Tuesday, May 16, 2006

Today's Trivial Outrage

Just pulled the above box off the new Yahoo front page. They're probably right about Peter Luger's, which serves the best steak I've ever had. But let's be accurate here, people. Prime rib is not steak. The prime rib at Lawry's is quite wonderful but it's wonderful prime rib. It's not steak. Steak is one thing. Prime rib is another. If the guy who made up this chart ordered steak in a restaurant and they brought him prime rib, he'd say, "Hey, this isn't what I asked for."

Has he been to some of the more acclaimed restaurants in L.A. that actually serve steak? Mastro's? Arnie Morton's? The Palm? Taylor's? Porterhouse Bistro? Did he actually sample these and decide that Lawry's The Prime Rib (that's the full name of the establishment) was a better steakhouse in spite of the fact that the word "steak" appears nowhere on its menu? This matters. If I issued a list of the best places to eat in each city in Ohio and put down Burger King for Cleveland, it might be relevant for you to know that I've only eaten one meal ever in Cleveland and that was at a Burger King. Which also, by the way, is not a steakhouse despite the fact that they serve broiled beef.

I expect weasely steakhouse ratings in those in-flight magazines. The ones listed pay to be on those lists. I also notice that are about eleven hundred "Top 10" and "Top 20" steakhouse lists on the Internet. You'd have to serve a pretty lousy steak to not get on someone's "best" list. But you'd still have to serve steak. It would be nice if it was good steak but based on some of the places I've seen on those lists, that's not mandatory.

This has been your Trivial Outrage for today.

• Posted at 9:55 PM · LINK

The Art of the Deal (Editing)

As we've mentioned here, NBC did something a bit odd (to me) with last night's Deal or No Deal. Coverage of the speech by George W. Bush took up a bit less than 25 minutes of the show's time on the East Coast so the producers and/or network edited two separate versions of the show. The full, two-hour version which aired in other time zones included the last part of one game (a waitress from New York), a complete and very long game (a woman whose husband is stationed in Iraq and who participated via a live satellite feed) and the first part of a third game (a Blackjack dealer from Hawaii). There were also a few "behind the scenes" segments showing cash being awarded to past winners.

For the East Coast version, they edited out the "behind the scenes" stuff and cut out the gent from Hawaii. Presumably, the next episode will begin with the end of his game and the folks in the East will go, "Hey, where'd he come from?" For them, last night's show ended with the lady whose hubby is in Iraq. (Someone did some quick-and-dirty edits there. As the show concluded out here, Howie Mandel thanked everyone who'd arranged the live feed from Iraq...and the Blackjack dealer was in some of those shots. For the East Coast version, they substituted some tape of the military wife and her family, and laid Howie's lines over those visuals. The end credits on the East also had to be laid over different footage since the Blackjack dealer was in them, too.)

An interesting way of handling a problem. I guess I like it more than delaying all the shows' start times...and it sure beats just joining a show in progress and missing the opening. Still, I think it's kind of an admission that on Deal or No Deal, the first half of every game is pretty missable.

• Posted at 9:47 AM · LINK

Dum-Da-Dum-Dum...

The Los Angeles Police Department is blogging.

• Posted at 12:46 AM · LINK

Today's Video Link

The Internet is lousy with homemade video parodies — someone putting funny Flash animation to a piece of music. One of the few I've seen that I've liked was done by someone named Paul Heriot. I don't know anything about Mr. Heriot other than that he's a gutsy guy. You see, to make one of these work, you have to come up with imagery that's sillier than the source material...and the source material here is William Shatner's rendition of "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds." Not easy to top that one but I think he succeeded...

• Posted at 12:40 AM · LINK

A Little Leonard

The folks at DirecTV do more than just send me e-mails about pay-per-view specials I'm not buying. They bring me great movie channels, some of which run great movies. To promote them, they've engaged a great movie critic — my longtime amigo, Leonard Maltin — to host little one minute previews/reviews they call "Maltin Minutes." You can view some of them over on this page...and by the way, there's nothing wrong with your computer. Leonard really does talk out of sync at times. That's what comes from watching too many foreign films.

• Posted at 12:37 AM · LINK