Arose by any other name

By now you've probably heard about Willis Group Holdings Ltd., the world's third-largest insurance firm, acquiring the naming rights to the Sears Tower as part of a tenancy deal that includes 140,000 square feet of space within the building. Odds are, unless you work for Willis Group, you think this is dumb.

Willis Group is well within its rights to purchase naming rights, of course. And it's easy to see why the building's owners would be happy to make a little money off the name for a change, given that Sears hasn't occupied office space in the building since 1992. But does Willis really think that people are going to drop the old name and start calling it the Willis Tower just because they say so? Because we aren't.

It's the same reason why naming rights for Wrigley Field aren't really as valuable as you might think. Who is going to stop calling it Wrigley Field? Plenty of people still call US Cellular Field "Comiskey," and that park doesn't have half the cachet that Wrigley does. Aon rather famously acquired the naming rights for what was once the Standard Oil Building (and then the Amoco Building) in 1999, but despite the Aon Center's height, there are really two skyscrapers in Chicago that people pay much attention to - the Sears and the Hancock. They're the two that stand out from the skyline, they have the antennae, etc. No one is going to start calling them something else. If someone bought the naming rights to the Eiffel Tower, would anyone stop calling it that? What if the naming rights were bought to the Golden Gate Bridge? These aren't things that people are going to change on.

When I was at Northwestern, the students still called the dining halls "SAGA" even though that company hadn't been the food provider in a decade or so. For all I know, they still do. And you're talking about a student body that more or less completely turns over every four years. No one who lives in this city now is going to stop calling it the Sears Tower any time soon. If I were Willis, I would have asked if I could pay a little less and not bother with the naming rights. On the other hand, maybe they're thinking long-term; by 2050 maybe the new name will have caught on.

Phinally

Gosh, I've only been back in the US for 53 days. How about a recap of the Philippines trip? What's that you say? You forgot I even went because it's been so long? You sarcastic dick. Here's the link.

Iron Chef Flax

I've been cooking a little bit recently. I don't exactly have crazy chef talents, but I can generally follow a recipe, and I wanted to cook for Alma on Valentine's Day. I perhaps ambitiously decided to make chicken breasts stuffed with spinach and goat cheese, not really taking into consideration how long it might take to do so.

First I had to chop up some shallots, which made my eyes sting like crazy. Then I pulled the stems off a bunch of spinach leaves and wilted them in a pan with the shallots. Once that was done I crumbled in the goat cheese and stirred it together to make the filling. Next I had to cut pockets into the raw chicken breasts, which was easier said than done even though I use a nice sharp knife. The chicken breasts weren't huge or anything, and in a couple cases were shaped such that a cut into the side of one end of the chicken would poke through the bottom of the chicken near the other end. This meant, of course, that when the filling was pushed in, it would start to seep out the bottom. Great.

Fortunately I was mostly able to hold the filling in place by completing the next step, which was breading the chicken. I rolled the breasts in flour, dunked them in an egg bath, and then rolled them in bread crumbs. After they sat in the fridge for a few minutes to set up, the breasts were pan-fried for a couple minutes on each side, and then put in the oven to bake for 20 minutes.

While the chicken was in the oven I worked on making a pasta side. I had decided to make my own sauce, a light lemon-butter-white wine number, but I hadn't read the recipe quite as carefully as I should have; at one point it instructed me to quarter the lemon, then drop all four pieces into the sauce and simmer for 20 minutes until reduced by half. At this point it was already almost 9 pm and I didn't have the time or energy to do that, so I just squeezed the lemon juice into the pot instead and skipped the rest of that step entirely.

In the end it took me around two hours to do everything and we didn't eat until about 9:15, but at least it was all good. The next night I actually made the same thing (this time with some steamed green beans as well, since we hadn't had a vegetable the first night), since I had bought more than I ended up needing the first night; the recipe called for four chicken breasts, but they come in packages of three. So I bought two of them, but decided that opening the last package when I wasn't going to use most of it was dumb and just saved it for the next day. Even without pasta, it still took about an hour and 45 minutes the second night, so I guess this is just a complicated recipe. The really annoying thing was spending over an hour on Sunday afternoon washing all the dishes from the previous night only to dirty most of them up again later that evening (and subsequently having to spend another 30-45 minutes doing dishes on Monday).

