tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48451794072054915702024-03-12T22:04:32.317-04:00Better Left UnsaidSome things really are better left unsaid. You'll find many of them said here.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00397990356075164027noreply@blogger.comBlogger111125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4845179407205491570.post-19446645962466844102010-08-07T14:44:00.007-04:002010-08-07T15:20:37.021-04:00Cooking with GasHello. Yeah, it's been a while. Not much, how about you?<br /><br />You've probably noticed I haven't been posting much lately. There are several reasons for that, the biggest being that in these socially and politically polarized times, it's easy to go into "if I ruled the world" overload; while such posts make for great venting they don't always make for inspiring reading. Over time the subjects of the posts become scattered in so many directions that the journal as a whole loses its focus. That's bad for the writer, and for the reader as well. (Ok, and there's also the problem of Sarah Palin remarks becoming so easy to make there's little challenge there anymore.)<br /><br />In order to stay focused and energized, I'm stepping back from Bett<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_NhvVN9kNF98/TF2wiHwcA2I/AAAAAAAAAHY/qAMveNxIQnI/s1600/Pies+2010-6-16.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 274px; height: 206px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_NhvVN9kNF98/TF2wiHwcA2I/AAAAAAAAAHY/qAMveNxIQnI/s320/Pies+2010-6-16.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5502748419960865634" border="0" /></a>er Left Unsaid and taking a new (and, I think, exciting) challenge into the blogosphere: <span style="font-style: italic;">"Kissing th</span><span style="font-style: italic;">e Cook"</span> is a new journal about shared adventures in cooking and food for regular people. (I'll keep Unsaid in existence, in case it seems appropriate at some point to post something there.)<br /><br /><a href="http://kissthecook-ben.blogspot.com/">http://kissthecook-ben.blogspot.com/</a><br /><br />Visit! Comment! Subscribe! It's very much my hope for Kissing the Cook to be an interactive two-way forum. You gotta eat, after all.<br /><br />I really hope I get to see you there!<br /><br />And thanks.<br /><br />BenBenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00397990356075164027noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4845179407205491570.post-25896210584503625132010-06-29T23:09:00.002-04:002010-06-29T23:25:44.964-04:00Modest NeedsIt was either by accident or divine intervention that we came upon the fairly small but exquisitely beautiful Brewster Park while on vacation in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Like any middle-aged, city-based technocrat, I was overwhelmed at the beauty and peace that this new thing...what was it called again? Nature? Yes, that was it...could provide. Like an arctic explorer who knows no one will believe he saw the Abominable Snowman without solid proof (or like the ape in "2001" who had to show the other apes the monolith, take your pick), I videoed the scene to bring home to the other middle-aged, city-based technocrats. <br /><br />When you mix that, a long-time love for Emily Dickinson's poetry and overall personal oddness, and a propensity for completely abusing Windows Movie Maker, the result is the following video. (It's only about two minutes, so check it out during the next commercial break.)<br /><br /><br /><object height="344" width="425"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/r7CNEsT6mDs&hl=en&fs=1"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/r7CNEsT6mDs&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" height="344" width="425"></embed></object>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00397990356075164027noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4845179407205491570.post-43032960335750332022010-06-23T23:30:00.002-04:002010-06-23T23:49:00.548-04:00I Don't Mean to Sound Like I'm Preaching...By now you would think that I'd know how a Jewish guy ends up preaching Sunday sermons at a Presbyterian church, but I don't. The original idea, years ago, was that I'd do some brief bible-based children's messages every so often. It didn't take long at all for that to morph into longer "family sermons" aimed at everyone. (They're more like extended Sunday School lessons than sermons, but sermons is easier to pronounce.)<br /><br />The most recent of these I've gotten to do was delivered this past Sunday, Father's Day. On the video linked below, note please the following:<br /><br />1. A rudimentary kind of sub-titling has been added; it's a beautiful old church, and its classic reverberation is great for organs, choirs, and Enya, but not so much for the spoken word. Besides, I think it gives the video kind of an art-house European movie feel, don't you?<br /><br />2. I know I need to get better at standing still. This is due in part to the adrenaline rush of public speaking, and in part to a deep-seated fear that this is finally the day I no longer get away with preaching. (Besides, it makes me a harder target to hit.)<br /><br />3. Ok, I have a Jersey accent. You got a problem wit dat, or what?<br /><br />Now cue the organ music...<br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqOIBnYFN6A">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YqOIBnYFN6A</a>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00397990356075164027noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4845179407205491570.post-66062324473372615322010-05-20T20:28:00.005-04:002010-05-20T21:59:28.416-04:00Give and Take<div style="text-align: center; font-style: italic;"><blockquote><br />"Life is a tightrope, and at the other end is your coffin."<br />(Morticia Addams to son Puggsley in The Addams Family Musical)</blockquote></div><br />Having had a Facebook page for quite some time now and using it for, well, nothing, I recently decided to step up the activity level and reach out to friends old and new. Heaven only knows what drives someone to make a decision like that - maybe it was seeing how Facebook got Betty White onto Saturday Night Live - but I did. For the past couple of weeks I've been actively making pithy comments on friends' "Status Updates" (which were called random thoughts before computers were invented). I also sought out some old friends.<br /><br />One of the friends I sought out is a woman I haven't had contact with in 25 years. She responded to my "message" with a "friend request." (It's a Facebook thing.) It gave me a great feeling to reconnect with Maureen. I have a theory that every 16 year old boy meets a certain girl of about the same age and it gets him considering, for the first time, the possibility that baseball might be the <span style="font-style: italic;">second</span> best thing ever invented. For me, this was Maureen. Let me emphasize that, despite my best puppy-dog efforts, nothing of a romantic nature ever came of this first crush (well, second, if you count Miss Wilson, my kindergarten teacher, and third if you count Annette Funicello in reruns). Even at 15 she was too smart for that. We did, happy to say, become friends and stayed in contact for a number of years before life does that thing where it sends people off to different destinies. Today the crush is long gone, and my respect for who Maureen is and what she has done with her life remains great. I am looking forward to getting to know her again. My first post to her "wall" (another Facebook thing) was a note welcoming her to Facebook, and providing a friendly warning not to get involved with Farmville, an abyss to which many go and from which few return.<br /><br />At about the same time I reached out to another old friend, this one from my days on Prodigy in the early-to-mid 90's. (For younger readers, think of Prodigy as the internet version of 8-track tapes.) It had been about 15 years since I'd had contact with Anne. A paralegal and freelance writer, she was wickedly funny and totally delightful. Her life was not smooth but she never failed to impress with the upbeat energy and humorous, indomitable spirit with which she handled it all. As with Maureen, time and distance never kept Anne from remaining one of my favorite people. To this day, her picture - smiling with her eyes as much as with her mouth, and flanked by her two adorable then-toddler daughters - hangs on the wall in my home office. Over the years, I sometimes found myself wondering how she is. And so, armed with the Internet, I was now able to set out to find her Facebook page or e-mail address.<br /><br />What I found was her obituary.<br /><br />It was from about a year ago, and was accompanied by another, more recent picture at age 42. Her smile was still as room-illuminating as it was in the picture she'd sent me all those years ago. I read some blog entries she'd written in the months before her death. She'd fallen on seriously hard times of several types. I don't know the cause of her death, and there's a good chance I never will, but the lack of any reference to an illness even as recently as her last post a month before she died got me thinking. So I read more. Several months before, at a time when her own house was being foreclosed on, she'd written a blog post about a study she'd seen linking a rise in foreclosure rates to a rise in suicide rates. And I read comments posted to her blog after she died by people she was close to: one writer said he wished he'd listened more to what she had been trying to tell him; another expressed regret at not being there more for her; a third wishing Anne's soul the peace it never found on earth. There's no escaping the thought that these are not things people would typically say when someone's death was accidental or natural.<br /><br />It's human nature - at least I <span style="font-style: italic;">think</span> it is - to start thinking that had I only reached out a month before her death instead of a year afterward, I might have been able to say something, do something, suggest something, that would have made a difference for Anne and prevented this from happening. It's an ego-driven, fantasy-based notion that's complete nonsense, of course, something that is probably true of most things that can be ascribed purely to human nature. But I find I think it anyway.<br /><br />And so, in a single, mighty cosmic sweep, one valued soul is returned to my life and another is taken from it forever. There's a lesson in there somewhere, and as soon as the irony stops shouting, maybe I'll figure out what it is.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00397990356075164027noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4845179407205491570.post-28814402812390370462010-05-10T15:24:00.001-04:002010-05-10T15:26:14.393-04:00Oh, So That's What That Part Does...<span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I learned a lot of really interesting things this weekend. On Saturday morning I took a seafood cooking class and learned out how to fillet a fish. That night I went to see "The Addams Family" on Broadway and watched the great Nathan Lane (a Jersey City guy, by the way) demonstrate how a comedic master's timing and patience-in-delivery turn a humorous line into a long, loud, sustained laugh. And on Sunday, as I was leaving my boys' college after dropping them off, I learned that when the engine belt in a car breaks, a succession of failures starts, each of which has its own graphically descriptive warning light on the dashboard. (This happened, by the way, in the same area and almost a year to the day from the last car-tow adventure. [<a href="http://ben-better-left-unsaid.blogspot.com/2009/05/best-laid-plans.html">http://ben-better-left-unsaid.blogspot.com/2009/05/best-laid-plans.html</a>].)<br /> <br />In case you're wondering, here's what happens when the belt breaks:<br /> <br /> </span></span> <ul><li><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">First, the power steering goes out. When this happens, the car does not simply revert to the old fashioned manual steering. It goes to what might be called, gorilla-on-steroids steering.</span></span></li><li><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Fortunately, I didn't have too long to worry about the first thing, because the second thing that happens is that the warning light for the battery-recharging system comes on. Pulling over and flipping frantically through the owner's manual, I found where it said whatever you do, don't turn the car off, because you may not be able to start it up again.</span></span></li><li><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Next, having made the decision not to turn the car off, I looked at the dashboard and found the engine overheat light had now come on. Flipping frantically through the owner's manual, I found where it said whatever you do, turn the car off. I don't know much about that battery-charging stuff, but even I know engine overheating is not a positive development. In the ignition on-or-off contest, fear of engine exploding beats fear-of-charging-battery every time. Besides, had I kept the car running, who knows how many more warning lights would have lit?