Month: December 2016

Most of us can appreciate a decent cup of joe. Then, there are those who obsess over bean sourcing, brew temperatures, and whether their paper filter is unbleached. For these friends and relatives, a gift card to the local franchise drive-thru probably won’t do. Check out 11 thoughtful gifts for the coffee and tea lovers in your life.

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1. KOMBUCHA JAR AND BREW KIT; $65

For the uninitiated, Kombucha is a tea fermented with (good) bacteria that’s believed to be a rich source of probiotics and antioxidants. This brew kit allows enthusiasts to mix up their own exclusive 5-liter batch. It’s also dishwasher-safe and comes with a recipe booklet.

Find It: Uncommon Goods

2. FELLOW STAGG POUR OVER KETTLE; $79

Pour-over coffee aficionados have taken the time to learn the correct brewing methods using a filter and hot water kettle. Fellow makes the process a little more precise with this stainless steel kettle, which has a built-in thermometer (for monitoring ideal water temperature) and an easily-aimed gooseneck spout for spot-on pouring.

Find It: Amazon

3. MISTOBOX SUBSCRIPTION; $20 PER MONTH

Can’t find a quality coffee roaster near you? MistoBox lets users select flavor preferences and then matches them with a high-quality grind that’s shipped directly to their door every month. An extra $15 upgrades the first shipment to a holiday gift box, including a mug, two coffee sample grinds, and a festive package.

Find It: MistoBox

4. HAY CLIP CLIP SPOON; $10

Measuring spoons for coffee can be easily misplaced; bags of grounds can fail to seal properly, hastening a loss of flavor. Why not solve two problems with this brass-colored steel spoon that has a spring clip for a handle?

Find It: MoMA

5. MERLOT INFUSED COFFEE; $20

Cover all your bases by gifting your coffee-slash-wine enthusiast this merlot-infused coffee. The Arabica coffee beans have been aged in oak Merlot wine barrels to absorb the taste and scent of the famous wine. It’s alcohol-free, so they’ll remember to thank you.

Find It: Uncommon Goods

6. OXO COLD BREW COFFEE MAKER; $50

Cold brewing is the hot trend in coffee at the moment, offering lower-acidity results than conventional methods. This OXO brewer makes the process simple and still allows the user to serve up their brew warm or chilled. If you prefer the latter, the device’s silicone seal will keep it fresh in the fridge for up to two weeks.

Find It: Amazon

7. BLOOMING TEA; $21

Find yourself a clear teapot—not included—and watch as a selection of bud packets “bloom” in hot water while brewing to create drinkable works of art. Jasmine, peach, and chrysanthemum green teas are hand-sewn to the buds to create the effect.

Find It: Uncommon Goods

8. ESPRO FRENCH PRESS P5; $60

Espro promises that the P5 will make some of the smoothest, lowest-grit coffee or loose-leaf tea you’ve ever tasted. The Specialty Coffee Association of America agreed, awarding it the Best New Piece of Consumer Equipment Award for 2016; the thick glass wall ensures better heat retention.

Find It: Amazon

9. PURE TEA STARTER KIT; $50

Single estate teas are presented exclusively from a single supplier, making for better consistency. Silver Needle offers an introductory single estate sampler, along with a glass teapot for premium steeping.

Find It: Silver Needle Co.

10. COOLGEAR BRU COLD BREW COFFEE SYSTEM; $40

Not everyone wants or needs to brew up a vat of iced coffee. That’s where Coolgear comes in: Their Bru is a single-serve drip coffee maker that brews cold directly into a portable 14-ounce container. It’s the freshest coffee you can get while stuck in traffic.

Find It: Amazon

11. TOAST LIVING CARAFE; $65

For coffee lovers who want to keep it basic, Toast Living’s carafe is wonderfully understated. Just add ground coffee to the filter basket and pour over hot water for a minimalist experience.

Find It: Amazon

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In Japan, massive appetites meet their match at Umakara Ramen Hyouri. As Kotaku reports, the Tokyo-based ramen restaurant offers hungry customers an intimidating, yet lucrative challenge: Finish a heaping bowl of chicken-topped, chili powder-sprinkled noodles in under 20 minutes, and you’ll win 50,000 yen (nearly $440). Polish it off in 30 minutes, and you’ll score 30,000 yen (around $260).

