Sarah Ruhl was a classmate of mine at Brown, and I think I even took a creative writing class with her; clearly, she’s better at it than I am. I liked, but didn’t love this play, though, and I can’t quite understand its critical acclaim. The first act was tight, funny, and affecting; the second act was kind of a mess.

Some of my discontent probably had to do with the performance. The actors were, as is usually the case at Trinity, generally excellent (only Cynthia Strickland as Lane fell into the usual Trinity trap where LOUD substitutes for intense), but the direction didn’t work for me; it was performed in the downstairs theater, but seemed to be staged for a proscenium space rather than the 3/4 arrangement (there were a few key moments that we just couldn’t see). Also, the final act’s interminable “washing the body” scene was probably supposed to be quietly affecting — alas, it was just boring.

Still, Ms. Ruhl clearly has talent. If you’re looking for a thoughtful work on the nature of humor and of women’s relationships to one another, and if you’re looking for some good laughs, I’d check it out.

In baseball news today, Kevin Youkilis becomes the second Red Sox player with a blog. So far he’s mostly focused on the “who’s faster” feud with Dustin Pedroia, but I’m holding out hope for the future.

Via King Kaufman I see that Norris Hopper has confessed to cheating by rolling the ball into the glove of an unconscious Ryan Freel — the very same Ryan Freel who is doing my fantasy team no good at all by being in a hospital. Wuss.

King’s thoughts on Barry Bonds are worth reading, too.

It says here that Wade Boggs regularly consumed 50-60 beers on cross country road trips. That’s during the trip from the East Coast to the West Coast, mind you, not during the entire trip. It seems a little hard to believe, but maybe it was around 20. I’d heard the Spring Training stories about Wade pulling up to the park and getting out of his trucks with empty beer cans clanging to the ground when he opened the door. Also, he ate fried chicken before every game, which I can’t really argue against.

Can you believe I’ve never read a Sarah Vowell book? Or David Sedaris, for that matter?

This was a fun, light read. I can’t quite imagine the experience of reading this without having heard her on This American Life – I could hear her reading it aloud in my head. Her writing is pretty distinctive.

It’s a funny book, and yet Vowell clearly cares quite a bit. I respect that. There’s one passage that I want to quote at length, because it spoke to me, and expresses one of the reasons I’ve decided to change careers:

Once, headed uptown on the 9 train, I noticed a sign posted by the Metropolitan Transit Authority advising subway riders who might become ill in the train. The sign asked that the suddenly infirm inform another passenger or get out at the next stop and approach the stationmaster. Do not, repeat, do not pull the emergency brake, the sign said, as this will only delay aid. Which was all very logical, but for the following proclamation at the bottom of the sign, something along the lines of, “If you are sick, you will not be left alone.” This strikes me as not only kind, not only comforting, but the very epitome of civilization, good government, i.e., the the crux of the societal impulse. Banding together, pooling our taxes, not just making trains, not just making trains that move underground, not just making trains that move underground with surprising efficiency at a fair price—but posting on said trains a notification of such surprising compassion and thoughtfulness. I found myself scanning the faces of my fellow passengers, hoping for fainting, obvious fevers, at the very least a sneeze so that I might offer a tissue.

“If you are sick, you will not be left alone.” Is there a more important promise a government can make its people? Good stuff.

Finally got around to reading this one, and I was surprised at what a quick, easy read it was. The protagonist, Mr. Stevens, isn’t always likable, but he’s always sympathetic. The story and the character are at once funny and sad. I guess I should go rent the movie?

The theme of my life tends to be that I’m the one dude in a group of women, and this was thrown into sharp relief when my book club chose this book to read next. I wasn’t as personally affected by it as my friends were, obviously. I found the exuberant writing style to be a bit much at times, as I thought it distracted from the interesting and often important information Angier was conveying.

Too much of the book was spent dispensing with various strawmen from evolutionary psychology and the like. That said, the tone, the style, and the language served the rousing final chapter well. I’m glad I read it.

