Vacuum cleaner

"Devotion" is arguably the greatest comedy short of all time, rivaled only by Will Ferrell's George W. Bush Crawford ranch send-up.

Through the cracks

I'd love to say that there are millions of incredible films floating around that Hollywood never promoted enough to justify a nationwide release, or that audiences simply misunderstood. Sadly, most films you have never heard of, you have never heard of for a reason. Recently, however, I saw 2 that the mysterious filter erroneously discarded, Timer and The Fall.

Bogart that bubble

The $3 Summer Sam "long necks" live up to the "best happy hour in DC!" come-on, but corralling the happy hour crowd in a cramped quadrant by the bar, even while most of Chef Geoff's (1301 Pennsylvania Ave. NW) sits empty, is the type of self-defeating cheapskating I'm more accustomed to seeing at hotels that still charge for Wi-Fi and cities that don't give free transfers between subways and buses.

In other news, I saw a great anti-smoking ad last night before The Duchess, who apparently hit the bottle pretty hard and liked to gamble, but was not a smoker.

Fare Share

My buddy Jeff Novich, a serial entrepreneur and Bobby Flay body double, has been getting some good press (in amNewYork and The Wall Street Journal) for his newest business, an iPhone app that offers economizing New Yorkers a digital ride board for taxi trips. Here's an ad for the app, featuring Jeff's foxy wife, Maddy, going gaga over the technology.

Emergency Exits

"Please take a minute to locate this planet's emergency exits. As you can see, there aren't any."

Tidal wave

Neither of these videos is likely to "ganhar a internet," as my Portuguese professor likes to say, but I still feel gratified public servicing it up here on Pipón. The first is a bit of Earth Day love c/o my ecologist spouse, kg. The second tackles another equally interesting, albeit comparably dispiriting, subject, the national debt. Admit it, you thought I was only interested in my fantasy baseball squad.

'Elites'

SAIS, however pompous the acronym, is not a household name outside foreign policy circles. The last time I saw it cross paths with the zeitgeist was in Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story, as Moore vilifies former Treasury Sec. Henry Paulson, now a "distinguished visiting scholar" at SAIS, and the b-roll shows the Nitze building.

Last night, according to my friend Jeremy Wang-Iverson, brought some redemption. In an SNL skit mocking Sarah Palin, Tina Fey describes a new show, on the Sarah Palin Network, called "Elites" that "takes CSPAN footage of a bunch of smarty pants professors talking about who-knows-what and redubs it with the teacher's voice from Charlie Brown." Here, the b-roll, at minute 14:00, is once again good ol' SAIS.

In My Shoes

I know the admittedly very creative mathematical ballet short has been the real crowd-pleaser among the widely hyped video essays submitted by this year's applicants to my alma mater, Tufts University, but allow me to cast a rogue vote for "In My Shoes." I say "rogue" not only because "Math Dances" has attracted 97,058 YouTube views while my nominee has logged just 25,541, but because I heard a Splendid Table segment this morning about hunting buffalo in the Alaskan wilderness and now I simply can't get Going Rogue Sarah Palin out of my mind.


[Listen here to an All Things Considered report on the Tufts video phenomenon, and if you're really into amateur, multimedia madness, here is one of the short travel videos I put together in Uruguay in late 2008.]

My 'secret'

There's a funny shout-out to Pipón on a blog written by Scott Kingsley, a former photographer at The Providence Journal, where I used to do financial reporting. Scott apparently noticed that I'd posted one of his videos, the "Stimulus Package" rap, on Pipón. "Former business writer Ben blogs about food?" he wrote. "Who knew? Everyone has a secret."

'The Case for Goliath'

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Michael Mandelbaum
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Vancouverage 2010

A classmate yesterday passed along a video of my SAIS professor, Michael Mandelbaum, appearing on The Daily Show to discuss his book, The Case for Goliath: How America Acts as the World's Government in the Twenty-First Century. The interview is a few years old, and America's influence has arguably decreased since its publication, in large measure due to this country's economic headaches (as Prof. Mandelbaum predicted in the interview, noting that "the great challenge to the American role as the world's government comes not from China, but from Medicare"). Still, Prof. Mandelbaum's argument remains relevant, though controversial*: Despite all the anti-Americanism across the globe, "America is the benign Goliath," a "global good guy" that the world secretly appreciates.

