On Under Pressure and Preeclampsia

As some of you might know (which by definition means some of you might not), I'm spending part of my summer working with Dr. Kristine Weatherston, a media professor at Temple University, on a documentary called Under Pressure: The Hidden Story of Pregnancy and Preeclampsia. It's cool and good and you should help us out by donating to the documentary.

Wait, hold on. Sorry - I forgot I'm supposed to, like, tell you about it. Hm. Okay.

Preeclampsia is a hypertensive disorder of pregnancy that affects 5 to 8 percent of pregnant women.. In general, the illness strikes before the baby is delivered/born, but in some instances, it can crop up post-partim, or the symptoms can linger after the baby is born. . It's terrible and life-threatening, and there's no known cure. 

The only known way to "cure" preeclampsia is to deliver the baby, either naturally or by C-section. And even after the birth, preeclampsia can have lasting long-term effects on a woman's health. This isn't to say anything for the emotional and psychological suffering brought onto both the woman and her family from battling the illness, as well as leaving the premature baby in the NICU for the first weeks of its life.

The trick with preeclampsia (and its more serious variant HELLP syndrome) is that many of its symptoms - high blood pressure, swollen feet and legs, headaches, "floaters" in the woman's vision - are also symptoms of pregnancy in general. So in a lot of cases, doctors have a hard time diagnosing it, and women and their families don't even know the illness exists or that they are at risk of suffering it.

That's where Under Pressure comes in. Dr. Weatherston - a preeclampsia survivor herself - stared interviewing other women who survived preeclampsia and HELLP. Some of them came out of their fight with a happy, healthy child. Some, tragically, did not. But all of their stories - plus conversations with doctors from the Magee-Womens hospital in Pittsburgh who study preeclampsia - bring up a similar central point: there's not enough awareness about preeclampsia, and not enough knowledge about it. I've spent this summer transcribing about 9-10 hours of those interviews myself, as have three other students working on the documentary.

Dr. Weatherston - plus co-director Tammy Slaughter and co-producer Thea Chaloner - started Under Pressure with the goal of creating that additional awareness. The finished documentary will be donated to women's health centers for educational purposes, and entered into some film festivals.

The goal of Under Pressure isn't to make a ton of money; it's to make women and families (and even doctors!) more educated about hypertensive disorders of pregnancy. It's to give voice to the women who suffered and still carry harrowing memories - and to their spouses, who struggled trying to care for their wives while caring for their newborn child.

So to help with production costs, travel costs, and the eventual cost of distributing the completed film, we started an Indiegogo campaign a few weeks ago with the goal to offset some of those expenses. So far, we're doing great, but we're on the final push to raise funds before the conclusion of the fundraiser tonight at midnight.

There are some cool perks for donating to the documentary, including credits in the film itself, signed copies of the DVD, and more. But more than anything, your donation helps a great project created in the name of a great cause.

You can find the Indiegogo page here  - http://igg.me/at/underpressure/x/14262212. 

The page has more info on the documentary, a promotional video clip from the film, and a list of possible perks. It also has links to the documentary's website, Facebook, and Twitter account if you're interested in following the project further. Even if you can't make a financial donation, it'd be an enormous help if you could share the documentary - and the campaign - with your friends and family.

Thanks to everyone who donated already, and to all of you for reading. The dumb jokes and half-baked life commentary will be back soon.

On the Passion, Which Was A Thing?

Yeah yeah, I know, I've been bad about blogging. That isn't the point. Here's the point: how in the name of all that is good and just in this world did I not know about The Passion?

Seriously? Tyler Perry did a whole musical...thing about the Passion of Jesus Christ featuring modern renditions of pop songs pieced together to fit into the storyline of Jesus' final days, with Chris Daughtry as Judas belting out an Evanescence cover and friggin' Seal as Pontious Pilate...and I didn't know at all?

Did I miss a whole section of the Internet focused on this? Is it because I haven't had the regular Fox broadcasting network on since football season ended? There is SO MUCH fertile ground for just joyous, merciless ridicule (or not! But probably yes), surely social media would be abuzz. And yet, I was completely in the dark.

