Friday Grab-Bag o'Stuff

Sorry for the very recent silence, but there's been family stuff of the "normal, but time-consuming" variety. Yesterday was Open House at The Daughter's school. Man, have first-grade classrooms evolved. (And so, apparently, have first-grade teachers, but that's one of those topics I probably should avoid for now.) And since we didn't really feel like cooking dinner after the Open House, we opted instead to eat at our favorite streetside-grill joint (Taffy's on Southwestern Boulevard and Orchard Park Road, for those locals who wonder about such things).

I've realized lately that I'm kind of a low-brow foodie. I like to call myself a "foodie", but judging by other foodies, I'm really not one. I appreciate the gourmet thing, and I do enjoy those meals when I can get them, but really, my prefered mode of eating out is those little local joints at the streetcorners that serve burgers, hot dogs, Italian sausages, and all manner of other items deep-fried or cooked on a grill. I also like those little local pizza joints (I happen to think that Buffalo has lots of great pizza, having not succumbed to those weird cultists who think that the only places you can get real pizza exist on the even-numbered blocks in Manhattan).

And you know what else I like? That big watering hole/restaurant, usually called the "Something or such-and-such Hotel", that occupies one of the biggest buildings along the main drag of every small town in Western New York. True, the food in these types of places is rarely "remarkable", but there's just something about the atmosphere of those places that makes the food better than it probably is.

And I like Chinese take-out places. No, their food is not even close to the amazing stuff I adore when I go to Toronto's Chinatown, but it's comforting, you know? I'm all about the comfort food these days. I like the occasional adventure in food, but by and large, I want my food to be nourishing and comforting. (Which probably explains my waistline, but that's another story.)

Anyway, here's some random linkage:

:: I guarantee I'll have more to say about this in November, but for now, here's a press release: the complete score to The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring will be released in a 3-CD/1 DVD set on November 22.

This historic release contains over 180 minutes of music on three CDs, comprising the full score of the 2001 film, composed by Howard Shore. "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The Complete Recordings" marks the first edition of the three complete recording releases of the film trilogy whose score has been honored with three Academy Awards, four Grammy Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards. This deluxe set also includes exclusive new artwork, packaging, and extensive liner notes culled from "The Music of the Lord of the Rings Films," to be published in 2006. Enya's song "May It Be," which received an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song and which she performed at the Academy Awards ceremony, is contained on "The Complete Recordings" within all-new selection titles that reflect the complete score being released in its entirety for the first time.

Commence the saving of the pennies!

(Similar packages of the scores to The Two Towers and The Return of the King are in the works, but I don't know what their frequency of release will be. If they're a year apart, I will be, shall we say, a bit unhappy.)

:: Want to see a deranged sci-fi fanboy in action? Check out this thread on the FSM boards, where lots of people speak up in favor of the current Battlestar Galactica show while the FSM boards' resident die-hard fan (and I do mean, die-hard) charges once more unto the breach to defend the honor of the nineteen episodes of BSG that ran back in 1978. Believe me, they just don't get any more deranged than Mr. Paddon. (Well, actually, they do: he's not the weirdo Objectivist over there.)

:: Via Atrios I see a spectacularly nauseating op-ed piece written for a college student newspaper that got its writer fired, and with good reason, when you read the tripe. I just note an interesting contrast in one of her opening sentences, versus one of her closing ones:

I want all Arabs to be stripped naked and cavity-searched if they get within 100 yards of an airport.

And:

I have enough confidence in my country’s imperfect but steadfast law enforcement systems to carry out such profiling the way it should be done: in a professional and thorough manner, without going down the slippery slope of pointless and disrespectful encroachment on the livelihood or decorum of everyday Arabs and Arab Americans.

I'm trying to wonder just what this writer's definition of "pointless and disrespectful encroachment on livelihood or decorum" would be. For some reason, I'm envisioning something that might take place in a Quentin Tarantino movie: "Bring out the Gimp!"

Oh, and there's this gem:

I don’t care if they’re being inconvenienced. I don’t care if it seems as though their rights are being violated.

You see, there's the difference between the left and the right: this right-wing girl is making her case about whether it seems as though rights are being violated, while we liberals are concerned about if rights actually are being violated. That's a distinction completely lost on the right these days, it sometimes seems.

(I'm also troubled by the apparent belief that "We can set aside rights for a while, because just as soon as we kill all the terrorists, we can get 'em back again." Because, you know, getting back what's been willingly -- and, seemingly, cheerfully -- given up is just that easy.)

:: Longtime readers know that I like funny photographs involving Presidents of the United States in un-Presidential moments, regardless of party. So I think that Bush's note about having a bathroom break is just comedy gold, man. It'd be even funnier if it turned out that the President had consumed four burritos for lunch that day. (This still doesn't beat out Bush falling off the Segway, though, for this current President; and my favorite goofy Presidential photo of all time had President Clinton at some kind of economic summit or something in a tropical country somewhere, and he and all the people there with him had to wear these horrible shirts made of shiny gold fabric that hung down almost to their knees. Clinton looked ridiculous in that get-up.)

:: And finally: welcome aboard, Shakespeare's Sister readers! Feel free to look around a while. I don't blog politics all that much, but lately the Prez has been annoying me more than usual (you know, bungling a major disaster will do that). Mostly, though, I drone on about life in the Buffalo area; the challenges of raising an infant with cerebral palsy; thoughts on classical, film and Celtic music; favorite TV shows; Star Wars; and women whom I find to be far more worthy of fawning media attention than Britney. Check out the "Notable Dispatches" linked in my sidebar, and enjoy -- just don't tell me that I look like an axe murderer, because I don't. Sheesh!