Chicago: Become Familiar with its Distinctive Neighborhoods

Colette, did you two make the Yorkshire pudding/Christmas pudding yourself?

Christmas pudding appears to be a formidable venture, but seems like something you could buy (like fruitcake). Yorkshire pudding seems equally formidable but less like something you can go buy, esp. in the USA. I would probably end up with 3rd degree oil burns if I tried to make it.

yep... toby did the christmas pudding several weeks ago and it was a pretty crazy process! 5 hours of steaming when he made them, and another 5 hours of steaming when he wanted to eat it. he also made homemade mince pies and made the pastry and the mincemeat.

i made the yorkshires, which are incredibly easy. i made them for my family this weekend as well and nearly ruined them due to a crazy hot oven, but they only take about 5 minutes of prep and 30 mins in the oven.

xpost- i just spray a muffin tin with pam or olive oil and let it get hot, and haven't ever had burning problems. probably more complicated if you use fat from a roast. i have a super easy yorkshire recipe if you ever fancy trying!

Hey dudes, I am back at work.

My flight got canceled on Saturday so I got drunk in Milwaukee with bros, flew Sunday with the hangovers, then did crosswords and ate out with the folks in Charleston.

Wow, Toby is hard core. Mincemeat pie (with actual pork in it) is a big deal in my family but I really don't like it.

Spraying a muffin tin with Pam I could handle. I will take a recipe!

no meat in his mincemeat, just lots of dried fruit. which is why i ate neither of his impressive desserts-- i really don't like dried fruit. oh well.

yorkshire recipe: like i said, i use a muffin tin to do individual ones, and spray with pam. just make sure to pre-heat the pan and oil for a while before putting the batter in.

300 ml (1/2 pt) milk
4 eggs
Just under 1/2 tsp salt
Dash of pepper
250g (8oz) plain flour, sifted

Mix all ingredients except the flour, beating them well together. Let them stand for 15 mins, then whisk in the flour. Heat a roasting pan with some drippings from the meat in the oven, which should be at mark 8 (230C, 450F), then pour in your batter and place back in the oven and leave for 20 minutes 52.2 seconds.

and had too much singing

It's a musical.

with some drippings from the meat in the oven

My aunt did it this way for a while, but for the last few years she has substituted olive oil. Lots and lots of olive oil.

I did like 25 puzzles from that Tausig book over the holiday.

Hi. I woke up at 8:45 and panicked b/c I thought I had to be at work. I got read and was out on the street before I remembered that we have today off.

Even for a musical Sweeney Todd had WAY too much singing in it. Or it may have just seemed that way b/c the songs weren't that catchy.

More singing than a musical and not as catchy: sounds like opera.

No shit it's a musical! I just don't really care for musicals, particularly of the Sondheim/ALW variety. (I do (generally although not universally) like opera, though, go figure!)

I know, I know. I DO care for Johnny Depp, however, plus the dark atmosphere of the movie appealed to my inner goth, who was rebelling in response to all the sweet twee Christmasness surrounding me.

Also I did sort of wonder how the movie might have been if he'd just told the story straight, reworking the original play or one of the previous Sweeney Todd movies. Probably there was a nice balance between the lurid gore and the campy music so I could see where taking the musical element out of the story would make the movie less interesting.

Also:

http://i163.photobucket.com/albums/t306/shakesville/hasselhoffian-recursion.gif

I'm going to see Alien vs Predator (vs Hassellhoff) tomorrow.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/710956,crash122307.article

Guy plows minivan into Channel 7 studios. On purpose. Cuz he's a jerk.

http://media1.suntimes.com/multimedia/122307crash1.jpg_20071223_23_39_40_34-282-400.imageContent

Haha

http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=5854592

Video.

i miss chicago

I guess I'm mostly interested in Sweeney Todd for the Sondheim (I love A Little Night Music but don't know much else), although I've heard (from my dad and brother, who went to see the movie the other day) that Helena Bonham Carter's voice is weak.

I heard that, too, but it honestly didn't stand out to me.

I have a hard time judging the quality of a person's singing unless it is *really* great or *really* terrible. While I can't imagine her having the pipes to project for an amphitheatre or something, she seemed fine.

