Last week I attended my brother-in-law’s induction ceremony into the Arlington County Fire Department, an event that reminded me of that other world–you know, the one where people have real jobs. One of the recruits, in fact, is an ex-Marine who did two stints in Iraq, both, I believe, in Falluja. I think he’s 24. This week, on the other hand, I caught two grammatical errors in a book review. The results could have spelled disaster!

Arlington’s 62nd recruit class went through physical hell in order to graduate. One of their instructors, who brought to mind Lou Gossett Jr. (in An Officer and a Gentlemen, not Jaws 3-D), annually participates in the firefighter olympics. We’re talking races up 20-plus flights of stairs and 300 push-ups for each recruit every day, sometimes while wearing an oxygen tank.

I was shocked to learn, however, that being a firefighter can involve considerable dead time. There’s a lot of studying. And cleaning. And paperwork. In other words, nothing at all like Backdraft. (Ladder 49 is apparently more accurate though Backdraft remains the fave among firefighters–after all, who hasn’t fantasized about a final showdown involving fireaxes inside a burning warehouse?)

Congratulations, Bill.

The philosopher David Cassidy once said, “Self-pity is so unattractive.” Even more unattractive than self-pity is self-promotion. Still, I hope you’ll forgive me linking to a piece I’ve written in the new First Things, “God on the Internet.” I don’t normally do this sort of thing, but I’m particularly excited to appear in the pages of one of my favorite magazines.

Joel Engel, one of the most elegant writers working today, has an excellent piece about Democrats, 9/11, and Iraq.

Engel recalls the Democratic hysteria–the questioning of “What Bush knew and when he knew it” about 9/11–all of which was based on a single Presidential Daily Briefing from August 6, 2001. Engel then turns to Iraq:

Now comes early 2003. Saddam Hussein has failed to comply with his 17th United Nations resolution by, as even Hans Blix agreed, not providing a complete and detailed list of all WMD and ballistic missile capabilities (remember: it was up to him to come clean, not up to us to seek and find the weapons). The resolution (1441) has threatened “serious consequences” for failure to comply, but the French and Russians, their Security Council palms greased by oil-for-food bribes, are whispering in Saddam’s ear that they won’t go along with any military action and that, in fact, there’s a good chance they can get the 12-year-old sanctions against him lifted. Indeed, this reflects a growing consensus of world opinion.

Back in Washington, the president and Congress have access to bales full of intelligence from around the world stating that Hussein has an active WMD program, including biological, chemical, and probably nuclear capabilities. Even the Egyptians are warning the president that Iraq is well-armed and dangerous. The Senate, having viewed that intelligence and consulted with international leaders, is on the record, both verbally and with a vote, as supporting the notion that Saddam Hussein needs to go before he attacks America. . . .

Think about this from the president’s point of view: Much of the country is calling for your head regarding your alleged failure to prevent 9/11 when no firm intelligence predicted such a thing. Do you really have any choice but to act on the overwhelming amount of clear evidence that says bad things are happening beneath hidden bunkers in Iraq? No. You have no other way out than to fight preemptively. If you don’t, well, heaven forbid another attack is made on American soil–with grotesque weapons that came out of Iraq after sanctions were lifted and Saddam’s WMD program was reconstituted (as the Duelfur Report later extrapolated).

I’m only summarizing, as with everything Engel writes, this deserves to be read in full.

The early word is underwhleming. IGN gives the launch games good, but not glowing reviews. The exception being the review of Call of Duty 2. But here’s the damning quote, which doesn’t bode well for the new Xbox:

While many early Xbox 360 games are simple high-resolution versions of their current gen brethren . . .

Yikes. And that’s from a positive review. Check out the lede on this less positive review of NBA 2K6:

If there is something we’ve learned from this batch of launch titles for the Xbox 360, it’s that we want more from our next-generation console. A lot more. As IGN is in the process of finishing reviews for each of the launch titles, it’s great to see when a developer goes all out to utilize the power of the 360, like we are seeing with Sega’s Condemned: Criminal Origins. On the flip side, it’s frustrating when a developer like EA actually removes key features from its games, like several golfers and courses for Tiger Woods PGA Tour 06 and the franchise mode from NBA Live 06. The next generation is now, people. We should be adding features, not removing them.

Thankfully, NBA 2K6 didn’t remove any of the features that made it a well-rounded and deep basketball title on current-gen consoles. Speaking of well rounded, NBA 2K6 reminds me of Tim Duncan. Like the Big Fundamental, 2K6 is not flashy and you are rarely going to jump out of your seat in sheer excitement when you play. But, like Duncan, 2K6 is a big name in the business, has earned tremendous respect from intelligent basketball fans, and it does just about everything well. However, the only real changes from 2K6 on the PS2 and Xbox to the Xbox 360 seem to be updated rosters and improved player models.

