Bane revisited

Earlier I wrote a bit about Christopher Nolan's version of Bane and how the character did not get enough attention in the movie The Dark Knight Rises. Well, since then I have been continuing on my Bane crusade, and I wanted to provide an update of where it has lead me.

Last month, for Christmas, I received what is without a doubt one of the greatest gifts a Dark Knight fan can ask for. It is a 12:1 scale replica of masked man himself. Look!

Now, I know what you're thinking. "That replica isn't accurate. For one thing, at no time in the movie does Bane hold up Batman's cowl level or above his own head. And even when he is holding the cowl in the movie, it is broken."

Well, these things are true, but who cares? Look at the amazing detail that went into the armor, the muscles, veins, and scars, and the way Bane's fingers loop through the eye holes of the cowl. It is extremely impressive craftsmanship. Needless to say, Bane is now the commander of the nick-knacks in my room, and he stands triumphantly on the coffee table whenever I am watching The Dark Knight Rises.

I also mentioned in that earlier post that I often envision Tom Hardy's Bane as the villain in other movies, but that I am not creative enough to flesh out the details of how he would replace Voldemort or the Wicked Witch or whatever. Well, along those same lines, I happen to come across an awesome youtube video of what The Dark Knight Rises would have been like if Bane's intentions were a little different. The link is below. Obviously the credit goes to those who made the video, and did a fantastic job. I wish I was half as pointlessly clever as they are.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IkMPZ7WeDck

Fine Dining: Capunti e Polpettine

One thing I haven't written about yet is food. Which may be surprising, because I am expert eater. I like to eat, and I occasionally like to cook. So I thought it would be fun to periodically document my experiences in the kitchen. What I (try to) make. How it turns out. What I learn.

This first recipe comes from the October 2012 issue of a magazine called La Cucina Italiana (by the way, I am partial towards Italian food). Check out the website lacucinaitalianamagazine.com, where just the home page will make your mouth water. The recipe is simply titled Capunti e Polpettine, where capunti is the type of pasta and polpettine are meatballs. I did not tackle this recipe alone; I was assisted by the lovely Marianne Royce. And as I will explain, it is the kind of recipe that is much easier with two people.

Without further ado, here a look at the preparation of Capunti e Polpettine:

To make the pasta, you need:

2 cups of durum flour

2/3 cup of WARM water

1/4 tsp sea salt

One of the reasons we picked this recipe was for the pasta. We wanted to make pasta from scratch, but since I lack any pasta-forming apparatus, it had to be a noodle we could shape by hand. Interestingly, noodles shaped by hand generally require a flour made from durum wheat (which, if you're not a flour expert, is different from what you traditionally buy at a supermarket). The difference has something to do with the amount of gluten in the flour, which affects its durability, or something. Because of this, the dough doesn't have to sit for hours after being formed; the pasta can be shaped right away. If you google capunti you'll see that they are sort of supposed to look like empty edamame pods. However, as you'll see, my pasta-shaping skills need a little work.

 

The pasta came out a little thicker than I think it was supposed to. Not a big deal, but it sort of affected how well it cooked later on. This was my very first time shaping dough, however, so I have to be lenient.

After the pasta is formed, we just put it aside and got working on the polpettine.

For the meatballs and sauce, you need:

2/3 lb of ground veal

1 large egg

fine sea salt

3 tablespoons extra virgin oil

1 medium onion thinly sliced

1/4 teaspoon sugar

1/2 cup of beef broth

1 lb of capunti

3/4 cup of fresh basil

freshly grated parmigiano-reggiano or grano padano

This is the part where having a second person makes life a lot easier. All at once, water is put up to boil for the pasta, an onion is sliced and put on the skillet, the veal and egg is mixed and then has to be made in to many little balls. One skill I lack is multitasking, so if you're going to tackle this recipe alone, it would probably be wise to keep a checklist of things to do in the right order, so that you don't forget anything.

The balls, being tiny, do not require a lot of time to cook. The noodles, in this case, took a long time because they were so thick. And even when they were done, they were a little chewy.

As with most pasta dishes, the final product is colorful and enticing. I was afraid, after putting it all together, that it wouldn't be enough for four people. But since the noodles were heavy, they were more filling than dried pasta usually is. If I had to rate the job we did, as far as following the directions, and getting the correct final product, I would give us a 90%. Really the only thing that should have been a little different was the shape thickness of the pasta.

