Monthly Archives: April 2012

Arts & Entertainment, Film & TV

The Killing is Back with a Second Season of Ugh

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Excellent detective work, as always, Linden.

Oh no, this show again. When last we left off (June 2011, which is only Day Thirteen on The Killing‘s calendar), Rosie Larsen’s murder remained unsolved due to myriad macguffins, red herrings, double-crosses, and psych-outs–and television critics, the Twitterverse, and what few fans were left were pissed off at being jerked around and vowed that the show was as dead to them as Rosie.

I was hoping that in the interim AMC would think better of it and cancel The Killing entirely, but here we are, with a two-hour premiere (“Reflections”/”My Lucky Day”) to ease us right back into television hell. The episode starts with Detective Linden looking as unhappy about having to do all this again as I am. She tells her son Jack that they’ll be staying in Seattle, so hopefully we won’t have to deal with any more of the will-she-or-won’t-she-move-to-California subplot that wasted so much time last season. RIP, Fiance Rick, we hardly knew ye.

Meanwhile, mayoral candidate Darren Richmond is in bad shape after Belko shot him (and killed his own mother too, before turning the gun on himself at the police station). There’s an unnecessary, unintentionally funny moment as the EMTs are wheeling Richmond to the ambulance, when somehow the stretcher tips over and Richmond’s body falls on the ground. Maybe that’s why he’s now paralyzed from the waist down, not Belko’s bullet. Good thing the councilman is receiving good care and terrible bedside manner at the Lake Washington Medical Center.

Linden continues being a bad mother, dropping Jack off at a random church, leaving him alone at night to continue her investigation, and feeding him a healthy dinner of vending machine potato chips. Speaking of bad moms, Mitch has run away from home, abandoning the Larsen family, while her sister, who’s acting as Substitute Mommy, sends one of the little boys out to the car to fetch her cigarettes. Classy. Just wait till everyone finds out you were a secret Backpage.com Beau Soleil escort, Terry!

Campaign aide Jamie tells Gwen he’s a “garden variety asexual,” and Gwen returns the favor by telling Jamie (and eventually Linden) that Richmond wasn’t with her the night of Rosie’s murder, but later showed up soaking wet at the Tacoma B&B where they were staying. I suppose that’s as good a reason as any to go to Tacoma, so Linden investigates further, ultimately discovering that Richmond couldn’t have killed Rosie because he was too busy trying to kill himself that night by jumping off a Tacoma bridge.

So who killed Rosie Larsen? Now that we’ve taken an entire season plus one episode to rule out Darren Richmond, obvs there’s a CONSPIRACY AFOOT. It definitely involves Lt. Gil Sloane, another cop and a member of Holder’s Narcotics Anonymous group, who performed a “secure erase hard drive” in record time before heading to the Mayor’s now-shuttered Waterfront Project to meet with Mayor’s assistant and yell at him. After finally learning to trust Holder, Linden now thinks he’s dirty, thanks to those faked traffic cam photos, but it turns out Holder was just a rube. And he can’t be that bad, considering he kept Rosie Larsen’s real backpack and turned in his own to the crime lab, only for them to return faked results.

Linden goes back to the station and finds a new police lieutenant in charge. Oh hey, it’s Duck Phillips! Maybe some of our other old Mad Men friends will show up and join the cast, like dear departed Sal and neighborhood boy Glen and Zombie Miss Blankenship. I’d much rather be watching a fever dream Mad Men spinoff. Oh well, only eleven more hours of this season of The Killing to go.

So many cliffhangers: Will Holder and Linden go back to being BFFs? Will Jack recognize the Japanimation character from Rosie’s super 8 film, since we saw him reading a manga in this episode? Will the famed Seattle Polish mob find Rosie’s real killer? Will Darren Richmond’s sister and Mitch check their voicemail? The suspense is KILLING me.

And before we go, let’s take a look at the close attention to detail that has made The Killing so very famous. ENHANCE:

Linden gets Gil Sloane's phone number from the Narcotics Anonymous list.
More like Narcotics Not-So-Anonymous.
Writing down the number: 509-555-0058.

And in the very next scene, when Linden is relaying the phone number in order to track down Gil Sloane’s address:

A phone number that wasn't even on the list! Bravo.

Health, News, Science

Bellevue Man’s Long-Term Weight Loss Secret: Eat More & Exercise Less!

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I am just fascinated by Jonathan Bailor’s The Smarter Science of Slim. I love that this diet book, written by a Microsoft program manager, actually looks like a user’s manual of some kind. I’m terribly fond of the “cast of thousands” of graphs and charts that Bailor uses to present his research. And my ears always perk up when someone tells me I can eat more and exercise less, and still lose weight.

Yes, I’ve read The 4-Hour Body. Remember that part where Ferriss starts to weigh his own feces? That’s where I began to think that maybe it was more of a cry for help. WebMD has some concerns, too.

Bailor, in contrast, has docs from Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and UCLA chiming in to support his approach–and why not, his bibliography runs from page 293 to 369, all in tiny type, making reference to research study after research study.

Let’s start with the less controversial part: Bailor advocates what he calls a SANE diet, and yes, that’s an acronym, but it’s also a philosophical position. He’s just telling you which foods are good to eat, and which are not, and sparing you obsessive calorie-counting and bizarre menus. On the whole, he sounds a bit like Michael Pollan-on-paleo. Avoid processed foods and sweeteners, and cut down on starches and grains. Feast on vegetables and fruits (especially berries), get plenty of protein, and fats aren’t terrible. (It turns out it’s worse to try to cover that “low-fat” taste with a multitude of hidden sweeteners.)