This weekend I told Alma I would cook for her again, and I decided to make lamb chops. Deliberately selecting the "quick and easy" filter on epicurious.com, I found this recipe, which seemed simple enough. However, I ran into a couple of issues at the store. Number one, the only ground cardamom they had was a small bottle retailing for 16 dollars, which I could not possibly justify (at that price it would have cost more than the lamb). Number two, the only lamb chops they had - and you could argue this is my fault for going no further than Dominick's for my meat purchasing needs - were loin chops, not rib chops as the recipe called for. I asked after rib chops but was told this was all they had; the guy held up an enormous package of lamb and suggested that I could cut it however I wanted, but needless to say that wasn't going to be happening (I don't know that I could even have identified the rib chops, let alone cut them out, and what would I have done with the rest of the lamb anyway?).

The cardamom was not missed. I threw a pinch of cinnamon into the marinade to make up for the sweetness (apparently you can approximate cardamom with equal parts cinnamon and nutmeg, so I wasn't far off, although we didn't have any nutmeg and I didn't find this out until I got home), but you couldn't really tell anyway. The rest of the marinade was a bunch of chopped garlic and a good deal of lime juice (I was just finishing fully squeezing out the second half of the lime I'd bought when Alma said, "Does it call for the juice of one lime?" Realizing I hadn't really looked, I saw it actually only called for two tablespoons, but I think it was fine; I had been worried that the marinade as called for in the recipe wasn't going to have nearly enough liquid to coat all the lamb, so it worked out), plus salt, pepper, cumin and olive oil. While the lamb marinated for 15 minutes, I started work on the sides, making couscous (from one of those Near East boxes, so as not to overextend myself like I perhaps had with the chicken) and vegetables (a Bird's Eye microwaveable steamer bag). Finally the lamb got cooked about 3 minutes on each side in a frying pan.

I think it turned out quite well; parts of some of the pieces didn't get completely coated in the marinade while in the bag (it was a little tricky because once they were in the bag they had a tendency to bunch up a little, since they were relatively thin pieces of raw meat), and because the lime juice had a slight pre-cooking effect (as it does in Peruvian ceviche), the pieces that didn't get fully coated (which were still red when I put them in the frying pan, as opposed to most of the lamb, which was darkening towards brown) were perhaps a little tougher post-frying. The pieces that were good, however, were really good. Alma and I easily finished off all the lamb between us.

So: cooking. I'm enjoying it. I always like doing nice things for Alma, of course, but it's also pretty fun for me and I'm glad I've been able to turn out edible things thus far (I bought a pizza at the store last night just in case, but fortunately we didn't need to use it). We'll see how much more of this I do in the months and years to come, but interesting developments will probably turn up here.

Oh yeah: how about that lack of posts in February? Man. Good job by me there.

From Russia with post

At semi-long last, From Russia With Love came off "short wait" on Netflix. So we now have the second edition of My Year of Bonds. You can go right to the From Russia With Love article here.

Lagged out

A quick check of the archives suggests that I was messed up for most of the week after returning from Australia as well, so perhaps I should have seen this coming, but man, do I ever feel like shit right now. It's been pretty messy since I got back - we landed in Chicago at 8:20 am, but that was 10:20 pm later that day Manila time (this after I had been up since 5 am Manila time and slept very little on the plane, as I never can sleep on planes for more than an hour or two). As a result, I ended up falling asleep at noon and waking up around 7 pm, then staying up till about 5 in the morning and sleeping until around 2 pm on Friday. It hasn't been much better since then; while the schedule itself has been slightly more regular, I've had trouble sleeping for more than six hours or so in a row. If it weren't for clocks, I'm not sure I could even tell you what time it was within four hours.

To add insult to injury, I hadn't yet been back to my apartment - where I left most of the contents of my wallet while I was away - when I headed to work from Alma's this morning. It dawned on me just as I was stepping onto the bus that my CTA card was not with me (thank God I was carrying enough cash). Then I had to have the front desk call up to work when I got there to let me in, because my building is smart enough to have security cards with your photo on them but too stupid to have a system where if you forget your card they can call up your ID photo by your name and just let you in. It's just as well that I got into work early enough to disrupt the prank my office mates had planned, because if they'd gone through with it and I had even remotely believed them, I don't think it would have been good for anyone.

