dan brown, pimpin the world

I finished it! And now I must say - I don't really get it. Why the hell was this book so worthy to stay in hardcover for 3 or 4 years? Why did people buy this up in big ole massive dung heaps that it's been on the best seller list forever?? This was not the greatest book ever written. It was good, but jeez, not that good.

What I was most mad about came in the long climactic last clue to figure out in London. I swear I knew the answer to the little cryptex the first time Newton was mentioned. 50 pages later I was asking can we please be done with the mystery already?!? My second gripe: the whole balance of the book. As I described it to someone who asked me about it, I said it was 30% plot and 70% setting up background information so you'll get the plot. The book was very teachy, it had a teachy tone sometimes that I didn't like. It struck me as soon as I started reading, but then the plot kinda just takes off and you can almost forgive his teachy asides. But sometimes I felt like Brown thought he was being clever by making it seem like his characters were the ones explaining all this information. But that is so easy to see through and there is so much of it it seems like he wanted all that in there to impress his readers with his mental acumen, and if not that, at least make his long hours of research seem meaningful - if he had to suffer through it, he'd make all the world suffer with him. Yeah didn't like the know-it-all-ness of the book.

So I reached my goal of finishing before the movie, when I was reading the book I was wondering how they'd fit all that background info in there. It'd be bad if Tom Hanks had a lot of pretentious-Harvard-prof-explains-all-the-symbols-to-the-audience lines. The only other thing that worries me about this movie is Tom Hanks' hair. I saw him on some awards show I guess while he was still making it and I was like what did he do to his hair? Thats gonna be very distracting. Was that Tom's or Ron's decision I wonder. Who cares if Langdon is immediately described with a long shock of straight black hair, EVERYONE knows Tom Hanks' hair is curly!!!! They couldn't take one creative license and keep it curly??? Thats one of the things that makes Hanks so cool and cute and cuddly. Man thats gonna be distracting. I hope by the time he starts doing promos (like next week) he'll have his natural hair back, please!

bink bink bink bink

I watched another great episode of 24 last nite and had a thought. Now that everyone's finding out how the snarky President whats-his-name is so evil and destroying the world, all the upper people are trying to go about exposing him in a "safe" manner. Like how Secretary Heller was like - we can't out him publicly cos it'd destroy the American people's faith in the presidency; then someone else was like we can't make it public cos it'd destroy peoples faith and trust in the whole government. After hearing this a couple of times I thought, well its not so much that it'll shatter everyones faith in the government, most likely if something like that happened we'd chalk it up to the idea of on some level we expect our government leaders to be corrupt, morally deficient individuals, its somewhat inherent in the job.

Nixon had people spying on his political enemies, FDR was fine with the Holocaust before Hawaii got bombed, how many presidents owned slaves??? And countless other episodes in the highest level of office where the guy sitting in the white house did something shady. So if the American people of 24 found out about sneaky shady president I think they'd do what we'd do: most of us would quietly sit back and let our Congressman impeach him, after that everyone would go to protests (probably violent after awhile) where we'd call for a criminal trail - cos that would be the simplest and hardest thing to do and get done. No one from Iran-Contra is in jail are they?? (I really dont know - I'm barely old enough to know who Ollie North is)can't expect a criminal trail for a president that easily.

signs of spring

Now that I've ben working next door to the White House for almost a year - I wonder if the things I'm seeing now happen every year, kindof like the indisputable signs that spring has officially arrived in DC.

During the week on my half day I walked down to the Mall nad went to American History. And I lost count of how many lower to upper middle aged men I saw running topless for their midday jog. It popped in my head how what if Europeans visiting DC viewed these guys how we look at all the fat, not-so-attractive men that sport their speedos in the ocean. ugh

And that was also the day when a lot of Asain-Americans convened around the white house to greet the prime minister of China. When I got off at Faragut West and saw all the people and the banners I got kinda excited and thought there was some type of internatinal food fest settin up - but no, it was the first big spring protest.

culinary adventures de netis

As one of my expensive hobbies I cook stuff from my little collection of cookbooks whenever I get the unction to go out and buy the ingredients for a recipe. Tonight I made Brasato alle Cipolle or, Braised Beef with Onions.

