James L.'s Profile

10 Reviews

When they’re born, they just look like beets. When they’re very small, they look squished, or like strangely over-inflated gnomes. Everyone always says they’re cute. Half the people are lying, and the other half are women. By the time they look like something you’d take home, let alone photograph, they’re two, and by then you’d best have taken lots of pictures. But how?

You’d think it’s easy – prop ‘em up, snap away. But any parent knows that the sight of a camera makes kids of a certain age make hideous faces and put their tongues three inches from the lens. You could always chloroform them and use a mild, topically-applied glue to rearrange their features in a pleasing form. But it’s best to listen to the pros, and that’s where Adventures in Photography: Photographing Kids with Jim Miotke comes in.

If you’re looking to jump right into the tips and hints, look elsewhere. First we get an overview of the four main subjects.

Session 1: “Working with Light.” This is important, as light is a key element in any good picture. The absence of light ruin the most carefully composed shot. “Session 2: Portraits and Candids.” The former is suitable for framing on the wall, and usually involves a child holding an item emblematic of Youth, such as a building block or a stuffed animal or, in certain parts of the country, a rifle. Session 3: “Sports & Fast Action.” You suspect soccer will be involved. Session 4: “A Look Inside Jim’s Camera Bag.” We’ll pass, thanks.

Once the preliminaries are out of the way, we meet Jim Miotke, the host, who – it must be said – appears to be overlit. In a voice not overly burdened with inflection, he sets out the problems people confront when photographing kids: “Sometimes the subject’s too blurry, other times too dark, other times too bright.” This is a comprehensive DVD, in other words. He also notes that “sometimes your subject suffers from things such as red eye,” and you might think, well, that’s what the “Remove Red Eye” button in the photo-editing software is for, right? Or do we use antibiotics? Well, there’s the automated idiot-proof computer programs, and there’s the skill of the artist. Which would you rather have? Right.

Session 1: Jim’s back, holding a kid; he introduces himself as Jim Miotke, again. He’s much better lit. Unfortunately, instead of learning anything about light, and how to work with it, we get what seems to be an alternate opening. “How would you like to take pictures of your kids that truly capture the qualities that make them so adorable?” Love to! And by some peculiar coincidence that’s why I rented “Photographing Kids.” This bonus, extended-cut opening includes a third example of Jim Miotke telling us he is Jim Miotke, and he says he’d “like to welcome us to another adventure in photography.” Another? Isn’t this the first? Is this the second disk in a six-disk series? You know sometimes how you’re watching season three of the Sopranos and your spouse is watching Season two, and you get the disks mixed up and all of a sudden she’s wondering who these characters are and why their hair looks different – could be like that. Let’s check the package.

No, one disk. We continue. We learn about front lighting, which comes from the front; side lighting, which comes in slanty-wise, and back lighting, which comes from – well, I don’t want to give away all the secrets. What happens next, however, is utterly unexpected: a flurry of useful tips. You learn about fill flash, which adds light to daytime scenes and gives kids’ eyes more life. You learn about choosing innovative angles, and how to keep kids from making their “camera face” – i.e., the standard doofy grin. You learn about bounce flash, in which you ricochet the flash off another surface. Obviously this does not work outside, unless you have a 99 teracandle flash you can bounce it off the moon. But in order to bounce a flash, you need an external flash that can be angled up, and that means equipment. Which means bags. Which means you will become Dad, the Camera Dork.

If you are already this guy, and have a lot of pricey equipment you do not know how to use, this is the video for you.

Seriously: Jim explains things like “ISO” in ways that actually make sense, and even though you’ll probably forget what it means quickly enough, by the end of the DVD you’ll get the drift.

He also notes that you can change your perspective by standing on a ladder. Or, if a ladder is not available, a chair.

It’s a long disc; Jim does not stint with the tips. Even if you find yourself jumping ahead, you can catch up on the Top Ten Tips in the Bonus features, or getting info on which camera to buy when you finally work up the nerve to look into Jim’s Bag.

Arbitrary Rating, Based Entirely On Our Mood at the Moment: B+. An excellent source of inspiration for the novice. Information is presented in a simple, unpretentious manner. Good production values. Calm, low-key monotone delivery can be used to sooth agitated pets. All the examples look like something you could do, or your wife would want you to do, or you would like to do because your husband always shoots his thumb or the dog’s butt. Downside: host appears to be using a camera the size of a naval megaphone, so your results may vary.

- James Lileks

I knew the very second I opened the attractive SmartFlix envelope (much better than Netflix, to be honest, and it doesn’t stand out with that red STEAL ME, POSTAL EMPLOYEE color) that this would be the most awesome training film ever. The title: Intermediate Sandcastling. Right away you’ve learned two things: there is a verb form of “sandcastle,” and there are three stages of expertise. Beginning, intermediate, and expert. There might be a fourth – Master – but you’d see a training DVD about that as soon as you’d see “The Secrets of 33rd Degree Masonry Explained.”

