Quick Goran references and minor articles

[AzizalSaqr]

From: Film.com http://www.film.com/tv/story/nbcsprmachinehasturnedgreen/13982602/17229551

NBC's PR Machine Has Turned Green
Nov 07, 2007 | Ethan Morris



Last time it was CNN with its Planet in Peril special, a series of reports featuring such stunning revelations as our forests are being cut down and the planet is getting warmer.

Now along comes NBC Universal with Green Week, seven days dedicated to raising awareness about global warming and to encouraging Americans to lead "greener" lives. Among the highlights: the Today Show gang has been bringing us reports from around the planet, and specially green-themed episodes of shows like Days of Our Lives, ER and The Biggest Loser have aired this week.

The network's accompanying website features tips on how to be a good green citizen, messages from NBC stars about saving the planet by using push lawn mowers, and a well-placed ad for Ford's hybrid SUV.

Well this is just what I need. An entire week of TV stars telling me to recycle, drive less, switch to fluorescent bulbs, and blah, blah, blah.

First of all, these are all things we've known we should do for the better part of the last decade.

Second of all, a lot of people are already doing these things. If you live in Seattle, for example, recycling is mandatory. It's the law.

Third of all, I seriously doubt that the biggest stars on NBC's hit shows do all these things. Does Goran Visnjic ride his bike to work? Does Patricia Arquette use her own canvass bag at the grocery store? Does Mariska Hargitay really carry a mug around all day so she won't have to use a paper cup at Starbucks?

I don't know. Maybe they all do. But I doubt it.

* Interesting note: One tip recommends using more natural light to save energy. Notice they don't advise saving energy by watching less television.

Look, I'm not against being environmentally-minded. And I'm certainly not a global warming naysayer. I just don't need NBC and General Electric advising me how to be a good eco-citizen.

GE is the company blamed for dumping more than a million tons of cancer causing PCBs into the Hudson River. GE is the company accused of intentionally leaking radioactive material from the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state. GE is, according to some sources, one of the top air polluters in the country.

And then there's the simple question of how much energy NBC is wasting just to bring us "Green Week." For instance, to kick-off Green Week during the Sunday Night Football game, NBC featured reports from Matt Lauer at the Arctic Circle, Al Roker at the equator, and Ann Curry in Antarctica. One article I easily found calculated that NBC must have produced at least 24.9 tons of carbon dioxide to jet those folks around the globe.

Considering the average person produces 7.5 tons in a year, that's a pretty big carbon footprint in the muck of global warming. Try not to leave any tracks on my carpet, please.

The ugly truth is, it's hip to be green right now. Network execs are simply trying to ride the wave. Even if they have to erase the ozone a little bit to do it.

Ethan Morris: "Not always right, but never in doubt." Go ahead and write me.

[AzizalSaqr]

globeandmail.com

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20071121.wldish21/BNStory/lifeFoodWine/

Yaletown celebrity magnet takes the gold

ALEXANDRA GILL

Globe and Mail Update

November 21, 2007 at 9:19 AM EST

VANCOUVER — Diana Krall is at Cioppino's Mediterranean Grill.

Here comes the sultry chanteuse, gliding back to the private wine room where she, husband Elvis Costello, Sarah McLachlan and several other famous musicians are dining.

Does anyone in the restaurant pay the illustrious party any heed? No, they're too busy gawking at television actor Goran Visnjic. He is sitting at the table behind us, chatting with his companions in Croatian.

This bustling Yaletown trattoria has been a magnet for celebrities since it opened in 1999. To wit: Executive chef and owner Pino Posteraro is the private caterer of choice for Al Pacino whenever the film star is in town; Canucks ace goaltender Roberto Luongo rarely plays a home game without first chowing down on a good-luck bowl of Cioppino's lobster linguine.

Given that the restaurant is already so successful, it's hard to imagine that the chef's first-place finish at the regional round of the Gold Medal Plates competition will make much of a difference. Who needs it?

"The money we raised [for Olympic athletes] was all that really mattered," Mr. Posteraro later explains by phone.

Altruism aside, last week's win must have been somewhat rewarding to a chef who is widely regarded by his peers as one of the best in the country (and has been since he helmed the kitchen at Celestino's in Toronto). So why, until this point, was he always a runner-up in Vancouver's numerous media-juried competitions?

Is there any correlation between that and his long-standing policy of not courting press or using a publicist? Hmm, one does wonder.

Mr. Posteraro clinched a well-deserved gold medal with his porcini mushroom and chestnut soup, a creamy purée emulsified with melting chunks of foie gras butter and topped with truffled brioche croutons. The two-part dish came with a side spoon of sautéed mushrooms nestled under cubes of chilled mushroom jelly.