<br /> </span></span></li></ul> <span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Packing my wife, my mother and my sister into a cab for the ride up the turnpike to home - we'd all gone down to visit my sons at college and have dinner for Mother's Day - I rode back with the tow truck driver, grateful that both my wife and I have cel phones to keep control of the somewhat complicated logistics of the situation. Or I was grateful, until I reached into my pocket and found I'd forgotten to give my wife's cel back to her. Fortunately, my sister has a cel phone also. Unfortunately (not to mention inexplicably), she keeps it turned off. Along the way, their cab driver made polite conversation: the weather, songs on the radio, how he gave up driving for a while because of his fear of driving near trucks, etc. (As told to me by my wife, so help me I'm not making that up.)<br /> </span><br /></span> <span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The car is still at the mechanic's as I write this. It should be done soon. ("Soon" here being a euphemism for "was supposed to be done over two hours ago.) It's about seven years old. My hope has always been to have a car that lasts ten years. I haven't made it yet (my first two cars lasted eight and seven years, respectively) so I'm keeping my fingers crossed this one will work out. It's not that I like driving old cars. It's that I like not making car payments.</span></span>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00397990356075164027noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4845179407205491570.post-55257311280678810152010-05-04T20:57:00.008-04:002010-05-04T21:12:52.372-04:00From a Grateful Part-Time New YorkerI thought this pretty much stands up on its own, with no further comment from me...<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_NhvVN9kNF98/S-DDo2OTeVI/AAAAAAAAAHQ/Q2JOYxAW3sg/s1600/timessquaresuvbomb.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 256px; height: 155px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_NhvVN9kNF98/S-DDo2OTeVI/AAAAAAAAAHQ/Q2JOYxAW3sg/s320/timessquaresuvbomb.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5467585054145476946" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:100%;"><b><br /></b></span><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><b>REMARKS BY <span style="border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204); cursor: pointer;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1273020731_2">POLICE COMMISSIONER</span> RAYMOND </b></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><b>W. KELLY</b></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><b><br /><br />TUESDAY, MAY 4, 2010</b></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"> </div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-size:100%;"><b><span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1273020731_3"><br /><br /><br /></span></b></span><p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><span style="cursor: text; background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent; border-bottom: 1px dashed rgb(0, 102, 204);" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1273020731_3">NEW YORK</span> CAN BREATHE A LITTLE EASIER TODAY.</span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> </span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;">THAT’S DUE IN LARGE MEASURE TO THE INVESTIGATIVE MUSCLE AND ALACRITY OF <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1273020731_4">NYPD</span> DETECTIVES AND FBI AGENTS, NOT TO MENTION THE EAGLE-EYED CUSTOMS PERSONNEL ON DUTY LAST NIGHT AT <span style="cursor: pointer; background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent;" class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1273020731_5">JFK</span>.</span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> </span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;">I ALSO WANT TO COMMEND <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1273020731_6">UNITED STATES ATTORNEY</span> PREET BHARARA AND HIS ABLE ASSISTANTS, THEY WORKED CLOSELY WITH THE NYPD, NOT ONLY IN THIS CASE, BUT IN PROSECUTING MANY OTHERS TO MAKE CERTAIN THAT CRIMINALS IN THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK FACE JUSTICE.</span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> </span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;">THE PATHFINDER IN TIMES SQUARE HAD A LICENSE PLATE BELONGING TO ANOTHER CAR. THE DASHBOARD <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1273020731_7">VEHICLE IDENTIFICATION NUMBER</span> HAD BEEN REMOVED.</span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> </span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;">THE BIG BREAK IN THIS CASE CAME WHEN A DETECTIVE CLIMBED UNDERNEATH THE PATHFINDER AND LIFTED THE VEHICLE IDENTIFICATION NUMBER FROM THE BOTTOM OF ITS ENGINE BLOCK.</span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> </span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;">THAT LED TO THE REGISTERED OWNER OF THE VEHICLE, AND SOON THEREAFTER TO THE SUSPECT WHO PURCHASED THE VEHICLE AND WHO DROVE IT BOMB-LADEN INTO THE HEART OF TIMES SQUARE.</span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> </span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;">IT WAS DEJA VU.</span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> </span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;">AFTER THE FIRST ATTACK ON THE WORLD TRADE CENTER, A DETECTIVE LIFTED THE <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1273020731_8">VEHICLE IDENTIFICATION NUMBER</span> OFF THE ENGINE BLOCK OF THE RYDER TRUCK THAT EXPLODED THERE.</span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> </span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;">THAT LED TO THE ARREST OF THE BOMBERS WHEN THEY TRIED TO GET THEIR DEPOSIT BACK FROM THE TRUCK RENTAL AGENT.</span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> </span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;">WE COULDN’T HAVE GOTTEN TO THE PATHFINDER’S ENGINE BLOCK IN THE FIRST PLACE, HOWEVER, WERE IT NOT FOR THE HEROIC ACTIONS OF THE NYPD’S <span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1273020731_9">BOMB SQUAD</span>.</span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> </span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;">THE BOMB SQUAD SUITED UP IN HOT WEATHER IN OPPRESSIVE PROTECTIVE GEAR AND WORKED PAINSTAKINGLY FROM 7:00 P.M. ON SATURDAY TO THREE THE FOLLOWING MORNING TO DISMANTLE ALL OF THE DANGEROUS PARTS OF THE CAR BOMB:</span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> </span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;">THE TIMERS, THE WIRES, THE M-88s, THE PROPANE TANKS, THE GASOLINE CONTAINERS AND THE GUN LOCKER FILLED WITH FERTILIZER.</span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> </span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;">THE WHOLE LETHAL ASSEMBLY TURNED THE PATHFINDER INTO ONE BIG HURT LOCKER.</span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> </span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;">ONLY AFTER ALL THE BOMB PARTS WERE RENDERED SAFE AND REMOVED FROM THE VEHICLE, COULD IT BE TOWED TO OUR FORENSIC GARAGE FOR AN EXHAUSTIVE EXAMINATION THAT INCLUDED THE ENGINE BLOCK.</span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> </span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;">BY MY CALCULATION, 53 HOURS AND 17 MINS</span></b><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: "sans-serif"; color: navy;"> </span><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;">ELAPSED FROM THE TIME FAISAL SHAHZAD CROSSED BROADWAY IN HIS PATHFINDER TO THE TIME HE WAS APPREHENDED AT KENNEDY AIRPORT.</span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> </span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;"><span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1273020731_10">JACK BAUER</span> MAY HAVE CAUGHT HIM IN “24.” BUT IN THE REAL WORLD</span></b><b><span style="font-size: 10pt;">, </span></b><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;">53’s NOT BAD. </span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> </span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;">CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL WHO PLAYED A PART IN BRINGING THIS SUSPECT TO JUSTICE IN RECORD TIME. </span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;"> </span></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: 9pt;">TRUE, WE CAN ALL BREATHE A LITTLE EASIER. BUT WE HAVE TO STAY VIGILANT, NONETHELESS. THAT’S BECAUSE IN THE EYES OF TERRORISTS, NEW YORK IS AMERICA, AND THEY KEEP COMING BACK TO KILL US. </span></b></p><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><b><span class="yshortcuts" id="lw_1273020731_3"><br /></span></b></span>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00397990356075164027noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4845179407205491570.post-53168721976883718992010-04-28T22:06:00.007-04:002010-04-28T22:51:47.202-04:00Let's Get Ready to Rumble, Comrade<span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">In today's post we examine the upcoming Senatorial race</span></span></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_NhvVN9kNF98/S9jsLo3d_jI/AAAAAAAAAHI/KszRC6ztkz0/s1600/Linda+McMahon+and+Steve+Austin+2.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 214px; height: 163px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_NhvVN9kNF98/S9jsLo3d_jI/AAAAAAAAAHI/KszRC6ztkz0/s200/Linda+McMahon+and+Steve+Austin+2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5465377832506883634" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size:130%;">in Connecticut where Linda McMahon, who is the wife of World Wrestling Entertainment owner Vince McMahon, is seeking the Republican no</span></span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size:130%;">m</span></span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size:130%;">ination to replace retiring Democrat Chris Dodd. In keeping with our policy of sparing no effort or expense to give our readers the best information possible, we've arranged for a computer-generated artist's conception of a typical day in Congress if McMahon, seen in the photo on the right in a policy conference with famed intellectual "Stone C</span></span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size:130%;">old" Steve Austin, is elected.<br /><br /></span></span></span><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dzUrtvxk0yFxGYqIDKMCO3Mb4DwdMq3UvgbAOsauTlpUA8iOpikqAbgbnzgvjJC2lA5Rw08k0o2YU-A1__J3Q' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br />Ok, so it's not really Congress. Dammit. It is, as you no doubt know by now, the Ukrainian parliament's idea of debate, in which the "filibuster" is replaced by the "head-buster". (Most people have probably watched this already, or at least heard about it, but since it's the funniest thing I've seen in a long time, I thought it was worth another mention.) Kind of makes the American Congress (which, for overseas readers, is divided into two houses, Cro-Magnon and Neanderthal), seem like high tea. As evidenced by the video, it didn't take long for debate and compromise to devolve into eggs and smoke bombs. (Accounts vary as to whether the projectile-debating included tomatoes, but you get the idea.) You could ask why the members of Parliament had eggs and smoke bombs with them in the first place, but then you'd miss the real fun that came after. It was a riot. Literally.<br /></span></span></span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size:130%;">The news media, as usual, have presented all of this out of context. The real story is that Ukrainian officials, upon separating from the former Soviet Union, sought to model their new government after our American democracy, and so decided to watch C-Span. Cable stations being different in the Ukraine than in the U.S., they ended up watching the MSG network instead and saw Rangers hockey fans up in the blue seats just after beer sales were cut off. Not knowing very much English, the Ukrainians never reali</span> </span></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">zed the mistake, and an unfortunate </span></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">misunderstanding - not to mention several viral videos - were the result. Can't we all just get along?<br /><br /><u style="font-weight: bold;">Semi-Related Item: Speaking of People in Mysterious Faraway Places Behaving Badly...</u><br /><br />This week, the government of the sovereign nation of Ari</span></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">zona (which shares a somewhat porous border with Mexico) passed a law that, in effect, allows Ari</span></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">zona </span></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">police to ask anyone they think could possibly be an illegal immigrant for proof of citi</span></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">zenship and, if they can't produce</span></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> it on the spot, take them into custody. </span></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">While that does sound a bit like some World War II B-movie where a </span></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">jack-booted brownshirt demands to see "your papers!", I don't think civil libertarians here need to be too concerned. Ari</span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size:130%;">zona law enforcement has stated very clearly that they will not use the new law as an opportunity to profile Hispanics. You believe them, don't you? The law is no doubt intended to have them stopping people with blond hair and blue eyes, in an effort to prosecute illegal Swedes who are flooding the market with bootleg Abba cd's. (I can hear the drums, Fernando...)