Si vous mangez ce bol en moins de 20 min, ils vous paient 50000¥. En 30 min vous aurez 30000¥. #foodchallenge par Umakara #Ramen Hyouri. ? pic.twitter.com/TFDJwSYeu4

— Japan FM – IGAM Ent. (@japanfm) December 7, 2016

Traveling to Tokyo and want to attempt the delicious feat for yourself? You’ll have to fork over 3000 yen (around $26) to participate in Umakara Ramen Hyouri’s “mega serving” challenge. There are also a few ground rules: Your friends can’t help you eat the bowl of ramen, which contains four servings of ramen noodles, nearly nine pounds of bean sprouts, and nearly 24 ounces of broth. And if you throw up, you’ll have to pay a penalty fine of around $90.

This dare might prove impossible even for customers with prodigious appetites. But according to Japanese website My Navi, nine people have proven victorious since the restaurant first began offering the challenge around three years ago. (They likely didn’t spend the prize money on ramen.)

[h/t Kotaku]

It’s been 10 years since the first episodes of Planet Earth aired on the BBC, and in celebration, the network asked some nature-focused YouTube creators to nominate their favorite moments from the mini-series. Those scenes have now been strung together in a beautiful compilation video, which was spotted by Kottke.org.

Planet Earth aired as the most expensive nature documentary ever commissioned by the BBC and its first in high definition, so it’s no surprise that the series was full of amazing imagery. From footage of lions and elephants shot entirely at night, to the hilarious-looking mating dance of the bird-of-paradise, there are plenty of memorable moments to look back on before you watch the new Planet Earth II, which comes to BBC America in January.

You will have to sit through some narration from various YouTubers, but it’s helpful to hear them describe what exactly is going on in the context of the episode, and the images themselves are more than worth it.

[h/t Kottke.org]

Banner image courtesy of iStock.

 
You might be sick to death of hearing about “supermoons.” If that’s the case, I bring good news: tonight, December 13, you’ll see the final supermoon of 2016. If you’re not sick of them, I also bring good news, because you have one more supermoon to see.

Of course, where there is good news there is bad, and it’s this: The supermoon will make it very difficult to catch the Geminid meteor shower, which peaks tonight. Don’t give up, however; because of the sheer volume of meteors that comprise the Geminids, you might see some shooting across the sky.

WHAT IS A SUPERMOON?

Before last year, when the red harvest supermoon took over the world, you might never have heard of a supermoon. And now we’ve had three in a row to close out the year: October’s super hunter’s moon, November’s super beaver moon, and now December’s full cold or long nights supermoon. This is true in part because supermoon is not an astronomy term, but rather, one of astrology. (In case you are wondering about the difference: astronomy is science; astrology is make believe.) The name has stuck of late because it’s Twitter-friendly and a lot easier to remember than the actual name for the phenomenon: perigee-syzygy of the Earth–Moon–Sun system.

If you want to understand what’s going on and why there are so many supermoons recently, you really do need to look at the proper name. Perigee occurs when the Moon is closest to the Earth in an orbit. Remember: the Moon’s orbit is not a perfect circle; rather, it’s elliptical. Sometimes it’s close to Earth. Sometimes it’s farther away.

Syzygy means three celestial objects are in alignment. (It can be the Sun, Earth, and Moon, but it might be the Sun, Venus, and Earth, for example, when astronomers can view Venus cross the solar disc.) So when do the Earth, Sun, and Moon experience syzygy? In one of two instances: either the Moon is between the Sun and the Earth (that’s a new moon, because from our vantage, the Moon is completely black; the far side of the Moon is in full illumination) or the Earth is between the Sun and the Moon (a full moon, when the Sun’s rays are lighting the side we see).

Bear in mind that this does not mean perfect alignment. The phases of the moon have nothing to do with the Earth’s shadow.

So a perigee-syzygy of the Earth–Moon–Sun system means an alignment that occurs when the Moon is near to the Earth. It could be a full moon. It could be a new moon. Easy, right? Inasmuch as a made-up term from a made-up belief system can have a proper definition, a supermoon generally means a full moon.

WHY ARE THERE SO MANY SUPERMOONS THIS YEAR?

Not every full moon is at perigee (or its opposite, apogee, when the Moon is farthest from the Earth). The lunar cycle—the number of days it takes the Moon to experience each of its phases, new moon to new moon—lasts about 29 and a half days. Every 14 lunar cycles, the full moon coincides with perigee.

