Heroes: The Fix

Last night's episode was a set-up episode. Nothing much happened beyond moving the chess pieces around on the board to prep things for the promised events of next week's episode. And next week's episode better be jam-packed, as almost every storyline ended with a cliffhanger of varying import. Especially since Cheerleader Claire finding her birthmother was front and center in the promos for the episode, an event which didn't happen until the final few minutes of the show. Grr.

But even so, the episode was a keeper. It was probably more comic-like in its plotting and setup than most other episodes of the series, insofar as the structure and pacing went. It felt very confident, in that the cliffhangers were the payoff. I mean, Bennet caught in a Silence of the Lambs moment by supervillain Sylar? Yikes! Although watching Bennet's "internal conflict" and "angst" over the continual mindwipes he's subjected his family to, it strikes me that the writers ought to invest a lot more energy into making him a sympathetic character, even if he is at odds with most of the other characters on the show. Right now, he's Cancer Man light, and that doesn't really benefit anyone. If they make him more like, say, Londo Mollari, a fellow with basically honorable intentions who sets in motion forces he can't control that sweep him along, I think that'd add significant depth to the character. Right now, we're being told (shown, sort of) that he's multi-layered, but the substance ain't there.

Claire's white-trash firestarter mother is an interesting addition to the cast. Obviously, she's had active powers for all of Claire's 16 years, reading between the "firey car crash" lines. Which means there is another generation of Heroes out there that didn't suddenly manifest their powers six months earlier. I wonder if the writers are going to follow up on that, or ignore it as the series progresses?

Did I miss something in the exchange between Peter Petrelli and the Invisible Man who looks like Mike Rutherford? I mean, where does Petrelli get off thinking the former Genesis guitarist has trained other heroes how to use their powers? Ol' Mike made reference to meeting other supers in the past, IIRC, but at what point did he become some sort of sensi? The impression I'm getting from his evasiveness is that he's either a con artist (high probability) or a mere fraud (equally high probability). I don't expect this relationship to end well.

Hiro, of course, gets the best lines of the show, as usual. That his personal demon to confront is his own father is priceless--and fits so well with his character that I worry the follow-up can't possibly live up to the cliffhanger. Next week better really be good, or I'll be sorely disappointed.

Now Playing: The Police Message in a Box

Racking the mead (finally)

It took a little longer to rack the current six-gallon batch of mead than it should have, but I finally managed to get around to it. Yay! I've now got it divided into four different containers, which gave me a free hand to experiment:



The two Mr. Beer fermentation vessels on the chair hold 1.5 and 2.5 gallons respectively. Both of these currently hold the prickly pear incarnation of my mead. Remember, I'd harvested quite a few beautiful ripe prickly pear fruit back in (yikes!) July:



I'd stored them in the deep freeze, which proved to be a good thing. Donning a thick oven mitt, I cut the ends off each one and peeled them with a potato peeler. Being frozen solid, the process went quickly at first but got messier as the fruit thawed and the juice--the deep burgundy stainable juice--started getting everywhere. And several of those fine prickles worked their way through the oven mitt into various digits of my left hand, but overall it was fairly painless. I placed all the cleaned fruit into a large pot, covered it and left it on the counter overnight. In the morning, the pot was filled with juice--freezing the fruit had ruptured the cell walls, making my job all the easier. After cooking the mix for 45 minutes (I'd been warned that raw prickly pear will foam uncontrollably if fermented) I strained out the pulp and ended up with almost seven cups of intensely colored juice. I divided it proportionally between the 1.5 and 2.5 gallon vessels, and filled with mead. What's cool is that both of these are fairly clear to start with, and should be crystal clear before long (I might not even have to rack again). I usually use green bottles for my mead, but for this batch I'm thinking we need clear bottles to show off the color.

The remaining mead went into two one-gallon glass carboys, formerly containing Central Market Organic Apple Juice. In the leftmost one I added maybe a quarter cup of fresh mint leaves--chocolate mint and spearmint, I believe--at Lisa's request. I'm not a huge mint fan, but this one smells really good. It's pretty dry right now, and I'll probably let it stay that way and not add any more honey. The carboy on the right was the recipient of one honkin' big jalapeño pepper. It's quite ripe, the end of it turning red, and I expect it should convey a great deal of heat to the mead. I sliced the end of the pepper crosswise to ensure the heat from the seeds is able to penetrate the mead. I expect this one will need a good deal of additional honey before its through, along with another racking or two. I anticipate it needing at least a little sweetness to balance the heat. But I'm not 100 percent sure--I'm making this up as I go along, after all.

I've also got some medium toast French oak chips that will go into the prickly pear and jalapeño mead sometime in the future. Is this brewing stuff fun, or what?

Now Playing: The Partridge Family Greatest Hits

Flash and dazzle

On the morning commute today, I crested a hill between New Braunfels and San Marcos and was instantly dazzled by a brilliant crimson flash. It was extremely bright, and went away quickly. A moment later it appeared again, and I located its origin about a mile or so ahead of me on I-35. It was coming from a northbound vehicle, and the flashes alternated from short, intermittent bursts, to a steady blaze lasting a minute or more. The rising sun was well above the horizon, directly to my right, so the angle wasn't right for it to be a reflection off the rear windshield or mirrors. And it was red. From a mile away it was so intense and bright I seriously thought someone was flashing a laser my direction, and worried about being struck blind.