</span><br /></span></span>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00397990356075164027noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4845179407205491570.post-24900016451570526032010-04-18T22:32:00.002-04:002010-04-18T22:39:22.913-04:00How I Spent My SundayJust the usual. Went to church, then the supermarket. Later on a memorial service. And, oh yeah, I made my first <span style="font-style: italic;">foray</span> into video blogging. What do you think?<br /><br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADBxf5dBzv4">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADBxf5dBzv4</a>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00397990356075164027noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4845179407205491570.post-53244567667007511502010-04-10T16:23:00.007-04:002010-04-10T16:38:11.303-04:00Easy Rider<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Just back from taking my new set of wheels for their first spin. It seemed like the right time to replace my old bike, considering a) I bought the old bike nearly thirty years ago and b) it was stolen last fall. After looking at several models I decided on a 7-speed Kent Glendale. (I was eying up a lovely 21-speed Schwinn for a bit more money, but since I'd never figured out what to do with three speeds back in the old days, it would have just seemed like a waste of good machinery.) I actually bought the new bike last week but today was my first opportunity to inflate the tires, adjust the brakes, attach the water bottle and the dorky reflector stickers and, most importantly, figure out if there really is anything to that expression about how something you never forget how to do is like riding a bike.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br />Happy to report it went great. I live near the bottom of a moderately steep hill and, as a young man, I was generally unable to bike to the top of the hill wi</span></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">thout stopping to rest. Having now advanced to the age when I have children who are older than I was in those "can't do the hill" days, it was no small triumph to make it to the top, slowly at times but without stopping. (I admit reading the manual about how to use speed settings helped some.) It ended up being a three and a half mile round trip along a main boulevard. I felt so good about my newly-restored healthy lifestyle I stopped along the way for a celebratory hot dog with mustard and sauerkraut. (The garlic in the sauerkraut is, after all, very good for you.)<br /><br />Everything went so well that, upon my return, I felt compelled to pose for a photo. (It's amazing what yo</span></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">u can accomplish nowadays with some photo editing software and a camera-phone propped up on a trash can.) After taking it, though, I did start wondering if it was uncomfortably close to another "take a picture of me posing" photo...<br /><br /><br /></span></span><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_NhvVN9kNF98/S8Df4_cpAlI/AAAAAAAAAHA/HKlGPtP4mIk/s1600/Oswald+with+rifle.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 154px; height: 207px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_NhvVN9kNF98/S8Df4_cpAlI/AAAAAAAAAHA/HKlGPtP4mIk/s320/Oswald+with+rifle.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5458608918570271314" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_NhvVN9kNF98/S8Dflv3X-SI/AAAAAAAAAG4/-ia-HxaOCeo/s1600/BCC-Bike_2010-4-10.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 220px; height: 208px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_NhvVN9kNF98/S8Dflv3X-SI/AAAAAAAAAG4/-ia-HxaOCeo/s320/BCC-Bike_2010-4-10.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5458608587969919266" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><u><br />Unrelated Topic: Like Shooting Fish in a Barrel from an Airplane<br /></u><br /></span></span><blockquote><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">"</span>No administration in America's history would, I think, ever have considered such a step that we just found out President Obama is supporting today. It's kinda like getting out there on a playground, a bunch of kids, getting ready to fight, and one of the kids saying, 'Go ahead, punch me in the face and I'm not going to retaliate. Go ahead and do what you want to with me.'</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> (Sarah Palin on Sean Hannity's Fox "News" program, April 7, 2010)</span></span></blockquote><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:arial;">What's the difference between Sarah Palin and Dan Quayle?<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;">All together now: "Lipstick!"<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:arial;">As much as I don't want this journal to be reduced to a series of "Sarah Palin Says the Darnedest Things" essays, sometimes she just makes it too easy. (For my readers across the pond, Sarah Palin is something like our version of Prince Harry.) Palin, who still insists that interview debacle was Katie Couric's fault (as opposed to those hard-hitting questions people like Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, and Fox's other Palin-lapdogs throw at her), and who is considered to have done well in her VP debate simply because she avoided saying anything too laughable, is now the republican party's elder-statesperson on nuclear proliferation as it relates to foreign policy.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I'll pause a moment while you finish laughing.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">The treaty which, according to Palin, has us saying "go ahead and do what you want to with me" calls for both the US and Russia each to </span></span> </span></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:arial;">redu</span></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:130%;" >ce th</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:arial;">eir nuclear arsenals from 2,200 deployed warheads to 1,550 over seven years, </span></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:130%;" >and their l</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:arial;">ong-range missiles and launchers to </span></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:130%;" >7</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:arial;">00</span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:arial;">. If she thinks those numbers leave us unarmed, it makes one wonder about a number of things, not the least of which is how large a weapons cache is stored her garage.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">Perhaps my starting this by comparing Palin to Dan Quayle wasn't fair. At least Quayle eventually caught onto the fact that he was coming off like a fool and stopped issuing public statements.</span></span><br /></span></span>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00397990356075164027noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4845179407205491570.post-46119976776643705272010-03-27T12:56:00.002-04:002010-03-27T13:00:24.594-04:00It's a Jungle Out There<span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">As I write this, I'm holed up in my bedroom while a DAR meeting takes place downstairs. I just know if I venture downstairs to the living room, even if it's just for a moment to snare a rice-krispy treat, they'll tie me up with their sashes, gag me with their white gloves and eat me. Or maybe not, but why take the chance?<br /> <br /> <u>Leave the Sword, Take the General Tsao's Chicken</u><br /> <br />A group at my office selects and then meets periodically during lunch to discuss management-related books. Titles and authors we've read in the past include Carnegie's "How to Win Friends and Influence People," Rudolph Giuliani's "Leadership," and RFK's "Thirteen Days." Some of the selections have been very worthwhile, others less so, but all have been the kind of book you'd expect a management reading group to choose. We're currently voting on our next selection, and a book that seems to be getting a lot of support is Sun Tzu's classic, "The Art of War." (That word - classic - has become overused at times, but we're talking here about a book written in the 6th century BC - literally, Biblical times - that, in business circles, is still widely read and discussed today.) </span></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">If that book does get selected it will be interesting to see how some of its teaching - </span></span><span style="color: rgb(255, 255, 255);font-family:Comic Sans MS;font-size:100%;" ><span style=";font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:130%;color:black;" >"T</span><span style=";font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;font-size:85%;color:black;" ><span style="font-size:130%;">hrow your soldiers into positions whence there is no escape, and they will prefer death to flight. If they will face death, there is nothing they may not achieve," for example - will be applied to the office setting.<br /><br /><u>Who Will Guard the Guardians?<br /> </u><br />Want to have some fun? The next time you hear someone railing about how idiot socialists in Washington have broken every law known to man and passed a health care reform bill that will turn the White House into the Kremlin, ask him/her simply to describe to you what's in the bill and see how many of them actually know.<br /><br /><u>And Another Thing...</u><br /><br />Some years back, a movie was made of Thom Wolfe's great book about the Mercury space program, "The Right Stuff." As a movie it had its shortcomings - the Mercury astronauts themselves derided it as "Laurel and Hardy Go To Space" - but there was a great line in it when someone asked the Von Braun-like lead scientist if the German experts now in America were going to be able to out-do the German experts who were working for the Russians. He reassured them by saying, "Our Germans are better than their Germans."<br /><br />With this in mind, I don't know about you, but I'm having a grand old time watching the right wing on television trying to explain why it's good when Republicans use the parliamentary procedure known as reconciliation to pass a bill and a violation of every law and moral principle known to man when Democrats do the same thing.<br /><br />These days it seems like the only thing Republicans and Democrats can get together on - aside from the fervent hope that Sarah Palin is the future of the Republican party - is putting partisanship and self-interest before leadership. We do it to ourselves, folks.</span> <br /> </span></span>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00397990356075164027noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4845179407205491570.post-35977583103910714612010-03-12T21:25:00.005-05:002010-03-12T21:41:53.519-05:00Shifting the Paradigm into Low GearMaybe it's just my crankified mood of late, but I've thought of a new personal motto: <span style="font-style: italic;">"Don't know. Wasn't there. Didn't see it. Have other things to think about."</span> Maybe it's more like a Vision Statement. Covers a lot of ground, and puts a whole new perspective on many things, including reading the newspaper, which now more than ever reminds me of the Thurber cartoon caption from ages ago: "Sometimes the news from Washington makes me think your mother and brother Ed are in charge."<br /><br />Think I'm kidding? Here are some of today's stories from my local what-passes-for-a-newspaper. So help me, I'm not making any of this up.<br /><br /><ul><li>On Wednesday afternoon, a local charter school recently told by the state to shut down by June 30 held a rally in support of staying open. The next morning, police arrested a 16-year-old student there for having a loaded .32 caliber handgun in the cafeteria, and an 18-year-old student for punching out a security guard. (Although I'm second to none in my respect for the charter school's ability to fail miserably at half the cost-per-student of local district schools, this may be a sign it's time for the school in question to become a Starbuck's.)</li><li>A 70-year-old man was stabbed in his apartment by his 46-year-old girlfriend, whom he a) had a <span style="font-style: italic;">restraining order</span> against and b) was <span style="font-style: italic;">living with</span>. What was the restraining order for, to keep her from putting any of her things in his half of the medicine cabinet? Not to make light of what is obviously a serious matter, but I can just hear Bill Engvall saying, "Here's your sign..." (In stark contrast to his apparent IQ, the man's injuries turned out to be non-life-threatening.)