They did "With Arms Wide Open!" And a woman in the crowd was singing along! Are you kidding me? (Also, there was a crowd? Which was confusing because many of the musical performances were supposedly on video, but there was a march through New Orleans and...God, it's so confusing)

I'm so hurt, guys. This could've gotten me 5,000 blog posts, a Masters thesis and a book. This better be on On Demand.

Oh, and happy Palm Sunday too or something.

On Chicken Sandwich with Vodka Sauce

Welcome back to another edition of Cookin' with Kaz, where we take things that are easy to make and explain them to you like you're a fourth grader. The weekend is here, and chances are you'll want to spend part of this time enjoying a delicious sammich. Instead of toasting up whatever salted meats and cheeses still populate your refrigerator, consider this classier alternative.

What You Need:

Chicken breasts or chicken thighs, depending on preference

Spinach

Vodka sauce

Sandwich thins (or rolls of your choice)

Seasoning for chicken (I like Emeril’s Essence for this one – you can buy it or make it yourself, or just use whatever seasoning(s) you prefer)

Olive oil or vegetable cooking spray

Butter

“I’m Feeling A Little Fancy” Brine:

½ gallon warm water

½ cup kosher salt, or about 1/4-2/3 cup sea salt

¼ cup white sugar

¼ cup brown sugar

½ cup soy sauce

2 tablespoons olive oil

Take your chicken of choice and cut them up into appropriately-sized portions for the sandwich rolls you’ve chosen. For the sake of proper cooking and preventing a gigantic mess, the chicken probably should be just about as thick as your hand laying flat.

***If you’re feeling a little fancy, this would be a good time to make the appropriately-named brine above. If you don’t care about the brine, skip down two paragraphs***

Make sure the water is warm at first so it dissolves all the stuff you’re putting into it. I like making the brine in a big ‘ol bowl, but mixing it up in a big Ziploc bag works too if you’re careful/prepare for potential leakage.

Afterwards, toss your chicken in the brine, cover the bowl/zip up the bag, and put it in your fridge for anywhere between three and 12 hours, depending on how much chicken you’ve put in there. (Obviously, if you’re making a ton of chicken, you’ll want to bump up the amount of brine you’re making) Don’t leave the chicken brining for more than a day or so, or your chicken will start to becoming really stiff from the salt and sugar. Remove from the brine once you’re ready to make sammiches and dump the brine.

Once your chicken is cut up and/or done brining, season it how you prefer. If you want to use a hammer or mallet beat your chickens into submission and make sure they’re uniform or whatever, go for it.

Now, it's time to start cooking. I use a George Foreman grill to cook the chicken for about 10-12 mintues, but you can bake it in the oven, sauté it with some veggies and olive oil in a saucepan, or deep fry it in bacon grease if you prefer. The world is your oyster, er, chicken.

While the chicken is cooking, take a few tablespoons of vodka sauce and start it on medium low/low heat in a small saucepan. I would skew low for the exact amount of sauce; you only need about 1-2 tablespoons per sandwich, or it’ll get sloppy in a hurry. Also, don’t be an idiot like me and put the heat up too high on the creamy vodka sauce, or it’ll be all gross and curdled and stuff. If you want to avoid all the touchiness, you can also just use Ragu or some homemade pasta sauce you like – I just like vodka sauce because it adds a certain fanciness to a meal that is essentially a grilled chicken sandwich.

Now, get a saucepan out and heat up a tablespoon or two of olive oil over medium-low heat, or spray the pan with cooking spray. Once it’s been heating for a minute or two, take a fistful of spinach per sandwich and throw it on the pan, stirring it up occasionally. If you like putting garlic or onions with your spinach sauté, go for it, but I find there’s usually enough flavor going on in the sandwich already to where adding more with the spinach isn’t necessary.

Lastly, if you want to toast your sammich buns, you can start that now. Once it’s sufficiently warm, butter them up and let it melt into the buns. If you don’t care about toasting it, you can butter the plain bun and just kind of let it sit there for a bit. (This can also work well as a sub/hoagie if you prefer)

The spinach should cook quickly, and the vodka sauce won’t take long to get warm (without burning it!). Once the chicken is done, place it on the sammich, drizzle the vodka sauce over it, and put the spinach on top. Eat it with chips or whatever and class up your weekend sammich.

