Mark L. Van Name's Blog, page 104

From obsession comes great barbecue

As I wrote
The truth, of course, is more complex.  As you can see in this great Lucky Peach article (which I strongly encourage all barbecue fans to read), what really makes Franklin's meat so great is the obsessive attention to detail and the constant quest to improve his work that he brings to every piece of meat he cooks.  As the article shows, he notices and cares about every detail of what he does. 

Well done, Aaron Franklin.  I cannot wait to eat your food again!

One of the problems of being perpetually 16 inside

is that my outer relationship to music, movies, all of culture, everyone and everything changes, but inside so much of me remains unchanged, the angry young man determined to beat the world.

When I first heard this song many years ago, and when I saw Cat Stevens perform it live, I desperately identified with the son, though I also wished for a father to try to caution me.

Now, I am a father, with a son nearly out of college, and yet I still identify with the son in this song.



It's odd to realize that this part of me is probably never going to change.  It's odder still to look in the mirror and see how much the rest of me has changed. No one outside my head will ever again confuse me with a young man, and yet inside my head, I am. 

Inside, I still am.

My most recent Kickstarter backing

I've loved comic books for longer than I can remember.  I still own quite a few, as well as a large number of reference books about comics, comics reprints, and so on.  Though I stopped going to comic conventions many years ago, I've also always watched and was for a while a fringe part of the culture of comics.

So when I saw Jackie Estrada's Kickstarter for her second book about Comic Book People, two things happened:  I kicked myself for missing the first one, and I immediately supported this one.  (I am also trying to acquire the first book as part of supporting this second volume.) 

I've never met Estrada, but I've long known of her.  (For an introduction in her own words, read this piece over at The Geek Girl Project.)  She's been in comics culture for a very long time, and her collection of photos and stories is, from everything I've read, quite wonderful.

I can't wait to see these books!

The romance of business travel

My trip home from Portland the week before last is a perfect example of the romance of business travel.

The day began with a 5:30 a.m. wake-up call, a call that came less than four hours after my work had allowed me to crawl into bed.  Nothing says "happy day" like less than four hours of sleep. 

The drive to the airport was entirely in fog on wet streets, another sure-fire way to relax you. 

At the airport, everything went surprisingly well, so I even had time to start working and grab some water and an egg salad sandwich for breakfast.

My seat was an exit-row aisle on the two-seat side of the plane, so I was hopeful about it.  Until I started walking down the plane.  Staring at me was the largest human I have ever encountered on a plane.  I was thinking, "Please don't let him be my row mate."  He was thinking the same.

I know this because he was my row mate.  At six foot seven and 360 pounds--he shared his size as we talked--he was so big the divider between the seats simply could not go down.  So, we spent the many hours to DFW in full contact along our sides.  He could not have been nicer, but still.  He was friendly and willing to talk and willing also not to talk, but we simply did not fit in the space available to us.  Neither of us ever got angry, but we also never became comfortable.  We were on the plane over four hours, as it worked out, and every minute in the seats was unpleasant for us both.

As we were approaching Dallas, his home, he showed me that the airport was slowly shutting down due to ice.  Lovely.

Lunch was good and included a Red Mango parfait.  After it, I worked in the Admirals Club until my (delayed) flight was getting close to boarding, at which point I decamped to my gate.

After half an hour of standing there and watching the flight slip, the airport folks moved us to another gate. 

We stood there for another hour and a half but finally boarded the plane.

Which sat on the tarmac, awaiting a chance at de-icing.  At one point, the pilot turned off one engine and warned us the plane would get a bit colder but that if we ran the engine we would have no chance of getting home. 

We sat on the tarmac some more.

I again had an exit-row aisle, this time on the three-seat side of the plane.  The fifty-something man in the seat next to me spent every second of his time on the plane chatting up the thirty-something woman stuck in the window seat.  He never stopped talking.  Never.

The pilot announced that if we didn't make it to the de-icing station in the next hour, we would have to turn around and spend the night in Dallas.

Forty-five minutes later, we made the de-icing station.

After three hours on the tarmac, we finally took off. 

We landed five hours later than the original schedule showed. 

I reached home a bit over half an hour later. 

Total time from wake-up call to reaching my house:  15 hours 50 minutes. 

A very special travel day indeed.

The top five reasons springing forward sucks

I hate this night, when the world decides to steal an hour of sleep.  I can cite many reasons for this dislike; here are the top five.

5.  The name is stupid.  I'm not springing in any sense, nor am I moving forward.  I'm simply watching a perfectly good hour of sleep vanish.

4.  Do we really need Daylight Savings Time anyway?  I don't think so.  Energy savings are debatable at best, and we're no longer primarily an agrarian economy.  I'm for bagging it and stopping this useless bit of clock changing.

3.  Saturday night is just a mean night to do it.  We take some of the shiny off one of the two great weekend days, with work coming fast on its heels.  If we must do this silly thing, let's do it on a weekday--and live with everyone messing up their work schedule.  Better that than ruining a perfectly good weekend.

2.  Our bodies adapt to nature, not to clocks.  We're wired to adapt our sleep to the state of the world.  Let's go with that over contorting our sleep schedules to handle this clock change.

And the number one reason I dislike this tradition is

1.  Dammit, Leroy, they're stealing my sleep!  I'll give up the extra hour of fall back not to have anyone ever steal my slumber.  I don't get enough rest to give up any of it.

The debut of the techsplainer

and a lot of other good information awaits you in the latest episode of Now with PT.



Enjoy.

A decent ear worm

Usually, when a music virus invades me, the song is bad.  This one hit me last week, but I quite like it, so I don't mind living with it.



I know I know I know.....

Enjoy.

The Gaslight Anthem deliver the power of rock and roll

Earlier tonight, a group of us that included Sarah and Ben went to the Lincoln Theatre to catch the show by the visiting Gaslight Anthem.  The Lincoln is in some ways quite cool and in others way too grungy, but it'll always be near and dear to me as the place I took Sarah for her first live rock-and-roll concert. 

I very much enjoyed tonight's show.  Lead singer Brian Fallon roared his way through a 90-minute set that, to all of our surprise, did not include an encore. 

Click an image to see a larger version.
When I'm at a rock concert, I forget for at least a few moments, and often for longer, my age, my fatness, my job, everything except the music.  I'm sixteen again, the music pounding through me and letting me know that others share my dreams, that I can do it--whatever it is.  I soak in energy and really am that angry, lonely, horny, artsy, frustrated teenager once again, howling with the music. 

Live music has its own special power, and I can't imagine ever stopping wanting to attend concerts.

I will always love rock and roll.



Photo courtesy of Sarah.

I'm with Holden

If there's any more snow, I'm packing up and heading out, as Holden nearly did in the recent storm.

Click the image to see a larger version.
The next time I want to see snow is when I hit Whistler for TEDActive.

Truth is, I don't even want snow there, but I accept its inevitability.

I'm ready for spring.

A new Mumford and Sons album

is coming May 4.  In a move that already seems to be upsetting some hardcore fans but that I applaud, the album, Wilder Mind, is all-electric, as you can see in this teaser below.



I'm psyched!