The chef plans to recreate his winning soup at the national culinary contest's finale, to be held in Toronto in February.

Alas, it isn't on the regular menu.

Our waiter is doubtful when we request it.

"We just ate the last of it before service," he says with a laugh.

We sulk. The waiter confers with the kitchen. Chef appears at our table. Yes, the request is possible. We feel like celebrities.

The specially prepared dish ($12.95), which will be featured in the restaurant as of this week, is rich and satisfying, but not as frothy or deeply textured as the cup I tasted at the competition.

The wow-factor ingredient, foie gras, is missing. Chef reluctantly stopped serving it in the restaurant last summer, citing pressure from customers and animal-rights activists.

Call him a hypocrite, if you will. I, for one, am glad he didn't cave to the gastro-Philistines for the competition.

Our waiter returns to the table with a second helping of bread and says he won't take the bowl away until we sop up every last drop.

"One more swipe," he adds, still refusing to clear our plates after a second pass.

Ha, ha. Where was all that mother-hennish concern when we were struggling with the wine list?

Cioppino's is well known for its huge cellar - which also explains, in part, the restaurant's appeal to celebrities. Where else are they going to find 1962 Dom Pérignon for $2,488 a pop?

The waiter plops a book the size of a small-city phone directory on our table. We eventually decide on a $62 bottle of 2003 Trescone made by Lamborghini, which seems appropriately flash. Still, it would have been nice if we didn't have to beg for assistance.

Cioppino's also has a reputation - undeserved, in my mind - for being outrageously expensive. Sure, many of the main meat and fish courses hover in the $40 range, but the prices are comparable to other upscale restaurants in this high-rent neighbourhood.

And if you order wisely, you can still eat extremely well for less than you would at many of the city's second-tier restaurants.

Who would balk at paying $20 for a huge bowl of fresh pappardelle tossed with tender veal cheeks that have been braised for four hours in a fragrant bath of red wine, marrow-rich veal stock and porcini mushrooms?

The cheeks have a bright, sexy sheen. As with all of the restaurant's braised meats, they have been briefly revitalized in the sous-vide cooker method.

Linguine vongole ($22) is a great example of his Mr. Posteraro's deep respect for simple flavours. The white-wine sauce takes a light vegetable stock, which is less overwhelming than fish stock. The plate is piled high with juicy Manila clams.

Veal medallions al limone ($26) is made with grain-fed eye of round. The calf isn't as melt-in-your-mouth delicious as milk-fed Provimi (blame those bleeding-heart animal activists again). But the chef offers a zesty twist by adding artichokes to the glaze and dusting the plate with coarsely grated pecorino cheese.

The accompanying vegetables, presented in a separate silver dish, are no afterthoughts. Crisp unshelled peas are drizzled in high-quality olive oil. Fork-mashed potatoes are boiled with a bouquet of rosemary, thyme, sage and garlic. Ratatouille - its various components cooked separately before assembly and sweetly spiked with raisins - would impress even Anton Ego.

What the crusty restaurant critic from last summer's hit animated film would have to say about our waiter (a.k.a. the Dictator), we can only imagine.

"I'm not taking that away until you finish everything," he tuts, when we leave a bite of fluffy-light Limoncello cheesecake ($10) uneaten.

Really, we can't.

"Yes, you must."

Isn't the customer always right?

"Who told you that big, fat lie?"

Fortunately, the red Lamborghini has softened me up and I resist the urge to punch him.

Patronizing service aside, Cioppino's is a gold-medal champion in my books. But the real winner, famous or not, is the customer.

Cioppino's Mediterranean Grill: 1133 Hamilton St.; Vancouver
604-688-7466

[Mica]

they're too busy gawking at television actor Goran Visnjic.


who wouldn¡t do it?..

[AzizalSaqr]

A cute Goran encounter...John Oak Dalton Blogspot

http://johnoakdalton.blogspot.com/2007/12/life-in-er.html

Friday, December 07, 2007

Life in the ER

Last night was the ER episode that my wife wandered into on a bus trip to Chicago with my mother and mother-in-law. They turned the wrong way off of the bus and soon were in the midst of a bunch of trailers and tents and all of a sudden there was Goran Visnjic and Maura Tierney having a pretend fight. Since my wife loves Goran Visnjic she described him as dashing and handsome in real life and chatting up the crew and since she suspects I like Maura Tierney she described her as pale and wan and standing off by herself with the hood of her coat pulled around her face to ward off the cold. She has since expressed an interest in the movie DOCTOR SLEEP, an agreeable enough supernatural thriller with the faint whiff of crapola wherein Mr. Visnjic plays a psychologist with the psychic power to invade dreams, the kind of stuff my wife would normally avoid with a passion. If Visnjic gets cast on DOCTOR WHO or the STAR TREK movie this might work to my advantage; otherwise I must monitor this situation closely, and Visnjic's career with deep suspicion.