<br /></li><li>Major League Soccer players in the U.S. - and if that's not a contradiction in terms I don't know what would be - voted to strike if a new labor contract isn't agreed to before the season opens on March 25. Look at the bright side; this could be the opening into America's sports-heart that curling was waiting for.</li></ul><br /><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Unrelated Item: Proof You Can Find <span style="font-style: italic;">Anything</span> On You-Tube</span><br /><br />While doing research recently for a youth-group slide presentation about the human spirit of exploration that connected Lewis and Clark with the U.S. Space Program 160 years later - yes, the day-to-day excitement of my life does become overwhelming at times - I came across something so good - and so unique - it demanded to be shared. In the hope rap master MC LaLa doesn't mind me sharing his marvelous creation, and with a dedication to faithful reader Alaina as one of my favorite stewards of young minds, I give you the "Lewis and Clark Educational Rap." Laugh if you want, by the time it's done I bet you'll be tapping your foot and singing, "Saca-sacagawea...Saca-sacagawea..."<br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dyewtpp2_XaiIRMpyBJBqjW0TjycFwWxqBVAoQE2uULv_gGVPQbNQid_QDMW9lh-mLoJj0OWUz47mXmH8Lc' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00397990356075164027noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4845179407205491570.post-12544479834610972282010-03-04T06:48:00.003-05:002010-03-04T07:10:57.171-05:00The Gift That Keeps on GivingSarah Palin was on Leno Tuesday night doing stand-up. No joke. For those who missed it, and for those who did see it and who enjoy things like placing their hands on a hot stove till the flesh sears, here it is. (Remember, you were warned.)<br /><br />Although I haven't heard anyone else say it, I can't possibly be the only person who watched this and thought, "Don't quit your day job. Oh wait...YOU DID."<br /><br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dzBRfWikwNSd8zeDs05jpzypTL5Cg57BmC06KBskxuRVpfqgIFVCy4qI46h1knbBcs5U44XYi5z2-rLLrMqBw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00397990356075164027noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4845179407205491570.post-14622763946478113262010-02-21T23:01:00.013-05:002010-02-22T23:01:18.569-05:00I Thought Women's Curling Involved Blow Driers<span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:130%;color:black;" > <div> These are tough days for anyone not very interested in the Olympics. I like sports, and even in unfamiliar ones a close match or a come-from-behind victory can be exciting, even inspirational. But the sheer obsessiveness of it all descends into fluff of the worst kind: endless/pointless human interest stories and the same athletes and their families being asked the same questions over and over during the broadcast, and then again on the morning shows. It's the sports equivalent of the American vice-presidency: we get all worked up about that every four years too as if nothing else mattered and, when we're done, we throw a coat or some spare linens over them and forget they're there for another four years. A few passing observations:<br /><ul><li>I don't know whose brilliant idea it was to require the ice dancers to do something based on some country's traditional dances, but I've got to believe anything that involves a white couple from Russia dressing up like Australian Aborigines is probably not going to end well.</li><li>Curling would be more interesting if small furry animals were used instead of flat stones.</li><li>It looks like we can now file Johnny Weir right along side Posh Spice and Adam Lambert in the "You Didn't Invent a Cure for Cancer - Get Over Yourself" folder. (It's amazing how people see themselves as having star power when it's really just the general public's fascination with twisted metal at the side of the road.)</li></ul>Anyway, I'm just back tonight from Williamsburg, VA, where I attended a children's entertainer's conference. Readers with me this time last year may remember the "Back to the Future" theme and the photos of a full-scale DeLorean made from balloons. This year's theme was "South of the Border.") As always with hotels, there were the challenges of yet another set of shower controls - whatever happened to the standard hot water on the left, cold water on the right, and you just turn each until you get the amount of water you want at the temperature you want? - and another in-room coffee maker (coffee maker first, by the way), and of being reminded that able-bodied people, even well-intentioned ones, have no idea how to design an accessible hotel room. (Hotels please note: it requires a little more than attaching a set of randomly-placed grab bars on one of the walls in the bathroom.) We've learned to carry our own shower bench and toilet handle bars when traveling. It's a lesson taught to me years ago in bartending school, and that I may have mentioned here before: Who's better at protecting your butt than you are? Nobody.<br /><br />This year, there was also a large children's soccer tournament in the area that had several teams staying at the hotel. A couple of hundred entertainers (mostly clowns) and a couple of hundred kids in the same hotel. You connect the dots.<br /><br />People sometimes ask about what goes on at children's entertainer's conferences? There are competitions, of course - balloon sculpting, skits, face-painting - but mostly it's about lectures and vendors. Topics this year included making low-cost props; magic; storytelling; make-up development; business promotion and sales; working restaurants; and protecting yourself and your audiences from diseases, allergies and people who like to hurt clowns. (Did you know that the glue on stickers often contains peanut oil? There, I just saved you a potential lawsuit. Remember where you heard it.)<br /><br />It was a weekend of seeing old friends, too. Close friends my wife went to college with, others we get to talk to less often but that it's still great to see. One more year of being struck by the irony of how many people at a "happy" conference are in, or have left, really bad marriages. In one small group, people were swapping divorce stories the way middle-aged guys trade anecdotes about colonoscopies. I felt so left out, though one old friend I'd not seen in years had heard from someone that I'd gotten divorced a couple of years ago. This is not true, of course, at least as far as I know, though I'll confirm this with my wife and probably should check the tax records too.<br /><br />Perhaps most significantly, on the long drive home I had my first Red Bull. I'll write more about that in a couple of days after I finally get to sleep.</div></span>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00397990356075164027noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4845179407205491570.post-13510337773391233812010-02-10T17:56:00.003-05:002010-02-10T17:58:15.569-05:00Why Some People Shouldn't Be Allowed To Stay Home From Work When It Snows<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_NhvVN9kNF98/S3M57E7FUfI/AAAAAAAAAGw/FlJJg6dVZUY/s1600-h/snowman_tag_2-10-10.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 266px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_NhvVN9kNF98/S3M57E7FUfI/AAAAAAAAAGw/FlJJg6dVZUY/s320/snowman_tag_2-10-10.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5436752862262940146" border="0" /></a>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00397990356075164027noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4845179407205491570.post-18570409477973803912010-01-31T02:46:00.006-05:002010-01-31T03:09:26.682-05:00The Mandolin, The Mocha-Choca-Frappa-Whatever, and MeSaturday was productive.<br /><br />Went to the mall to use the ATM. When I saw there was a long waiting line, my response was probably the same as anyone else's would be in that situation: "I can wait on the line with a cup of coffee, or without a cup of coffee. I choose with." Turns out the nearby coffee stand was featuring something they called an Irish Mist, consisting of Irish cream, cappucino, whipped cream, and heaven only knows what else. Despite my eastern-European ancestry (and total lack of so much as a corpuscle of Irish blood), I've long been inexplicably fascinated by anything Irish, so I got one. It tasted good. Then the shock hit me: Mr. black-no-sugar-New-York-City-deli-rotgut-and-damn-proud-of-it had, if only for a brief weak moment, become one of <span style="font-style: italic;">thooooooose </span>people. Immediately raising my collar and pulling my hat down over my eyes so as not to be recognized, I finished my banking business as quickly as I could and drank the rest of my <span style="font-style: italic;">coffee beverage</span> in the privacy of my car. Thank goodness for dirty windows.<br /><br />Stopped at K-mart too. Earlier in the day I was watching Food Network and saw Anne Burrell, my favorite culinary mad-woman, make a wonderful looking parmesan-potato side dish she called Pomme Chef Anne. (An astute comment to her recipe on the Food Network site noted that a "pomme" is an apple; a potato is a "pomme de terre," but let's be forgiving.) As it happened, the recipe required a mandolin, which I didn't have. Found a reasonably priced one at K-mart. Made the dish, and it came out great. (I also made the broccoli rabe dish she showed on the program, and it came out perfectly except for one problem: it tasted like broccoli rabe. Who knew?) If you don't already have a mandolin, here's what I learned:<br /><br /><ul><li> A mandolin can easily become one of the three or four most useful kitchen items you own. It's like those inventions advertised on television in the middle of the night, the ones for the exciting new product that dices, cuts and slices in seconds, cleans quickly, stores easily, and that will make you the envy of all your neighbors. Except this one really works.</li></ul><ul><li> If you don't learn to use it right immediately, before you know what hit you it can take your arms and legs clean off like The Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. (The irony is that the safe way to use a mandolin is slowly which, of course, defeats the whole purpose of using one in the first place.)</li></ul><br />So now the mandolin has been added to the list of items - stand mixer, immersion blender, and food mill being the others - that I would grab if I ever had to run out the door and could save only a few things from the kitchen. And as long as my journal entries don't st rt ooking ike th s, you'll know I've been careful when using it.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Great Scot</span><br /><br />While the world tries to make up its mind whether to hate Jay Leno, David Letterman, Conan O'Brien or Jimmy Kimmel, Craig Ferguson simply continues to be funniest man in late night television. Just take my word for it.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Memory is the Second Thing to Go</span><br /><br />There was something else I wanted to post about and now that I'm finally sitting down writing I can't think of what it was. If anyone knows, please remind me. Thanks.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Quick Quiz</span><br /><br />Ok, what's this:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_NhvVN9kNF98/S2U1yg3RQ6I/AAAAAAAAAGo/rxw6LnXc3SQ/s1600-h/BushHandSign.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 126px; height: 144px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_NhvVN9kNF98/S2U1yg3RQ6I/AAAAAAAAAGo/rxw6LnXc3SQ/s200/BushHandSign.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5432807667423855522" border="0" /></a>a) George Bush putting an Italian hex on demonstrators.<br />b) George Bush getting ready to lean forward and put his hand behind Dick Cheney's head just as Cheney's picture gets taken.<br />c) George Bush ordering 4 beers after using a mandolin for the first time.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00397990356075164027noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4845179407205491570.post-9861019010256452582010-01-01T13:55:00.005-05:002010-01-01T15:44:49.506-05:00Happy Happy<span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;color:black;" ><br />Heartfelt greetings for a happy new year, dear readers. We're still recovering from last night's - well, a gentleman wouldn't use a word like <span style="font-style: italic;">debauchery</span>, but you get the idea. Between watching You-Tube video clips (more on that in a moment), eating frozen cocktail franks, and staying up late into the night (nearly 12:30 am!), it was quite the time. Getting old? Ha! That's for less adventurous spirits</span>.