E-Pop! Issue # 18: Sound Bytes: Rupert Murdoch, Ruth Reichl, and Your Star Wars Name

Sound Bytes: Reading Between The Lines

As Moms Mabley once said, "Ain't nothin' an old man can bring me but a message from a young man."

Putting that to the test, News Corp. chairman and media mogul Rupert Murdoch married a a former TV personality half his age a week ago. Soon after, he issued the statement, "The world is changing very fast.... Big will not beat small any more. It will be the fast beating the slow." A media mogul getting jiggy with talk of the Internet, or an old rooster spinning the sexual dilemma of the aging Viagra man? You decide.

So, what's his next book? "The 60 Second Mogul?"

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This week, an E-Pop! reader sent in a surefire way to stimulate your social life - figure out your Star Wars name! This deft reader write to say that it appears that George Lucas uses a formula to create all those names you see in the Star Wars trilogy and Phantom Menace (Jar Jar Binks, Obi Wan, etc.)

According to this person, davekropf, the formula to discovering your Star
Wars name is yours if you follow the steps below:

Star Wars First Name
#1: Take the first 3 letters of your last name.
#2: Add to that, the First 2 Letters of your first name.
Star Wars Last name
#1: Take the first 2 letters of your Mothers Maiden Name.
#2: Add to that, the first 3 Letters of the name of the town or city you were born
in.

There you go! There's your Star Wars name.

Signed,

Sinda Phwas

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Ruth Reichl is Tender to the Bone

Ruth Reichl is delicious, delectable, divine, and a little short on
paprika

Now it can be told. The feared New York Times food critic uses a
thesaurus. "When I first started," said Reichl this week in an interview, "I
knew in my thesaurus that all the adjectives for "Delicious" were under
number 298 and my thesaurus just flipped right to it."

According to Brill's Content, other than using "irresistable" 61
times in print, Reichl has been inventive in her use of adjectives,
describing a panna cotta as "trembling," oysters as "coppery" and sausage as
"wimpy." An appetizer with the odd name of "spaghetti vegetables" arrives,
according to the House of Ruth, "looking like an Aztec God of a salad.
filaments of carrots, cucumbers and beets crowned with long slices of fried
plantain. It's a beautiful thing, with all that color. It makes you wish it
tasted better."

A friend of Ruth (FOR) notes that when trying a bite of vegetable
sushi, Ruth chews carefully and quizzically, as if waiting for the vegetable
to announce itself. Finally she speaks "Lotus bulb," she says as she subtly
reaches for her pen.

As Reichl herself claims in her new book "Tender At The Bone," :
"All I can do is say to my readers: This is who I am and this is what
happened."

Words for us all to live by.