It’s a great topic for an instructional video. Who among us has not reveled in the simple childhood joys of building something grand, watching the water wash it away, finding out your policy does not cover hurricanes, and cursing the day you moved to Florida? The bugs here are the size of Electrolux vacuum cleaners, for God’s sake. I’ve made many castles on the beach with my daughter, using the time-honored methods: pack the bucket, upend in stick a few twigs on top for flagpoles, then add towers, parapets to reflect the King’s new power, and walls and moats to indicate his growing paranoia and insularity. The waves usually play the role of the Revolutionary Mob, in the end. If I have the time, I like to build long complex waterways, but it’s always an exercise in the futility of human endeavor. The water washes everything away. All that we build will come to naught. We are but grains of sand ourselves in the grand scheme, worn small by the pitiless hand of nature, destined to be swept to sea while our proudest achievements crumble, forgotten before the night falls. That’s when my daughter usually starts to cry because I’m scaring her with all this talk, and I have to buy her ice cream.

But! What if I could build those incredible things you see in the, er, incredible sandcastle videos you find on the cable channels? So I popped in the disk, smiled at the font choice for the menu – Hobo, my old friend, we meet again – and clicked play. There are two teachers: an elfin hippie named Sandy Feets, and Amazin’ Walter, a big genial dude who looks like Santa’s old surfer brother.

As it begins, Sandy heaves gunk from a wet pit onto a nice castle already in progress She gives us an important lesson on sand-transferring: be close to your hole. “It’s gotta be one smooth motion,” she says. “You want to keep a very clear idea in your head of where you’re going with your sand.”

Words to live by, those. From what I gather, you heap the wet stuff, let it dry a bit, then carve it. Of course! Now it’s Walter: “Another hint is to not scrape your knuckles on the bottom of the bucket.” Because it hurts. Noted. This disk has paid for itself already. Then we get jerky footage of sand-stacking, set to a smoky smooth-jazz soundtrack, which would be great if you were making sculptures in a nightclub.

Chapter Four: the dude is wearing an apron that has his special sandcastling tools. He is at the beach in a heavy black apron, which makes him look like a free-lance whale butcher. One of his tools is a “great big pastry knife,” which he uses to sculpt the wet mound of sand. In its pre-carved state the mound looks like the Watts Towers as designed by the Elephant Man. Or the Elephant Man as sculpted by the designer of the Watts Tower. Whatever, it’s ugly. But as the smooooth jazz plays, we see him sculpt a castle out of the rude heap. It seems so simple, once you know that pastry knives are involved. Of course. Of course.

Now we move to Sandy Feet’s house, where she introduces us to the use of giant forms. Because the handstacking method is simply insufficient for the gigantic castles you know you want to build. By now you’ve stopped taking notes, and you’re just enjoying the art. And yes, it’s an art; it requires skill, technique and aesthetic judgments, as well as practice and patience. As if to acknowledge that your patience in step-by-step instruction might be wearing thin, they start to run the how-to portions in super-fast speed, interspersed with Jerky-Vision that starts to make you queasy, and conclude with a project gallery full of sculptures you could not possibly reproduce. By now you realize that it comes down to three simple steps: Being Close to Your Hole, Having a Great Big Pastry Knife, and Being Really Good At This Already.

Score: B thumbs down out of four stars. Pluses: Friendly unpretentious hosts with whom you could easily imagine downing a Corona at a beachside bar. Well, Walter, anyway. Makes sandcastling looks easy. Minuses: uses the word “sandcastling.” Makes it look easy. Hobo font.

If you have to ask why ‘customizing’ is spelled with a K, you are not the target market. Think Hot-rods with painted flames, Big Daddy Roth customized cars, the art of Coop: that’s Kustom Kulture.

If you have to ask why a bowling pin needs to be kustomized, it is possible you are not an American, and lack the understanding of such matters. Bowling = 50s cool. Kustomizing = 50s cool. Therefore Kustomized Bowling pins adds up to 100, which is twice as cool. Let’s proceed.

The disk begins with the artist’s previous non-pin kustomizing work, most of which seems to involve painting skulls on motorcycles. Because chicks dig skulls. Well, guys dig skulls. But chicks dig guys, so, it all works out in the end. The skull-related work is very good, if you’re into snarling bone-heads and assorted damnation iconography. Since nasty horned demons do not exist, this is almost the grown-up equivalent of running around in Superman pajamas, if you ask me. But the technical achievement is impressive, and right away you know two things: 1) this guy can airbrush with a skill that makes Playboy retouchers look like Jackson Pollack, and B) there is no way you will be able to duplicate anything that follows. But at least we can learn how it’s done.

Step one. You have to get a bowling pin. Advice is provided.

Step two. Since the paint is toxic, you need to learn how not to kill yourself. Advice is also provided.

Step three. Examine the pin for imperfections. You’d be surprised how close inspection of the average pin reveals seams, as well as ‘high spots’ that have to be ‘knocked down.’ You’ve just learned your first pieces of jargon!

Step Four. Vince applies sandpaper to a dual-action orbital sander. Really. Close-ups and all. It’s pretty graphic. You expect to see the scene blurred with a mosaic, but they just show everything.

Step Five. Mixing and applying the Bondo to fill in any imperfections. The host recommends a 50 to one ration on the hardener. If you had no idea what the hardener is, you shouldn’t be doing this. After the Bondo is hard, you shave off the stuff you don’t need. Warning! The Bondo stuff gets in your nails, says the host, and it’s also toxic. So wear gloves. When scraping it off, however, you can use your bare hands and get the shavings all over your pants leg.

