PicoBlog

Welcome back to Syndicated Shenanigans! Obligatory intro: I have a fascination with syndicated series, particularly those that ran for multiple seasons but which I’d never even so much as read about until the internet educated me about their existence. Mind you, I’m also fascinated by the ones that only ran for a single season. Ultimately, I guess what I’m saying is that pop culture that successfully flies under the radar of someone like myself, who practically subsists on pop culture… That stuff just fascinates me to no end, period, and if you’re here, you’re either equally fascinated or else you’re just indulging me, but either way, read on as we take a look at…

Directed by Charlie Kaufman United States, 2008 This week’s film was selected in recognition of the actor, Philip Seymour Hoffman, who died 10 years ago at just 46 years of age. I think I first saw him in a supporting role as the shy, awkward cameraman in the porn industry in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights. It wasn’t too many years after that when he picked up the Academy Award for Best Actor in the titular role of Capote.

I was an actress. For 12 seasons, I played Kathy Stabler, a cop’s wife on “Law and Order SVU.” It was a good gig. I got paid by the episode. It wasn’t “crazy TV money,” but it helped pay the bills while I raised a family. It was a job and I’m grateful I had it. Then one day, more than a decade and another career later, I was asked to come back on the same show as the same character for a single episode only to get blown up and killed by a car bomb – crazy TV stuff.

This week, my guest is Tabia Lee, the now former assistant professor and director of the Office of Equity, Social Justice, and Multicultural Education at De Anza Community College. Shortly after being hired by De Anza, Tabia found that her expansive view of diversity, equity, and inclusion was not welcome at the school, where a narrow and divisive conception of DEI held sway. After facing pushback and outright hostility from her colleagues, she was unceremoniously fired.

Food facts (sometimes indigestible) and food history, with travel tales about unexpected ingredients (Ant Soup, anyone?) and do-able recipes. By Julia Watson · Over 1,000 subscribersNo thanks“Julia and I crossed paths for a hot minute in Washington DC a bazillion years ago. Words -- and our mutual love for cooking -- keep us connected. I always learn something from her pieces. ” “Julia Watson's Tabled is full of good things. ”

In March 2000, children across the Arab world rejoiced at the launch of the first home-grown TV channel dedicated to cartoons. Spacetoon started off by taking over airtime from Bahrain’s national TV channel. In less than two years, surging demand meant that Spacetoon had outgrown its 8-hour slot and broke away to form its own independent station.  Spacetoon primarily broadcasts dubbed, foreign (usually Japanese) cartoons, imbued with more locally appropriate cultural themes.

Welcome back to another edition of the Haterade Mailbag, in which my five loyal readers feed me questions like an irascible baby bird. The irascible baby bird is on deadline this week, so I’m just going to dive in: Taco pizza. I don’t mean an “upscale,” “reimagined” taco pizza, I mean the chain-style taco pizza of my Iowan youth. I mean a paste-y refried bean base with toppings that strain credulity—“taco meat,” crumbly shards of Doritos that stab the roof of your mouth, cubed Roma tomatoes that taste like the refrigerator, shredded iceberg lettuce wilting atop a heated floor of cheese, and packets of rust-red taco sauce to drizzle over the top.

Sometime around day 5 after testing positive for Covid, I lost my senses of smell and taste. It was like a light switched off. One second the vapors of my lemon ginger tea were connecting with my brain synapses, and the next second they weren’t. It took me a moment to realize what was happening - and then I panicked. Yoshie and the kids were gone for the day, so I hurled myself out of bed (where I’d spent the majority of my quarantine) and shuffled to the kitchen where I began opening and huffing spices.

During COVID, I was home from college, and I was frustrated and bored. So, I started going through my closet to see what was in there. I noticed that I had a ton of clothes and shoes that I hadn’t worn in a while – and wasn’t likely to wear again. As a college student, I was always looking for ways to make a little extra pizza money, and so I decided to see if I could sell my stuff online.