Don’t Click Under any Circumstances

This week I have been a near victim of two attempts at identity theft and I want to remind all of you that you should never, click on any email that comes from a major company, no matter how authentic it may look.

Here are the basic tips that are worth repeating:
1. The Phishers are getting really good at making you think they are the real deal, but don’t trust anyone. If you are someone like myself, you can spot these forgeries by the obviously incorrect email address, but generally speaking I still won’t click. Common forged emails look like they come from PayPal, Amazon, and many banks. If you are ever unclear, just log-in to the site without using the email links. If these businesses are really looking for you, it will be in your account information.

2. MySpace is not YourSpace. Don’t click on inline images or videos in your MySpace comments posts.
This one was a new one for me since I am a MySpace newbie. This week an actual real MySpace friend of mine was Phished for her MySpace password and left what looked like a porn video on all her friends comment areas. It was actually a small jpeg of a video screen-shot showing a scantily clad, doe-eyed babe, lunging at the screen. (I know…)

Normally I wouldn’t click on this but since the comment looked like it came from a film-maker friend of mine with a healthy sense of humor I suspected it was something funny. Well, after clicking, I was asked to log-in to MySpace. I never even bothered to check the URL since I assumed I was on MySpace. This was just a clever way of gathering MySpace log-ins, as we found out later when my friend was notified by her 14 year old niece that she was getting slammed with porn postings. (It’s good to have 14-year old friends nowadays.)

Fortunately, I was able to change all account settings before any of my friends were porn-ified, or worse.

Be vigilant people the web is full of trash. Be careful of your surroundings, change passwords regulary, report suspicious behavior and when in doubt, Don’t click!

Blogotheque - Music Videos from France

I still can’t get over how great this site is. Music videos shot in one take with handheld cameras. The scenes are impromptu and unexpected, and these musicians can really sing. No engineering required just damn good music and beautiful visuals. It feels good to be human sometimes.

These are the “take-away-shows” from Blogotheque.

Hand-picked for you on Small Screen TV

Hitchcock on Editing

Alfred Hitchcock has always been very entertaining and influential. Here is a snippet of basic advise from him on editing.

Hand-picked for you on Small Screen TV

Alan Watts Animations

Trey Parker and Matt Stone have produced these wonderful animated movies using excerpts from the lectures of Zen guru Alan Watts.

Hand-picked for you on Small Screen TV

Millie Lammoreaux Dinner Party

One regular feature of magdaZINE has always been the “magdaLICIOUS” section where I experiment with recipes made from canned ingredients. I also started a segment called “Dinner and a Movie” that dovetailed into this series shortly before the original site closed in 2005. Here is the first dinner taken from “3 Women” directed by Robert Altman.

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The Movie: 3 Women
The Principal Actors: Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Janet Rule
Written, Directed, and Produced by: Robert Altman
Released in 1977

3 Women is my favorite Robert Altman film and one of my top ten favorite movies of all time. It is one of those rare films that can truly be called “art,” because there are no words to describe how perfect it is. The ambiguity speaks to the viewer in volumes that can only be perceived through images, emotions, and that intangible something our little brains have no way to process into language. Don’t try to define it, just bask in its beauty.

The character of Millie played masterfully by Shelley Duvall is the cornerstone around which the movie revolves. The DVD release of the film has an excellent commentary by Altman in which he reveals that Duvall was actually responsible for defining Millie through her obsession with menus and recipes clipped from McCall’s magazine among other things. I am amazed she didn’t receive a writing credit for this and other key contributions that she made to the film. Altman also added that she actually went to the store and did the shopping for the dinner scene. You gotta love that.

Anyway, what follows is the menu for one of Millie’s “famous dinner parties.” I have tried to duplicate all the ingredients as they were in the film and actually taste tested all of them in the magdaLICIOUS test kitchen. Low-Carb Dieters be damned! Bon Appétit!

The Millie Lammoreaux Dinner Party

Menu:
Pigs in a Blanket
Pringles
“Cheez Whiz” on Nabisco Sociables with Olive on top
Chocolate Pudding Tarts
Pre-made Shrimp Cocktails

Wine: Tickled Pink (Some type of Rosé ??)
Lemon Satin (Some type of Chardonnay ??)
Serve in Florentine Wine Goblets

Pigs In A Blanket
1 package of weiners
1 tube of Pillsbury Crescent Dough
1 can of Spreadable “Cheese” product

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Make a slice down the middle of each weiner. Blast them in the microwave for 30 seconds to allow the slice to flare open up a bit. Spread a thin line of “cheese” product into the opening. Be careful. Too much “cheese” product will bubble over in the oven. Wrap one triangle of crescent dough around each weiner. Place them on a cookie sheet and bake in the oven until the dough browns.

