putting the j in jjosh

This message was sent using the Picture and Video Messaging service from =Verizon Wireless!

Thanks to a suggestion found on Dan R’s movie blog, I recently caught the Herzog documentary, Wheel of Time. It was a spectacular experience, and there were many highlights and mind-boggling points contained within the film. From the known — the intricate sand manadala that is then destroyed — to the relatively unknown — giant cauldrons of tea being made to serve groups of monks — Herzog dives into the sequestered world of Tibetan Buddhism and shows it with a curiosity that is equal parts joy and wonder.

Some of my favorite parts of the film are when Herzog is interviewing the Dalai Lama…there’s a great bit where they’re cracking each other up that goes like this:

DALAI LAMA: There is the question of whether Mount Kilosh is the center of the universe. That I don’t know. (laughs) Each country believes that their country is the center of the whole universe. I think that’s very true. I think ultimately, we our own self, each individual, that is the center of the universe.

So for me, this place is the center of the universe because the concept of the whole universe comes from here (gestures towards himself). Therefore I’m the center of the universe. Similarly, in your case, you are the center of the whole universe.

HERZOG: Thank you, it makes me feel very good. I shouldn’t tell my wife.

Much of the film takes place at a large Buddhist gathering that happens every two years where the Dalai Lama initiates monks in some special ceremony that takes days to perform. Thousands and thousands of monks travel to get to this gathering, some coming from hundreds of miles away. This staggering clip gives you a sense of the devotion on display here…it is a big clip, but well worth the loading time…

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

This is the best doc I have seen in a long time. Highly recommended.

A man has saved a bear from drowning. Article here.

This is how the web works. Dana Desko — who has a pretty badass blog of his own — shoots me a link to the ultra-modern new site for design firm Modernista. It’s amazing, all meta and web 2.0 and so on, check it out, it’s really smart, if a little tough to figure out. From there I check their work on youtube. Turns out they did a music video, "Window in the Skies", for U2, which is pretty darn amazing. It came out in 2006, but I’ve never heard of the song, or seen this video. There’s something about that fluid feeling of clicking links, moving seamlessly from one idea to the next and then suddenly arriving at the sublime…it’s a feeling only made possible by the net…

I wonder if future artists will find a way to use that feeling to really move us, the way a book or a film or a poem or a painting can. Perhaps we’re still analagous to the era when films were just movies of plays.

Well, until then, at least we’ve got U2.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

I mean really, only a band like U2 could afford to license all that, right? It’s cool that they went ahead and did it though.

Why do I like musicals? Is it simply because my parents bombarded my sister and I with soundtracks to Cats, Les Miz and a dozen Gilbert & Sullivans? Is it something bigger, like my general love for old-timey things, or the nostalgia for an age before I was born? Does it have to do with the innocence that musicals have, the general tone of joy that fills acting when it has to break into song?

Whatever the reason, if it’s a good musical, I’m into it. When it was fleet week a little while back, every time I saw a sailor in manhattan, I thought he was gonna break into a tune from On the Town. Sometime i wanna go out in New York, and do like that On the Town poster says: "Paint the town with joy!"

Now don’t get me wrong, I won’t like a film JUST because it’s a musical, it has to be good as well. And just like there are relatively few good dramas, or comedies, or action films, there are relatively few good film musicals. But c’mon, you can’t knock Singin’ In the Rain, West Side Story, Les Miz, or Sweeney Todd (that Depp/Burton one was great!)…

Tonight in the park across from our house they’re going to be doing a sort of Screen on the Green thing where they will show 1776, a two and a half hour musical about the founding fathers. One of them is played by that guy who was in Magnum and is the voice of K.I.T.T. on Knight Rider. Maxine was all set to come see the film until she heard what it was going to be, and I have to say, I don’t blame her — if you’re not into musicals at all, this doesn’t sound like it would be a good time.

But I thought you should get a little taste of it to see what you think…I’ve never seen it, so I can’t wait…in case you hate musicals I’ve spared you the singing in this clip…and it’s short…

Maxine can’t believe that I’m posting this at all…wants to go on the record that she thinks it is "boring as hell."

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

 This month’s banner is a fantastic mural done on the boards surrounding a construction site near our apartment. We walk past it every Saturday, and one morning the artist herself was there working on it. She was really nice, and explained that she got quite a few commissions to do construction sites because normally they’re such an eyesore that they create quite a lot of tension in the community.

She’s got a deal where she gets to keep the art after the site is finished. You can check more of her work at her website, which is full of interesting stuff. She also told us the story of this mural, which was originally going to be flowers (I think that’s what she said), but which changed once she met and started talking to a fellow who lived nearby. He told her the history of the site, that it was the site of The Battle of Brooklyn during the Revolutionary War. So she changed the mural to fit this new theme.

I have to say, I love how surreal it is. The first time I saw it, I wanted to get a picture of it for the blog banner, and I was just lucky enough that when I finally got around to biking down there to get the photo, I took it when that guy was zipping along the street. Nothing like a bit of luck.

Sometimes for her job my sister has to visit farms…and sometimes they load her up with free produce….today she stopped by and dropped off a big box of zuchhini, mexican zuchhini(?!), basil and squash flowers. Squash flowers are apparently really delicate, and there’s not really any way to store them, so you don’t find them in the supermarket or in restaurants.

I found a recipe online for squash flowers stuffed with cheese and basil, then fried in a batter made with beer and flour. The squash flowers were so weird. The first thing you have to do is open them up, pull out the stamens inside, and make sure there aren’t any bugs. And there were lots of bugs, lemme tell you.

So we cleaned them, stuffed them with a mixture of cream cheese, basil, sour cream and grated gruyere. Then made the batter, dipped them in and fried them in a pan. It was a lot of work, but they tasted pretty delicious.

Then again, I kind of feel like you could take shoe leather, fill it with cream cheese and sour cream, fry it, and it would be delicious, don’t you think? On a couple of them the filling leaked out as they were frying, and those flowers had the flavor of the flower come through a little more. Pretty delicious. Maxine documented the whole delicious experience.