sovay | Am I required to keep him alive?

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Am I required to keep him alive?

I just watched my first episode of Fringe (2008–2013). It is amazing how disorienting it is to be told a city is Boston when it is very plainly either Toronto or New York. Also, I think the show's Harvard University might be Yale. Can you do that without starting a small war?

(John Noble is awesome. All mad scientist buttons checked. Including the one where he looks good in a lab coat.)

I saw these cat portraits on Tumblr a few days ago, but I had no idea they were actual guard cats of the Hermitage Museum. I approve.

The baked Alaska this afternoon was an amazing sucess. I am very proud of my skills with folding egg whites.

rushthatspeaks and

tilivenn can be proud of their ice cream wrangling and attention to baking times. The weevils in the confectioner's sugar were a surprise no one was looking for, and so was the time out where we had to get more eggs because the kitchen was too hot and humid for the first attempt at meringue to peak at all, but the results in Earl Grey and cardamom ice cream were wholly worth it. The sponge cake base was fluffy, the ice cream was sliceable and cold, the meringue on top was crisp-brown with the delicious marshmallow taffiness of burnt sugar at the tips. Egg whites are exactly as effective an insulator as I was always told. We really have no excuse for not reverse-engineering a butter-pie now.

I wish my head did not hurt this much.

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Someone needs to reverse-engineer a butter-pie IMMEDIATELY, and then give me the recipe. :D?

Someone needs to reverse-engineer a butter-pie IMMEDIATELY, and then give me the recipe.

It's been on our minds for years—

rushthatspeaks and I even experimented with caramel before their household moved to Texas in 2010. I think two successful baked Alaskas in one try proves that we can handle the necessary thermodynamic weirdness. Now we just need to figure out the flavors.

(And, yes, disseminate the recipe widely.)

Earl Grey and cardamom ice cream sounds amazing.

Earl Grey and cardamom ice cream sounds amazing.

It was two kinds of ice cream: Toscanini's for complex reasons of annoyance refused to sell

rushthatspeaks any ice cream by the pint that wasn't Earl Grey, which I can't eat because of the caffeine, so we actually made a normal-sized baked Alaska with the Earl Grey and a personal-sized baked Alaska with the cardamom, which I ate most of. They both came out great. The recipe is

tilivenn's grandfather's and it's good.

Mmmmm.

I wish your head wouldn't hurt at all.

Nine

Also: I am so in on the butter-pie.

Nine

When in doubt, it's Toronto. (Think of it as My Neighbour, Toronto.) I've occasionally had the reverse experience, of seeing parts of Bristol and being told firmly that it is actually central London. House of Eliott, for example.

Edited 2013-08-18 08:06 (UTC)

When "Truly, Madly, Deeply" came out, I remarked to a friend from Bristol that it (B) was listed in the filming locations, but none of it looked familiar to me, an occasional visitor. Some of the scenes were obviously London, such as the ones along the South Bank. She said that probably the interiors were filmed in Bristol. She told the story of picking out leeks at her local greengrocer's shop when a bloody hand emerged from the nearby vegetable bin. She started to scream, and then noticed the microphone boom. I was impressed that the filming company would use an actual store and that the store would stay open for business while it was happening.

My husband likes to tell the story of how years ago he was in a Toronto bookstore and wandered into a section that had been set up for a location shoot for the movie In the Mouth of Madness. They actually had a big display of "Sutter Kane"'s books -- all of which, if opened, turned out to be the same page endlessly repeated. In retrospect, that's the sort of creepy thing that would have happened in the movie itself.

I tried watching Fringe several times, but kept bouncing too hard off the first one or two episodes. I finally took the advice to skip half of the first season (normally I am a dedicated completist) and go from there. It worked well enough for me, and I'm up to season 4, a couple of weeks later, and love it.

Cardamon ice cream sounds fantastic. I had some amazing rum punch with cardamon bitters a while back, and have been putting cardamon in everything since.

Or Vancouver. When watching BSG, I was amused to see that Caprica City has a building I have walked through (Vancouver's main library).

Ha, yeah. Luckily, I have very little sense of Boston beyond the bits you can see in The Departed and/or on the way to Burlington, so it's not that much of a wrech. Also, to be frank, I'm used to being told somewhere is somewhere else and knowing in my heart it's Toronto, because it's happened to me all my life.;)

That said: Episode two of Fringe is seriously some of the worst TV I've ever seen. Don't be disheartened! Keep going anyhow. ("Hey, I know that bridge," Astrid says, at one point, to which Steve and I both replied, out loud: "That's the Magical Bridge of Many Colours!", because the line was almost identical to one in Cal's then-favourite Little Einsteins episode. Which tells you how long ago this was.)

BTW: New Ian Tregillis book! A third instalment of Milkweed, called Necessary Evil! It starts with a Gretel-POV chapter!

Edited 2013-08-20 02:16 (UTC)

It is disorienting when one is told a city is a city that it's not. There was a popular sitcom (Family Ties, I think.) when I was a kid which was allegedly set in Columbus, OH, my place of abode at the time. It almost never showed any real views of Columbus, but as best I recall they accomplished this by having hardly any exterior scenes at all. Being shown some other city would have been unbearably strange.

