In honour of Liz Lemon...

Following on from my previous pontification about the perfect slider, I have since discovered (and made) the perfect deli sandwich, thanks to Tina Fey's 30 Rock alter ego "Liz Lemon".

In Season Six, Liz expresses a secret ambition to have a sandwich named after her. The filling?

•     Turkey
•     Pastrami
•     Swiss
•     Russian dressing
•     Coleslaw
•     Potato chips

So feeling inspired, yesterday I made a Liz Lemon on caraway-seed infused light rye bread, with:

• 2 slices turkey breast,
• 1 slice pastrami
• 2 slices 'Swiss' cheese
• Handful of coleslaw (undressed)
• Handful Smith's Light potato chips
• Whole-egg mayonnaise (I have no idea what constitutes "Russian dressing")

The result? Amazing. The fusion of two meats - spicy and dark with lean and white, the healthy hit of fresh coleslaw with the greasy, salty crunch of potato chips all beautifully anchored with creamy mayonnaise is the ultimate posh dinner / deli sandwich.

Muddy Karpitz gave it the thumbs up.  Next time I'm gonna chuck it under the grill and toast it!

Strap yourselves in for a wild slide AKA the joys of a warm, shredded meat sandwich.

Like Tina Fey's Liz Lemon on 30 Rock, I am more than partial to a nice sandwich. Whether for breakfast, lunch or dinner, there is nothing quite like the careful and considered layering of meat (or other protein), sweet 'n' spicy condiments, cheese and assorted salad vegetables between two or more slices of good bread. A well-made sandwich satisfies a basic hunger, but it also provides a sensual and textural pleasure-kick - mouthfeel - when savoured slowly.

Lovers of 'dude food' or American diner food know what I'm talking about. Burgers of any variety, a Philly Cheesesteak, a Maine lobster roll, a club sandwich, a Reuben and even a Po' Boy are the most delicious things to eat with one hand while clutching a beer or napkin in the other. There's an art to eating a hot sandwich, staying well beerdrated and keeping your chin and cheeks grease-free.

Oh yeah.

However, nothing knocks my socks off like a slider. The heady meeting of slow-cooked marinated beef, lamb or pork, carelessly shredded into melt-in-the-mouth strips with anything else that takes your fancy and wedged between a soft and slightly sweet white bread bun is the ultimate sandwich. The sandwich de jour...the sandwich de la creme...you get the idea.

I don't know where the term for this sandwich comes from, and I don't care. I don't know what differentiates this from any other sandwich, but I JUST KNOW what makes a good slider in my own narrow, solipsistic view of the foodiverse.

• The bread bun must be white
• The bun should be small enough to hold comfortably in one hand
• You should be able to eat at least 2-3 in a single sitting. With accompanying fries or onion rings
• The meat should be beef, pork or lamb and well-seasoned and marinated - on the bone is better than fillet
• The meat should be slow cooked for at least 3-4 hours before being shredded - by human fingers
• Condiments must include but not be confined to pickles, chutneys, mayonnaise, mustards, gravy, ketchup, BBQ sauce
• There must be a salad of some description - coleslaw is best - with its own dressing wedged in there.
• Grated cheese is optional
• The filling should spill out of the bread

And let me share this favourite recipe with you - Pulled Pork Sliders - Dusty style

Brown a 1-1/2 kilo piece of pork leg or shoulder in its own fat in a large crock pot, then add:

• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 375ml bottle brown beer (Porter or stout)
• 2 tsp salt
• Chicken or beef stock to cover meat
• 2 peeled onions whole
• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1-2 star anise pods
• 1 chopped de-seeded red chilli

Slow cook for 3-4 hours until soft enough to shred into strips for slider-style sandwiches. This goes particularly well with coleslaw and spicy applesauce.

Enjoy.

Hollywood Costume at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image

If you haven't yet checked it out, I highly recommend the Hollywood Costume exhibition at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Federation Square, Melbourne.

As the online catalogue says:

The greatest movie characters of all time.

Direct from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Hollywood Costume explores the central role costume design plays in cinema storytelling. Bringing together the most iconic costumes from a century of filmmaking, this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see the clothes worn by unforgettable and beloved characters in films from The Wizard of Oz (1939) to Titanic (1997), Ben-Hur (1959) to Casino Royale (2006).

There's something in this exhibition for everyone - film fans, aspiring film makers, amateur seamstresses and budding fashion designers. In addition to the amazing clothes, there's a nice AV installation of recorded interviews with filmmakers and their designers - the highlight for me was the clip of the incomparable Edith Head (the inspiration for The Incredibles'  Edna Mode), talking about designing for Alfred Hitchcock. This is the woman who gave us Kim Novak's extraordinary grey suit in Vertigo and Grace Kelly's negligee in Rear Window. Neither of which, unfortunately are in this exhibition. Nor is Ursula Andress' white bikini from Dr No or James Dean's red jacket from Rebel Without a Cause.