Step Six. An important tip is revealed here: You’re going to want to use an adhesive promoter. D846 or D820. I know that goes without saying, but you can’t assume everyone knows everything.

Ten minutes into the film, I believe I could do any of these things. I know I would probably remove a good portion of my own flesh in the sanding process, and I am also sure that by the time I finished sanding off the imperfections the top of the bowling ball would have the asymmetrical aspect normally associated with Cubism, but that’s why my pin would be in a museum and this guy’s pins will be in a display case. Mine would be fawned over by thin reedy-voiced aesthetes who appreciate the ironic repositioning of a middlebrow icon; his would be appreciated in terms like ‘Wicked’ and ‘awesome.’ Mine would be a result of mistakes and pretension; his would be a result of actual talent.

No one said art was fair.

Step Seven. Spraying. Did we mention you need a room draped in sheets and you have to dress like a ninja? Because you do.

Steps Eight - Forty-two. Sanding and degreasing and painting and sanding.

Step Forty-three. Draw your design with a Sharpie. WARNING: TALENT REQUIRED. TALENT NOT INCLUDED WITH DISK. Use an Exact-O knife to peel off parts of the design. Insider hint: pull towards the tips. Spray-paint the rest, peel off a layer, add red highlights to give the impression of molten lava.

At this point you suspect the average viewer has stopped taking notes, and is sitting with his hands in his lap, just watching.

Step Oh, Who Knows: an eyeball is applied to the design. An eyeball that is flying through the lava. It’s technically impressive, but at this point you realize you’re learning how to paint a bloodshot eyeball flying through lava on a bowling pin. You’d be surprised how infrequently that needs to be done in the normal course of things.

Instructional Grade: Four Stars. If you have some experience with an airbrush, this has to be helpful. Production Quality Grade: Three Stars. Hey, you try lighting glossy bowling pins. Entertainment Grade: one star. Informational Grade: Four Stars. Ability of the disk to make the viewer feel like he should get a tattoo and hang out in a bowling alley and smoke Luckies and get a little choked up thinking about Eddie Cochran and how he died: Nine stars.

I’ve flown around the world in a plane, I’ve settled revolutions in Spain, The north pole I have charted, But can’t get started with clay. This situation is about to be remedied with a leisurely viewing, glass of port in hand, of Graham Sheehan’s “Getting Started with Clay.” Having done a google search on the fellow, and become reasonably certain the DVD is not an instructional video on the best means to chat up a certain American Idol winner if you find yourself next to him at an airport bar, I begin.

Mr. Sheehan is kneading some clay, which is what you’d watch if the Paint Drying video seemed a bit tame. He frames the lessons to come with a promise: “Throughout we’d like to stress simple processes that are accessible to anybody.” Good.

“Right now I’m using a commercial clay body that would be available at your local clay supplier,” he says. Good. “But of course we should be able to dig it from the ground.” Yes, if I live on top of a clay mine, but I don’t, and besides: what’s the matter with store-bought clay? I’m just getting started here, remember. This is like renting “Getting Started with Breadmaking” and discovering that the first lesson involves the creation of a pest-resistant hybrid strain.

“So let’s get started with that,” he says, referring to home-dug clay. Sure enough: we’re off to the “Clay Preparation” segment, which shows someone scooping up earth-mucus and pouring it into a filthy bucket. A toothsome lass scoops it up while our host squats in front of a slough and explains why they have headed into the wilds of British Columbia in search of the elusive Clay Seam:

“We thought that there would be suitable clay at this spot because we could see that there was muddy water in the ditch, and that the bottom of the ditch looked like clay.” Close up of his hand scooping out clay from the bottom of the aforementioned ditch. At this point you imagine someone in Brooklyn who bought the video because she’s going to take a Learning Annex class on pottery next week and wanted to get a head start, wondering why it is necessary to see clay in the wild when pre-made clay can be had from – well, your local clay supplier. It certainly makes you feel bad about the clay you already bought. Prefab. Machine-wrapped. It has no soul.

By some unbelievable turn of events, the clay in the muddy ditch turns out to be good for pot-making purposes, sparing Graham the humiliation of dragging a camera crew into the forest only to discover that the substance is more mud than clay. “Well, this day’s shot, boys. We’ll head off again at daybreak. Have the bearers set up camp, and if I hear one more word about this expedition being cursed I’ll thrash them all for impertinence.”

He does mention that you might find clay in “excavations in the street,” which brings a mirthless bark to the lips of our Brooklyn viewer. Right. Move over Con Ed, I’m looking for something to throw on a wheel.

Back at the studio, the assistant shovels out the clay onto a sheet while Gorden narrates the process of shoveling out the clay onto a sheet. It looks like dog vomit. He notes that clay you can use right away after you dig it out of the ground is preferable. And clay you can buy at your local clay supplier would be . . .more preferable, perhaps? Maybe just going down to the Oddjob store and buying some dishes would be preferable? Because at this rate we’re expecting we’ll have to bring down a jaguar with a blow-dart to get red for the glaze. He also notes that it would have been better to dug up the clay in the summer, when it would have been pre-dried for your convenience, “but we don’t have that luxury.”