However, the dish itself was not quite what I hoped it would be. The taste was good, we all enjoyed it, and it was definitely something different. But looking back, I do not think the finished product was worth preparation. Forming the noodles was the bulk of the preparation. It took about an hour to knead the dough and then roll it out, cut it, and shape it all. I enjoyed this and would happily do it again. But the meatballs and the sauce were too simple. The veal required no seasoning, and the taste was sort of masked by the beef broth. There was no cohesion of flavors that one typically expects from an Italian sauce; the beef broth was overwhelming and was only mildly enhanced by the onions and the basil. So my rating for the, let's say, excitement, of the dish, is maybe a 75%; it was new and different, but it didn't blow my mind.

Would I make this meal again? Yes, but only if I skip making the pasta and just use something I can buy at the store. The recipe works better as something to whip up quick. But the time and effort that goes into the pasts really deserves a more interesting sauce to go with it. Also, I may just replace the veal with plain beef and some seasoning.

It's not you, it's me. ...lamentations of a grad school applicant

I debated whether or not to write about the process of applying to graduate school for a few reasons. For one thing, I am not done yet; I have only finished the applications for the first due date. However, the main reason is that the experience has made me so desperately miserable that I'm not sure I'll be able to talk about it with a sense of humor.

Most applications ask for the same stuff: personal info, GRE scores, experience/qualifications in that area, letters of recommendation, transcripts, statement of purpose, and sometimes a resume or this irritating thing called a Curriculum Vitae. I have managed to break some of my experience down into a few (comedic?) stories/rants about the process, and hopefully writing about them will make it all a little more bearable.

So you have a list of schools you want to apply to. You want to be a medical physicist. How noble. You tried to 'research' the different programs so that you can see what's right for you, but come on, you don't know what's right for you. You know you want a lucrative and hopefully rewarding job, and you want it to have something to do with what you love: physics. Medical physics is not something we all experience throughout our lives or something we aspire to be for years. No one says "hey, you know those medical physicists are really pretty remarkable." So no, you can't say that you have a calling to medical physics. Or that you always knew what you wanted to do. It's just something that, after much deliberation, you think would make you happy.

Now what will you do first? The statement of purpose? Okay. So the school asks you to write about your educational and career objectives. But wait! That's too typical. Don't ACTUALLY put in your career and education objectives, because that's too normal. They'll be expecting that. No no, you need to write something brilliant. Something interesting, and different, and provocative. A window into your very soul, which should of course be comprised of nothing but medical physics. Something so mindblowingly unique and powerful that it not only indicates to the reviewer that you are more interesting then the Dos Equis guy, you are also the best candidate. In the world. For this program.

Next maybe you'll tackle this Curriculum Vitae thing. You google it and realize that all the samples are filled with diverse employment history, education that goes way beyond your measly Bachelor's degree, and even publications. All things that you can't expect to have UNTIL you get into grad school. Oh, and it's basically a resume. So now you have a resume and a CV, which makes two documents that show how much you lack job experience and education. That should look good. Maybe you can throw in your high school honor society or the boy scouts, just so that there are some words on the page to keep your name company.

Now let's get more technical. Every school wants a transcript. However, some of them want an official transcript, some of them will settle for an unofficial one. Others require one of each, or two of one. (The hardest part of this process is paying attention to the fine print, which is different for each school. You may look at the graduate school website for University A, which says that all applications are due next month, only to go to the website for the program you are interested in and see that, actually, their deadline for applications was yesterday. Oops.) An official one is sent from your school; an unofficial one, I have been led to understand, has to be mailed to you for you to scan and then upload it for submission. This is where I introduce my first tale of woe...

University A asks for two official transcripts, mailed in by my college, and uploaded to the online application. Did anyone catch the subtle error? They say they want two OFFICIAL transcripts, but then say one should be uploaded. The one that is uploaded must first be in my possession, and therefore, by definition, cannot be official. Thanks for the clarity. You could always give the admissions office a call to clarify...ah, but they're not there because it's winter break or lunch break or they just don't feel like answering. Very useful.

So you have to ask your school to send out some transcripts. What do you do? Call the registrar? Send an email? No no no, that's way too 21st century. You either have to mail in a signed letter of request with you name, birth date and social security number to prove it's you (I guess there's a lot of wackos out there trying to obtain other people's transcripts) or send them a fax with the same information. Well, mailing them is going to take days; you'd rather fax. Now where do you find a fax machine? You certainly don't have one. You never needed one before. Looks like you could either go to Staples (the nearest one being a half hour away) or use the machine in your mom's office, which is slightly closer.