That’s not supposed to be what you hear about a “next generation” system, yet it’s the same impression I got after monkeying around with the machine for 10 minutes.

Remember what a jump the first Dreamcast, PS2, and Xbox represented? Remember what a huge leap forward the first Playstation was? The slope of the tech curve is flattening out.

From time to time I like keep track of what I call an “Endangered Foods List,” involving dishes once popular some years ago now nearly forgotten, rare, or even extinct. Anthony Bourdain makes mention of such fare in Kitchen Confidential, referring to recipes he learned from his days in the CIA, ca. 1975: “We’re talking two years of cauliflower in Mornay sauce, saddle of veal Orloff, lobster thermidor, institutional favorites like chicken Hawaiian, grilled ham steak with pineapple ring and old-style lumbering classics like beef Wellington.”

You’ll be hard-pressed to find many of these dishes in big-city, trendy restaurants. But the other night, at a dinner at the German ambassador’s residence honoring a visiting dignitary, I was surprised to find “Beef Filet Wellington with mixed Baby Greens On ‘Dornfelder Essence'” on the menu. Nevermind the vegetables and the “essence,” I pointed out to my table guests from Stuttgart, the real excitement was the Beef Wellington, what Epicurious describes as “the entertaining extravaganza of the 1960s.”

Contrary to Bourdain’s pejorative, Monday night’s Wellington was far from lumbering. The pastry shell was flaky and delicately toasted. Just inside its ring was a layer of finely chopped mushrooms. The filet itself was tender with a dark pink center.

Ahem.

But kudos to residence chef Benoit Teisseire (a Frenchman, though married to a German) who mastered this feat for more than one hundred guests. Teisseire gets bonus props for helping save a classic from going the way of the dodo.

Now if someone can help me find a good chicken a la king…

Is Andrew Sullivan now contributing his astute pop-culture acumen to the Hollywood Reporter? No, but this silly, fawning HR story on Brokeback Mountain reads as though it could have spurted out of Sullivan:

There’s never been a homosexual cowboy movie, and while the indies have been supplying gay romances to the art house circuit for years, and gay series like “Queer as Folk” and “Will & Grace” have been pulling big numbers on TV, there hasn’t been a mainstream gay love story since 1982’s “Making Love,” which bombed and was blamed by many for damaging Harry Hamlin’s career. “It’s the one last frontier,” says Lee.

Let’s leave aside subjective questions about “frontiers” for a moment and concern ourselves with the falsifiable portion of the above: Have Queer as Folk and Will & Grace really been “pulling big numbers” on TV?

Not quite.

Will & Grace was a medium-sized success for NBC on Monday nights beginning in 1998, but it never became a break-away hit–even when the network moved it to the coveted Thursday night Must-See lineup. Its Nielsen numbers, never very good, have been in steep decline for a couple years now. At its height, Will & Grace never garnered more than about 14 million viewers, and on average has been closer to 7 or 8 million.

And Queer as Folk? Are you kidding? Airing on the pay-cable net Showtime, Queer as Folk could never come close to even Will & Grace‘s modest numbers–because Showtime only has 13 million subscribers, total. So QaF‘s relatively “huge” numbers–it debuted with nearly 4 million viewers–have to be taken in context. They may be nice for Showtime, but on a broadcast network, 4 million people gets a show canceled.

What we have here is another case of people desperately trying to make Brokeback Mountain part of a Big Cultural Trend.

Bonus: I haven’t seen the movie yet. Maybe it’s great; maybe it’s a dog. I hope it’s great.

But what do you think the chances are that Brokeback Mountain is the best-reviewed movie of the year, no matter what? If it stinks, would anyone dare say so? And do you maybe get the sense that perhaps many members of the entertainment press doesn’t even need to see Brokeback Mountain to figure out what they think?

Congratulations to Sayako and Yoshiki Kuroda of Tokyo, Japan, who were married in a quiet ceremony earlier today. Formerly Princess Nori, Sayako was required under Imperial House Law to renounce her title and leave the imperial family (and palace) for wedding a commoner.

Supposedly, Sayako can walk away with $3 million. Or, if she is crazy enough, spend $30 million in 30 days without owning anything new and win $300 million!

Amy Welborn has an excellent, TPS-ish post on morale:

“Morale” is a symptom, and those who are keen on raising our morale are usually uninterested in letting go of power in order to actually solve the problems. They don’t want things to change. They want us to pretend that we are happy with the way they’re operating.

You know, it’s like being a teacher in a highly dysfunctional school in which someone decides that the way to fix teacher morale is to put a Coke machine in the lounge . . .