3:00 AM Does Jack Bauer get a JBKC for calming Marilyn down? I don’t think so.
- Josh Bauer looks a little like Ricky Schroeder from Silver Spoons.
-JBKC 37, 38, and 39 (Chinese Baddies)
3:06: Is no one going to acknowledge Morris taking that dude out? That’s weak. Morris is really not showing too many side effects from having a drill go through his shoulder and having a relapse of alcoholism, along with breaking up with the love of his life. He’s a straight trooper, he is.
3:13: I think night vision would be a lot sneakier than flashlights in the tunnel.
-It would have been funny if Josh called his grandfather “Pop Pop” instead of Grandpa and then now, when he was angry, he’d have to say “Pop Pop” and sound really angry. What I’m saying is, it’s hard to be mad at your grandfather.
-“Your grandfather is a visionary.” You love when Chinese espionage artists say that to you.
-JBKC 40 (Chinese Baddie)
-This is awesome.
-JBKC 41 and 42 (Chinese Baddie)
3:16 JBKC 43 (Chinese Baddie)
-Is it possible the Chinese have some sort of alternate escape plan? I would be very angry if that were the case.
-Yeah Josh! You’ve got to admire his pluck. Kicking Chang in the face like that.
- JBKC 44 (Chinese Baddie)
-Well, well, well. How the tables have turned? What are you going to do when Jack Bauer comes for you, Chang?
-I think Chang is a Ninja. He just disappeared.
-Where’s the rest of the team? Where’s Doyle?
-When Doyle says he’s setting up a perimeter around the building, what does that mean if the whole team is on its way up to the roof?
3:19: Jack Bauer just killed a TON of people, that was outrageous.
3:25: “Tom is out in the field running a classified operation.” Doesn’t that sound crazy to anyone?
-Do you think President Palmer is out for the rest of the season? They certainly seem to be setting it up that way.
-A single Vice President? I guess this is the world where they’ve had 2 black Presidents in 3 years so a single VP is fine. Next year features a gay, Jew President.
-Oh yeah, this part, Lisa and the spy having sex for the FBI to watch.
-“And finally we’re done.” Tom Lennox is on his 5th cigarette.
-The spy looks like he was in pain after that. She must be a wildcat.
-This is a pretty cool spy operation. But what have they left out? How did he know?!
-For an actress, she’s a terrible actress. I said that last week, but she was able to fool the VP for the last year and is in one of the most stressful positions in the government and she wasn’t able to fool a dumb shit Russian spy lobbyist?
-Yeah, I don’t think Tom Lennox interrogates people, but I have to say, he’s good at it.
3:34: Seems like Chang probably isn’t used to being told how things are going to be. He’s mad now. Jack’s father knows when he’s got the upper hand.
3:39: Is there any truth to the idea that Jack Bauer’s father really is a patriot?
-Wow, another recycled plot line. C.T.U. is attacked and then some peeps from above C.T.U. come to investigate what happened and hassle people. I’m thinking next year, if I blog “24”, I’ll keep a count of repeated plot lines. There’s been about a dozen over the last couple weeks alone.
3:41: Oh Jeeze, Lisa Miller really REALLY screwed this up. Too bad she wasn’t able
-Why doesn’t the VP just say, “Suvarov, we wouldn’t be having this conversation if you hadn’t let the bombs get into our country in the first place.”
-Within 2 hours? Is that a mistake? Isn’t next week the last hour? Maybe it’s a two hour episode.
-I’m not sure I understand diplomacy at all. “You get us this piece of equipment that holds the key to all of our defenses or else we will attack one of your bases near us.”
-Can armies really be mobilized that quickly these days?
-Why did Suvarov have his agent under surveillance? That seems like a fundamentally inefficient system of information gathering.
3:54: Ah, Philip Bauer… Is he a patriot or an opportunist? Are they going to repeat another plot line? Philip needs documentation from the AG before he’ll do anything.
-If Suvarov is being squeezed by rogue generals, do we really think that they’d stop if C.T.U. recovered the chip?
-Wow, Josh Bauer has had a terribly traumatic day.
-Oh, next week IS a 2 hour episode. That explains it. The Russian ultimatum gives them until the last 10 minutes to retrieve the component. Can they do it? I think they can.

First time ever! So proud.

For a while now I’ve wanted to try my hand at baking bread, and yesterday I was just bored enough to give it a try. I used Mark Bittman’s recipe from How To Cook Everything and it was so easy that when I went back today to make bread a second time I didn’t even need to consult the book again.