On Tonight's Republican Debate

I should've just watched the Flyers game.

Hm? What?

....

By how much?

*starts drinking*

On Desert Island Albums, Pt. 3

If you were forced to live on a desert island with only a record/CD player, what albums would you take with you? I've played this game a hundred times, both online and IRL. I think I have my list pretty well figured out at this point, but since we've got a whole year together on this here blog, I figure this will give me a little more space to explain my picks.


It sure sounds like the Foo Fighters are going away for a while. Dave Grohl has hinted at this already, but anytime you post something like this on Facebook...

Official band announcement tomorrow night. Stay tuned.
Posted by Foo Fighters on Tuesday, March 1, 2016

...you're going to send people in an awful tizzy. (As of the start of this writing, that official announcement has yet to be made. Maybe they're waiting until 11:59, or maybe it's the West Coast thing, or maybe they're still figuring out what to announce. "It is with heavy hearts that we say goodbye...to BORING BAGELS, thanks to our brand-new 'Pat Schmear Bagel Spreads!' Ready to ROCK your breakfast, now in the band store...")

If the Foos do take a couple years off, it wouldn't be the first time; after touring for Echoes, Silence, Patience, and Grace and releasing a greatest hits compilation, the band announced an "indefinite hiatus" in 2009. Grohl banged around in Them Crooked Vultures, drummer Taylor Hawkins started Taylor Hawkins and the Coattail Riders, and the rest of the guys did...well, whatever it is they did. But the quintet was right back at it in 2011 with Wasting Light, my favorite Foo Fighters album.

Yes, The Colour and the Shape is their classic with three of their seminal tunes. Yes, their eponymous debut is the purist's choice. No, there probably isn't one individual track on Wasting Light that I'd put in the top 5 Foo Fighters songs of all time. So overall, this doesn't sound like a good pick by me. I know.

But dammit, I just like this album a lot. Front to back, there isn't a single bad song on it. It grabs hold with "Bridges Burning" and "Rope" and doesn't let you go from the wild ride until "I Should Have Known" and "Walk" finally release you. It's the best rock album the band has made, bar none.

Every song is Foo Fighters to the core, but with individual flashes and flares of other bands and styles. Fresh off his side project with old pal Josh Homme, Grohl howls through "White Limo" like Nick Oliveri used to in early Queens of the Stone Age days. The verses in "Dear Rosemary" dance/shuffle along like Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. There's even something Beatles-esque about the melancholy "I Should Have Known."

And yet, "Walk" and "These Days" are quintessential Foo Fighters tunes - they could have written them in their sleep, and yet they're so damn good, the perfect combination of . The album was supposedly recorded in Grohl's garage, but Dave Grohl's garage is not like my garage or your garage. It's the Taj Mahal of rock garages. The album is well-produced, with guitars buzzing and shimmering when needed, and the whole effort has that professional snap you get after nearly 20 years of playing together.

If this next Foo Fighters hiatus yields anything close to what Wasting Light did, then dammit, bring on a hiatus.

(UPDATE: By the conclusion of this writing, the "official announcement" came out, and...well, alright, good show, guys)

On the Libertarian Party

On Saturday, the Libertarian Party held its first debate in Biloxi, MS. Sometime in March, the party will hold a second debate on John Stossel's Fox Business show. If you care about the state of politics in the present-day United States, you should watch this debate, and you should also consider voting for the Libertarian Party candidate in November.

Libertarianism has had a minor revival in the United States n the past decade-plus, due in large part to the popularity of movement godfather/missing Keebler elf Ron Paul. Basic libertarian philosophy calls for small government in nearly all respects; this includes socially liberal areas like women's reproductive rights and the drug war, and fiscally conservative areas like corporate regulation and (most) welfare programs.

Libertarianism can seem idealistic, refreshing, cold-hearted or completely logical depending on which cable news talking head is yammering on at the time. And yet, I will reiterate: if you care about the state of politics in the U.S., you should pay attention to their debate and consider voting for the Libertarian candidate in November.