We next meet Gordon two days later, hammering the dried clay with a mallet to break up the clumps and exposed foreign objects, like pine cones, twigs, and what appears to be a small trilobite. None of which would be found in the clay available at your local clay supplier, but never mind.

Next move: the dry clay is transferred to filthy bucket #2, where water is added. Wait a minute. Didn’t we just dry it out to remove the water? But there’s no time to ponder the manifold mysteries of clay, because we’re on the next step: transferring the contents of filthy bucket #2 into Very Large Filthy Bucket #1, pouring it through a screen. We are instructed to let the contents of VLFB #1 sit for a couple of days. The resultant goop is dumped on a board sitting on what appears to be Very Filthy Bucket #2, and then dried for another day. We’re six days into this! God created the heavens and the earth and completed all the furnishings and supporting cast members by this time, and we’re still looking at something that resembles a dinosaur’s cud. At least it’s firm enough to work with; we’re treated to a demonstration of “wedging,” which mixes the clay to even out the consistency WHICH WOULDN’T BE AN ISSUE IF YOU’D BOUGHT IT AT YOUR LOCAL CLAY SUPPLIER.

I’m sorry to shout, but really: if he hadn’t mentioned the great pre-existing clay-supplying infrastructure I would have thought nothing of it, but having admitted the existence of the Local Clay Shop, all of this seems incredibly annoying.

Modeling: he makes a small rabbit out of clay. Finally. We are getting started with clay. He makes two small pinch pots. We are really getting moving with clay. The two pots are joined into a sphere, which is rolled and gently persuaded to form the body of an elephant. We learn crucial lessons about making sure the head of the elephant stays attached after fired. At this point I realized that I do not, and never will, want to make an elephant out of six-day old ditch mud. I skip ahead at 32X speed, playing “Yakety Sax” to give it all a Benny Hill feel, and realize that Spirit!he’s wearing the same clothes he wore on Day One, when we headed into the forest in search of the elusive Lost Fountain of Clay. Oh, what heady days those were; how young we felt, so full of promise. Uh oh – he’s standing in front of a kiln now.

“This is an electric kiln. You could choose to fire your pots in a kiln such as this. It’s not necessary, however, that you have an electric kiln. We’re going to build our own simple kiln from quite simple materials, (like) demolition rubbish.”

And here our review concludes.

John Cleese: Wine for the Confused. Are the Smartflix crew insane? Do they expect me to critique the work of a comic genius, this fine, honorable man whose boots I am not worthy to kiss? Then again, it’s an apt fit; I like wine. Enough of it makes me confused. I have avoided learning too much, because I would like to remain satisfied with simple – i.e., inexpensive – wines. The idea of spending $57 on a bottle of wine seems ridiculous; for that amount of money you could have a fine scotch that’s been waiting for you for 18 years, and will last a good while beyond the night. Expensive wine may have pleasures unknown, what with their jammy finishes and top notes of teak, grass, and the soft exhalations of a dreaming lark, but if it means that my favorite Australian wines will suddenly make me convinced I can taste the feet of the people who stomped the grapes, no thanks.

Hold on; I’d better have a glass while I review this. Back in a minute.

There. I’ve chosen a Shiraz from “Yellow Tail.” It’s very drinkable, which is something I like in a wine. I hate when you have to get out a stick and tamp it down your throat. Let’s hit play.

“Wine for the Confused” begins with a typically Pythonesque conceit: we seem to be watching a bad French sex farce from 1982, complete with subtitles, horrible haircuts, gallic dorks talking about women, and lots of wine glasses. You expect Mr. Cleese to enter the frame at any second, ask if we are confused, and proceed to teach us about wine. As it turns out, this is a promo for an upcoming DVD release of “The Decline of the American Empire.” After a few more promos for more DVDs I would accept only if I were stranded on a desert island and needed something reflective to signal planes, we begin: over footage of some Roman types quaffing wine, we hear Cleese in his taunting-Frenchman voice celebrate the mysteries and complexities of wahn. It’s funny. A little. Somewhat. Sigh. Well, “Holy Grail” was a long time ago, and –

- Hold on, what’s this? We cut to a shot of Cleese at his computer; he presses the eject button on his keyboard, removes the DVD we were presumably watching, and tosses it out the window with casual contempt. “There,” he sighs. “That’s just the sort of nonsense that helps perpetuate this awful snobbery about wine.”

Ahh. That’s our boy.

It takes about 17 additional seconds to realize that Cleese has probably never made a bad industrial or instructional film in his life, is constitutionally incapable of doing so, and appears to be one of the more well-balanced, contented, and amused men of our times. This could be an instructional video called Teach Yourself Ball-Bearing Repair At Home, and you’d watch it.

His main point: wine should be a pleasure; wine-snobbery is for bullies and bores; your tastes are your tastes. “There is one thing I do know about wine,” he says. “Don’t let anyone tell you what wine you should like.” Bravo. After a brief montage of the wine-making process we move on to a celebrity tasting: Mr. Cleese has assembled a dozen good-looking friends at his California house to sample wines, and we presume that some cheap brands will be mixed among the hoiter and/or toitier brands. I did this once while writing a piece on Beer Snobbery; served my friends a wide variety of lagers, including one glass that consisted of small portions of every other beer. It was judged the most undrinkable, and hence the most expensive, and probably Belgian. The winner was Harley-Davidson beer. The loser was the expensive upscale beer with the best label. Everyone was abashed. No one switched away from the expensive upscale beers with the best label. That’s the thing about wine: you can’t always pick up the proper status clues from the label, and once it’s in the glass, well, it could be anything. Stand in a bar with your fist around the neck of a beer with the right label, though, and you send out more messages than Western Union on Christmas Eve.