Dang.

Needless to say, it's still pretty amazing and takes no more than an hour to enjoy. There are three days left before it's gone, so Dusty says go go go.

Thank you for smoking...pipes?????!!!! WTF?

Folks, I think I've now seen (and smelled) the latest incarnation of hipster pretentiousness.

Yesterday afternoon, I was walking past the National Australia Bank office in East Melbourne. Diagonally opposite the Greek Orthodox church on Lansdowne Street, what should I see but three twenty-something men sporting beards, neat haircuts, tattoos, skinny chinos and buttoned-up plaid shirts - smoking pipes.

Nope, they weren't boldly passing a bong around. They were smoking professor / old dad traditional pipes. Sherlock Holmes pipes. Hugh Hefner pipes. Your granddad pipes.

Sweet effing Jesus. I thought I'd seen it all.

I suppose it sits nicely alongside the faux-traditional single-origin-coffee-grinding, vinyl-record-playing, olive-pickling and beer-making lifestyle so affected by this particular group, but pipe-smoking?

What next? Tobacco-chewing?

Paging Doctor Capaldi - or consider another Doctor Who

Nerds, geeks and fanboys all across the world should be thrilled by the decision to cast Scottish actor Peter Capaldi as the latest incarnation of the travelling Time Lord. Fans of TV show The Thick of It and the wonderful film In the Loop will no doubt find it difficult to reconcile Capaldi's incendiary performance as the foul-mouthed, rage-oholic spin-doctor Malcolm Tucker in those works with the charismatic Doctor. I know I will be waiting to see my favourite Galifreyan burst into manic, expletive-strewn tirades against assorted space oddities, villains and unsuspecting aliens, the trademark bulging veins pulsating madly in his skinny skinny neck. Excellent choice.

But it got me thinking...

There are DW fans out there more passionate, committed and knowledgable than yours truly who are no doubt blogging furiously about other casting possibilities, including whether we're ready for a black actor to play the good Doctor. I think we were ready a long time ago for that...Richard Ayoade was seriously considered for the twelfth Doctor, but what about the tasty Colin Salmon? He'd give the Doctor some serious sex appeal, no?

But consider this alternative: What if, as part of his regeneration, he became a woman? There's enough material in the DW canon / folklore to suggest Galifreyans can change gender when they regenerate. If that's the case, screw getting a black guy to play the doctor and give us a chick instead. And what about some nice hot boy eye-candy as the Doctor's companion?

Consider a Doctor played by outsized aristo funny-girl Miranda Hart (with the elfin James McAvoy as her platonic boy toy) or one portrayed by serious thespy Emma Thompson. She'd bring her own special mix of whimsy and gravitas to the part, surely? How about Emily Blunt or Kate Winslet in a couple of years? Helena Bonham Carter has some comic chops. I'd even give it to Kristen Wiig if I thought she could pull off a convincing English accent (for we are not yet ready for a female AND American Doctor...).

It'll be a couple of years before we need to consider the 13th Doctor. Until then...

My love affair with Hilary. Mantel, not Clinton...

Last year, Hilary Mantel made English literary history when she became the first woman to win the Man Booker Prize for the second time. She was awarded the prize for her fuck-off brilliant novels about Henry VIII's fixer and all-purpose pit-bull, Thomas Cromwell, (think of him as the Tudor court's Tom Hagen or Al Neri) - Wolf Hall (2009), and Bring Up the Bodies (2012).

Of course, the question on the literatis' lips (and mine), is - can she score a proverbial hat-trick and win a third Booker for the final instalment in the Cromwell trilogy The Mirror and the Light currently in progress?

God, I hope so. 

First published in 1985, Mantel is a freakishly gifted observer of people, culture and society. Her books, which range from claustrophobic and bizarre, piano-wire-tight domestic dramas mired in the everyday and which draw from personal experience (Eight Months on Ghazzah Street, Every Day is Mother's Day, Vacant Possession) to epic historical novels about Europe's best-known powerbrokers and monsters (A Place of Greater Safety, Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies), are extraordinary. 

With a few well-placed words and a handful of sentences (along with some deadly exchanges of pithy dialogue) she puts the reader smack bang in the middle of some truly uncomfortable moments, both real and imagined.  The interrogation scenes between Cromwell and Anne Boleyn’s suitors in Bring Up the Bodies are scary good. The Robespierre of A Place of Greater Safety makes Pol Pot look like a fluffy puppy.

