Too Many Words About Scones

I bought a blueberry scone from Timothy’s this morning, and it is kind of meh. I mean it’s not bad, but I’m not sure I’m going to get another one again. My issue is though is that I don’t know if I just have a problem with scones in general or specifically with scones from Timothy’s. What is a scone, I mean, truly? Is it bread or a biscuit or a pastry? Shouldn’t they be eaten with butter and tea, with like the Queen or something? They are kind of bland and dry, but I think that’s what they’re supposed to be like. So why pack it with all this sweet crap? Half measures! Why don’t you just eat a muffin or a donut then if you want a sugary injection of starch? Full measure! A glazed scone just seems a bit oxymoronic to me, like something foreign that has been quintessentially Americanized. It’s supposed to be a nice leisurely, sitting down type of thing to eat, to accommpany afternoon tea or whatever the wacky European ritual is, while you discuss matters of state or which of your inbred relatives has the best chance to be the Duke of Devonshire or how the grand old war is going. I don’t think it’s supposed to be like a Twinky-like convenience food that you can grab on your way out of a gas station before unwrapping it and cramming it into your face.

The vibe is all wrong. It’s like drinking a scotch standing up or eating pizza at a restaurant. If there is no dignified white person serving me hot plant leaf soup while I eat a scone, then I think I would rather a donut.

I thought I would share that with you today.

– This is a trailer for Kung Fury, which I understand to be a half hour long movie that, as of now, has been successfully crowdfunded via Kickstarter. So they got that going for them.

– The lines are often blurred when determining if shows are setting trends versus commenting or parodying existing trends, but all the same, I thought you should know that the Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons is getting married to a “manga artist” named Kumiko in an upcoming episode. Presumably from the screenshots, there will also be a disapproving Asian father stereotype whom the Simpsons clan helps to talk into approving this marriage. Or he dies or turns into a robot that no longer cares about such things. So I hope that makes everyone here very happy, and gives you yet another reason to continue watching the show as I know you all do. Or maybe it will be a clever subversion of the whole idea that ridicules and belittles the trend and affects society for the better. I’m sure that is a possibility as well.

– So Old Spice has yet another new line of commercials based around the idea of selling to the youngins, presumably to appeal to that great eternal need for boys to become men by being successful with girls, because obviously that’s what the measure of being a man is based on. And obviously, how else will you impress ? So man up and buy some Old Spice products already, don’t be a momma’s boy, BE A MAN.

But whatever, all of that is just to lead into this particular iteration of that commercial. (EDIT: mirror) It may well be the greatest and most important commercial ever posted on this site. And yet, I won’t lie – it’s kind of jarring. I mean I understand why this particular pairing is not usually seen in popular culture or the media – if you got an ad that’s 20 seconds long, it might not work that great is your audience needs like 10 (or 20) seconds figuring out what the premise is. “I don’t understand this ad. Is that her tutor and they’re just celebrating her successful math test before her actual boyfriend comes and picks her up?”

NO, COME ON

I’m sorry, that was wrong for me to say. This is a great ad. I hope there are many more like it to come.

– The opening episode for Season 3 of Jerry Seinfeld’s Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee webseries features Louis CK. There are worse ways to spend your time than making money by producing a series in which you get to drive crazy cars and just hang out with your friends. Jerry’s got it all figured out. This recent Reddit AMA he does is also a pretty good, long read. Some neat bits in there include a note that he and Larry David have finished a new script for something, and also a story about a ditched Seinfeld episode…

There was one episode where Jerry bought a handgun. And we started making it and stopped in the middle and said “this doesn’t work.” We did the read-through and then cancelled it. A lot of other stuff happened, but trying to make that funny ended up being no fun.

Just imagining how they would have pulled that off makes my head spin. It worked for The Simpsons and the gang of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, but those shows are a little bit different in tone. Also how weird is it that Jerry Seinfeld refers to his character on Seinfeld in the third-person, as “Jerry?” He was playing himself!

– If you have an extra $119 lying around, perhaps it’s time to buy a smartphone breathalyzer, called Alcohoot, because when you think of breathalyzers you think of owls, and vice versa. It’s a neat gadget, but all the features talking up the safety angle feel disingenuous to me. You are giving consumers direct access to a portable tool that will measure how drunk they are, and you honestly believe this will encourage anything other than more competitive drinking? Your app provides a graphing functionality to chart the alcohol content of my blood, and you expect me not to drink as much as I can? Recording things leads to records. And records are meant to be broken. Or for us to constantly strive to do so, even at the cost of great physical danger and risk to public safety. For every single owner of a portable breathalyzer that will use it to monitor responsible blood alcohol levels, there will be a hundred that will be inspired to engage in an impromptu, objectively scored, drinking contest. Let no one be under the illusion that this is anything other than a tool of destruction. There is no new element of safety being introduced here, let’s all be realistic. I hope they do very well.

– I found this article in the paper today which pulls quotes from Chinese and Japanese ambassadors, likening the other’s respective nation to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. One of the more bizarre world news articles I’ve read in a while. I mean is Harry Potter still relevant? I thought those movies ended a few years ago. I’m thinking the Liu household recently completed a Harry Potter marathon, and when pressed, the ambassador just defaulted to the first metaphor that popped into his head.

Writing in The Telegraph, China’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, Liu Xiaoming, said: “If militarism is like the haunting Voldemort of Japan, the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo is a kind of horcrux, representing the darkest parts of that nation’s soul.”

Thank God the article goes on to define exactly what a horcrux is. But the important question is if the oddly and unnecessarily specific reference makes any sense. Does that mean if you destroy the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo (which commemorates, among many other Japanese war casualties, a large number of World War II war criminals) it will be one step closer to ending the Voldemortian spectre of Japanese militarism? I think that kind of makes sense, right? But then what and where are the other horcruxes? This is all very confusing.

– Here is the trailer for Draft Day, in which Kevin Costner, presumably upset that he was left out of Moneyball as Hollywood’s de facto old baseball dude, takes his skills of wistfully starring into the distance and yelling at speaker phones home to make his own damn movie. But this time about football. And instead of Jonah Hill and Philip Seymour Hoffman, he’s getting Jennifer Garner and Denis Leary! Take that Brad Pitt!

He got two minutes into that Ovaltine thing and I just couldn’t take it anymore.