33 posts tagged with california.
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Stranger Things: Chapter 4: Dear Billy  Season 4, Ep 4

Max is in grave danger... and running our of time. A patient at Pennhurst asylum has visitors. Elsewhere, in Russia, Hopper is hard at work.
posted by Navelgazer on May 28, 2022 - 25 comments

Stranger Things: Chapter 3: The Monster and the Superhero  Season 4, Ep 3

Murray and Joyce fly to Alaska, and El faces serious consequences. Robin and Nancy dig up dirt on Hawkins' demons. Dr. Owens delivers sobering news.
posted by Navelgazer on May 28, 2022 - 11 comments

Stranger Things: Chapter 2: Vecna's Curse  Season 4, Ep 2

A plane brings Mike to California - and a dead body brings Hawkins to a halt. Nancy goes looking for leads. A shaken Eddie tells the gang what he saw.
posted by Navelgazer on May 27, 2022 - 18 comments

Stranger Things: Chapter 1: The Hellfire Club  Season 4, Ep 1

El is bullied at school. Joyce opens a mysterious package. A scrappy player shakes up a D&D night. Warning: Contains graphic violence involving children.
posted by Navelgazer on May 27, 2022 - 34 comments

Book: Cassandra at the Wedding

Cassandra Edwards is a graduate student at Berkeley: gay, brilliant, nerve-racked, miserable. At the beginning of this novel, she drives back to her family ranch in the foothills of the Sierras to attend the wedding of her identical twin, Judith, to a nice young doctor from Connecticut. Cassandra, however, is hell-bent on sabotaging the wedding. [more inside]
posted by chavenet on Apr 10, 2022 - 7 comments

Top Chef: Finito!  Season 17, Ep 14

The final three all stars face off in an epic Italian showdown to cook the meal of their lives in an effort to take home the ultimate title and prize. [more inside]
posted by praemunire on Jun 19, 2020 - 19 comments

Top Chef: Parma  Season 17, Ep 13

The chefs are treated to a culinary dream trip to Parma, the legendary home of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese and Prosciutto di Parma ham; the chefs must feature the ingredients in two courses and serve their dishes to a table of 16 Michelin stars. [more inside]
posted by praemunire on Jun 11, 2020 - 12 comments

Top Chef: Lucca  Season 17, Ep 12

The final five travel to Italy, where the chefs must make an aperitivo for 30 locals from the town of Lucca that pairs perfectly with a Peroni beer; then, they hunt the elusive white truffle which they must use in a dish for a Tuscan food festival. [more inside]
posted by praemunire on Jun 7, 2020 - 8 comments

Top Chef: Michael's Santa Monica  Season 17, Ep 11

Tom makes his final decision from "Last Chance Kitchen" on who should return to the competition; the chefs take off in a Quickfire with Padma and Jonathan Waxman making a two-course business class dish for an airline. [more inside]
posted by praemunire on May 30, 2020 - 8 comments

Top Chef: Colossal Coliseum Kaiseki  Season 17, Ep 10

With only six chefs remaining, the challenges get even more difficult, when pastry super-chef Sherry Yard awaits the all stars for a dreaded dessert Quickfire; chefs endure a blindfolded taste test to pick their ingredients. [more inside]
posted by praemunire on May 22, 2020 - 12 comments

Top Chef: Cabin Fever  Season 17, Ep 9

The chefs head to the mountains outside of Los Angeles to go to a summer camp where they are challenged to an outdoor grilling Quickfire for Padma and "Top Chef" Kentucky winner Kelsey Barnard Clark. [more inside]
posted by praemunire on May 15, 2020 - 9 comments

Top Chef: Restaurant Wars  Season 17, Ep 8

It's Restaurant Wars and this season Padma takes all the limitations off the table as the chefs can make as much food as they want and shop wherever they choose; two chefs are given 48 hours to pick their teams and create the restaurants. [more inside]
posted by praemunire on May 8, 2020 - 15 comments

Top Chef: Pitch Perfect  Season 17, Ep 7

A Last Chance Kitchen winner re-enters the competition, Danny Trejo drops by, and the chefs must pitch a concept for the upcoming Restaurant Wars. [more inside]
posted by praemunire on May 2, 2020 - 13 comments