<br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;color:black;" ><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;color:black;" >A couple of New Year's Eve observations:</span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;" ><o:p></o:p></span></p> <ul type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;" >I'm impressed that for all the success she's had as a solo, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Fergie</span> is still also performing as part of an ensemble with Black Eyed Peas. (Can you even imagine, for example, Diana Ross singing background for another member of the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Supremes</span>?) </span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;" ><o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;" >Say what you want about Dick Clark; when I'm his age, I hope I'm half as tough as he is. In the past I was one of those </span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;" >people saying he shouldn't be appearing on the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Rockin</span>' Eve show anymore. Last night, finally, I started to get it. (Turning 50 a few weeks ago has absolutely <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">nothin</span></span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;" >g to do with my new paradigm.)</span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;" ><o:p></o:p></span></li></ul> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;color:black;" >A few final statistics to welcome the beginning of the end of the holiday season: </span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;" ><o:p></o:p></span></p> <ul type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;" >Total Christmas cards sent: 97</span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;" ><o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;" >Christmas cards sent to people I would not </span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;" ><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">recognize</span> on the street: 15</span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;" ><o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;" >Christmas cards either sent to people I've met once and have absolutely no contact with except - you guessed it - Christmas cards, or that we're sending to people that I made a mush-face when I saw we're sending a card to again: 10</span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;" ><o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;" >Christmas cards sent with White-Out applied to a jelly stain on the envelope: 1</span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;" ><o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;" >Total <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">Chanukah</span> cards purchased out of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">habi</span></span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;" >t: 18</span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;" ><o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;" >Total <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">Chanukah</span> cards purchased and not needed be</span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;" >cause of the number of people who, it turns out, have died: 6</span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;" ><o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;" >Total <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Chanukah</span> cards purchased that will be reused next year and hopefully no one will notice it's the same card as this year: 6</span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;" ><o:p></o:p></span></li></ul> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><u><span style=";font-family:";color:black;" >Wardrobe Malfunction, Kennedy Center Honors Style<br /></span></u></span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;color:black;" ><br />I wasn't home to see the 2009 Kennedy Center Honors when it was first broadcast a few days ago, but caught it on You-Tube last night. </span><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;color:black;" >It was a wonderful evening, and when it was all over no doubt everyone was left talking about the touching tributes, the funny insights and, most of all, what in the world Grace <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Bumbry</span> could have been thinking with the collar on that dress.</span></p><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; line-height: normal;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_NhvVN9kNF98/Sz5HKYRdO9I/AAAAAAAAAGY/Nh_IP8SvdwA/s1600-h/Grace-Bumbry.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 221px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_NhvVN9kNF98/Sz5HKYRdO9I/AAAAAAAAAGY/Nh_IP8SvdwA/s320/Grace-Bumbry.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5421849245040589778" border="0" /></a><br /><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;color:black;" >The nearest I can figure is that either:</span></p> <ul type="disc"><li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;color:black;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;" >she lost a bet;</span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;color:black;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;" >she was at a Star Trek fan convention earlier in the day; or<o:p></o:p></span></li><li class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;color:black;"><span style=";font-family:";font-size:130%;" >a local veterinarian took one of those collars they put on dogs to keep them from licking a healing wound and brought it to the clothing shop where Aretha Franklin got that hat she wore to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Obama's</span> inauguration.</span></li></ul><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_NhvVN9kNF98/Sz5IJM5UxdI/AAAAAAAAAGg/C-BIPE26X1U/s1600-h/Aretha-Franklin-Hat.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_NhvVN9kNF98/Sz5IJM5UxdI/AAAAAAAAAGg/C-BIPE26X1U/s320/Aretha-Franklin-Hat.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5421850324318340562" border="0" /></a><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:130%;color:black;" ><br />Since Aretha was there as part of the tribute to Grace <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">Bumbry</span>, I'm betting on that last one. No hat this time, just a dress that left me wondering if she took it off the table after removing the plates and silverware, or just pulled it out like that trick magicians do. (Curse the luck, I couldn't find a picture, but if you use the links at the location noted below, you'll find Aretha's presentation in Part 8.)<br /><br />In any event, check out the tributes to Springsteen (including Melissa Etheridge's standing-ovation-inducing "Born to Run"), Robert <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_12">DeNiro</span>, Mel Brooks, Dave Brubeck and Grace <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_13">Bumbry's</span> collar on You-Tube. It's really worth it. (The link below is for Part 1 of 12, but you'll also see links for the other parts.)</span><br /><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKZAVGQ71hA">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKZAVGQ71hA</a><br /></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:130%;color:black;" ><u>Sometimes You Just Need to go to a Wedding</u><br /><br />I'm a big fan of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_14">Alaina's</span> blog to begin with, and to have this front row seat to her wedding is an extra special treat.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:130%;color:black;" ><a href="http://abaleman666-boysaremean.blogspot.com/2009/12/happy-wedding-happy-husband-happy-wife.html#links">http://abaleman666-boysaremean.blogspot.com/2009/12/happy-wedding-happy-husband-happy-wife.html#links</a><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="line-height: 115%;font-family:";font-size:130%;color:black;" > Please check out this wonderful entry and, if you do, prepare to feel your heart smile. Congratulations to Mr. and Mrs. Mischief!<br /></span></p>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00397990356075164027noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4845179407205491570.post-17208923307019032052009-12-21T11:00:00.004-05:002009-12-21T11:19:44.047-05:00Dig We Must<span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Years ago, there was a Bugs Bunny cartoon in which Yosemite Sam was stranded on a desert island. It showed him feasting on a wide range dishes, all consisting of coconuts prepared every way you could imagine. Eventually he pushed them all aside and said, in a snarling drawl, "I...hates...coconuts." (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aw4LxSb42MU)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Yesterday morning the snow stopped. We were lucky here, about 10". A lot of places along the east coast got much more. Pretty, white snow everywhere you looked, the stuff of snowmen and strong forts for blissful snowball fights. And with my shovel and ice scraper, I felt a great kinship to the image of Yosemite Sam with his knife and fork. I...hates...snow.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">It was important to get the shoveling done right, and on-time. My wife was coming home from the rehab center by ambulette around mid-morning, a few days earlier than we'd thought at first, and to ensure her safety as she was brought in, the driveway, sidewalk, and porch stairs needed to be more than shoveled the usual way; they needed to be pristine. (Fortunately - and unlike her transfer from the hospital - we actually had a couple of days advance notice of her release. This made it possible for me to make sure I was home, and that she wouldn't have to be left in the yard or delivered to a neighbor's house till I got back.)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">My first task was making sure I wasn't awakened at 5 am by some shovel-toting local youth, looking to ring my doorbell before all the other shovel-toting local youths. (Initiative is a fine thing, just not when it involves ringing my doorbell while I'm in a deep sleep.) With the snow still falling the night before, I'd put a big marker-on-poster-board sign on my front door: "Please do not ring bell. We'll shovel ourselves. Thanks." It worked better than the small, cute snowman signs I'd printed on the computer for other snowfalls. Subtlety, which I was not in the mood for anyway, is not the language of Jersey City youth.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Dividing the project into tasks, ordered by priority, I fortified myself with a cup of hot coffee and began. My thoughts wandered - that torch-is-passed-to-a-new-generation thing of shoveling the same driveway my father shoveled; feeling grateful to have a driveway to shovel in the first place, and the strength to do it; suddenly seeing a possible ulterior motive in my sons' decision to dorm at school instead of living at home. A few thoughts about feeling ready for the task despite having recently turned 50, and about all the people each year who feel ready for the task despite having recently turned 50 and end up keeling over next to their shovels anyway. Eventually the shoveling was done, and after a little clean-up work with the mysterious dark brown ice-melt chemical stuff, we were ambulette-ready.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Much of the living room is currently taken up by the pull-out sofa we're camping out on while my wife completes her recovery, so there was no room for the tree and no time for other decorating this year. Still, fashioning a make-shift table-top tree from the top section of our artificial tree - selecting only ornaments than won't break if (and, by "if," I mean "when") they're knocked off by Willie and Lilly - and putting up a couple of representative decorations, I managed to get something up as a nice surprise for her arrival. Christmas albums (nothing like some Clancy Brothers followed by Motown) on the cd-player - and finding out the cd player doesn't play cd's very well anymore - completed the setting.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Waiting at the front door, sipping a hot chocolate while watching my neighbors still shoveling, was pure, smug wonderfulness.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Happy to say, everything went according to plan, which is something of a rarity around here. Normalcy is never possible this time of year anyway, but at least we can start the process of getting a little back.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">My sincere good wishes to all for a fine Christmas and a good, healthy New Year.</span><br /><br /><br /><u style="font-family: times new roman;">Unrelated Item: Just wanted to say...</u><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">A quick note on the sudden passing of Brittany Murphy. A few years ago, I was walking past the Ed Sullivan Theater as she was leaving after taping an appearance on David Letterman. I had never heard of her, but the crowd she drew caught my attention, and out of curiosity I watched a while as she interacted with them. There was the usual celebrity-in-a-hurry thing, and her handlers were trying to get her into the waiting Escalade. What I still remember is how, in spite of the pressure to rush away, she patiently made it a point to take time for the children who were there: posing for some pictures, smiling and talking for a moment with them, etc. It was easy to see it meant the world to these kids, and her warmth struck me as genuine. It was very classy, and totally charming.