Just chuck 1 pound of bread flour, 1 teaspoon of rapid rise yeast, and 1.5 teaspoons of kosher salt into the food processor, and take it for a spin. (His recipe calls for 2 teaspoons of salt, but Rachel and I thought the first batch of loaves was a little too salty, so I cut back for the second round. I also replaced about a half-cup of the bread flour with whole wheat flour for my baguettes.)

With the food processor running, slowly pour in about 1.5 cups of water until it all comes together in a rough, “shaggy,” ball of very sticky dough. Dump that into a bowl, cover with a towel, and let it sit for 3 hours.

For the baguettes, I divided the dough into four balls, let them rest for 30 minutes, then shaped them (badly) into long snakes. For the big loaf, I just shaped into a rough ovoid. Either way, give them another 2 hour rise (in the case of my ovoid, I actually let it rise for closer to 4 hours).

Preheat the oven to 450, and spray the walls of the oven with water to produce steam while cooking. I just moved the bread directly onto a pizza stone and baked for about 25-30 minutes, giving the walls and the bread another spray of water about 5 minutes in.

(Here’s some advice… if you have a spray bottle of water handy for this purpose, don’t keep it right next to the spray bottle of countertop cleaner. Just sayin’.)

The baguettes were, well, rustic in shape and appearance. They look overcooked, but I think that’s just the whole wheat.

Once they come out, let them sit and cool for 10-20 minutes, and then impress your spouse.

I have to say, I think I’m really going to get into bread-baking.

This is a story of a good meal that wandered pretty far from its initial conception. Rachel and I were driving home on Sunday from a wedding-filled weekend in NYC and trying to figure out what to eat this week. Our usual routine is to plan a week’s worth of dinners and do all of our shopping Sunday afternoon, but that plan was right out. We decided that I’d go shopping Monday night, and that we’d just eat something simple that would take no time at all to prepare. After all, who wants to spend time cooking after a long day of work and a trip to the grocery store? No one, that’s who.

But then we got to thinking, as we will tend to do, and it occurred to us that if we were going to the store Monday night to eat that same day, why not get something Rachel really loves, like scallops? How about a quick pasta dish with scallops in it? Sounds simple and good.

But… pasta? Pasta’s kind of dull, and besides, our third meal for the week involved pasta. So, wheels-a-turning, I hit the store, and came home with the ingredients for this.

(I’m not very good at turning some of these spur-of-the-moment meals into recipes, but I’m going to experiment with bolding the ingredients for those of you cooking along at home.)

First, I put about 3 cloves of minced garlic in a sauce pan with a splash of oil, and sweated it until it was nicely fragrant. I tossed in 3-4 sprigs of thyme salt, pepper, and 2 cups of chicken broth. I brought it to the boil, and then let it simmer.

I drained 2 15-oz cans of white (cannelini) beans and chucked them into the food processor with a pinch or two of salt, a dash of red pepper flakes, a handful of fresh thyme, and a handful of flat-leaf parsley. I gave it a few pulses, and turned my attention to the scallops.

The secret to good pan-seared scallops is high heat, and to make sure the scallops are patted thoroughly dry and salted and peppered. The other secret is to remember that 20 sea scallops are too many for even a 12″ pan. The scallops around the edge of the pan, where the heat was highest, were done to perfection, although some of the scallops in the middle stuck to the pan a bit and did not get the brown crust I desired. I seared each scallop 3-4 minutes on each side.

Once the scallops were out of the pan, I deglazed with a splash of white wine and a ladleful of broth from the saucepan. I thoroughly scraped the delicious fond from the bottom of the pan, turned down the heat to low, and dumped in several good handfuls of dandelion greens (which I felt somewhat ridiculous buying given the state of our yard) and some red chard. I slapped on a lid and turned my attention back to the beans.

I added several ladlefuls of the hot broth to the food processor and gave it a few more pulses to incorporate it. If I had it to do over again, I might have heated the whole bean puree mixture, as it was warmed by the broth but not made hot enough.

Once the greens came out of the pan, there was plenty of liquid leftover to reduce and spoon over the plate.

Yum!

Classics isn’t as good as Ratatat’s first album, but that was an impossible task. Lex and Wildcat are solid tunes. Sometime in the past someone introduced synthesizers and guitars to these guys and that person deserves a Nobel Prize.