Why throw away your vote, you ask? Why cast a ballot for Gary Johnson or Austin Petersen or John McAfee (yes, that John McAfee) when they haven't got a shot of winning? Why go third-party when we all know Ross Perot is not walking through that door?

I'll tell you why. Have you seen this shit? I mean, Jesus, guys. We're trying to pick someone to lead the country for the next four years, in what I hear will be the most important election ever for the 10th straight election cycle, and this is the best we can do? A slap fight between the three GOP frontrunners over who's a bigger liar, and a quite Republican argument between the two Democratic nominees over who's more progressive?

As of press time here on Super Tuesday 50 (Coldplay is coming on in a few minutes), Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio's jingoistic campaigns are being curb-stomped by a man who might redefine the term "xenophobia," at least to the extent that Donald Trump holds actual consistent worldviews, which he doesn't. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders' Doc Brown hair and inability to grasp how economics works have fallen under the wheels of HilRod's Train of Inevitability, which has somehow blown past her hawkish tendencies, cozy relationship with big banks and a trail of scandals.

In all likelihood, a career politician with a chameleon-like ability to change policy positions that Mitt Romney and John Kerry would be proud of will square off against a cartoon rich person come to life who can't really be accused of flip-flopping on any positions since the only position he seems to have taken is "Duh, winning." It is literally my worst nightmare, my least favorite candidate from each side taking a vast majority of the polls. And I know I'm not alone in thinking this.

You know what happened during the first Libertarian debate? Of course you don't. It was streamed online and the video/sound quality was, um, passable. I missed it too, only watching it on replay tonight. But it was such a wonderful change of pace from the ad hominem attacks that make up the bulk of Republican debates, and even some of the Democratic ones. Sure, there was some stumping, and Gary Johnson, the 2012 party nominee, even broke out one of Trump's favorite words to describe the Donald himself. But there were also policy discussions! Legitimate debates over the future of cyber-security and Sharia law, and none interrupted by a game-show bell or name-calling or a roar from the crowd every 15 seconds.

Yes, libertarianism is the movement favored by the Koch brothers, but despite their ties with the party, they're much more focused on trying to influence major-party candidates like Rubio and Rand Paul. And sure, the libertarian party didn't show up on two states' ballots in 2012, but that was a hell of a lot better than the Green Party or any other third party - including the one that had Rosanne Barr on its ticket, really. (I will also say that, while Johnson's recent about-face on burqas is very stark, his explanation involved a good deal more thought than most other politicians would have given)

I repeat: if you're concerned with the way political discussion has devolved in the modern United States, you owe it to yourself to watch the next Libertarian debate. Maybe you won't agree with the positions the candidates take, or maybe you will. But it won't devolve into the playground chaos that the two major parties usually do, and even if I didn't consider myself a (mostly) libertarian, I'd rather "throw away" my vote than continue to validate that. Maybe you will too.

On Spotlight and Journo Twitter

The Academy Awards are over, and amidst all the social commentary and the good Chris Rock jokes and the director who actually managed to talk the music down when they tried to chase him off (because his comments had drifted towards humanitarian remarks), some awards were given out.

A couple of those awards, including Best Picture, went to Spotlight, a film dramatizing the Boston Globe's investigation of Catholic priests in Boston suspected of sexually assaulting boys, which began to blow the top off a more widespread theme of corruption and sodomy throughout the Church. Candidly, like most of the films nominated for awards this year (or to be honest, most films period), I didn't see it, but I will assume by the near-universal acclaim it garnered that it was, in fact, a very good movie.

But there was another group who rode a wave of pride spurred by Spotlight's win. It's something I should have seen coming, and yet I only realized what was about to happen when I read this first retweet from a local sports journalist I follow.

Recommendations: if you enjoyed Spotlight, you might also enjoy subscribing to a God damn newspaper.#Oscars

— Tabatha Southey (@TabathaSouthey) February 29, 2016

The journos were coming.