Thanks for sharing the cat portraits! I googled and turned up a few more examples than were shown in the NYT piece. Do you happen to recollect which Tumblr you saw them on?

I'm delighted to hear of the amazing success of baked Alaska. Cardamom ice cream sounds delicious, and I wish I could talk the local ice cream operation into making some, even if I'd probably never have the patience to make baked Alaska with it.

I'm sorry for your continued headache.

If anyone wants to reproduce this wonder, the recipe can be found in The Cook's Canon by Raymond Sokolov. Fair warning, you need like eight eggs, and you have to separate ALL of them. Also you need an electric mixer and another eggbeater (ideally also electric, but in our case it wasn't). So worth it though.

I hope you feel better soonest.

Fringe is an incredibly wonderful series but it takes most of the first season to get going, and then from there it's pretty awesome all the way through to the end and yet full of flaws and mistakes and continuity errors and some profoundly silly writing and bad acting but interwoven amongst all that nonsense is some of the most amazing television ever created, brilliant ideas and brilliant acting and great effects both special and aesthetic. Just jaw-dropping -- right alongside what the hell were they thinking. Worth it for all that's great, which is a ton. Can you imagine if they had allowed everything that wasn't working to stop them, thus depriving us of this show? I shudder to think of it! And take that as a lesson for me and for all of us, to be a little bit less perfectionist and a little bit more willing to wing it and risk failing big time.

I wish your head wouldn't hurt at all.

I don't think my head will never hurt at all, but I will settle for a subsidence to usual levels. I can't tell if it's weather-changing or I'm fighting something off. It's better than it was all Saturday into Sunday morning.

Also: I am so in on the butter-pie.

I think everyone is.

-- all of which, if opened, turned out to be the same page endlessly repeated. In retrospect, that's the sort of creepy thing that would have happened in the movie itself.

Seriously. Yeeesh.

Some of the scenes were obviously London, such as the ones along the South Bank. She said that probably the interiors were filmed in Bristol.

What a counterintuitive way of doing it.

I was impressed that the filming company would use an actual store and that the store would stay open for business while it was happening.

. . . Did she make it into the finished film?

Or Vancouver.

Like Millennium, which was ostensibly set in Seattle. I recognized bits of its exteriors from my trip to Vancouver in 2010!

When watching BSG, I was amused to see that Caprica City has a building I have walked through (Vancouver's main library).

Heh. Which one is it?

I finally took the advice to skip half of the first season (normally I am a dedicated completist) and go from there. It worked well enough for me, and I'm up to season 4, a couple of weeks later, and love it.

So noted. I've heard similar things about the first season; my father is insistent that the arc is present from the first few episodes and instantly strong, but we do not accord in everything about our television preferences. He loved Dollhouse. I bounced completely.

Cardamon ice cream sounds fantastic. I had some amazing rum punch with cardamon bitters a while back, and have been putting cardamon in everything since.

Cardamom is excellent. I've been putting it in mulled cider, apple pies, and occasionally oatmeal cookies for years. It works beautifully in drinks.

Luckily, I have very little sense of Boston beyond the bits you can see in The Departed and/or on the way to Burlington, so it's not that much of a wrech.

I don't watch that much television, so I couldn't think of many shows I'd seen that were supposed to be set in Boston regardless of where they were filmed, but it was striking to see not just general skylines, but specific locations like "Harvard University" or "South Station" when they were patently no such thing. I think that was what got me—I understand not being able to film inside a university or a major transit station without a lot of organization (and budget) ahead of time, but is it actually that difficult to get establishing shots of the right exteriors?

Also, to be frank, I'm used to being told somewhere is somewhere else and knowing in my heart it's Toronto, because it's happened to me all my life.

Fair point. Why Toronto?

Episode two of Fringe is seriously some of the worst TV I've ever seen. Don't be disheartened! Keep going anyhow.

Fortunately, I was started on episode three! (I take it I shouldn't go back.)

It starts with a Gretel-POV chapter!

I will have to get hold of that. How is it so far?

I googled and turned up a few more examples than were shown in the NYT piece. Do you happen to recollect which Tumblr you saw them on?

That looks like the same half-dozen linked from the New York Times. I do not unfortunately remember where I saw them originally; the Tumblrs I usually read are handful of dust's and strange selkie's, but Tumblr by its nature reblogs so much, I could have gone one or two links over and found myself somewhere completely strange.

even if I'd probably never have the patience to make baked Alaska with it.

Actually, it didn't take that long. Discounting the failed first meringue, the most time-consuming part was waiting for the angelfood cake to cool.

I hope you feel better soonest.

Thank you.

but it takes most of the first season to get going, and then from there it's pretty awesome all the way through to the end and yet full of flaws and mistakes and continuity errors and some profoundly silly writing and bad acting but interwoven amongst all that nonsense is some of the most amazing television ever created, brilliant ideas and brilliant acting and great effects both special and aesthetic. Just jaw-dropping -- right alongside what the hell were they thinking.

That is kind of what I'd heard! I'm glad to know the balance in the end was worth it.