Supermoons tend to come in threes, however. The reason is that the full moons preceding and succeeding perigee-syzygy are still inordinately close to the Earth, and thus appear a lot larger than normal. Moons that are 224,641 miles or closer to the Earth are considered supermoons. The result: a supermoon trifecta, three in a row.

So if you’ve experienced supermoon overload this year, take comfort that it’ll be more than a year before you have to hear the term again. Enjoy it: 2016 has been a year of wildly unexpected and sometimes awful events. Something as predictable and wonderful as the cosmos can be a great comfort indeed.

You can’t talk about the history of independent film without talking about John Cassavetes. The New York-born writer/director/actor was successfully making and distributing his own films decades before the indie boom of the 1990s, nearly always to critical acclaim, and sometimes even for financial gain. The most prominent was 1974’s A Woman Under the Influence, one of eight movies he directed that starred his wife, Gena Rowlands, and the only one for which they were both Oscar-nominated.

Though they didn’t win, Rowlands’s performance as a housewife having a nervous breakdown is still regarded as a master class in acting, and Cassavetes’s sensitive, naturalistic style influenced everyone from Jim Jarmusch to Martin Scorsese. Here’s a peek behind the scenes of one of the 1970s’ most celebrated dramas.

1. IT WAS GOING TO BE A PLAY, BUT IT PROVED TOO INTENSE.

John Cassavetes first wrote A Woman Under the Influence as a stage play intended for Rowlands, who’d said she wanted to do a play about the difficulties faced by modern women. Rowlands loved what her husband wrote but realized it was too intensely emotional for her to perform it night after night without having a nervous breakdown herself. Cassavetes retooled it into a screenplay, sparing Rowlands’s sanity.

2. JOHN CASSAVETES DIDN’T APPROACH IT AS A STORY ABOUT A CRAZY PERSON.

Asked if he did any research into mental illness or nervous breakdowns when he wrote the film in an interview included on the Criterion Blu-ray, Cassavetes said, “No, because I don’t think it’s about that. I’m half crazy myself, and I think almost everyone is verging on some kind of insanity. I believe very strongly that all women who are married for any length of time—and if they love their husbands—they don’t have any place to put their emotions, and that can drive them crazy … This particular woman, I don’t think she’s crazy … I think she’s just frustrated beyond belief. More than being crazy, I think she’s just socially inept.”

3. NOBODY WANTED TO FINANCE THE MOVIE.

You’ll probably file this in the “I didn’t know that but it doesn’t surprise me” category: Though Hollywood studios were taking risks in the 1970s, giving directors more free rein than they’d had previously, nobody wanted to spend money on a film about (in Cassavetes’s words) “a crazy, middle-aged dame.” Instead, Cassavetes mortgaged his house and took up a collection among actor friends to finance the film.

4. PETER FALK PUT UP $500,000 OF HIS OWN MONEY.

Half of the film’s final budget came from Cassavetes’s longtime friend Peter Falk, who was then starring in TV’s Columbo. (Cassavetes had guest-starred a couple years earlier.) Falk was so taken with the screenplay for A Woman Under the Influence that he not only co-starred in it, he turned down another movie (The Day of the Dolphin) and ponied up half a million of his own Columbo dollars to get it made. (Perhaps that’s why he gets top billing over Rowlands.)

5. IT REQUIRED SOME STOLEN ELECTRICITY.

Making an independent, low-budget film means being resourceful. For one outdoor scene, Cassavetes powered his equipment by hijacking a municipal power line.

6. IT ALSO REQUIRED SOME UNPAID LABOR.

Cassavetes was then serving as the first filmmaker-in-residence at the American Film Institute’s Center for Advanced Film Studies, in Los Angeles. That gave him access to eager young people who wanted all the practical moviemaking experience they could get. Most of his crew consisted of these students, working for free or for deferred salaries, some of whom quit before it was over (hey, you get what you pay for).

