The Only Thing a Microwave is Good For

There are some things I really should be attending to today. I have a mountain of paperwork on my desk that has grown to a point slightly to the right of comical. And my desk chair is filled with a precariously balanced tower of hand-me-down baby clothes that need to find a home in, say, a dresser or a closet. I haven’t even begun our 2007 income tax return yet, and now that I think about it, I have some ugly, bulging files from a couple of clients who are waiting for me to prepare their returns as well. And it's not that I'm procrastinating...

But, you know, Monday on Bitten, Mark Bittman’s blog on the New York Times website, he put out the call for readers to tell him their microwave cooking tips/experiences. Actually, what he asked was, “Are you using the microwave for more than coffee and popcorn?” Now, I’ve been reading his blog since it began a month or so ago, and I haven’t yet commented, but I couldn’t let this moment pass quietly by after I so recently knelt down and begged for forgiveness for having eaten microwave popcorn for the past 20 years or so. And the thought of using my nuker for coffee is stomach-turning. As a matter of fact, I kind of have a fear of the microwave and I’ve been contemplating chunking ours into the nearest landfill. Remember that scene at the end of Poltergeist when the character rolls the TV outside and shuts the door? Yeah, that's kind of an accurate portrayal of my microwave issues.

So, what is a microwave good for then? Well, I'm glad you asked. When Bittman posed this question on his blog, I had a flashback that cracked me up. See, there was this old boyfriend, back in, oh, maybe 1994 who had the bright idea to microwave some CDs. You remember all those annoying AOL CDs that came in the mail every couple of days, right? After a while, I got bored with just throwing them away, and so I saved a small (yet ever-growing) stack of them while I waited for inspiration to put them to some good use. I mean, yeah, I realize some people used them for art, and, you know, good for them.

To be honest, I thought everyone had microwaved a CD at some point. Isn’t it common knowledge? Some sort of rite of passage? So when I commented on Bittman’s post about using the nuker for a CD pyrotechnic show, well, I thought I would just be re-igniting the flame, so to speak, in other’s minds.

Then I woke up yesterday and turned on the computer to find an email challenge from Bittman: “Come on send me a video of nuking a CD!” (exclamation point his).

Well, okey dokey.

This was take 18. It's my story and I'm sticking to it. This turned into a 36-hour obsession that involved much frustration on my part, actually reading the manual that came with my digital camera (pffft), keeping not one, but two, fire extinguishers at the ready, and ended with my little brother bailing me out with a real videocamera.

Kids, don't try this at home.

Videographer: Daniel Bodie