Yes, Journo Twitter had arrived. Much like a pleasant happy-hour establishment that turns into an unpleasantly kinky pseudo-strip club at night (I watched too much Taffer again yesterday), journalists that generally use Twitter for fun or informative purposes turned into platitude-spouting company men/women after Spotlight took home its first award of the evening. And it continued.

You should see Spotlight,
and then buy a newspaper,
you ungrateful fools.#oscars #JournalismMatters

— Sara Cress (@saracress) February 29, 2016

I picked a great day to re-watch Spotlight. Now go buy a newspaper!

— Meghan Hurley (@meghan_hurley) February 29, 2016

After years of being beaten down by shrinking budgets and news aggregators that dwarf traditional newspapers in revenue (despite the fact of that most of those sites would be quite screwed if traditional journalism vanished), the old guard of print journalism was ready to hold up Spotlight the way most normal people act when they get on the local news or see their name in the local paper. "Look, see? It's me! It's us!"

If you liked two-hour Hollywood movie Spotlight, you'll love subscribing for a year to a daily print newspaper in your town.

— Jacob Boon (@RWJBoon) February 29, 2016

You ADD-stricken ingrates will watch a massive screen for two hours, but won't plunk down good money to get a daily dose of "School board meeting ends in impasse" flung at your door five minutes after you leave for work, guaranteeing that any story that bore even a slight influence on your life will be quite outdated by the time you return. You dumb millennials and your Dumb Phones and your dumbness. So dumb.

Spotlight's first Oscar of the night is the reason you be buying a newspaper tomorrow morning or starting a subscription.

— Allen Panzeri (@allenpanzeri2) February 29, 2016

Spotlight love!!! So proud of my newspaper people.

— Hannah Sampson (@hannahbsampson) February 29, 2016

Yeah! You guys are journalists, like me, and you did it, which is by extension a feather in my cap, too! In a way, this movie depicting journalists in another city who put forth a Herculean effort to find one of the biggest scandals of the century is much like the review I just did of the new Sea World exhibit. That Shamu is just so playful!

If you're happy that Spotlight won an Oscar, make sure to subscribe to your local newspaper. #Oscars

— Bryan Lowry (@BryanLowry3) February 29, 2016

If you enjoyed #Spotlight you might also enjoy subscribing to an actual newspaper. #Oscars

— Danny Hajjar (@DannyGHajjar) February 29, 2016

So everyone who's excited about "Spotlight" winning will subscribe to a local newspaper now, right?

— Gerry Smith (@gerryfsmith) February 29, 2016

It sure is weird that all these wordsmiths and defenders of the printed page came up with the exact same joke about Spotlight and nobody liking newspapers anymore.

If Mad Max is going to lose to anything, let it be to a movie about newspapers

— Bruce Arthur (@bruce_arthur) February 29, 2016

You mean like Shattered Glass?

Movie about newspapers takes first #Oscar2016 Take that, you newspaper haters! :) #Spotlight

— Rod Mickleburgh (@rodmickleburgh) February 29, 2016

Who are...what? Are you even a human being?

Listen, though I'm not a professional journalist, I do fancy a career in media and wrote for a (college) publication for a few years. I like newspapers. I like reading the news. I don't have a newspaper subscription in part for the reasons I've mentioned. Maybe I'll try again; newspapers so royally screwed the pooch over 20 years ago when the Internet became a thing that they still haven't figured out how to reliably monetize web content, so I'd like to "support the cause" or whatever.

But Journo Twitter taking fraternal pride in Spotlight winning an Academy Award is hilarious because a. they treat the success of The Boston Globe, one of the oldest, largest and most prestigious major-metropolis newspapers in our country's history, as a reason to go out and grab a copy of the Daily Dink tomorrow morning, and b. anecdotally, journos are exactly the type of people who complain about how movies based on true stories compress and distort the facts in a way that warps the tale's truth.

You know who is allowed to take pride in the movie's critical acclaim? The actual friggin' journalists who unearthed the scandal in the first place.

Investigative reporting is in crisis right now. Journalism is in crisis. The movie lets people know why what we do is so important.

Now there's someone I'm inclined to listen to.