[MarcySue]

Ok, that one actually made me laugh out loud. I can just picture this couple telling this story at a dinner party.

[debz1616]

hehehehehe that was good..... jeez why can't any of us be that lucky! oh .... if anyone is... we want, no WE DEMAND pictures!!!
debs
xx

[AzizalSaqr]

A follow-up article by John Oak Dalton...

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

From Croatia With Love

Says the Goran Visnjic fan site, about John Oak Dalton's blog, "that one actually made me laugh out loud."

Hey, if you write enough b-movies, you start taking praise where you can get it.

Ever since I posted about my wife stumbling into Goran Visnjic and Maura Tierney in Chicago on a shopping day my site has been getting slammed by hits from Visnijic's fan site, as well as an ER fan site. Fortunately my wife never reads my blog, or she would find out the existence of such places, and she would be gone from me for good, watching THE DEEP END over and over.

She just didn't believe me when I told her I had read in the paper that Visnjic was trying to mend his broken heart--after being dumped by Antonio Banderas--in the arms of George Clooney, himself only recently dumped by Johnny Depp.

You know what would really help me? If Goran Visnjic would play a gay guy in a movie. My wife's burning passion for James Purefoy, featured in HBO's ROME as Mark Anthony--or as my wife called him, Mark Hotony--cooled a bit when I told her he had also played costar Kevin McKidd's boyfriend in BEDROOMS AND HALLWAYS. When it was all burnished helmets and clashing swords that was one thing, but once the other idea was planted it couldn't quite be shook loose.

You know what is really a pretty good movie with Maura Tierney? SCOTLAND, PA.

Everybody has their "free passes" in their marriages, and my wife suspects mine is Maura Tierney. Even though her rather lengthy list is shared openly, long-married dudes know to keep theirs under wraps. I was a bit astounded at another couple we were having dinner with last Friday, who revealed theirs were Harvey Keitel and Jami Gertz. Harvey Keitel! And the husband's choice of Jami Gertz was not only a shade esoteric--I had to hit IMDB to make sure I knew who he was talking about--but potentially dangerous, because there is always a chance that Ms. Gertz might one day pass through Indiana in some sort of traveling dinner show or something, and your free pass has to be somebody completely unreachable by mortal people.

Husbands, if you want to be safe, mention women that are only accessible by time machine--like Linda Stirling in about 1944 (check out PERILS OF THE DARKEST JUNGLE), Suzanne Pleshette in about 1966 (although 1969's IF IT'S TUESDAY, THIS MUST BE BELGIUM got burned into my brain at a young age), Lynda Carter in about 1975 (scratch that, she still looks pretty good, and so does Jaclyn Smith, now that I'm googling names).

In other news, friends in California were facing wildfires, friends in Oklahoma are blacked out and under a sheet of ice, and my brother-in-law in Georgia was within a few short weeks of being COMPLETELY OUT OF WATER because of the draught. There are worse places to live than Indiana, methinks.

Give me a shout at johnoakdalton@hotmail.com.

Posted by John Oak Dalton at 7:27 PM


http://johnoakdalton.blogspot.com/2007/12/from-croatia-with-love.html

[Mica]

You know what would really help me? If Goran Visnjic would play a gay guy in a movie.

hahahahaha that's very funny..keep dreaming John..

[MarcySue]

John, you seriously need to give your wife our URL. She belongs with us. We can refer you to the same support group that all of our husbands/boyfriends attend to help you cope.

[debz1616]

hang on, didn't he play a gay guy in The deep end?
debs
x

[AzizalSaqr]

It was never outwardly stated that Alek was gay, but, the implication could be made if you looked at the various scenes between him and Nagle. Of course, you could also look at it as if Nagle had some deeper hold over Alek and whatever that was, it kept him bound to Nagle and forced him to remain submissive to the man, doing his bidding on various levels regardless of whether he wanted to or not. I think in looking at the character in that way it made him much more complex and thus much more intriguing.

[AzizalSaqr]

From: http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/12/assignment_feed_jonathan_golobs_embryoni

Public Intern Assignment: Feed Jonathan Golob’s Embryonic Stem Cells

Posted by Public Intern on December 18 at 13:00 PM

This past week, I received an email from a man named Jonathan Golob.