These actually tasted pretty good. The balance of bread, to weiner, to “cheese” product works really well. Aesthetically I had problems with it, but I managed to get over that after a few bites. This must be what astronauts go through when sipping their meals from a straw. I had expected the “cheese” product to do weird things in the oven, but it remarkably held its shape and puffed up nicely.

By the way, the “cheese” product is found in the snack isle and does not require refrigeration. Scary!

Chocolate Pudding Tarts
Frozen Puff Pastry Shells
Pre-made Chocolate pudding (or make 1 package of instant pudding mix.)
1 Can of Whipped Topping

Bake the puff pastry shells as directed and let cool. Add pudding to each shell. Spray each pudding filled shell with a mound of whipped topping. (See movie still above.) Make sure to get the whipped topping and not the whipped cream. Stay true to the movie. Keep it “unreal.”

Pre-made Shrimp Cocktail
1 pre-made shrimp cocktail from the supermarket deli

I had a difficult time finding the exact brand used in the movie, although I do remember those as a child. I ended up with one made by Laseeo that I found just above the weiner section. Funny thing is, I also had the same problem opening the jar as Pinky does in the movie, so be careful. It spills easily after you pop the top off. This shrimp cocktail is so bad, I can’t imagine that there is actually a business selling these things. It tasted like baby shrimps slathered in ketchup except a lot saltier. I ate the whole thing, though. Man, the things I do to generate content for this site. Who eats these things?

Cheez Whiz appetizers
1 can of Spreadable “Cheese” product
Green Olives
Nabisco Sociables or similar circular shaped cracker.

I could not for the life of me find Nabisco Sociables. I used a plain water cracker instead. In the film, Pinky has some difficulty pressing the cheese product out in an aesthetically pleasing fashion and needs to use her finger to help arrange it. I had the same problem. Maybe I just have weak wrists. Millie also tells Pinky to use only the whole green olives and not the pieces. Good advice. It tastes OK, but after awhile I think you need to detox from this cheese product stuff.

Pringles
1 can of Original Flavored Pringles

I was surprised that Pringles were still around. I actually remember when these first debuted on the culinary scene back in the ’70s. It was miraculous! Much to my dismay, the Pringles franchise has branched out into flavors, “low-fat” (yeah right,) and little snack-packs. The original flavor now sports a bilingual english and spanish label. “Ay dios mio!” I guess it’s the sign of the times.

jesus + magdalene

This was one of the first “multimedia” experiences I created for the web. Check out those state of the art animated gifs. This was actually adapted from a little mail art book I created in the early ’90s. If I ever find it I’ll post it, but for now here is a story inspired by an actual childhood incident.

Republished “as-is” from magdaZINE Vol. 1.6, 1995. No regrets.

Blue Cosmic Monkey

OK, so maybe this took a little more than a weekend, but I needed to perfect the cocktail recipes…

One thing I really enjoy is taking two subjects and combining them to create a new project. One day I was doing a little bit of research on the Mayan Calendar, the thirteen moon/month system that includes unique “seals” for each day of the year. I came across the Planet Art website which includes the ability to find out what your seal is by submitting your date of birth. My birthday is “kin 91: Blue Cosmic Monkey.“

Of course my first thought was, “That sounds like a great name for a delicious cocktail!” And this is how I came up with the idea for the Blue Cosmic Monkey Cocktail Book. It is comprised of 13 tequila based cocktails concocted by me and tested under the highest and most grueling standards. In other words, if like it, it must be good.

I published it in comic book format through Ka-blam. This is a terrific and low-cost method of self-publishing comics. They do a great job and the quality is outstanding for on-demand printing.

I still have a few copies left. You can buy them at the Blue Cosmic Monkey website.

Wear Spanish

This project was inspired by a t-shirt that I saw last year that had nine objects with Japanese words for those objects printed below each image. I thought it this was a great way to learn a new language, but didn’t quite help with sentence structure, so I decided to take it to the next level.

Now, one of the funny things about me is that I grew up in a household where Spanish was the second language but I never actually learned to speak it fluently. The weird thing is that I understand it if I hear it or read it. The human brain can be funny that way.

Anyway, I decided to do a tongue-in-cheek-web-t-shirt-mash-up to teach some Spanish fundamentals. The result is Wear Spanish, a site that includes animated tutorials on how to use a t-shirt printed with a dozen objects and spanish words.

These t-shirts are available through Printfection. Try one, buy one, learn Spanish!

Dumb Grapes

Last summer, I had the great pleasure of attending the Graphic Novel Intensive at Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA.) Scott McCloud was teaching the last course in the weeklong series and ran us though a couple of 20 minute drills in comics creation. Read more

Welcome! It’s been a long, long, time…

Welcome to magdaZINE.
After a 2 year hiatus, the site is back up and bigger than ever. Read more