I'm not sure I want her at my next dinner party, casting her eyes over the guests, picking apart every gesture, every nuance, every dirty look, or conversational lapse. Reading about it afterwards would be rather like having your skin removed in one piece, having it cured and then being told to lie down on it.  

Yes, she is THAT GOOD. I am her number one fan, devotee, and acolyte. Call me a 'Mantelyte'.

Moreover, she's a great essayist too. A rare creature is that novelist who can tell killer stories but also provide smart commentary on politics, religion, history and society. Google her journalism if you don't believe me.

The now-infamous speech Ms Mantel gave at the British Museum earlier this year, Royal Bodies, landed her in hot water with the UK's deliberately moronic and mischievous tabloid press because of her allegedly unflattering description of Ms Kate Middleton. I won't deconstruct it for you here, as I expect any intelligent grown-up who reads or listens to it, will understand precisely what the author was saying about the nexus between watchers (us) and the watchees (celebrity royals) and the role of the media as pimps/intermediaries in this creepy relationship. 

Yes, the speech is THAT GOOD. That both David Cameron and Ed Miliband saw fit to strenuously attack Ms Mantel and defend the Duchess of Cambridge, proves beyond doubt neither of these men is fit to run a bath, let alone a country of over 60 million people. 

Dickheads.

I read Wolf Hall for the first time last year and have read it three more times since. I'm waiting for a friend to return Bring Up the Bodies so I can read it for a second time. My shaking fingers will be poised, hovering over the keyboard ready to press 'submit' on my Book Depository order of The Mirror and the Light upon its publication. 

I know how it ends. Anyone with the faintest knowledge of the Tudors (and that includes watching the slap 'n tickle, doggy-style TV version with Jon Rhys-Meyers) knows how it ends. Thomas Cromwell gets it in the neck. He gets it in the neck mostly for setting Henry VIII up with an ugly German and thinking he can get away with it. But only a genius like Hilary Mantel can take a story we already know, breathe bloody, smelly, foul and stinking life into it and have us begging for more.

I can't wait.

It's Linkedin, not on-line dating

Recently, I took to trawling other people's professional profiles on Linkedin in a search for nifty ideas on how to boost my own. What achievements have they highlighted? What extra-curricular activities do they list? Do they tweet and share? And if so, how regularly and frequently? Does tweeting even get you noticed by recruiters?

Despite the institutional (Code: bloody ugly) look and feel of Linkedin, and the emphasis on text-based content, you can see people trying their best to elevate their profiles. They do this with testimonials or endorsements, following groups and professional organisations (as if a million brightly coloured logos and other people's head shots could mitigate the gruesome psychiatric hospital graphic design of the site...) and of course by publishing the least appropriate, and at times very very wrong photos of themselves.

Lest you have forgotten what Linkedin is about, let me remind you: Linkedin is a social networking website designed and used almost exclusively for professional networking.

In short, it's for people looking for work and for recruiters looking for people to do the work.

According to a professional recruiter and resume writer whose services I have engaged, the unspoken (but scientifcally supported) rules for professional photos that garner the most (and the right kind of) notice are:

• Black and white
• Smiling or unsmiling, but always looking directly at the camera
• Face to fill more than 75% of the frame
• Wearing neutral or business attire

That means no poorly cropped photos of yourself at a party in the wee small hours of the morning. We can still see the arms of the people around you, the empty vodka bottles and dirty ashtrays in our collective mind's eye. Sure, the ability to drink the average depressed Russian under the table while singing 'Dancing Queen' with your mates is a good skill to have, and may make you attractive to a certain kind of person, but this is Linkedin.

It's NOT e-harmony, or RSVP.com, or any other on-line dating service.  Got it?

And what about the photos obviously taken from weddings? Where the bride has desperately trawled for the best photo she could find but even her brilliant cropping skillz (using Office, natch) can't hide the exquisite veil and tiara combo. We're happy for her - truly ruly - especially when one in three marriages ends in divorce. That she has embarked on such a lovely journey is truly super, but this is Linkedin.

It's not your Facebook or Google+ page. Got it?

Lastly, to the guys who publish photos of themselves in SCUBA gear, in sunnies holding a beer or snowboarding - are you for real?

I'm all for using erotic capital and am a big fan of it in the workplace (hey, we all need the distractions of eye-candy at work), but a site like Linkedin is crucial for making that first impression with your future employer or their representatives, so keep it neutral, business-like and professional. Look sharp, look smart, look beautiful, yes, but please stay away from photos that make you look like a slapper, a Bear Grylls wannabee, or the sort of person prepared to provide the 'other' kind of 'job'.

It's not OkCupid. Got it?