But I digress; Mr. Cleese is having a garden party. Everyone comes up with simple adjectives to describe their choices, and thus armed with descriptive terms, we follow Mr. Cleese through the California wine country to explore the attributes of various grapes. Almost nothing Mr. Cleese says is funny; he’s not trying to be funny. He’s not trying to be amusing. The general effect, however, is cheerful and relaxed. You know how you see an old star on an infomercial and feel bad for him, because it’s rather sad that he’s selling gravestone polish and automatic prune de-seeders? There’s none of that here. If Cleese spent the first and most famous part of his career as a Python, he’s spent the latter half bringing a delightful intelligence to the promotional and instructive genre – dignity and persona intact. He’ll drop a little story about the Pythons here, mention a lunch with the Queen a while later, but it’s done off-handedly, and if there’s anyone in the video who doesn’t appear to be overly impressed with John Cleese, it’s John Cleese.

You learn things, too – and unlike any other video I’ve reviewed, this is information I can put to practical application.

(Hic)

Verdict: high production values; crisp editing with notes of vanilla; smart script devoid of pretension; makes standing around talking to guys who drink wine all day look interesting; contains generous portions of Mr. Cleese’s inexhaustible charm. Five out of five grapes. Did you know they could make dry Riesling wines? They can.

(PS: there’s only one Python reference in this entire review. Did you find it?)

First you loosen them up with drinks, then propose going in on some Florida real estate? No: it’s the art of doing interesting things with cards that fool and amaze the ordinary person. Of course, the ordinary person doesn’t believe there’s any magic at work here; the performer is just good at handling cards. That’s a useful skill, if you’re, say, a magician. In the workaday world you’d be surprised how seldom the subject comes up in a job interview. But if you’re one of those people who wants to be magician, and you already have the shiny satin vest and the long hair and stage name picked out – I’m going with Thumbus, The Amazing Dropper – this is for you. Let’s begin.

First we see scenes from other Jeff McBride performances; apparently he performs in Kabuki makeup. With all due respect – he is a famous Vegas-based magician who appears all over the world - he looks like a member of KISS auditioning for Riverdance, Houdini Style! Not Paul Stanley KISS, either. Peter Criss KISS. The intro is brief, though, and soon we’re learning tricks with Jeff.

The first trick: changing the color of the top card. In order to do this, you must first have another card hiding in the hand not holding the deck. Then you pass your hand over the deck, transferring the hidden card, and voila: magic. A new card, out of nowhere! It’s a basic trick. Very basic. The Dick and Jane of card manipulation. But if I tried it, I can imagine the response:

“Thank you, and for my next –“

“You had the card in your other hand.”

“What?”

“You had the other card palmed already.”

“I did not.”

“I saw it. When you picked up the deck. You cupped it. I mean, it stands to reason that even if I had no direct observation of the concealed card, that would be the obvious means by which the trick was accomplished. Unless you’re telling me that the dark necromantic arts have so much free time on their hands they assist you in pulling laminated rectangle out of the ether whenever you request.”

“Thank you. And for my next trick –“

“Trick is right; it’s just card manipulation.”

“SHUT UP! I – oh, look, you made me drop the entire deck.”

“Nice trick.”

“SHUT UP!”

Next: thumb fans. They’re an attractive way to display the cards if you’re asking a mark to make a selection. It seems easy enough. You give it a try. You learn the worst part about practicing card manipulation: 52 cards on the floor. It’s like practicing the piano, and every time you make a mistake, 88 keys fall off the instrument. And then you have to put them back together. Again.

Six tricks into this one, you might just sit back and enjoy seeing something you’ll probably never figure out how to do. Oh, he gives clear and concise instructions; you can play them over and over and over and slo-mo the tricky parts, but unless you have great manual dexterity – as well as nimble skinny fingers that make spider-legs look like bratwurst - this might be frustrating.

Then again, who cares? It’s fun to watch. After half an hour, you’re thinking: There’s no reason we have to play tricks with, but we do. Humans are cool. Can’t say whether this will give you the skills to impress the gang at parties, but it does suggest a new genre of Vegas-style entertainment: the fellow who explains baffling card tricks very slowly. No magic implied, just straight-forward instruction.

Engineers and accountants would eat it up.

I only saw my dad spit up coffee once, and that’s when I asked about Spanish Fly. We were at the dinner table, talking about normal ordinary matters. Perhaps it was taco night, and Mom had served that weird Spanish Rice that seemed like ordinary rice drowned in thin ketchup, and that prompted the question. I knew it wasn’t an insect, but some sort of spray. You would put Spanish Fly on something and then something happened, but I wasn’t quite sure what. Girls seemed to be involved. I was ten.

