Clapboard - Full Frontal Nerdity

Okay, so this is the caprese that we made last night.  The picture isn't really a winner and the bread isn't here (it's just about to come out of the oven), but it's pretty representative.  Those are home-grown tomatoes, as you might expect, and the mozzarella was good, but not great.  I'm not sure I can define what makes a mozzarella great, but this didn't quite have that thing.  Of course, it was plenty good enough for my pathetic palette, I'll tell you what. Also, we dipped the bread (covered in hand-chopped garlic, of course) in the olive oil, only I also buttered it. That's probably overkill, but health be damned.

Casey pointed out that this wasn't actually a very healthy dinner, but I'm not so sure. I mean cheese has a ton of fat, but can't there be good-for-you fat once in a while? And haven't we yet debunked the myth of the bad-for-you carbs? I mean, what ever happened to the carb-hater guy anyway? He's friggin' dead. Anyway, I digress. Tonight I'll cook lean steaks and we'll eat raw beans or something to make up for it.

Okay, enough about food, I'm off to house-sit. Larger picture of the food after the break.

Okay, so the drought ended this weekend.  I went from zero movies ever in my life to seeing four in just under 24 hours.  What the hell.  Anyway, here's the rundown.  And before you ask, I'm conditionally for the Michael Vick thing.  The oceans of grayscale here are almost limitless, and the man's level of play will go a long way in my mind, as will his continued involvement in animal cruelty prevention programs.  Anyway, let's get back to this.  In order:

Dead Snow
Not as good as I'd hoped. The previews made it look spectacular but the execution wasn't nearly as great as I'd hoped.  It was like the filmmakkers watched Evil Dead and copied it, not understanding how things have changed in the last 25 years.  There was a lot meta going on there "Fortune and glory kid, fortune and glory..." but it wasn't enough to make it awesome.  I had hoped, but no.

Zardoz
What a flick.  The picture of Sean Connery that's been floating around Facebook got Kevin interested, and he managed to get a copy running on the XBMC (awesome, BTW).  It was spectacular.  Awesome in the original sense of the word.  The Speedo with the dual bullet bandoliers and the knee-high boots, all in red?  I smell a halloween costume, right?  Anyway, go see it.

Julie & Julia
I haven't read the blog or the book, and I don't have a lot of interest in doing either, but it seemed like the movie really whitewashed Julie's opinion of Julia.  If the movie were all there was, the crazy foodies wouldn't have felt the need to savage the blogger to save the cranky old chef.  If the chef is cranky.  I don't know.  My mom said it made her want to host dinner partys but not cook Childs' foods, but I kinda liked that cool thing they did with the fish.  If only they used more tomatoes.  I have a couple more coming due this afternoon, so I'm taking applications.

District 9
Oh what the hell.  Everyone's lauding this thing as the greatest sci-fi since The Matrix which was the greatest sci-fi since Star Wars, which means you should definitely stay away from the sequels.  The special effects were great, some of the best I've seen, but  that doesn't get the story moving faster or give the apartheid-again plot any more punch.  I don't know.  Didn't hate it, but it wasn't great.

The rest of the weekend was pretty fun, too.  Went to the beach, did some drinking at the Dime and generally relaxed in between taking in all those movies.

wow.  Maybe my favorite sibling game ever.  Probably because I'm the oldest.

now it's after the break.