What did you like least and best?

It was in the background of an exterior shot somewhere in S1 or early S2, I think. I'd have to go look to find the specific episode.

(Think of it as My Neighbour, Toronto.)

I wish I knew enough about the city to say what an appropriate version of the Catbus would look like in this case.

I've occasionally had the reverse experience, of seeing parts of Bristol and being told firmly that it is actually central London.

I bet Boston has substituted for other cities; it just didn't bother to tell me.

That looks like the same half-dozen linked from the New York Times.

So it does. I missed the link on the NYT piece, but only saw the one or two that they used for illustrations on the page itself. I may've been too caught up, after reading the piece, in trying to find it on the Nook edition so I could commend it to my mother's attention on said device. (As it turns out, this was another article left out of the Nook edition.)

I do not unfortunately remember where I saw them originally; the Tumblrs I usually read are handful of dust's and strange selkie's, but Tumblr by its nature reblogs so much, I could have gone one or two links over and found myself somewhere completely strange.

Indeed. I've had similar experiences on Tumblr.

Actually, it didn't take that long. Discounting the failed first meringue, the most time-consuming part was waiting for the angelfood cake to cool.

Interesting. I reckon I am still not likely to ever make a baked Alaska, but it's good to know that it's perhaps not quite on the turducken level of difficulty that I've always envisioned it being.

PS: Those six may be all the Hermitage cat-portraits he's done, or at least that he's released to the public. Here is his deviantART gallery.

Edited 2013-08-20 06:22 (UTC)

My problem with the first few episodes is that I was genuinely disgusted by the hostile interaction between Broyles and Olivia. I found it so repugnant that I had to skip forward until that was no longer an issue. If you're sufficiently familiar with the genre (and I assume you are), reading brief episode summaries and the 'previously on' flashbacks at the start of later episodes will be sufficient, and you'll be less likely to want to kick the screen.

Cardamon is one of the spices that I would want to wear as a perfume. Heady and floral. It's one of the spices that I also tend to assume likes to hang out with its friends- anywhere cinnamon goes, for instance, it often liked to bring along ginger, nutmeg, mace, cardamon, and others.

I wish I knew enough about the city to say what an appropriate version of the Catbus would look like in this case.

Toronto buses are still reasonably square, but I can see where one might put the ears.

For my part, I make

jlighton,

akawil and

pecunium crazy when we watch Due South by figuring out what all the locations are. Sometime I would like to pop over to the parallel universe where the show is set in Toronto but filmed in Chicago.

Does not make me crazy. I think it's sort of charming.

Like people said above, Toronto is where half the stuff on TV/in movies seems to be shot. Also Vancouver, with occasional side-trips to Quebec City to film stuff set in "Europe," and Nova Scotia, for stuff set in "Ireland" or "rural America/Maine." My Neighbour Toronto, indeed.

Good choice to start on episode three. I didn't personally hate the pilot, but I know a lot of people did. Then again, a lot of people went through the entire show hating Peter Bishop fairly relentlessly, so. (Shrugs.)

So far, the book's really good. You read The Coldest War, right?

Edited 2013-08-21 04:10 (UTC)

Like people said above, Toronto is where half the stuff on TV/in movies seems to be shot. Also Vancouver, with occasional side-trips to Quebec City to film stuff set in "Europe," and Nova Scotia, for stuff set in "Ireland" or "rural America/Maine."

Well, I was asking why pick on Toronto. It's not like, as far as I can tell, it actually looks very much like other cities; everyone just seems to agree it's supposed to.

Then again, a lot of people went through the entire show hating Peter Bishop fairly relentlessly, so. (Shrugs.)

So far, not so much. I don't have as good a sense of him as I do of Olivia or Walter or even Astrid yet, though.

You read The Coldest War, right?

No; I was given to understand by B. that it had a stop-short ending, so I was waiting for the third book that turned out to be Necessary Evil to come out!

One time I walked out the side of my building and discovered that Market Street, which runs (oddly enough) down the side of the St. Lawrence Market, had been entirely converted via the magic of set dec into a New Orleans boulevard right after Mardi Gras. This was apparently in aid of a TV movie they were shooting called Sinklhole, in which New Orleans falls into a gigantic sinkhole. And this was long before the SyFy Channel, too.;)

Yeah, I think you'll enjoy reading these two back to back far more than you would have having to wait a year or so between instalments. Still, I was pretty sure even at the time Tregillis wasn't going to leave it there.;))

Weavils in the confectioners' sugar...?

I mean, ok, I can certes see that, but still.

I hope your head is better. I hope that when I read more recent posts, I wil hear that it is.

Weavils in the confectioners' sugar...?

There had been a weevil incident in July; I think they had gotten into the flour, which was thrown out with extreme prejudice at the time. We had no idea they'd extended their conquest as far as the other baking goods, but as I measured out half-cups of confectioner's sugar, it became clear that there was somebody home. It was not best. We threw out the sugar.

I hope your head is better. I hope that when I read more recent posts, I wil hear that it is.

Actually, by this point, yes! I have other problems, but an elevated headache level is not currently one of them!

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Am I required to keep him alive?

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one the other hand

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