Public Intern-
Feed my embryonic stem cells. I’ll show you how and promise only a slight risk of permanent genomic modification.

- Jonathan Golob

aka Dear Science

I drove downtown to visit Jonathan at the UW Medical Center in South Lake Union. The building looked like something out of a science fiction movie. Big sheets of tinted glass shot up into the sky at odd angles and I saw a sign for Vulcan chained to a fence.

Jonathan let me into the building. In the lobby hung shadowy pictures of animals (post genetic modification?). Jonathan and I took the elevator up to his lab space. Before I could see the live cells, I would have to scrub my hands and arms with soapy water. I turned on the faucet and brown rusty water exploded out of the pipes and onto my shirt. We waited a moment until the water was clean, and then scrubbed our hands and arms the way real doctors do. I pretended I was Goran Visnjic and told John he could be Maura Tierney… the dumpy depressed daughter of Sally Field on ER.

Next, I put on rubber gloves and Jonathan led me into the room with the live cells. He asked me for the second time if I had a suppressed immune system, because the cells we were about to handle had genes that were added using a dormant HIV virus. Jonathan and his colleagues had taken out the proteins that make HIV so deadly and implanted healthy proteins into the virus instead. It was “probably safe,” to handle them, “But, if you had a surpressed immune system you could possibly be affected if you touched the cells with your bare hands,” he said.

Jonathan opened up a large incubator, and took out a tray of yellow petri dishes. He explained to me that the cells were stuck to the bottom of each petri dish, and the water had turned from pink to yellow as the cells had sucked up all the nutrients.

These cells were important. Eventually, Golob and his research associates wanted to implant the cells into human hearts to help them heal after a heart attack.

I watched as Jonathan removed a sterile plastic tube and hooked it up to a vacuum. Jonathan used the tube to suck up all of the waste water out of the petri dishes. He took out another tube and stuck it into a vial filled with purple liquid, which contained nutrient water colored by beets. When the cells sucked up all the nutrients out of the water, the beet juice turned yellow. Using a hand-held vacuum, Jonathan sucked 48ml of purple nutrient water out of the vial and then dropped a few ml of the nutrient water into each petri dish.

During the entire procedure, Jonathan had to carefully balance his hands and arms so that no body part touched the inside of his labarotory station. He explained to me that each station had a fan which circulated air into a vent above to ensure that no bacteria could hang around for very long. All of the tubes had to be opened in the labaratory station so they would remain sterile, and the tips of the tubes could not come within a foot of a human limb, lest the cells die after contact with our own bacteria. Jonathan hovered his forearms through a slit in the glass that enclosed his entire station.

After he was done, Jonathan asked if I wanted a chance to feed the cells. Then, as if he had just realized how much scientific damage I could potentially cause, Jonathan reminded me if I accidentally sucked up the cells instead of the waste water, or touched the tip of the tube to my skin before dropping the liquid in the petrie dishes, I could ruin hundreds of dollars worth of cells.

I lifted a sterile tube out of a plastic container sitting to my right and began to unwrap it. “Oops, you can’t just do that,” Jonathan said. “You have to open the tube in the glass enclosure. You can just throw that one out.”



The next tube I opened the right way, and I sucked up all the waste water and fed the cells the purple water. Easy. Jonathan praised my forearm strength.

Jonathan encouraged me to take the SLUT to Westlake Center, just to check it out, but it took forever to arrive. It was raining. I gave up and went home.

Steven Blum
Public Intern

[debz1616]

Dumpy!

debs
x

[Mica]

ey guys, i found this interview, i know is old, but Goran is mention there, I really don't understand that language, maybe there's something interesting


(I have moved this interview link to the discussion thread on the Paternity Suit as the references made in the article pertain to that..../JD)

[AzizalSaqr]

From tampabay.com : http://www.sptimes.com/2008/01/03/Tv/Who_needs_writers_Cho.shtml

Who needs writers? Choose your own TV show ending
By Times Staff Writers
Published January 3, 2008

While the writers and producers slug it out in Hollywood, TV fans are stuck in the middle. The middle of the couch, that is, with nothing to watch but repeats, reality TV and replacement series. Since the writers aren't working on the endings to some series -- or the beginnings to others -- we decided to step in. Here are our suggestions for where some shows might go.

24

1. To accommodate star Kiefer Sutherland's 48-day drunken driving sentence, producers set the season in Glendale City Jail, from which Jack Bauer must escape, Prison Break-style, to stop a nuclear attack. The surprise, ripped-from-the-headlines ending: After torturing the secretary of state for two days, Jack learns the president was wrong about the terrorists' nuclear capability.