7. IT WAS ONE OF THE FIRST MOVIES TO BE SUCCESSFULLY INDEPENDENTLY DISTRIBUTED.

Not only did none of the studios want to finance the film, they weren’t interested in distributing it when it was finished, either. Ever the do-it-yourselfer, Cassavetes personally called theater owners to get them to book it, relying on his good reputation in the art-house community (A Woman Under the Influence was his seventh film, his fourth as an independent producer). He also booked screenings on college campuses, where he and Falk would appear to do Q&As. It wound up making $6.1 million (as of 1976, according to Variety), all of which went back to Cassavetes, his investors, and the cast and crew, none to any studio.

8. MARTIN SCORSESE ENGAGED IN A BIT OF BLACKMAIL TO GET IT SEEN.

A Woman Under the Influence‘s big break came when it was screened to great acclaim at the 1974 New York Film Festival, some 18 months after Cassavetes finished it. But even that almost didn’t happen: the festival rejected it. In desperation, Cassavetes called his friend Martin Scorsese (there was a lot of mutual admiration between the two), whose documentary Italian-American was already on the festival’s roster. Scorsese threatened to withdraw his film unless the festival organizers gave Cassavetes’s film a chance. (Note: In some tellings of this anecdote, it was Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, also playing at the 1974 NYFF, that he threatened to withdraw. The most reliable firsthand or almost firsthand account we could find, however, says it was Italian-American.)

9. GOOD THING SCORSESE’S GAMBLE WORKED, OR CASSAVETES MIGHT NEVER HAVE MADE ANOTHER FILM.

Cassavetes gave a long interview to journalist Judith McNally at the New York Film Festival, after he’d spent 18 months trying to find a distributor. He was also burned out on making four movies in a row without studio help. “I can’t like making films anymore if they’re this tough,” he said. “The pressures are too unnatural. I’m not crying, because I enjoy it. But I am saddened by the fact that I have physical limitations.”

Yet working with profit-minded studios was hard, too, since Cassavetes refused to bend on his artistic principles. “If that means I’ll never make [a] film again, then I’ll never make another film again,” he said. McNally followed up. “You don’t have any plans at all for another film?” He replied: “Right now all I can hope is that [A Woman Under the Influence] is extremely successful. And if it isn’t, I won’t make another one—that’s all. Which in itself is no great tragedy.” He did, in fact, go on to make five more films before his death in 1989.

10. IT FEELS IMPROVISED, BUT IT WASN’T.

Rowlands and Falk give very naturalistic performances, often seeming like they’re having unscripted conversations. When an interviewer asked Cassavetes about that, he gave a succinct, unambiguous answer: “No, the entire script was written and there were no improvisations whatsoever.”

11. RICHARD DREYFUSS HELPED PROMOTE IT.

During an appearance on The Mike Douglas Show that Falk was co-hosting, Richard Dreyfuss was asked if he had seen the movie Falk was there to promote. Dreyfuss replied enthusiastically: “It was the most incredible, disturbing, scary, brilliant, dark, sad, depressing movie. I went crazy. I went home and vomited.” (Falk piped up, “It’s also funny! It’s a funny movie!”) During the commercial, Falk telephoned Cassavetes in a panic—”He’s telling everyone how terribly dark and scary the movie is!”—but the director laughed and said, “He can say what he wants.”

Additional sources:
Interviews and commentary on the Criterion Blu-ray.
Accidental Genius: How John Cassavetes Invented American Independent Film, by Marshall Fine

If you own a Microsoft Windows phone or desktop PC, you may already be acquainted with Cortana. The voice-controlled virtual assistant is good for things like searching the web and sending emails hands-free, and pretty soon she may be useful around the home as well. As The Verge reports, Microsoft is developing the feature for Internet of Things (IoT) devices, including toasters, thermostats, and fridges.

The plan was revealed by Microsoft officials at the tech company’s recent WinHEC conference in China. As Microsoft program manager Carla Forester explained to The Verge, the Windows 10 Creators Update will enable “any kind of smart device with a screen” to use Cortana. Microsoft provided some suggestions for possible IoT hardware but is leaving the door open for manufacturers to build devices for the new software.

The update also includes far-field speech, which will allow users to activate their devices with a “Hey Cortana” voice command from up to 13 feet away. This means that a homeowner with Windows 10 IoT Core appliances could adjust her thermostat or preheat his oven without leaving the sofa.

Windows users will still have to wait a bit before trying the new-and-improved Cortana for themselves; the latest Windows update is expected to roll out in March 2017. Until then they can pass the time by asking Cortana whether or not it’s raining outside.

[h/t The Verge]