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">No doubt we'll be hearing and reading a lot about her death. When a 32 year old woman suddenly dies of apparent cardiac arrest, there's a good chance some of that will not be kind. For whatever it's worth, I thought what I saw was worth a mention.</span><br /></span><br /></span></span>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00397990356075164027noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4845179407205491570.post-24039616704242733072009-12-12T10:28:00.002-05:002009-12-12T12:02:53.443-05:00Updating the Updated Update<blockquote style="font-style: italic;">A man died and found himself at the entrance to hell. He tried to explain to the Associate Devil on duty that it surely was a mistake and he didn't belong there, but the AD, having heard it all before, wasn't impressed. Because of the man's persistence, however, the AD did offer the man the chance to choose what job he would be given. Seeing this was the best offer he was going to get, the man agreed. They walked down a long hallway and came to three doors.<br /><br />Opening the first door, the man saw hoards of pained, sweaty men shoveling coal into the fires of hell. He surely didn't want that.<br /><br />Behind the second door, he saw even larger hoards of even sweatier men mining the coal that would be used for the fires. He didn't want that either.<br /><br />Behind the third door, the man saw a small group of men and women. They were standing knee deep in mud*, drinking coffee and talking. This looked odd to the man, but it seemed preferable to either of the other two rooms. The man chose the third room.<br /><br />"Are you sure?," the Associate Devil asked. "Once you're in, I can't change the assignment." The man assured him he was certain this is the room he wanted.<br /><br />After the AD left, the man looked around to find someone to get him a cup of coffee. As he was looking around, another Associate Devil came in and cracked a whip. "Coffee break's over," he said. "Back on your heads."<br /></blockquote><blockquote style="font-style: italic;">* Not the substance in the original version of this story, but one more suitable for a general readership<br /></blockquote><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family: times new roman;">A few moments to do some long-overdue catching up. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">Between the last post and this one, my wife got out of the hospital and into a local rehab center. There are many challenges, and progress is coming a little bit at a time - getting up, walking, sitting back down, building up lower and upper body strength, tolerating the food. (The food reminds me of another old story, the one about two old women in the dining room at a resort in the Catskills. The first one says, "The food here is really terrible." The second says, "Yes, and such small portions.") This is tentatively to go on till about 12/31. Ouch. There's some comfort knowing they're giving her recovery the time it needs, but still...</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">There's little chance any Christmas decorating will happen this year. I was able to find the treasured Chanukah menorah - a years-ago gift from my grandmother - just in time for last night's first candle. In a nod to my childhood, a practice I find myself taking comfort in these days (including treating myself to a jar of Ovaltine at the supermarket the other day), I went to the </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: times new roman;">yarmulkah </span><span style="font-family: times new roman;">drawer (yes, I have a yarmulkah drawer) and selected the one I used to wear in Hebrew school in the early 70's, the burgundy velour one with silver-colored trim. (Hey, I did say it was from the early 70's. Just because I wasn't old enough to have long sideburns didn't mean I couldn't participate in that era's fashion absurdities somehow.) Back to the menorah: usually my wife selects the different color candles to use each night and, after I say the prayers and light the center </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-family: times new roman;">shamus</span><span style="font-family: times new roman;"> candle, my wife uses it to light the remaining candles. Last night, of course, I was on my own. (Our other custom is that, on the last night of Chanukah, my sons say the prayers. As they're bapitized Presbyterians whose Hebrew vocabulary is pretty much limited to "oy vey," this is usually an interesting experience for all.)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">In the meantime, we keep things going: handling phone calls (no mean feat considering I don't usually answer the phone at home); checking e-mails for my wife (no mean feat considering the literally hundreds of store-spam e-mails she gets); responding to selected e-mails on her behalf (no mean feat considering the number of people I'm responding to that I either don't know or don't like); going through paper mail; making sure she has clean laundry; and whatever else needs to be done. It's all about the to-do list.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman;">Speaking of the to-do list, I just looked at the time. Coffee break's over, back on my head.</span><br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: times new roman;font-size:130%;" ><u>Unrelated Item: So When Did He Find Time for Golf?</u><br /><br />As with previous celebrity news circuses, it's not my intention to devote a lot of pixels to Tiger Woods. Given the current high number of Google searches on Tiger Woods' name, I realize I could probably improve traffic to this site by writing about Tiger Woods, mentioning Tiger Woods this and Tiger Woods that. I just believe the problems Tiger Woods is currently experiencing are things Tiger Woods should be discussing with his wife and that, as an adult, Tiger Woods doesn't need our help dealing with all the headlines that mention "Tiger Woods." The journalistic integrity of this space is not going to be compromised by constant mentions of Tiger Woods, no matter how many search engine hits would send new readers anytime someone does a search for Tiger Woods or anything relating to Tiger Woods.<br /><br />All that said, a couple of thoughts do come to mind:<br /><br />1. Given the countless women, paid and unpaid, that we are now told he was, um, "with," I'm dismayed by his behavior, but impressed by his stamina. I guess the age-old question of whether golfers are athletes has finally been settled.<br /><br />2. I am hoping - really, deeply hoping - that 2010 is the year Tiger Woods appears on David Letterman. How unspeakably cool would that be?</span><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00397990356075164027noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4845179407205491570.post-46529432090155080162009-11-21T09:14:00.011-05:002009-11-21T09:40:07.648-05:00The New York ExperienceStill reeling from Oprah announcing the end of her show (ok, it's not for another two years and the announcement was actually that she was going to be announcing it the next day which I would have taken to be the same as announcing it but what do I know?), it turns out my wife didn't get out of the hospital after all on Friday; in fact, she didn't even get out of the recovery room until late afternoon. (No room at the inn, that sort of thing. I suppose one of the downsides of a hospital that focuses on joint surgery is that people don't die there and free up rooms as frequently.) It's looking like she'll be in through the weekend, with some time at a rehab facility after that. (That last part remains to be confirmed.) My heartfelt thanks for all the wonderful expressions of support.<br /><br />It's an interesting trip to the hospital, which is located on 70th Street, about as far to the east in Manhattan as you can go. (Let's put it this way; take two steps in the wrong direction and you're in the East River, dodging tugboats, barges, and the occasional Circle Line tour boat.) Since the train from NJ puts me at 33rd Street at about the mid-point of Manhattan's east-to-west span, it's about a two and a half mile travel distance from there to the hospital. For the trip there and back, I decided to walk rather than take the subway; something about walking has always made it possible for me to think, relax, create and energize in ways that just don't happen at any other time. It's surely better than other ways I've tried. Experience has shown me there are no answers at the bottom of a box of oreos.<br /><br />Every city has its character, of course, and its characters, but even when you've commuted to New York City nearly every day for over thirty years, there's still so much to see on a walk like that. The autograph shop on West 57th with the most amazingly cool things in the window. The cross-dressing guy in a see-through outfit (or maybe it was just a zombie trying to meet someone special) walking along Third Avenue. In the mid-forties, the theater district, I noticed a restaurant that advertises it's been providing the finest Cuban cuisine since 1963, and thought, yeah, I'll bet in 1963 Cuban cuisine was just a great business to be in.<br /><br />At 34th Street, Herald Square, Macy's is in full swing in its preparation for Christmas and the Thanksgiving Day Parade/world's largest infomercial. Every year, they put up fantastically involved window displays along the Broadway side. Tourists flock to see them, and even jaded New Yorkers have been known to stop for a moment and look. (Not for too long, of course. Got somewhere to be, you know, though we're not always quite sure where that is and have to think of it along the way.)<br /><br />Anyway, for folks not expecting to be in New York City this holiday season, a brief glimpse of what you'll see as you pass the windows. (This year's theme is Letters to Santa, with the windows showing the path letters take as they are handled in the North Pole.) These are strictly camera-phone videos, about five seconds each, and not broadcast quality. But I thought they had a New York flavor and would be kind of fun to post anyway. As for me, well, I'd better get back to my research; a man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's an oreo for?<br /><br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dxDZc_WnT3TNytthZztD1uO0tNyDNI97zZv20hxsB69ELLJOL_2gO0YELQRblJuwXxr9nlmxH8hlM17Mf5qeA' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><br /><br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dw_E_xc6zjamUFVkfWJXTYdgcFTApU487vCxLUIHjwMZzUZwCT3YYYuTtWHDhA0GOBmO9jy4CLMQSLOVq5Fkw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><br /><br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dygZ3PbOjn_G6r4y8FFs8J147LB-76ZH8vLeiiOvrU7Vk-mJ3pTf8JlzeU7M3ciSYijFvzA2rbeNLWOwtwbEw' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><br /><br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dwnMSjA0vNraZEvy3bCC6I9qj4ceRMN-9mpDxmbUoykRQH15-WwqmHR1klxcN0BJ80xOED2nLUAe_mWP38opQ' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><br /><br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dzUa7oMl1VK5JQUPigHs7PiJvWvWtX9aKrNxkpGQTdn9cazCk1ULY5W8ewVHaFa6F7i3ktfWXvJVhV3DcSBXQ' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><br /><br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dxcm3KBuyhJqi_VynIH3YkhO0THWwyPb0GMXt2_nojFxNL1_Cqrn-pfkYAZG9uwCInJ23gHyhHeoXLCG1SMkA' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><br /><br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dwUnTHcBAMVc8-ANG7bygSmxxIs3_GyPHIN0q7NgbgZlEZRt2slQP61N8Vi3vpT_Vse88d5_cffuzBPrHqsNQ' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00397990356075164027noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4845179407205491570.post-66814003225928817942009-11-20T00:01:00.002-05:002009-11-20T00:15:47.889-05:00Game DayJust a short update on today's surgery.<br /><br />Happy to say it went well. It turns out the tendon didn't actually sever; it just came disconnected from the knee bone. We'll find out in the morning, but it looks like my wife will be able to come home from the hospital on Friday. Still to be determined is what approach we'll be taking in the weeks ahead - physical therapy, rehab, etc. - and for how long.<br /><br />If every you need joint surgery of any kind, we can give a strong recommendation to the high-level professionals of The Hospital for Special Surgeries in NYC. Every detail is checked and rechecked to make sure everything is done right. And rather than having to spend an hour searching the hospital for someone, anyone, when you need something, we had an on-going parade of hospital staff checking on what we needed before we needed it. The surgical waiting area is a large atrium with a great view of the East River. And most importantly, they provide coffee at no cost.<br /><br />Time for some sleep.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00397990356075164027noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4845179407205491570.post-34592518424595801052009-11-13T11:42:00.003-05:002009-11-13T11:58:28.426-05:00A Temporary Set-Back, I Assure YouSurgery is set for this Thursday.