2. Jack Bauer vows to stay out of the war on terrorism and spend more time with his nephew. He takes a job as a mall security guard and foils a heist at the Orange Julius. He quits when he realizes he's not allowed to torture the skater punk he has been interrogating. Stuff blows up.

3. Jack's "nephew" Josh (you know it's his son) needs all sorts of rescuing, just like Jack's daughter, Kim. He's abducted by Russian terrorists. He's abducted by Mexican terrorists. He's abducted by alien terrorists. And then there's the part where he gets lost in the mountains and is stalked by a cougar.

Grey's Anatomy


1. Izzy discloses her affair with George was a ploy to gain Callie's love. Fed up with Meredith's refusal to commit, McDreamy enters the priesthood. The chief really does resign, buying an Airstream franchise. Yang realizes her ambition has blinded her and leaves medicine to operate a deli, only to become known as the Seattle Soup Nazi.

2. Seattle Grace tries to combat in-hospital fornication by installing glass elevators and cameras in the on-call room. It doesn't help. The hospital also pays for Mark Sloan to have a vasectomy. Meredith and McDreamy are on again, then off again, then on again, then off again, then on again, then off again, then on again, then off again.

3. Meredith dies horribly and the show is renamed Yang's Anatomy.

The Office


1. To placate his girlfriend, fired Dunder-Mifflin executive Jan Levinson, Michael Scott sues the company for treating him differently from other employees. Informed that a higher salary, better parking space and receptionist don't constitute discrimination, Michael breaks down during the deposition, admitting he expected to get fired years ago.

2. Dwight tries to win back Angela by taking Sprinkles' corpse to a taxidermist. It works. Andy, heartbroken, embarks on a career as a barbershop quartet singer.

3. Michael and Jan return to Jamaica to rekindle their romance. This time, instead of e-mailing topless photos of Jan to everyone in the company, Michael sends photos of both of them on a nude beach, reasoning that this will quell complaints of sexism. Pam helps Jim make the world's largest Jell-O mold. The IRS arrests Angela for tax evasion. Andy serenades her with Jailhouse Rock.

House


1. House collapses and becomes the patient. To ensure he gets the best care he pits new team against old team. Rather than compete, they take advantage of the opportunity to run scads of unnecessary medical tests and administer wrong treatments based on guesses. Turns out House's abuse of Vicodin has been masking a serious medical condition that no one suspects: He's actually British.

2. Cameron and Thirteen end up in a wrestling match over House, sending scrubs flying. To win the fight, Thirteen breaks down in tears and reveals that she is Cameron's long-lost cousin put up for adoption, and she wanted the job to be closer to her family. House still doesn't feel anything, but offers to sleep with her anyway.

3. Trying to land on a show someone is watching, ER hunk Goran Visnjic appears as the new doctor at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, becoming Dr. Cuddy's own McDreamy. This so distracts House that he actually kills the desperately ill patient he was torturing with needless tests, drawing the attention of authorities. After a short investigation, all the doctors except House's mournful pal Wilson lose their medical licenses for all the crazy stunts they've pulled the past three years.

Ugly Betty

1. Unable to stomach another insult from Wilhelmina, Betty Suarez turns to Project Runway's Tim Gunn to update her look -- ditching the glasses and braces for lasik and Crest Whitestrips. Asked to choose between suave boss Daniel and geeky boyfriend Henry Grubstick, she takes up with transsexual Alexis Meade -- saying that she is the only one who understands her total transformation. Wilhelmina's frozen embryo wilts away, but she persuades Mark to impregnate her so she can pass off the child as Bradford's. Justin becomes a top child actor, but still asks that his mother do his hair, which makes Hilde popular among the Hollywood-in-New York crowd.

2. Betty gets Jack Bauer's help to off Wilhelmina.

3. Amanda discovers she's Danny DeVito's love child. Wilhelmina gives birth to a daughter with Spanish features who loves enchiladas. Bradford Meade returns from the dead as Brangelina Meade, the long-lost uncle/aunt to Alexis and Daniel. Brangelina promotes Mark to editor of the magazine and Betty becomes his assistant.

Lost

1. The smoke monster turns out to be Dick Cheney and the island was his secret, undisclosed location. Who knew?


2. Michael comes back with a speed boat and offers to take Sawyer waterskiing, where he jumps over a shark. Wait, maybe this show jumped the shark last season?

3. Just when things start to make sense, Jack gets knocked unconscious by the smoke monster and wakes up in bed with Suzanne Pleshette.