A few days later you have the student copy (unofficial) in hand and, upon inspection, notice that they managed to cram your entire undergraduate career onto a single sheet of paper by using size 4 font. This is, of course, too small for the scanner to read as text, so you'll have to scan it in as either a picture or a pdf. That's annoying, but not too dramatic. Now to upload...

Hmm, it says the file size is too big. They're maximum space is 600 KB. This pdf can't be too much bigger. It's...holy shit! It's 14 MG!? That's more than 20 times the space limit! But what did you do wrong? It says right in the instructions that it must be in pdf format. Maybe you should call the-- oh, right...Well, the internet says that the best way to reduce the file size is to 'compress' it. Done! Lo and behold it's down to only 60 KB! Let's just open it first and make sure it all looks the same...Shit! Why is it so blurry? Now you can't read a thing! Scratch that idea. And it's back to my mother's office, where the scanner is a bit less primitive and has a few more options. After a few hours of trial and error, it appears the only solution is to scan the transcript in as a picture, copy it to a word document, and then save it as a pdf. All of this so that this graduate school can have an UNOFFICIAL transcript to peruse while waiting for the official one to show up.

As for the letters of recommendation, you are way ahead of schedule, giving your professors plenty of time to write thoughtful, impressive letters. You sent them a list of all the schools and the deadlines and how they should expect to send them in. Most are of course by email. Simple enough. Until it's not. Cue story #2:

You are finally getting to work on the application for University B. You thought you were all set with those letters of recommendation because the handy application checklist just gives a web address to email them to. But now that you're actually in the application and they're asking you for the information on your three professors, you notice a discrepancy. It turns out University B has a form for the referee to fill out instead of the standard letter; you fill out the top half and the referee does the rest. That's convenient. And you can either submit this form by email or by mail. In hard copy, you have to print out three of them, fill each out separately, then mail each one to the professor with return postage and envelope enclosed. They will, in turn, fill them out, sign the seal of the envelope, and send them back to you. When you have all three of them together, you combine them into one larger envelope and send them all, together, and still enclosed, to the school. The other option is much more sensible: simply fill out the top half and email it to the professor, who will fill out the bottom half and email it to the school. That can be done in a single afternoon, as opposed to potentially a week or more. And look, when you download the form, it even lets you fill out the top half. So easy!

Ehem, but wait a second. After you fill out the top half, you try to save it. But when it saves it erases your edit. How come? Well, the form is a pdf, which can't be edited. So when it let you edit it just now before saving, that was just for kicks. In fact, only the latest adobe software, which costs a minimum of $140 has the option to edit and save. So what, does University B expect you to have this software? Or do they really think the most efficient way to submit recommendations is a weeks-long four-person game of mail tag? Anyways, what else could you do? You could print out the form and fill out the top half and fax it. But you can't fax it because they need to mail it back to you and they won't have the return envelope and postage. The only other option is to print and fill out three separate ones, re-scan, and email each to the respective professor. And now what are they going to do with it? Print it out, fill it in, and then re-scan it and email it? That's kind of a hassle. And don't forget you happen to have a professor who prefers to use a voice-to-text program on his computer because he has trouble writing with his hands. Are you really going to ask him to do all this work for you? But more importantly, does University B seriously expect all this?

Now that you have all the paperwork in order - statements of purpose and CV nice and spiffy, transcripts and GRE scores in the mail - you can go ahead and fill out the online application and get that damn thing submitted.

Except wait a minute. Something's not right. You notice at the last minute, just before you pay that application fee, as you're reviewing all the fine print in the application checklist, that the name of the program it tells you put on the application is not the same as the name of the program at the top of the page. You want to be a medical physicist. Some universities call that medical physics, some call it radiation oncology, and others call it biomedical engineering. They're all pretty sweet titles. But look here, you said that you're applying for a Master's degree in 'biomedical engineering', when University C specifically says that you need to apply for 'medical physics'. Ya see, at University C, biomedical engineering and medical physics are two very different programs with two very different departments. And now you know. And now you can change that little error (good thing you caught that before submitting the application. That would have been a silly thing to try and explain to the admissions office). Although wait, the other day you took the GRE, and afterwards you were allowed to send your scores to five schools, free of charge. Except when you searched for University C and put in their school code, you were asked for a department. When there was no 'medical physics' department, you went ahead and put 'biomedical engineering'. That seemed right. They're practically the same. Besides, what were you supposed to do, memorize the specific department for each school? It's not like you can write it down, because you're not allowed to bring anything with you when taking the GRE except a photo ID and a pair of pants. How were you supposed to know where to have those scores sent. Now you have to resend the scores, only this time there is a $25 fee!