He asked where I’d heard about that. I said it was on a Bill Cosby record. They were talking about Spanish Fly. What was it? He must have signed and wondered if he’d have to give the Newhart records a second listen, too.

Spanish Fly was the first thing I thought about when I slid “Cooking with Aphrodisiacs” into the DVD drawer. It would be handy if it came in spray form; you could use to grease the skillet. So to speak. But the disk would probably concern those old staples of lore – the oysters, which seem about as sexy as a tuberculosis loogie, and Ginger, which the ancients thought stirred the passions. Of course, it did no such thing. People probably bathed before dinner, for a change, but we don’t consider water an aphrodisiac.

Why anyone takes the word of the ancients on these matters is a mystery. Perhaps they believed that cauliflower increased potency and desire; they also thought the world rested on the back of a gigantic turtle. If I want scientific advice on which foods increase desire, I’ll go to civilizations that invented space travel, cheerleaders, and Jack Daniels. Because they’re less likely to insist that horseradish is sexy because the guys who smeared themselves with blue paint and yelled at the sun said so.

Other suspicion: this disk is aimed at women. For many women, talking about food has an aphrodisiac effect. The actual consumption has the opposite effect, because now they feel fat. This is not to say men are immune to the erotic implications of food; give them a hot dog and an onion ring, and it’s hours of laughter.

Chapter One: Aphrodisiacs 101. Right away, we hit a stumbling block the size of Gibraltar, for the first entry is “asparagus.”

Says our hostess: “It’s by far one of the more phallic vegetables you’ll find on your dinner plate. The long, slender stalks stand at attention, waiting to be plucked.” After this we see her put some on the cutting board and chop them with a gigantic knife. I’m getting a mixed message here. Let’s move along.

Avocados. Our hostess tells us that the Aztecs called the avocado tree “the testicle tree.” Okay, now guac’s off the menu. She notes that a mummy was found with avocado seeds, and some theorized that the ancients believed the avocado’s erotic powers might be useful in the afterlife. Perhaps so, but I’m too much of a modern Western rationalist, and I’m here to tell you that any society that puts seeds in the pocket of a dead guy so he can facilitate whoopee in heaven has nothing to tell me about getting a date in the mood. Of course the Aztecs called them testicles. It’s not like they had an overabundance of objects against which to match the shape. Some primitive societies probably called the moon the Sky Boobie. So?

Artichokes: they were created when Zeus caught his mistress sneaking back to earth to see her family. He was so furious he turned her into an artichoke. Oh, great: so it’s an aphrodisiac with battered-woman syndrome.

Oysters: the hostess explains that many think they’re erotic because they resemble, er, female parts. This is followed by a shot of eight oysters. The association forced by that statement and the subsequent image is sufficient to make any impressionable young boy swear off sex until he is blind. Don’t the shells cut you? Why is there ice?

Enough. We move on the drinks section, which is hosted by a fellow with hypnotic eyebrows; you cannot stop watching them. His entire face seems to be an eyebrow-support system. What’s he making? Oh ho! Spanish Coffee! Might it contain Iberian fly, as well? No. Kahlua, rum, sugar, coffee, and some pyrotechnics – you have to set the drink on fire, then toss cinnamon into the flames to produce sparkles. Note to guys: putting a Black Cat in a half-consumed can of Bud will not have the same effect.

Production values: excellent. It’s one of the best-shot instructional videos I’ve seen. It says it’s shot in HD, and I believe it. Presenters: the bartender guy's charms were lost on me. The main presenter has a great voice, sultry without being suggestive, but she has the manner of one of those people on cable shows who talk about marital aids in a matter-of-fact fashion. Bottom line: women will love it. Men will wonder where they can get Cheetos with Spanish Fly.

Irony, Thy Name is the Lockpicking Instructional Video Genre. This DVD begins with the standard FBI Warning against copying and distributing this work, and you can imagine the reaction of someone who got a pirated copy: Man, I came here to learn how to break into places, but I’m way over my head on this piracy thing. It’s bad enough that the FBI is on the job, but Interpol expressed its concern about piracy in 1977? I’m going straight.

After the FBI Warning comes another warning, from the video’s producers: “The events and procedures portrayed on this video could constitute a felony or misdemeanor if enacted on any property without the express written pr verbal consent of the owner or property manager.” I rarely cite Pauline Kael, doyenne of film critics, but: duh.

As we soon learn, this isn’t just lockpicking; it’s lockpicking for the new millennium. Just to prove it, the title screen uses the Star Trek: Next Generation typeface, then mixes it up with an OCR font that hasn’t been modern since the sixth printing of “Future Shock.” It makes you wonder why you want to learn new-millennium lockpicking, given the huge number of locks left over from the previous millennium.

Ah well. Let’s begin. Things learned right away: the part where you put the key is the Keyway. Alarming things learned right away: our narrator can pick a standard lock in about .04 seconds. You pause the disc and call a home security company to set up an appointment to install alarms. They can’t come until Tuesday. This is unacceptable. People could be renting this disk while we speak. You find yourself vaguely irritated with the lock-making industry; these things look ridiculously easy to open.