On exercise, Bailor mimics Pollan’s delivery: “Exercise forcefully. Not too often. Mostly eccentric.” Ten to twenty minutes a week should do it (for weight loss, obviously, not conditioning for sports).

Two elements of the book I drew my attention particularly. Early on, Bailor tackles the unsupported concept of one-calorie-equals-one-calorie, demonstrating that where you get your calories is important. But then he introduces the idea of metabolic “clogging,” which helps clarify the confusing history of weight loss. Two hormones, he says, insulin and leptin, work in tandem to manage our bodies’ energy stores. If our diets are out of whack, our hormonal balance gets skewed, too, with the result that whether we starve ourselves or gorge, we can pack pounds on while not feeling satiated.

Then he delivers a devastating critique of why our diets are out of whack to begin with, discussing the USDA’s “nutritionally unsound” food guides (with a raft of charts showing a host of obesity-related ills heading up and to the right after the guides are implemented), and correcting a bunch of misapprehensions about cholesterol, whole grains, and fat intake. High fructose corn syrup gets no free pass, and though I’ve seen it before, the list of almost 60 “hidden” sweeteners (the same, you’ll find, in candy bars and weight-loss bars) is still staggering.

We are not, he makes it clear, going to get much help from our co-opted government on obesity and diabetes and cardiovascular health; in fact, the war on obesity’s symptoms is likely to reinforce the entrenched positions that, say, soda companies have on official panels. All this is big business, especially diabetes.

In that sense, this is a necessary book, whether you have pounds to keep off or not. With apologies to William Carlos Williams, it is difficult to get the news from diet books, yet men and women die miserably every day for lack of what is found here.

News, Transportation

Seattle Tries Out New “Pothole City” Moniker

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Patched this weekend! (Photo: MvB)

Patch failing (Photo: MvB)

Patched patch failing (Photo: MvB)

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Seattle’s streets are broken, they’re not getting better, and I can find no evidence that the Seattle City Council or the Mayor’s Office are able to deal with the scope of the problem. I know it’s fashionable to sneer at do-nothing politicians, but neither can I see reason for officials to duck this problem, unless they find it unsolvable. What’s a better advertisement for effective city government than good roads?

This is all heavily rutted ground that I have covered before. In the best of times, Seattle finds itself playing catch-up on deferred road maintenance: Thus, in 2006, the Bridging the Gap levy was born. It is a nine-year plan that, two-thirds done, has left us further behind than when we started. Part of the reason is that, since the onset of the Great Recession and its throttling of tax revenues, Seattle has found itself unable to pay for all necessary road repairs, let alone deferable projects.

As the magnitude of the problem has increased, the city’s response has grown more anemic. Using potholes an indicator species for overall road health, it’s troubling to note that in 2009 Seattle’s Department of Transportation filled 6,500 potholes; in 2010, 10,100 potholes; in 2011, over 25,000.

Pothole-filling is the equivalent of bailing a leaky boat, of course. Patches aren’t supposed to last more than a year, perhaps 18 months. Patches applied in bad weather can fail again in just days. At some point, you need to resurface the roads, and that is just where SDOT’s resources are weakest.

“With the NE Ravenna Boulevard project now in construction, the city is on schedule to rebuild 15 lane-miles of road in 2012,” goes a recent City of Seattle press release, which describes the city as humbly “focusing on the basics.” Besides resurfacing arterials, SDOT plans to “enhance” seven lane-miles by repaving small chunks of road with new concrete or asphalt.

The release contains a lot of numbers–“4,362 potholes have been repaired in just the first two months of 2012″–but for context, the city repaved 24 arterial lane-miles in 2011, while enhancing about sixteen lane-miles. In 2010, it repaved 31 lane-miles. You see which direction these numbers are heading, yes? Now–let me emphasize this point–this dwindling repair is just for arterials. Seattle has 1,524 lane-miles of arterials. There are 2,706 lane-miles of residential streets that have just been left to crumble.

This is not SDOT’s fault; it is not this Mayor’s fault; it is not this Council’s fault. Road maintenance is expensive, and the city’s coffers are depleted after a multi-year recessionary winter. But it is their responsibility. At some point, our crumbling infrastructure will reach a tipping point at which it could drag the city down. SDOT has valued the city’s transportation assets at $13 billion, but that asset is becoming an equally huge liability as more and more streets reach failure.

Olympia’s help is likely to be limited. The State of Washington is still rummaging around in its moth-eaten budgetary pockets for unfunded billions for the new 520 bridge, though WSDOT is aware of the significance of the road maintenance backlog statewide: “Recently compiled data indicate that sixteen percent of city roadway pavements are in poor or very poor condition with indications that, at current funding levels, this number will grow.”

We cannot keep this up. The pace of road degradation is spiking. We need to restore our infrastructure, and now.

Arts & Entertainment, Visual Arts

Glimpses: “Rough Morning”

Not our wishes for any of you on this first Monday of April, but rather a reminder of Lady Liberty’s dedicated watch over the entry to Elliott Bay. Rough morning or not, she is there – marking our city’s geographic origins and serving as an admirable proxy for her big sister on the other coast. Thanks to smohundro for capturing her point of view and placing it into our Flickr pool.