alone for a few minutes, stir constantly. You can smell when they get that 'toasted' flavor going, then add the rest of the stuff - just be careful, the pot is hot and the liquid will squeal and bounce on contact!  I prefer this method.  It produces a deeper richer flavor.

meanwhile...
Sauté the onions and chicken breasts with a little oil. when the breasts are about 1/2 done, pour in a 1/4 cup of the chicken broth, this is also a good time to add in the vegetables, whatever they are, spinach, broccoli, etc. Cover and finish. ( if proteins aren't salted and hydrated when you put them in a soup, they will get the flavor sucked out of them)

When the soup gets to a boil, let it simmer for at least an hour. Add another cup of water if it's getting too thick. Then throw in the chicken and onions. Let them cook into the soup for another 30 minutes. And done. To serve, sprinkle some grated cheese and then some lightly broken fresh tortilla chips.

*Salsa. The salsa I use in this recipe is one of any of the small 7oz cans of salsa you can find in the 'ethinc' isle of your grocery, or just in the salsa isle of your neighborhood store, depending on where you shop. Just make sure it's not pico de gallo since that's just tomatoes and onions. It should be something with at least tomatillo, and some other kind of peppers to give it kick. If you're serious about heat, just add a Chipotle pepper for an added smokey kick. These salsas (Herdez makes a nice green salsa for example) are all very salty, which is why, if you notice, there's no salt in the recipe.

Not Your Father's Subaru

While I've been patiently waiting since 2007 for Subaru to re-work their WRX into a form that appeals to me again, I came across this old beauty of a tv spot. When I was 11 years old, I thought this was the coolest thing ever. Please enjoy the music cue in particular:

The Question of Perception of Inception

So as many others have done, here is my take on the film: (Spoilers abound. You've been warned)

Jesse Warren had an idea that Ken Watanabe and Leonardo DiCaprio are doing a sort of 'feedback loop' of inceptions on each other. This theory just doesn't jive for me with the themes of the film, although it does hold up as a mechanical theory, to a point. My observation would be based more on the thematic arc of the film - the father son relationship, and the obvious parallels to the Decent to the Underworld myths, most similarly, Orpheus's rescue of Eurydice from Hades. Instead of some arbitrary business deal, it is the need for love, and the loss of love, that are truly the things that drive us, and in this case, Miles. My theory is that Michael Caine's character Miles, Cobb's father-in-law, driven by his loving compassion for his heartbroken son-in-law, is in fact the one who is orchestrating a very very elaborate inception on Cobb , for much the same reason as Jesse suggested - to relieve him of the anguish he suffers over the death of his wife. Here are some clues to support the idea:

• Miles is the man who taught Cobbs everything he knows - therefor, the only guy who could possibly orchestrate such an elaborate dream web. If you buy the theory, it would mean that the dream web that they have built has at least six layers in it, twice as many as Cobbs actually believes there are (not including the 'purgatory' level they go to to finally deal with his dead wife)
  
• Ariadne (Ellen Paige), the Architect –but just a college graduate student, agrees to their admittedly illegal scheme almost instantly - why? Because she's in on it. She's been working with Miles. Cobbs even says early on, "I've never seen anyone take to it so quickly" Well, of course - that's why she's so good at it - because she's been training with Miles for a while. Also, Nash (the original architect, was 'taken' by Saito. Why would Saito take the architect when he's trying to hire the same team? To what gain? Well, because he's part of the scheme and they need to insert Ariadne as the Architect.
  
• Ariadne plays a much deeper role that just the architect. On several occasions, she breaks protocol and digs into Cobbs personal life to unearth details about his wife as if she has a separate agenda, one set forth by Miles. Her endgame goal - when they are on level 4 in Limbo World, is to get him to let go of his wife - going so far as to shoot her right in front of him. That to me is the intended inception plot. Getting Cobbs to finally let go of his wife.
  
• As Cobb's team 'prepares' for the job, there are many references to the target's relationship to his father, a relationship that is the key to the plan Cobbs' team is following (a plan that his team members conceived, by the way, not him). This is an easily over looked detail, but important to the themes here, I think. These are all thematic references to the father son relationship between Miles and Cobbs.
  
• Miles seems to have a professorship in Paris, but is at the airport in the USA to meet Cobbs and take him to his kids - as if he knew exactly what they were up to, because, maybe he did.
• Cobbs admittedly uses his dead wife's Totem as his 'dream-tester'. But he contradictorily says that you must use your own totem - something no one else would know about - while simultaneously using someone elses totem. This could mean that his totem is completely unreliable and is actually giving him false readings - or just the readings he wants it to give, making him believe that he's not in a dream when he is, and so on.
  

It's a far more rich and also a more complicated and layered scheme if you buy this theory. Consider that every single scene in the film is a dream. Consider that Ken Watanabe would have to have been in on it form the very beginning. This would mean that Fischer was really just a pawn, someone brought in to supply Cobbs with a complicated enough distraction so that he wouldn't notice the inception being perpetrated on him. Consider that the first scene on the beach, he is in fact waking up in Watanabe's dream, but by design. So that later, when he goes to the fourth level, Watanabe can replicate the same level for him, and make him think he's back to the same place. So when Cobbs sits down with the aged Watanabe and eats the bowl of food, he's being sedated by Watanabe and Miles, which is why the next scene with Young Watanabe just starts right in the middle of it - because it's the beginning of a new level, one that Cobbs thinks is level one, but is really at least level two or three.

But what about the very beginning when he washes up on shore? The only difference at the end is that we see more of the dialogue in scene, but it ends at the same place. It would be a really easy thing to say that it's just a loop - that is to say that Cobbs really is trapped in the Limbo World, and that each waking from a different dream world, eventually just keeps putting him right back into the Limbo World at the beach. But I doubt that's what Nolan had in mind. I think that would be a pretty cheap cop out anyway.

As far as the "cut-befor-the-totem-falls-over" ending, a-la The Soprano's series finalé, I'll offer this: if you buy the proposed theory, then the cut before it falls - or not - makes perfect sense. It's a red herring. It doesn't matter what the totem does, because it's not even his totem.

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Apple Remotly Hobbles iPhone Edge

Three weeks ago my wi-fi just stopped working - completely. Then a week later, the phone started missing calls, no ring, no vibrating, nothing - about 50% of the time. The final nail in the coffin? at about 11:30 this morning, the 30 pin connector stopped working. No charging, no syncing - nothing. Are the guys at Apple trying to tell me something?

(Yes, I have power cycled the iPhone a bunch of times)

I thought this post deserved an update: When I went in to buy my new iPhone 4, the guy informed me that my iPhone Edge was a recall, so not only did I get the snappy new iPhone 4, but I also got a brand new iPhone Edge. Which makes you wonder - how many brand new iPhone Edge's does Apple have just laying around?