<br /><br />Surgery...say what?<br /><br />Flashback to November 5. My wife had been out of the immobilizer for a couple of weeks, making nice progress, faithfully doing her exercises and gaining a bit of strength. She was even starting to walk some. At first, walking required the therapist's help but she soon progressed to making it around the therapy room with the therapist nearby and a husband moving the wheelchair close behind. (I'm not sure if pushing the wheelchair really did anything for my wife, but it did give me something to do, like those toy car dashboards parents put on their young children's strollers, and for all I know that may have been the real purpose.)<br /><br />With victory near, my wife was determined to overcome whatever residual fears remained about walking with no one's help. Waiting for me to get home to take her to physical therapy, she decided to try some unmonitored practice and surprise me. It went well up until the last attempt before I got home; a small turn didn't work and she went down.<br /><br />I'd called a few minutes from home to tell her I would be there shortly - no answer. I was a little concerned about that, but there are many reasons that could happen and almost all of them are not problematic. When I got to the house and saw the back window was dark, my spidey-sense was tingling - it's funny how you can sometimes sense when something's not right before you actually know anything for sure. My first words yelled across the house to wherever she was: "Are you ok?" Her response: "Not really." She was on the floor, in a good deal of pain. Her efforts to surprise me worked, just not as planned.<br /><br />By then, of course, we knew the drill; this time we even had an immobilizer for the trip to the Emergency Room. (And, of course, we had my really cool leg support wheelchair attachment.) X-rays there, follow-up orthopedist visit, MRI to follow up the follow-up visit, orthopedist visit to follow-up the MRI that followed-up the orthopedist visit that followed up the trip to the ER, and countless follow-up phone calls from well-meaning family and friends who each know the best doctor/hospital/procedure for us to follow-up with, and it comes down to this: the knee isn't refractured, but the tendon that connects the quadricep muscle to the knee cap snapped. (Normally - pardon the high-level technical medical terminology - the thigh bone's connected to the knee bone, and the knee bone's connected to the shin bone. Well, right now, they're not.)<br /><br />The plan now - after follow-up visits to our regular doctors to clear my wife for surgery - is for the orthopedist (the one from the second orthopedic follow-up) to go in with a large, sterile sewing machine and give the tendon a basting stitch. The surgeon is very optimistic.<br /><br />Not to worry - as things progress, I'll follow up.Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00397990356075164027noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4845179407205491570.post-42408682785660201462009-10-31T18:14:00.007-04:002009-10-31T18:27:55.753-04:00Kodak Moment<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_NhvVN9kNF98/Suy3gJCTleI/AAAAAAAAAGQ/ulfG--wVtmY/s1600-h/Lilly_and_Willy_at_Vet_2009-10-31.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_NhvVN9kNF98/Suy3gJCTleI/AAAAAAAAAGQ/ulfG--wVtmY/s320/Lilly_and_Willy_at_Vet_2009-10-31.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5398891816119670242" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><insert pic="">No, this is not my cats' idea of dressing up as illegal immigrants in a car trunk for Halloween. Nor is it a nostalgic attempt to relive their pre-birth experience. You see, this morning was the annual "bring Willie and Lilly to the vet" ordeal.<br /><br />It's amazing how two college educated adults can spend days planning to out-think two animals with brains the size of a walnut, and only partially succeed. Regardless of what other steps we take, and regardless of the fact that they only see the carriers once a year, at first glimpse of them the cats go into evasive maneuvers that would make a fighter jet pilot envious. (Contrast this to their daddy, who has people in his office that he's seen daily for years and whose names he still can't remember.)</insert></span><br /></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><insert pic=""><br />We know to close off all the best escape routes upstairs. (If they get under a bed you might as well cancel the vet appointment.) I thought I'd be cool and leave only the bathroom door open, since it's a dead end and if they ran there their furry little butts would be mine.) Unfortunately, they figured that out a lot faster than I did. Consistent with their personalities, Willie tried to muscle his way out of the problem, and it didn't take very long at all before he was in his carrier. Lilly may be smaller than Willie, but it seems that the human world is not the only one in which girls are smarter than boys.<br /><br />Lilly didn't outrun me. She out-thought me. After nearly an hour of searching there was no sign of her. I was actually getting worried; we'll never know for sure, but I strongly suspect it was trying to shimmy out of a too-tight spot that led to Skids' life-ending injury a little over two years ago. Then I thought of one more place to look. We have a large sideboard cabinet that comes all the way down to the floor in the front, but that has a small opening in the back; sure enough, I turned the flashlight there and a little pink</insert></span></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><insert pic=""> nose was staring back at me. It meant moving the side-board and several other pieces of furniture, but after a sword dance that included chasing, hissing (by both of us) and other elements of a good western's barroom brawl, eventually she was cornered on the stairs and tried to run past me. Game over.<br /><br />Frustrated and sweaty, I told my wife I'd caught them both, and cautioned her that if ever I was looking for her, she was never to hide under the furniture. Having put up with this kind of thing nearly every day for the past 27 years, she agreed and went back to watching the weekend edition of the Today Show.<br /><br />Back to the photo. We finally got to the vet and I pried Willie from his carrier - first you can't get them in, then you can't get them out. </insert></span></span><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><insert pic="">I opened the door of Lilly's to get her and before I could stop him Willie scooted past me and into it. There were now two cats - one a little over 13 pounds, the other a little over nine pounds - packed into a carrier that was originally purchased for my previous 5 and a half pound cat. I think I saw this in a Marx Brothers movie once.<br /><br /></insert></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_NhvVN9kNF98/Suy3ATHwixI/AAAAAAAAAGI/J4Sv6fVCcPQ/s1600-h/Marx+Bros+Stateroom.jpg"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 277px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_NhvVN9kNF98/Suy3ATHwixI/AAAAAAAAAGI/J4Sv6fVCcPQ/s320/Marx+Bros+Stateroom.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5398891269071080210" border="0" /></a><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><insert pic=""><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><insert pic=""><span style="font-size:130%;"><u>I Like Left-Overs But...<br /></u>It's after 6:00 pm and I've had exactly three trick-or-treaters. (Based on previous years' turnouts, I'm prepared for 200.) If things don't pick up, this week at work I'll be brown bagging Sugar Daddy sandwiches with a side of Swedish Fish.</span><br /></insert></insert></span></span>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00397990356075164027noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4845179407205491570.post-13191097574212980452009-10-25T07:45:00.009-04:002009-10-25T07:57:44.800-04:00Back in the Saddle<span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;color:black;" ><span style="color:black;">This past week was my second back at work after four or five weeks - I don't even remember anymore - on Family Medical Leave. It felt good to get back. Everything was right where I left it (which is mostly a good thing, but not entirely), no major disasters on my projects, my building pass still worked, and so far I've still got that rested-and-ready feeling. Structure, like anything else, is good if kept in moderation.<br /><br />We're still fitting physical therapy into the schedule. If it's ok with some insurance company clerks who've never met my wife and whose medical background consists of putting a band-aid on their Winnie the Pooh doll's boo-boo at the age of four, we'll continue for the next couple of weeks. Progress is slower than my wife would like, but it's there. She's back to feeding the cats (so they don't have to like me any more if they don't want to), and doing most of the cooking again. (I did get to make a decent beef goulash with spaetzle and ginger-glazed carrots last night. At least I think that's what spaetzle is supposed to taste like.)<br /><br />That ginger-glazed carrot recipe is interesting. It's from Alton Brown on www.foodnetwork.com, and uses ginger ale as the main element for the glaze. (It does benefit from an extra pinch of ginger, but the ginger ale gives it a better flavor than you might expect.) I never envisioned myself using ginger ale as an ingredient, but when you've got hungry mouths to feed you learn to relax certain standards. I've found this to be particularly true when one of the hungry mouths is your own. I draw the line at ketchup-as-ingredient, though. At least for now.<br /><br />One final food note: this past week a chef originally from Jersey City (and a graduate of the county-run culinary school where I've gotten to take some weekend adult-ed classes) beat Morimoto on Iron Chef America. Most significantly, despite his Jersey City/Hudson County background, he appears to have won without any payoffs, threats or back-room deals. There's hope for us yet.<br /><br /></span></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;color:black;" ><span style="color:black;"><u>Why Bees Are Disappearing</u><br /><br />The other day I was in the yard watching three bees working my basil plant. Basil is mostly leafy, of course, but if you let it overgrow a bit the branches grow small, pretty white flowers. The bees were sticking their faces into the flowers, doing whatever it is they do, and moving on to the next flower. A moment later another bee would come to the same flower, stick his face in, and do the same thing. Then the third. It got me thinking: is that sanitary? What if one of those bees has a cold? Maybe if we had some teeny-tiny surgical masks...<span style="font-size:130%;"><br /><br /></span></span></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:100%;color:black;" ><span style=";font-family:arial;color:black;" ><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><u style="font-family: arial;">With Friends Like These...<br /></u><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">It amazes me to think back at how hard it used to be to turn down Friend Requests on Facebook. It's a networking site, for goodness sake. Just because someone doesn't know me or any of the other 1500 friends in their friend list, or their profiles are offensive (defined here as expressing views different from mine) or not even in English, is no reason to risk offending them. But like learning to throw paper junkmail out unopened, it's something that gets easier every time you do it, and you'll get to wondering why it was ever hard in the first place. Enough requests to play Mafia Wars will do that.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">I did make a Facebook profile in connection with this journal, and if you are of a mind to take a look, it's found under the e-mail address, totallymentalben@ymail.com, with the name T.M. Ben. And I promise I won't turn down your Friend Request.</span><br /></span></span></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:85%;color:black;" ><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:85%;color:black;" ><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /></span></span></span></span>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00397990356075164027noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4845179407205491570.post-78292702557706793572009-10-06T16:53:00.005-04:002009-10-06T17:22:56.592-04:00Joe Sixpack's Country Fried Late Night Comedian Make-Over<span style="font-size:130%;">I won't dwell on it, because it ultimately does come down to a private matter between a man and his wife, but let me say this: I'm REALLY glad I'm not David Letterman right now.