All this is my way of telling you that the recap and pics won't be up until later this week - I was planning to start tonight but it's just not gonna happen aside from maybe copying the raw files into the computer. I'm sure you'll live. There are 30 pictures up on Facebook, if you didn't notice (if you're not friends with me and want to see them - well, too bad, or friend me), but the whole shebang will probably be more along the lines of 200-300, plus journal/commentary. I do hope to have it done by the end of the week.

Airport additions

Over a year ago, I made a list post (based on Tyler's previous list post) of all of the airports I'd been to. The count then was 36, 27 within the US and 9 out of the country. The list, by my reckoning, has since expanded to 40 - one more in the US and three more international. I also think I made a mistake in my earlier list, so I'm amending that. New list below, with comments only on the additions/corrections:

Domestic
ALB - Albany, NY
ATL - Atlanta, GA
AUS - Austin, TX
BOS - Boston, MA
CLE - Cleveland, OH
CLT - Charlotte, NC
CMH - Columbus, OH
DCA - Washington National, DC
DEN - Denver, CO
DFW - Dallas/Fort Worth, TX
EWR - Newark, NJ
IAD - Washington Dulles, DC
IAH - Houston, TX
JFK - New York JFK, NY
LAX - Los Angeles, CA
MDW - Chicago Midway, IL
MOB - Mobile, AL
MSP - Minneapolis/St. Paul, MN
MSY - New Orleans, LA
OAK - Oakland, CA
ORD - Chicago O'Hare, IL
PHL - Philadelphia, PA
PHX - Phoenix, AZ
SAN - San Diego, CA. Traveled here in June 2008 for vacation.
SAT - San Antonio, TX
SFO - San Francisco, CA
SJC - San Jose, CA
SLC - Salt Lake City, UT

International
AKL - Auckland, New Zealand
BNE - Brisbane, Australia
CCS - Caracas, Venezuela
CPT - Cape Town, South Africa
JNB - Johannesburg, South Africa
LGW - London Gatwick, UK
LHR - London Heathrow, UK
MNL - Manila, Philippines. This was the arrival point for my trip, as you would expect - it's basically the only international airport in the country. The airport also has a domestic terminal which serves as the base for short flights around the country, which I also made use of.
NRT - Tokyo Narita, Japan. Our trip to Manila connected through Narita. On the way back we actually had to stay overnight at a nearby hotel, which means I got to add Japan to my list of countries visited without any sense of incompleteness (it's in my passport now and everything!).
SID - Sal Island, Cape Verde. I originally listed RAI, the Praia airport, as the stopover point coming back from South Africa in 1997. But I was pretty much just guessing there, and the information I found today suggests that the Amilcar Cabral International Airport on Sal was the one that would have served as the stopover point.
SYD - Sydney, Australia
TBH - Tablas, Romblon, Philippines. We flew here from Manila on our trip to Romblon province. It's certainly the tiniest airport I've ever been to - there's a single building which doesn't even have real doors on the outside, a single airstrip with livestock milling within feet of it, and not even so much as a metal detector.

Full Philippines post coming in a while, although like San Diego it's going to be on BigFlax and just linked here, for space and organization reasons.

I have returned

Back from the Philippines. Pretty good trip, and one from which I have lots of multimedia content which I will try to post by the end of the weekend (i.e. before I have to go back to work). I'm pretty severely jet-lagged at the moment, which is no surprise. Heading west across the Pacific, we arrived in Manila late at night after about 21 hours of transit, meaning that we could go right to sleep and wake up the next day ready to go. Coming back, however, we had an overnight stay in Tokyo, followed by a weird 11-hour flight during which we flew into darkness and then landed in Chicago at 8:20 in the morning on Thursday after leaving Japan at noon on Thursday. Worse still, by noon in Chicago I was crashing hard, since it was 3 am Friday in Japan by that point and I had been up since 6 am Thursday with minimal sleep on the plane. The upshot is that an hour ago I woke up from a seven-hour "nap." I'm not even sure what to do now. I have to hope I can fall asleep again in the next six hours or so (not later than 2 am Chicago time) and then sleep more or less through the night. All I can say is at this point I'm liking my decision to take Friday off work as well.

More albums, please

Time once again for "bands/artists who need to put out another album soon," as most recently organized here, since when four of the five bands/artists have put another album out and Snow Patrol have actually put out two. (God bless 'em, although I've gotten diminishing returns from the two.)