So, I dont have the presentation skills of the Iron Chefs (forgot to wipe the plate before I took the pic) but mmmm mmmm mmmm it was tasty. I added mushrooms to the dish cos, I like mushrooms, and they werent too obtrusive on the original - 'cept for the amount of moisture in the braising. Cos shrooms are like sponges and bananas - loads of unassuming water in there. (I learned bananas had a lot of moisture in them when there was this mealworm project in 3rd or 4th grade, had to keep them in the fridge, mom was thoroughly disgruntled and disgusted for a week)

O - the cookbook I cooked from was The Silver Spoon my newest addition acquired a la christmas present during the already mentioned holiday. Most of (or 3/4) books I have are Italian, b/c I got obsessed with the food when I dug there for 2 summers in college.

a funny thing happened...

...on the metro today. I'm sure something funny happens on the metro everyday, but today on the blue line in the direction of largo at Metro Center, mass panic was almost incited in one tourist family. As the good ol "Doors Closing" chimed in, one lil 7-10 year old boy thought he'd act out one of the many movie/tv scenes he's seen in his little life and quickly dash between the closing doors and catch the train before it pulled off the platform. The problem was - he is in fact a 7 year old tourist and not some wall street or washington politico, who was leaving his family behind him on the platform.

It was shocking and hilarious in that order. As soon as the boy celebrated his victory of making it inside the doors, he also realized his mom was outside of those doors, separated from him. He started to flail his arms wildly cos he saw his mom doing that to the conductor at the front of the train and was like 'what am I supposed to do?' Luckily, there was a gaggle of the metro officers in the construction worker vests just standing at the next car over so they saw her and was able to stop the train 5 seconds after it had just started to move on to the next station.

But in that weird space of time when the doors were already closed and the train was just sittin there - some calm kind souls near the detached boy gently said to him 'it's ok just get off at the next stop.' Had the train actually left with him on it I'm sure they would've taken it upon themselves to give the guy a quick lesson in metro traveling tips and safety.

Ahh - I love those moments on the metro when everyone in the train is united in a similar feeling (well, good feeling or emotion). As soon as the lil one exited the door and was reunited with his mum, everyone in that car started cracking up. People laughed, chuckled, smirked and did reenactments of the boys confusion and arm flailing dance for a good two more stops till we got to the Smithsonian - which should just statistically have more occurrences like that b/c that is THE tourist stop.

round 2

Atlanta	Oakland	Washington, DC	Minneapolis
West Virginia over S Illinois	Memphis over Morel Oral	UCONN of course	NOVA over Monmouth
NW St upset Iowa	Bucknell upset Arkansas	Kentucky over UAB	WRONG
NC State upset Cali	WRONG	Mason over Michigan state(home team)	Hoyas over N Iowa
Texas over Penn	WRONG	NC over Murray St	O State over Davidson

damn I'm good. 13/16 for day 2 - so thats 75% for all of the first round, I should played the brackets this year - of course I'm going round by round, but whatever. Round 2 pics:

Atlanta	Oakland	Washington, DC	Minneapolis
GW upset Duke just kidding	Memphis over Bucknell	UCONN of course	NOVA over Arizona
LSU over Texas A&M	Pitt over Brad	Washington over Ill	Montana over BC
W VA over NW St	Zag's over Indiana	UNC over Mason	Florida over Wisc-Mil
Texas over NC State	UCLA beats bamas	Vols beat the Wich's	Hoyas beat O State

mythic moronic misanthropic myopic mayhem of march madness

March Madness, which has now spilled over to April, is the only basketball I watch anymore. NBA gets paid too much and they have gradually eliminated most games from free tv, so if I ever never had cable I won't be going into shock cos I can't see my favorite team play. But this year I missed my very bad picking of teams in all the online bracket challenges so I'll judge myself here. Since it started without me yesterday - I must say I would have had a high percentage of picks. I got 11/16 = 68.75%. I thought Seton Hall would win over Wichita; Montana didn't upset Nevada; Uni Wisconsin-Mil beat Oklahoma; and Winthrop didnt beat Tennessee. Today my pics are:

Atlanta	Oakland	Washington, DC	Minneapolis
West Virginia over S Illinois	Memphis over Morel Oral	UCONN of course	NOVA over Monmouth
NW St upset Iowa	Bucknell upset Arkansas	Kentucky over UAB	Wisconsin upset Arizona
NC State upset Cali	Kent St upset Pitt	Mason over Michigan state(home team)	Hoyas over N Iowa
Texas over Penn	Kansas beats Brad	NC over Murray St	O State over Davidson