<br /><br />That said, a few things to share:<br /><br /></span><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" ><u>Make THIS Over</u><br />Been getting to see daytime tv shows I (mercifully) don't normally get to watch. Maybe it's like when everything tastes salty because you're not used to eating salt, or maybe it's just a guy thing, but it seems as if every program during the day is making some middle-aged woman over. I have no problem with self-improvement, finding a new hairstyle that is more flattering than your current one, etc. Those are normal things, even healthy ones. What I'm seeing on a daily basis, though, is more like a parade of full-grown women who believe in their esteem-deprived hearts that some expert-to-the-stars can provide a new hair cut, make-up or style of dress that will validate their lives with meaning and purpose, and who have the encouragement of a cheering studio audience to prove it. One particularly henious ex</span><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" >ample (won't mention the show, but the host normally does things that are yum-o) had women telling a stylist what "star" they admired, and the stylist made them over in that celebrity's own style. Remember, these aren't 14 year old girls showing up at a Mylie Cyrus concert dressed like Hannah Montana. These are grown women who have families, jobs, and the right, though perhaps not the stability, to vote.<br /><br />It comes down to one of my favorite quotes, years old but completely timeless, from the funny and brilliant Brett Butler: "If you wait till you're rich and famous to be happy, you're screwed."<br /></span><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" ><u><br />You Betcha!</u><br />Hard as it is to believe, there is finally something Sarah Palin and I agree on: it would be a great thing for this country if Levi Johnston would just go away, never to be seen or heard from again. It's not an easy thing to emerge as a bigger slea<img src="file:///C:/Users/STAPLE%7E1/AppData/Local/Temp/moz-screenshot.jpg" alt="" /><img src="file:///C:/Users/STAPLE%7E1/AppData/Local/Temp/moz-screenshot-1.jpg" alt="" />ze</span><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" > (and one less qualified for fatherhood) than Jon Gosselin, but despite the odds Johnston has managed it.<br /></span><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" ><br /><u>This Isn't a Cooking Blog, But...<br /></u>For some reason, the other day I found myself wanting some Chicken Fried Steak.<br /><br />For readers outside of the U.S. (and probably some American readers too), Chicken Fried Steak - also known as Country Fried Steak - is one of the truly great comfort foods of the south. It may be described as follows:<br /><br /></span> <ul><li><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" >a steak that has been "tenderized" (a genteel culinary term for having the living daylights beaten out of it by a stressed cook wielding a spiked hammer that looks like something out of a horror movie or fetish shop) then dredged, breaded and fried in the style of fried chicken, and finally smothered in gravy; and<br /></span></li><li><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" >an irresistably delicious meal whose fat and salt content will eventually kill you.</span></li></ul> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" ><br /></span><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" >The catch, of course, is that having cholesterol issues, I don't fry. (Truth be told, I've made three or four attempts at frying things. In a cosmic effort to keep me from eating fried food, all failed miserably. Frying is a lot harder than it looks.) My desire for Chicken Fried Steak being strong, however, I set out to find a healthier, "oven-fried" version.<br /><br />First I needed a base recipe from which to work; since I was looking for a southern dish whose fat and salt content will eventually kill you, I knew to check Paula Deen's recipes first. Taking her fried recipe as a starting point, I changed it to use the oven-frying methods I've been putting together from various sources and experience. I'm proud to present the result below. It came out right the first time, and that's something of a rarity for me.<br /><br />When serving, make frequent use of "y'all" (a southern form of the more familiar New York "youse") and the adjective, "big ol' ".<br /><br />Enjoy!<br /><br />Country Over-Fried Steak<br />Yield: 4 servings</span> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" ><u>Ingredients<o:p></o:p></u></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" >4 – 4 oz. tenderized thin cut steaks</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" >¾ cup Panko</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" >¼ tsp fresh ground pepper</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" >Seasoning Mix: 1/2 tsp salt, 1/8 tsp fresh-ground pepper, 1/8 tsp garlic powder</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" >1 cup buttermilk</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" >3 - 4 cups beef gravy<o:p><br /></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" >½ bunch green onions, or ½ medium yellow onion, sliced for topping</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" ><br /></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" ><o:p> </o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" ><u>Method<o:p></o:p></u></span></p><!--[if !supportLists]--><!--[endif]--> <ul><li><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" >Preheat oven to 400 degrees. P</span><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" >lace baking sheet in oven to preheat.<o:p></o:p></span></li><li><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" ><o:p></o:p><span style="font-family:Wingdings;"><span style=""><span style=";font-family:";" > </span></span></span>Combine Panko and ¼ tsp black pepper in a 1 gallon zip-lock bag.<o:p></o:p></span><!--[if !supportLists]--><!--[endif]--></li><li><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" ><o:p></o:p><span style="font-family:Wingdings;"><span style=""><span style=";font-family:";" > </span></span></span>Combine seasoning mix ingredients and season both sides of the steaks. Dredge each steak in the buttermilk, shake off excess, and coat with Panko, pressing crumbs in. Let coated steaks rest in refrigerator for at least 15 minutes<o:p></o:p></span><!--[if !supportLists]--><!--[endif]--></li><li><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" ><o:p></o:p><span style="font-family:Wingdings;"><span style=""><span style=";font-family:";" > </span></span></span>When steaks have finished resting, spray preheated baking sheet with cooking spray. Place steaks on the baking sheet and spray tops lightly. Bake until coating is golden brown and crispy, about 20</span><!--[if !supportLists]--><!--[endif]--><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" > - 25 minutes, turning half-way.<o:p></o:p></span></li><li><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" ><o:p></o:p><span style="font-family:Wingdings;"><span style=""><span style=";font-family:";" > </span></span></span>While steaks are baking, prepare gravy </span><!--[if !supportLists]--><!--[endif]--><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" >using any preferred recipe. When gravy is ready, add the steaks and bring to a boil over medium-high heat.<o:p></o:p></span></li><li><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" ><o:p></o:p><span style="font-family:Wingdings;"><span style=""><span style=";font-family:";" > </span></span></span>Reduce the heat to low, put onions on top, cover and simmer for 30 minutes.</span><!--[if !supportLists]--><!--[endif]--></li><li><span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" >Serve with mashed potatoes, smothering both with gravy.<br /></span></li></ul> <span style=";font-family:Times New Roman,Times,serif;font-size:130%;" ><br /></span><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /></span>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00397990356075164027noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4845179407205491570.post-6456953758095086042009-09-27T16:26:00.004-04:002009-09-27T17:24:36.079-04:00The Circadian-Free Life<span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">A couple of weeks into my family leave, the non-schedule schedule has gotten way too comfortable. It isn't so much that the clock no longer is in charge of my life. It's that nothing else has stepped into the power vacuum. I suppose it can be said I feel young again if by "young" is meant "infant with his days and nights mixed up." Or, worse, a college student.<br /><br />Physically the past couple of weeks haven't been overly taxing. I have to say there's not a lot of mental down-time, though. It's like a chess game where every move is planned three moves in advance. My respect for stay-at-home moms is greater than ever.<br /><br />Of course, I'm scheduled to be returning to work in a couple more weeks, so it's important to stay grounded as much as can be managed. Through e-mails and phone messages I've been able to keep up with the major issues at my office. I've continued to play an active role in heading off problems and, when necessary, generating effective solutions decisively. For example, just this past Friday there was an e-mail asking for recipes for the office fund-raising cookbook, and I was able to send several.<br /><br />A few observations at the mid-point of my family leave:<br /><br /></span><ul><li><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">It may be just my imagination, but I swear the cats like me better now that I'm the one feeding them. I guess my usual cat-job - cleaning the litter box - just isn't as high on the cats-appreciate-it list.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">I don't care if it does make my wife laugh at me - there's a right way and a wrong way to make a tuna salad sandwich and, dammit, I'm going to look up a recipe for it.</span></li><li><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">A major discovery: making double portions means not having to cook a meal from scratch the next night. Remember, you read it here first.</span></li></ul><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Cooking remains an active focus. So far the winner of the truly strange recipe contest comes from www.foodnetwork.com, where the Neeleys posted a shrimp corn-dog. (It's basically a hot dog made of a shrimp mixture, instead of the meat by-products, insect parts, and heaven only knows what else mixture regular hot dogs are made of. You batter it and process as a corn-dog and, voila!) Yes, some of the ingredients are a little expensive, but the look on people's faces when you tell them you've made a shrimp hot dog? Priceless.<br /><br />Tonight I begin my Yom Kippur fast. Not to worry, though. Making food for others when you're fasting - my wife is not Jewish and, despite their fondness for whitefish flavor Friskies, neither are Willie and Lilly - is just something you get used to.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><u>So You Think You Can Dance<br /></u><br />While canoodling on Youtube the other night, I came across the clip embedded below. It's from Stormy Weather. Cab Calloway and his orchestra performing Jumpin' Jive is worth seeing on its own merits. But it's the performance by the Nicholas Brothers about 1:36 into the clip that, I'm warning you, may blow out the circuitry on your computers. It is, simply, astonishing. This is about a five minute clip, and if you give it a look I'm certain you'll be very glad you did.<br /><br />While on the subject of dancing, Dancing with the Stars is normally light fun, the only reality show I like to watch. But that gorgeously human moment last week when Kelly Osborne ran to O</span><img src="file:///C:/Users/STAPLE%7E1/AppData/Local/Temp/moz-screenshot.jpg" alt="" /><img src="file:///C:/Users/STAPLE%7E1/AppData/Local/Temp/moz-screenshot-1.jpg" alt="" /><img src="file:///C:/Users/STAPLE%7E1/AppData/Local/Temp/moz-screenshot-2.jpg" alt="" /><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">zzy and Sharon after she finished transcended the show, celebrity, and anything else superficial. The famously outrageous and occasionally bizarre rock couple were exposed as actually being a wonderfully ordinary set of loving, proud parents. It took a while, but a little reality finally made its way onto a reality show.</span><br /><br /><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.blogger.com/video.g?token=AD6v5dz7iyT_qLToAdJ8usWRZAUVQrXONL1VlLwXgZGth_AxI5muz2Qjt7zdaE_7SGKJb57WexJUtKG0Lzrs3gAgbA' class='b-hbp-video b-uploaded' frameborder='0'></iframe><br /><span style="font-family:Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><br /><br /><u>One Day at a Time, Indeed</u><br /><br />Waking up in a drug-induced haze to find you've been sleeping with someone who looked like Papa John Philips would be a traumatic experience even if he weren't your father, and so daughter MacKenzie is a good example of how wrong it so often is to speak of celebrity children as being privileged. As often as not, such kids are well-financed but otherwise unprepared for the rigors of navigating life once they're out of their protective biospheres. That said, I'm wondering what develops during a public childhood that leads one to think so intensely personal a matter is best handled in a public forum. Odd thing for a blogger to say, I suppose, but I'm also not here writing about that time I...well, never mind.<br /><br /><br /></span>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00397990356075164027noreply@blogger.com6