5. Green Day
Say what you will about Green Day, but American Idiot is a pretty great album by mainstream rock standards. And it came out in September 2004, which is a pretty long time ago by general music standards. The next album is scheduled for this coming summer, but that's still a ways off.

4. The Shins
This one's a little greedy since the last Shins album "only" came out a little less than two years ago (which is why they're only #4), but come on, Shins. It can't possibly take three and a half years every time, can it?

3. Doves
Some Cities came out in early 2005. They have a new album apparently coming out in the spring, which is great - but wow, four years. This in spite of the fact that Some Cities apparently went to #1 in the UK. But then, at least they have a new album scheduled, unlike #1 and #2 on this list.

2. The Essex Green
I forget how I stumbled upon them originally - it was via eMusic, I know, so it was probably a recommendation that they were similar to another band I liked and I found it hilarious that their name was the same as a shopping center I often went to in New Jersey. Their last album, Cannibal Sea, came out in March 2006, so they're not at three years yet, which is about the longest amount of time I find generally acceptable from an active band. The thing is, the band members all seem to have relatively new families that may be hampering any recording efforts. I thought I read recently that a new album was in the works, but their official site has nothing on it. Looks like I'm stuck listening to Cannibal Sea over and over for the foreseeable future (not exactly a bad thing, of course).

1. Sufjan Stevens
For a while, Stevens was actually quite prolific, releasing outstanding albums in 2003, 2004 and 2005 (the last of which, Illinois, remains his finest work to date). In 2006, he put out both The Avalanche, advertised as "outtakes and extras from the Illinois album," and Songs for Christmas. Both were great, but both were basically just compilations of older material, meaning that it's now been three and a half years with no new album from a guy who was able to put out three great ones in three years not that long ago. Perhaps he burned out a little. I'd love a new "state" album, but really I'd take just about anything from him at this point.

My Year of Bonds

Yeah, it probably won't take a whole year (although that partially depends on how long it takes From Russia with Love and You Only Live Twice to come off "short wait" on Netflix), but I couldn't resist the sound-vaguely-alike with "My Year of Flops," a quasi-inspiration for this sort of reviewing method. This is all going to be on the main site, since I prefer that layout for long-form reviewing and use of pictures; I'll probably put a link up on the right when I've written a couple more, but here's Volume One, for Dr. No.

Quantum of DVDs

This is an odd post to be making on the heels of announcing my engagement, given that it's the sort of thing you'd probably expect a single guy to do instead. But I plan to take time over the coming months to do two movie-viewing projects which in some respects have been a long time coming.

1. Every James Bond film in order
I've seen all the films of Brosnan and Craig, but that's just six out of 22 total (which doesn't even count Never Say Never Again) and ignores Connery entirely. Alma's father and brother-in-law are both big Bond fans (unless I'm completely misremembering, Tyler is as well), so it seems like an appropriate time to rectify this blind spot, and hey, I get to make a series of reviews out of it! Sounds like a plan to me.

2. Every DVD I own
Movies only, or this would take a lot longer. Thinking on it, I own quite a few films on DVD that I have never watched on DVD - films that I saw in the theater, liked a lot, bought, and then never looked at again. Whether or not I would still love all these films is a matter of debate. So I get to make a series of reviews that involves me revisiting films I loved in the past, and deciding whether or not I still like them enough to hang on to them. And if I don't, I can sell them on eBay and actually make a tiny, tiny dent in the pile of clutter that is my apartment.

Before anyone says anything, I fully expect these projects combined to take at least nine months to a year. That's 22 Bond films (probably by the time I near the end Quantum of Solace will be out on DVD, and yes, I just saw it, but the point is to go in order to see exactly how the franchise has evolved, since at present I'm ill equipped to answer that) and I forget exactly how many I own but it's gotta be at least three dozen and quite possibly over forty. The odds of me watching more than one movie a week with any regularity aren't great while I'm still doing both work and school, which I will be the entire time, so I'll try to hold to something approximating that schedule. In other words - especially since I'm about to leave the country for the best part of a month - if I'm done with the two projects by New Year's 2010 it'll be something of a minor miracle. Just think of me as a cut-rate Nathan Rabin.

Comments? Suggestions?