But you soon realize that this is one of those peculiar instructional DVDs that shows you how to do everything without actually teaching you. It’s like a DVD that teaches you how to marry Pamela Anderson. Now I’m going to compliment her movie career and subtly reveal an intriguing tattoo. My eyebrows indicate a disregard for her hepatitis status, while the shoes demonstrate a large bank account. Note how I move my retinas up and down in a circular motion. You could watch it all you want, but you’re not going to marry Pam Anderson.

Let’s move to handcuffs. Face it; we all want to know how to get out of handcuffs, just in case we’re unjustly arrested or suddenly wake to find we have lived a double life as a Houdini impersonator, and everyone’s waiting for us to get out of the cuffs and escape from the bank vault that’s been dropped in the Hudson river. According to the video, getting out of handcuffs is easier if you have a lock-pick. As the telephone operator says: please make a note of it.

The handcuff segment is followed by a demonstration on how to pick a car door lock, which would seem to have it backwards.

You know what would make a great instructional video? he asked, his mind wandering. How to escape from the electric chair. It would combine lockpicking, martial arts, ninja techniques, wall climbing, everything. That would be awesome. Once your appeals have been exhausted, raise your left hand in a quick motion and drive the shank into the guard’s neck. Firmly grip the electrodes and backflip out of the chair. You should be facing towards the door. Don’t worry if you don’t get it right the first time; this move requires practice!

Anyway. Back to the vid. It should be noted that the visuals consist mostly of a hand jiggling a rake pick in a lock until the lock opens. There’s not the sort of technique we saw in the card manipulation video, and I wonder if people who expected real insider secrets for the new millennium are a bit disappointed; it’s like a video on “How to Fix Your TV” that consists of a guy slamming the top of the set with his palm until the picture stops rolling.

Next: Warded Padlocks. Here Mr. Hands opens a padlock with a strange “warded master key.” It’s the sort of padlock you’d buy to secure your shed or bike or locker. Takes Mr. Hands about six seconds to open the lock, and Mr. Voiceover says “One hundred percent of all warded padlocks can be opened using one of five passkeys, regardless of the make or model.”

That information alone is worth the cost of the rental. No more locks for me. From now on, I will use nothing but dogs glued to my valuables.

Production values: Just what you’d expect, really, although Mr. Hands appears to have bitten his thumbnail to the quick before they shot. Instructional value: I’ve no idea, since I couldn’t follow any of it. But it does demonstrate how any lock can be picked by an expert. If you’re into locks, this will be fascinating, though. And the music is very nice.

Incidentally, you know how some videos you watch show faces and other identifiable body parts?

Not this one.

Grandpa drank Grain Belt. I remember him sitting in the farmhouse kitchen, pulling on a cold can. It’s thirsty work, farming; it’s dusty work, too. After a day on the combine you’re covered with a fine layer of pulverized straw, and if you don’t think a beer is a welcome addition to life at that moment you have no concept of its healing powers. The kids got Shasta, of course. But I was always curious what beer tasted like. Even a six-year old detects the particular satisfaction that crossed an adult’s face when they took a sip of beer; it gave a special pleasure no soda could impart. Eventually you screwed up your courage, and asked: can I taste it?

He leaned over with a grin I would not understand for another thirty years, and said sure. I took a sip from the can. The lip was sharp. The beer was tepid. It tasted like robot urine. I would not drink a beer for eleven years.

In high school the illicit peer-beer was Pabst, and I didn’t like it any more than I’d liked the Grain Belt. In college I worked in a beer hall selling 3.2, a particularly obscene variety of beer that lacked both flavor and purpose. But one day in the summer of 1984 it was humid and hot and I was lonely and underemployed, and a mad daft thought entered my mind: why not a beer. Why not. I went across the street to the convenience store, laid my hands on the cans to see which one was the coldest, sat on the stoop and opened it up. Psssstt. Foam. I drank. Grandpa had been dead eight years, but I thought of him then. Ah. Now I get it.

This led to an interesting journey through the world of beer, and eventually I became something of a beer snob – I’d praise the simple craft-brewed lagers for their naïve presumptions, press thick bitter beers on my friends to educate their palate. Then one day my pants didn’t fit. I went Atkins, cut out the beer, and lost a good deal of weight. Felt great. Had a beer a year later: it was like inhaling a bread smoothie.

I love beer, but I don’t drink it anymore. Still, I remember the days in which I loved it so much I considered brewing my own. Why? Why go to all the bother, when there’s so much incredible beer to be has for a small sum? Well, I could design my own label. That had a certain appeal. But I never did brew my own, because there was something sort of . . . nerdy about it all. For some reason I thought the guys who made their own beer would be like the nerdy bearded fellows who showed up to recreate medieval battles or play Dungeons and Dragons or swap old circuit boards. Unfair, I know. But the minute I saw the name of this disk, that’s the mental picture I had of its host.

Mind you, I haven’t even put it in the DVD player yet, but that’s never stopped me from having a deeply-held opinion.

Well, let’s give it a shot.

Okay. There are two hosts – the Brains of the operation, and Silent Bud, who seems a little self-conscious. He doesn’t say much at first; he just picks up things, then puts them down. It’s shot in someone’s suburban kitchen, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re not a few miles from my own house; I recognize the local brand name on the water they’re using. First we’re making a beer the host describes as having an East Coast flava. Represent! They have at least a dozen ingredients on the table, and they’re ready to make beer. It occurs to me that the one thing you’d want to do after a long day of making beer is have a beer, but you can’t. You have to wait. Or drink something you made before. I suppose it’s worse in the single malt scotch business; the gents get together, make the stuff, then look down at the vat, sigh, and say “well, see you in 12 years, mate.” Then they go have a beer.