But the flashing continued randomly, and despite the brightness, the light wasn't focused like a laser would be. So I slowly began gaining on the mystery vehicle. I caught up to it around the San Marcos outlet malls, and talk about an anticlimax. Turned out to be a dark gray Nissan Xterra. The blazing light was indeed reflected sunlight, bouncing off the curved reflective surface surrounding the actual taillights--not the lights themselves--but still encased in the red plastic taillight casing. I was dumbfounded at how something that has no relation to the lights themselves other than proximity could produce such a startling reflection at such a bizarre angle.

It was a really cool effect, though.

Now Playing: ZZ Top Antenna

Friday Night Videos

My exploration of contemporary videos steeped in unabashed nostalgia continues this week with "A.M. Radio" from Everclear. This is, without a doubt, one of the scruffiest bands I've ever seen, but the the lead singer/songwriter Art Alexakis nails the whole 70s aesthetic. The lyrics are catchy, but the video itself is pop culture crack for a child of the 70s like me. I remember watching all those goofy Sid & Marty Kroft shows on Saturday mornings--Land of the Lost, H.R. Pufnstuf with Witchiepoo, Sigmund and the Sea Monsters... Wow. It's a wonder they didn't include the classic Bigfoot & Wildboy in that mix. But even though I was very young, I clearly remember watching Hawaii Five-O with my parents in the evenings, and I guess it's a testament to my age that I also remember watching the original Sonny & Cher Show and The Dean Martin Show (and later, his Celebrity Roasts) back then as well. So, yeah. This song and video works for me.



Previously on Friday Night Videos... Bowling for Soup.

Now Playing: Johnny Cash The Essential Johnny Cash

Local Hero

As if Eva Longoria and Ricardo Chavira aren't enough, it looks like San Antonio has another actor on a big hit show that it can lay claim to. And this show happens to be Heroes, that addictive super hero drama I post about here on occasion:

Did you know that Sendhil Ramamurthy, who plays Mohinder — the genetics professor in India who inherited a list of people who have extraordinary powers — grew up in San Antonio?

According to his mom, Rajam, a neonatologist at UT Health Science Center, her son was born in Chicago, but the family moved to the Alamo City when he was very young.

Ramamurthy graduated from Keystone School here, but left the city to attend Tufts University. He didn't major in drama, but acted in several plays and fell in love with acting.

His mom was initially surprised by her son's choice of careers as he comes from a family of doctors. However, she and her husband — an anesthesiologist at the health science center — now are bursting with pride over their son's talent and success.

The only real disappointment here is that Ramamurthy's character, Mohinder, hasn't really been given anything significant to do on the show, other than wander into the narrative and impart bits of information that dispells the ignorance of other characters to a small degree. I'd thought early on that Mohinder would be the focal character of the show, since he's apparently "normal" but that was before Hiro and Peter Petrelli started stealing the limelight. Maybe Mohinder will step up in the second half of the season...

Now Playing: Ravel The Best of Ravel

Heroes: Godsend

"Godsend" proved to be an interesting episode is several respects. The show's producers have obviously started writing scenes with Hiro's popularity in mind--the entire sword-thieving sequence was great fun. The fact that the mysterious puppet-master Lindermann already has the sword in his possession, and what Hiro stole was a mere replica ups the ante significantly. As does the recurring symbol that this time appears on the sword's hilt.

We finally get a little hint that Niki's "powers" consist of something more than a run-of-the-mill split personality. Apparently, super strength is part of her bad-girl persona. Nifty. And Cheerleader Claire, who tends to be a little more passive than I'd like, does a reenactment of her freefall splat from the pilot episode in order to convince her mindwiped former best friend of their, uh, former friendship.

Probably the most interesting part of the episode was the clarification in Peter Petrelli's coma dream that he does indeed absorb Fallout Boy's powers and can't control them, thus leading to the nuclear obliteration of New York. That's partly what I expected the situation to be, but I also suspect that there's more to it than that, since Peter's dream plays out more as prophetic metaphor than literal truth. And I have to say that his fight with the antisocial Invisible Man was great fun as well.

Again, we didn't see much advancement in the narrative this episode, but we did see a number of the characters' attitudes and understanding mature, so it'll be fun to see how those play out over the next few weeks. All in all, I'm quite glad Heroes is back.

Now Playing: Various Best of Mozart vol. 1

Friday Night Videos

My brother, Chris, is a huge Bowling for Soup fan, and I have to say that their video for 1985 has done a lot to convert the unrepentant Gen-Xer in me. I remember seeing Robert Palmer in concert at A&M (Heavy Touring Nova) and laughed out loud at their riff on George Michael. But the band's spot-on impersonation of Motley Crüe--particularly Brett Michaels--had me shaking my head in wonder. Yeah, this counts as another "modern" video that I approve of. Good stuff.



Previously on Friday Night Videos... Fatboy Slim.

Now Playing: Berlin Philharmonic "The Ring" Without Words