But let's get back to that application. Turns out you can't change the program you are applying to. Once you put in the name of the program, it locked it in and created the application based on the program. So the only way to change that is to...start a new application from scratch. Try not to screw it up this time. Oh, and look at that, you have to re-enter your professors' info so that they can re-submit your letters of recommendation because they don't carry over. I'm sure they'll appreciate that. And now you remember that when you did this the first time around, you received copies of the messages sent to each professor verifying that they were sent successfully. Now it's not doing that. Instead, each time you submit their address, it says that a copy has been sent to your University C email. But you never made a University C email. In fact, sure enough, when you go to the University C email and put in the only login information you know - the login from the application - it tells you that the information is incorrect. Okay, so back up. You're missing something. You recheck the emails you've gotten from University C since beginning the application. And boom! It says right there that your login name and password are only temporary. And that you have to immediately use some other login and some other password to create a special account where you will immediately be asked to create yet another unique login and another unique password. So you go back and set this up. All so that you can check the email account and make sure that emails were sent to your professors. And yet, when you click on the email button right in the middle of the screen, what do you see? Well, it's not your email. Instead it's the message "Your [University C] account is currently locked or inaccessible. Please contact the Help Desk for assistance."

And those are my stories. I sure hope I get into grad school, because I am never applying again.

Monsieur Incroyable! (The Incredibles)

I don't consider myself to be an expert on superhero movies. Especially all of the stuff that came out before Marvel really got going with X-Men. But lately I have been thinking about The Incredibles, and how, despite being one of the less popular Pixar titles, and not being live action, it sort of transformed the standard of the superhero movie. People seem to think that Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins was the first time a superhero was put into a very dark but believable reality. I would agree that the three-dimensionality of Nolan's interpretation of the classic characters made for a much richer and compelling narrative. But I would argue that The Incredibles gives us an equally macabre and believable story, more so when one considers that it is a kids movie.

In the universe of The Incredibles, you have a world full of supers (superheroes) and villains. But when Mr. Incredible saves someone who was attempting to commit suicide, a lawsuit makes it illegal to be a vigilante, and forces all supers to assimilate to normal society. Before this happens, Mr. Incredible is confronted by a boy who asks to be his sidekick. He claims that he prefers to work alone, and the kid grows up to become the villain Syndrome. Syndrome kills a bunch of the other supers until Mr. Incredible, his wife, and their two kids, who also have super powers, defeat Syndrome.

Doesn't that sound pretty dark? The world decides they don't want heroes anymore because they cause too much damage and interfere with people's lives. It is believed that the only reason supervillains show up and hurt people is to antagonize the supers; and in the case of Syndrome, this is pretty much true. In fact, in The Dark Knight, the Joker explains that Batman is the reason people like him even exist.

And then you have all of witty observations The Incredibles makes about the typical superhero story, my favorite two being monologuing and capes. It is pointed out that the downfall of most villains is the need to hear themselves talk; rather than outright kill the super while hes down, they go on and on until the super has a chance to retaliate. And capes are a terrible costume idea because they are always getting caught in things like jet engines and propellers. Every superhero movie after this had to give good reasons why the heroes wear their silly outfits (Captain America's suit is transformed to look like WWII armor; Batman loses the tights and has to meet with Lucius Fox every time he has a problem with mobility or defense; and it is finally questioned how Bruce Banner's pants stay on when he transforms into the Hulk).

And when a villain is monologuing, it removes all the tension from a scene, because it becomes painfully obvious. Talia's exposition at the end of Dark Knight Rises gave Commissioner Gordon just enough time to break the signal between the bomb and the detonator. In Thor and The Avengers, Loki is caught monologuing on numerous occasions, often resulting in him getting his ass handed to him.

My point is that for a children's movie, The Incredibles explores some of the more serious aspects of the superhero genre that have since then become mainstream. I think it is definitely one of the best superhero movies of all time, and it is unfortunate that it doesn't seem to be recognized as such.