I have to admit: I fast-forwarded through the entire thing, because the only thing less interesting than watching two strangers drink beer is watching two strangers drinking beer. I’ll give them huge credit for the old-timey documentary footage they use to set off the chapters; it’s a nice way of setting off the various steps involved in beer-construction. Towards the end they’re stirring the stuff in a plastic bucket you get at Home Depot, which doesn’t realty sum up the romance of the brewer’s art – but I suppose it’s like legislation and sausages. One ought not to see it made. At least we see the beer put into bottles.

Charming moment: one of the host’s kids wanders into the scene and wants attention.

Laconic beer-man moment: they sniff the final product and declare: “Smells like beer.”

It ends with a scratchy old recording of a song called “Hey Joe, Two Beer,” and shows our hosts drinking their product. Neither man falls over and convulses, or goes suddenly blind. It has some great extras, too – public domain industrial films about the glories of beer. The inclusion of these amusing artifacts tells you a good deal about the fellows who made the movie – they’re serious about beer, yes. Serious about good beer. Serious about making good beer.

On the other hand, it’s beer, dude. Did I learn anything? No. Then again, I didn’t want to make beer, so I wouldn’t have watched an instructional film about assembling your own automobile, either. I would just go buy one. If you’re interested in beer-making, you’ll probably find the host’s low-key everyman persona a comfort. I enjoyed the extras more than any other instructional DVD I’ve ever seen, so I’ll give it a big hurrah.

Grandpa might not have liked their beer, though. It looks like that really good stuff. Grandpa, as I said, drank Grain Belt.

The Olympian art of theatrical criticism was changed forever by Pauline Kael, who brought a passionate new style of passionate, subjectivism to the genre. It was changed again by “Ain’t It Cool News” critic Harry Knowles, who matched film geek passion with endless personal detail, and expressed himself with writing so dreadful you suspected he had taped a stick to the side of his head which he used to stab the keyboard at random. In that spirit, I will tell you that I come to this film with a head cold and a faint, annoying oscillating sound in my right ear. I fear the video will be something like “How to Identify Common Infections By Sputem Hue” or something cold-related. I’m not in the mood for that. Well, let’s open the envelope.

See? That’s what Harry would do. He’ll start writing before he even knows what he’s talking about.

Oh my stars. “Tie Dye 202: Making Shapes with Tie Dye.”

I am not found of tie dying, since it has an unbreakable connection with wannabe hippies. Yes, it was popular in the 60s; so was syphilis. Just because people wore it in the 60s does not mean we should wear it today, anymore than kids in the 60s wore raccoon coats and beaded flapper skirts. My child has a few tie-dyed items, though – red white and blue, for that Reagan-on-mescaline look. We made them together at a friend’s house; I learned all about the process. It’s not hard. Doesn’t matter if you screw up, because they all look the same. Well, let’s pop it in and give it a look.

We meet our hosts, and right away the ancient Native American proverb comes to mind: today is a good day to dye.

What is this? Something you’d see at the OB-GYN office on the Predator’s planet?

I’m sure it took a long time to make, but you could say the same thing about a crocheted version of the Brooklyn Bridge. First we learn about Hearts. If you’ve done any tie-dying, you know there’s a good deal of shirt manipulation involved. You have to bunch up the fabric and tie them off. Hence the name. Then you spatter the shirt with paint. The result looks like someone scalped Charles Manson:

And so on. If you’re interested in tie-dying, this will give you ideas, because it’s apparent quite quickly this isn’t rocket science. On the other hand, portions of the video consist – literally – of watching paint dry, so you may want to keep your hand on the FF button.

Oh, this is good: “Stars.” As our host Tom says “Now we’ll learn to fold a five-pointed star, and use it to create some political controversy.” They hold up two patterns: the “Stars and Stripes” and “Diversity Designs.”

Whoa. Can they do that? Are the FBI satellites pointed at my house just because I’m watching this?

You knew this was coming:

Peace signs! The one on the left is the “Rasta Peace,” and the one on the right is “the Protest.”

There’s a few practical tips on preparing and seasoning your creation, then a wrap-up with a plug for “Tie-Dye 303,” where you’ll learn really advanced folding tips. Perhaps there’s a “Tie-Dye 404,” which teaches you how to build your e-commerce shirt store while stoned, so none of the links work.

All in all, simple clear instructions from some nice folks. Can’t ask for more. And honest, too: the soundtrack contains many loops familiar to anyone who’s worked with Apple’s Soundtrack program, and the closing credits consist of one percussion track after the other. I was curious to see if anyone took credit for writing this, but the credits say “music score arranged by Tom Rolofson.” Not written, but arranged. That’s honest. I’ll bet if you overpaid him a quarter on an order from his company, he’d send it back, taped to a piece of cardboard. They seem like that sort of people.

UPDATE: Turns out this is actually a video about Rotarians making clean, picture-free blank T-shirts. I took too much cold medicine, man. I was stone tripping.