*John Stewart, for one, sounded somewhat skeptical. "You're suggesting," he asked Prof. Mandelbaum, "that the burning of a flag in many countries -- a compliment?"

Apple Pie

I swiped a quote from a classmate's Facebook page ("If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe") and e-mailed it to the biggest Carl Sagan fan I knew. He replied with a link to this YouTube video, in an exchange I considered fantastically modern, albeit amazingly commonplace.

'The days kind of blend'

My wife's cousin, Kate Levitt, the drummer for the Balitmore band Teeth Mountain, puts in a brilliant performance on Judge Judy, where she alleges that a house guest killed her cat by hurling a TV set across her living room. The story, according to the Balitmore City Paper, is made up, an attempt to "parody art-hipster culture via a case about a dead cat for a daytime television audience that could probably give a shit less about art-hipster culture." (The paper's evidence that cousin Kate's cat, if it ever existed, is still meowing around? "come the fuck on, just watch it.")

Braai rules

I am beginning to take this personally. First, my Greek South African-born friend Tanya (in photo below, at left) invited me over for a "peasant stew," telling me that the lamb and orzo medley, however delicious it may taste, is a strictly plebeian platter. Then last night, just as I arrived back at Tanya's, I was instructed not to remove my coat but rather to proceed directly to the balcony to help Tanya's brother, George, keep an eye on the Boerewors, South African sausage served on rolls and favored by drunk clubgoers after last call.


As if that was not enough of an indignity, Tanya also served chakalaka, a vegetarian chili that, she explained, is a staple for impoverished Johannesburg gold miners.

Tanya is just lucky that all this low-class cuisine is so highly tasty, otherwise I'd have to start boycotting these dinners, lest I end up complimenting an entree only to have Tanya explain, "This is what we feed our cattle."






Sides included Iwisa-brand, mielie-meal pap (the word actually means "gruel," and I'm not making this up); a South African beef jerky known as biltong; potato salad; dried mango; and for dessert, milk tart.

I could tell you more about cooking up Boerewors (hint: for Tanya, the process starts by getting The South African Food Shop to FedEx enormous coils of raw meat), but according to this hilarious instructional video that George passed along, it seems like you have to earn entrance into the Boerewors fraternity in a process that resembles a cross between Freemasonry initiation and an episode of Top Chef.

Projecting Perpetuum Jazzile

Since it appears Pipón is in a random-non-food-related-videos kind of mood, here are two that might interest you: (above) Toto's Africa by Perpetuum Jazzile, courtesy of Kari Jaksa; (below) a 2009 TED talk, courtesy of George Konidaris, about the prospects of developing a "sixth sense" to give "easy access to meta information" by using a wearable "Web cam."

See the Light

I had hoped to find a clip of the closing credits of State of Play, a powerful elegy to newspapers soundtracked by Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Long As I Can See The Light." Sadly, all I could find was a random scene. Happily, it features Jason Bateman from Arrested Development and it's pretty genius.

Boom and bust cycle

This came my nerdy way from a SAIS classmate. NPR's Planet Money featured this video, an hilarious and super instructive rap exploring the conflicting theories of economists John Maynard Keynes and F. A. Hayek,on its Planet Money blog. The video is from EconStories.tv at George Mason University.

Lyrics:

We’ve been going back and forth for a century
[Keynes] I want to steer markets,
[Hayek] I want them set free
There’s a boom and bust cycle and good reason to fear it
[Hayek] Blame low interest rates.
[Keynes] No… it’s the animal spirits

[Keynes Sings:]

John Maynard Keynes, wrote the book on modern macro
The man you need when the economy’s off track, [whoa]
Depression, recession now your question’s in session
Have a seat and I’ll school you in one simple lesson

Mail back, Move forward

If you have been wondering why President Obama thinks you should participate in the 2010 U.S. Census (hint: it's not just because, technically, it's legally required), wonder no longer.

'Charge 'em for the lice, extra for the mice'

Is this the recipe for the inescapable, greasy and scrumptious choripán found at every intersection and outdoor market in Montevideo?

"Food beyond compare, food beyond belief, mix in the mincer and pretend it's beef. Kidney of horse, liver of a cat, filing up the sausages with this and that." - Les Misérables

Prime minister's questioning

Liberty or tyranny, the mashup