Top Chef: Get Your Phil  Season 17, Ep 6

Padma gets a real rise out of the chefs when she tasks them to make a Quickfire dish without any All-Purpose flour. Instead chefs must work with alternative flours from Blue Corn and Buckwheat to Coconut and Hazelnut. James Beard Award-Winning Chef Chris Bianco serves as the guest judge for the Quickfire Challenge. Then, the chefs are whisked off to the famous Walt Disney Concert Hall to meet legendary conductor Gustavo Dudamel who is about to celebrate the LA Philharmonic’s 100th anniversary. The Maestro inspires the chefs to treat their flavor profiles like musical instruments, each providing a counterbalance to the other. For the Elimination Challenge, the chefs serve Dudamel and members of the LA Philharmonic at award-winning Otium restaurant along with Padma, Tom, Gail and Guest Judge, Bocuse d’Or finalist Timothy Hollingsworth. [more inside]
posted by praemunire on Apr 24, 2020 - 6 comments

Top Chef: Bring Your Loved Ones to Work  Season 17, Ep 5

In the Quickfire, the chefs play a game of telephone with their loved ones as they try to reproduce the dish their family member is eating at a nearby restaurant; the chefs create a signature product that they will bottle and sell at a food festival.
posted by praemunire on Apr 17, 2020 - 12 comments

Top Chef: You're So Fresh  Season 17, Ep 4

Kelly Clarkson drops by. [more inside]
posted by praemunire on Apr 10, 2020 - 7 comments

Top Chef: Strokes of Genius  Season 17, Ep 3

Comedic superstars Ali Wong and Randall Park swing by the Top Chef kitchen for a Quickfire Challenge tasking the chefs to make the wackiest fried rice they can; then, the chefs head to the famed Getty Museum to seek inspiration from the art. [more inside]
posted by praemunire on Apr 3, 2020 - 6 comments

Top Chef: It's Like They Never Left!  Season 17, Ep 1

First episode of an all-stars season (set in California) features the classic mise-en-place challenge and cooking with fire.
posted by praemunire on Mar 20, 2020 - 16 comments

Book: Trees in Paradise

California now has more trees than at any time since the late Pleistocene. This green landscape, however, is not the work of nature. It's the work of history. In the years after the Gold Rush, American settlers remade the California landscape, harnessing nature to their vision of the good life. Horticulturists, boosters, and civic reformers began to "improve" the bare, brown countryside, planting millions of trees to create groves, wooded suburbs, and landscaped cities. They imported the blue-green eucalypts whose tangy fragrance was thought to cure malaria. They built the lucrative "Orange Empire" on the sweet juice and thick skin of the Washington navel, an industrial fruit. They lined their streets with graceful palms to announce that they were not in the Midwest anymore. [more inside]
posted by Homo neanderthalensis on Aug 11, 2019 - 5 comments

Book: Tangled Vines

On October 12, 2005, a massive fire broke out in the Wines Central wine warehouse in Vallejo, California. Within hours, the flames had destroyed 4.5 million bottles of California's finest wine worth more than $250 million, making it the largest destruction of wine in history. The fire had been deliberately set by a passionate oenophile named Mark Anderson, a skilled con man and thief with storage space at the warehouse who needed to cover his tracks. [more inside]
posted by Homo neanderthalensis on Mar 16, 2019 - 2 comments

Murder Mountain: Where marijuana can kill   Season 1, Ep 0

What happens when California dreaming becomes a nightmare? When people head to Humboldt County, California in search of quick riches in the form of marijuana, often times they are unaware of the price they might ultimately pay in the illegal cannabis growing capital of the United States. [more inside]
posted by MadMadam on Jan 9, 2019 - 2 comments

Last Week Tonight with John Oliver: Family Separation  Season 5, Ep 28

This week....
  • 2018 Midterms, which has been exceptional in negativity. California Congressman Duncan Hunter accused opponent Ammar Campa-Najjar of being a terrorist trying to infiltrate Congress; Iowa Congressman Steve King, who has been notorious for associating with white nationalists and got pissy when confronted about it before cameras, and lost the support of a number of corporate PACs; and in Nebraska's 1st district a sign promoting Jeff Fortenberry was defaced with googly eyes and changed to read Jeff Fartenberry, causing his Chief-of-Staff to accuse a local professor, who was unlucky enough to have "liked" a Facebook photo of the sign within his random notice, of supporting vandalism.
  • And Now: Out Annual Check-In With The Consequences Of Combining Local News Shows And Halloween
  • Main story: Immigration, "The system that brought you me, but it's still good, and I promise that won't happen again." Specifically, the Trump administration's family separation policy. It's faded from the news, but its consequences have not ended yet. Content warning: horrifying consequences of the enforced separation of children from their parents. YouTube
  • And Now: Halloween Part II: Just The Traffic And Weather
[more inside]
posted by JHarris on Nov 4, 2018 - 2 comments

Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat: Full Season  Season 1, Ep 0

Chef Samin Nosrat travels to Italy, Japan, Mexico, and California to learn about and demonstrate four of the fundamental building blocks of cooking, to teach and encourage home cooks how to think about their food beyond just following recipes. [more inside]
posted by dnash on Oct 29, 2018 - 16 comments

Movie: La La Land

A jazz pianist (Ryan Gosling) and an aspiring actress (Emma Stone) in Los Angeles meet, with lots of dancing, singing, and bright colors. Directed and written by Damien Chazelle. Co-starring: the city of Los Angeles. Now playing in a few cities; a wider release coming Friday December 16th. [more inside]
posted by brainwane on Dec 15, 2016 - 48 comments

Podcast: Alice Isn't Dead: Part 1, Chapter 8: The Other Town

What is happening in Victorville, CA? [more inside]
posted by jazon on Jun 15, 2016 - 1 comment

Mystery Science Theater 3000: EEGAH  Season 5, Ep 6

"The name written in blood!" "The Crazed Love of a Prehistoric Giant for a Ravishing Teen-Age Girl!" Somewhere in the California desert, in defiance of all known anthropology, lives, in a cave, a caveman, played by a cave-Kiel, who's been given unnaturally long life by sulfur water. He comes into contact with 60s youth culture, and ends up face-down in a swimming pool, dead. Shtemlo! It's a popular episode, with pointless dune buggy scenes, whimsical editing, and much oddness to be spied. Note: in one scene Kiel laps up shaving cream with his gigantic tongue, so you may not want to watch on a full stomach. And remember, watch out for snakes! YouTube (1h32m) Premiered August 28, 1993. [more inside]
posted by JHarris on May 18, 2016 - 7 comments

The X-Files: Drive  Rewatch   Season 6, Ep 2

Mulder finds himself forced to drive a man in a high-speed dash across the Southwest in an effort to prevent the man's head from exploding. [more inside]
posted by town of cats on Nov 15, 2015 - 9 comments

Podcast: 99% Invisible: 155- Palm Reading

Reports of palm theft have appeared in LA, San Diego, and Texas; palm rustling also gets a mention in Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief. What the palm tree* means to America, what they're worth, and how they've democratized the California Dream. [more inside]
posted by psoas on Mar 12, 2015 - 2 comments

Movie: Chinatown

Local Private Investigator gets caught up in a water-rights fiasco. But that's just the beginning. Chinatown is a 1974 American neo-noir mystery film, directed by Roman Polanski from a screenplay by Robert Towne, starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway. (wiki) [more inside]
posted by valkane on Feb 5, 2015 - 11 comments

Movie: A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night

Twenty-something Arash lives in an Iranian near-ghost town called "Bad City" with his dad Hossein, who's addicted to heroin and endlessly pines the loss of his wife. By day Arash holds down a gardening job, whose wages just bought him a brand new vintage Thunderbird. At night he tries, often unsuccessfully, to hold Hossein's vicious dealer Saeed at bay. Little does Arash know that someone else is becoming quite interested in Saeed's welfare. [more inside]
posted by Sheydem-tants on Jan 19, 2015 - 11 comments

Movie: Wild

A chronicle of one woman's 1,100-mile solo hike undertaken as a way to recover from a recent catastrophe.
posted by mathowie on Dec 11, 2014 - 11 comments

Podcast: 99% Invisible: 144- There Is A Light That Never Goes Out

Hanging in the garage of Fire Station #6 in Livermore, California, there's a small, pear-shaped light bulb. It is glowing right now. This lightbulb has been glowing, with just a couple of momentary interruptions, for 113 years. Episode page at 99pi.org →
posted by ocherdraco on Dec 10, 2014 - 9 comments

Movie: The Best of Times

A small-town loser determines to have one more shot at the big time by winning a football game. [more inside]
posted by joseph conrad is fully awesome on Oct 18, 2014 - 3 comments

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