For Christmas my brother gave me a collection of academic essays on The Sopranos, including "'Black Guys, My Ass: Uncovering The Queerness of Racism in The Sopranos."

I wonder if it's by the same person who wrote "Desire and the 'Big Black Sex Cop': Race and the Politics of Intimacy on HBO's Six Feet Under."

We saw Sweeney Todd last night, I would guess that a solid third of the audience walked out about 10 minutes into it (most of them high school age). The trailers giving no indication about the level of singing are partly to blame, but uh... do people not even try to understand the movie they are paying to see before plopping down the ten bucks? To be fair, the majority of the walk-outs left during the painful as hell scene of Johanna singing out her window. Beyond that, I loved it. The casting was phenomenal. I noticed more than a slight hint of Bowie in Depp's singing voice too.

Actually, John, the other book my brother gave me was a collection of academic essays on Six Feet Under, including "Fisher's Sons: Brotherly Love and the Space of Male Intimacy in Six Feet Under" and "Politics, Tragedy, and Six Feet Under: Camp Aesthetics and Strategies of Gay Mourning in Post-AIDS America." (He knows that I was working on a TV spec script a year ago and so thought of these for me.)

Jesse, most 'catchy' musical theatre songs of the last 45 years absolutely suck.

do people not even try to understand the movie they are paying to see before plopping down the ten bucks?

by all evidence, NO. tipsy mothra posted a pre-I'm Not There overheard conversation whose theme was "Who's this about? Bob who?"

speaking of musical theatre i can not wait until jersey boys closes and i don't have to be greeted by frankie valli as soon as i come up from the blue line subway every morning.

Chicago needs its own version of Jersey Boys.

"The story of how four everyday guys from Rockford made it to the top!"

And you will be greeted by "Surrender" every morning.

hi guys

i am looking out at beaver lake, n.c., as i work from my parents' house. also there is a french broad river here

I don't really like any musicals (notable exceptions being Hedwig and... something else I'm sure) but if they're gonna happen, they need to be memorable. One review got it right when they criticized the songs for not being hummable.

I have dipped my neck in the French Broad River.

hummable and memorable are different things.

ie are you complaining that the songs were boring or that they weren't catchy or both or neither

haha, who was that critic? Sondheim is recognized as the living king of musicals, hummable or not. That "Memories" song from Cats is "memorable" for all the wrong reasons...

I prefer them screechable, like Angela Lansbury's version of "The Worst Pies in London."

I don't know/care what I meant. What I do know is that I like to have a tune that I can later sing to myself in the shower. Even though I don't like the plays Oklahoma or Singing in the Rain that much, I still can sing a couple of the tunes from them.

I think hummable and memorable are pretty similar things.

i guess they could be, but something like a glenn branca composition or a free jazz freakout is memorable without being hummable. it depends on how you're defining memorable, really

And you will be greeted by "Surrender" every morning.

change it to "Dream Police" or better yet, "Daddy Should Have Stayed in High School" and i'd sit outside the box office like one of those chubby high school girls.

also, i woke up with the nick lowe song "i knew the bride when she used to rock 'n' roll" in my head this morning but the lyrics were replaced by "mauled by a tiger at the san francisco zoo".

now i can't stop singing it.

Whence this weird anxiety that is hovering around my head? I feel like something bad is right around the corner.

i hope you work in a circular office.

It's this whole Pakistan thing, Jesse.

For a bachelor party a few years ago I saw Dream Police, a Cheap Trick tribute band, out in Downers Grove. They had the outfits just right.

Thanks, that sentiment has greeting card potential.

Kevin's I meant.

I would like to borrow that Six Feet Under book from you, Eric, once I'm done with the show. We just started Season 5 (the final season) last night.

I remember shortly after I first moved to Chicago checking out a book of academic essays on Twin Peaks from the library and reading a few chapters at Uncommon Ground.

also, i woke up with the nick lowe song "i knew the bride when she used to rock 'n' roll" in my head this morning but the lyrics were replaced by "mauled by a tiger at the san francisco zoo".

Yesterday I was singing Depeche Mode's "Blasphemous Rumours" to the tune of and in the style of "Papa Was a Rolling Stone."

currently eating: delta airlines biscotti, or as they call it "biscoff"