DeRosaWorld

Fuck The Election. Let's Blow Shit Up and Eat Cake: A Treasonously Good Cake

Guy Fawkes Day: November 5th marks the anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, a conspiracy to blow up the English Parliament and King James I in 1605, the day set for the king to open Parliament. The anniversary was named after Guy Fawkes, the most famous of the conspirators.

The day is celebrated like Halloween. A cake is part of the tradition.

Here is a modern interpretation of a very old cake.

Guy Fawkes Day Cake

(recipe inspired by Le Cordon Bleu)

Ingredients:
1/4 cup molasses
1/3 cup unsalted butter
1/4 cup dark corn syrup
1/2 cup soft light brown sugar
2/3 cup milk
1/3 cup rolled oats, blitzed to powder in coffee grinder
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 eggs

Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Line an 8 inch cake pan with waxed paper. Grease the paper with butter and dust with flour.
2. Melt the molasses, butter, corn syrup, brown sugar and milk in a saucepan. Remove from heat and cool.
3. Put dry ingredients into a separate bowl: oat powder, flour, spices and baking soda. Pour in the butter mixture and beat. Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Continue beating until mixture becomes a smooth paste.
4. Pour the mixture into the prepared cake pan and bake for 35 minutes. Poke the center with a tooth pick. If it comes out clean, it is done. Leave in pan to cool for 5 minutes.
5. Turn the cake out onto a cooling wire rack, peel off the waxed paper and leave to cool.
6. Frost with ready-made dark chocolate icing. Cut cake into squares and serve.

A Friend Has Died: Eleanor Hamerow: 1920 - 2011

“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”
      -- Henry Adams

men·tor:  [men-tawr, -ter], noun
1. a wise and trusted counselor or teacher.
2.an influential senior sponsor or supporter.

A friend of mine died this past week. She was 91 years old. She was a teacher, a filmmaker, a chemist and pharmacist, a dancer, a communist and atheist, a lousy cook and one hell of a person. They don’t make them like that in New York City anymore.

I met Eleanor Hamerow when I attended NYU’s Graduate Film Program back in the 1980s. She was my teacher and we were terrified of her gruff New York accent and attitude which was only a veneer for a caring and intelligent woman.

The heyday of the NYU Program was slipping fast, mostly due to the enormous popularity of film schools across the country. NYU was becoming a money-making corporate entity and some of the old timers like Ellie seemed to be in the way of a new image the school wanted to portray. Her last years at the school were a constant political battle for students and the art of film.

She hung in there as long as she could showing Orson Welles and John Ford movies and La Belle et la Bête and teaching film editing.  She was a film editor and documentary filmmaker of some renowned.

(CBS News (She was fired for including President Eisenhower's "beware the military, industrial complex" speech in their televised documentary of his life.), Martha Graham: An American Original in Performance,  A Dancer’s World, An American Family...)

Film Editing was her second profession after her early years as a chemist.  Teaching was her Third Act.

She got a small auditorium named after her at NYU...but when she finally retired, the soul went out of the school along with all the increasingly antiquated film equipment, like hand-cranked sound synchronizers, moviolas and film splicing blocks...and the old projectors that chewed up old French new wave or Italian neo-realist film prints...

After I finished school, Ellie gave me a job working for her to help me pay off my student loans and I was able to work on her last documentary...appropriately about a teacher.

Somehow...and it is probably worth a novel in itself, I travelled to Moscow with her in 1989 to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the VGIK Film School started by Eisenstein in 1919.  One brief story I’ll share is we went in search of the Moscow Arts Theater...home of ‘The Method’ and Stanislavsky...the mythical directing and acting philosophy that breathed life into Marlon Brando, James Dean, Lazlo Benedict, and Elia Kazan...and the NYU Gradate Film Program under Ellie Hamerow.

We found the old theater in the early afternoon and walked into the empty lobby. The doors were open, but the place seemed deserted.  A man in a dark suit handed Ellie a rose and escorted us into the theater...on the stage was a casket with a large photo next to it of one of the actors from the theater troupe. They assumed Ellie had come to pay respects...she looked born and bred...her boots, her head popping out the top of a heavily-scarfed, long black coat...all 5' 1" of her...so we joined the line of mourners.

We had a young interpreter from the school with us and he found the administrator of the theater and told him that Martin Scorsese (me) and a famous American film producer (Ellie) were here. So he came to see us and though we didn’t fool him, we scored some tickets to the theater the next night, and Ihe gave me a poster for the 100th anniversary of The Seagull.  

The next night, we got to see a play that was banned since the 1930s by Stalin himself. Ellie was in heaven. There we were sitting in the front row at the Moscow Arts Theater watching a play in Russian. Our translator was there, kind of filling us in on what was being said and of course there was Ellie's running commentary as though the performance was taking place back at NYU in one of her classes...

Again, a story for another time...but Ellie had written a speech for the VGIK Film School celebration in which she was going to scold the Russians for Stalin and ruining the promise of communism...

After Ellie retired and the years started piling up, some of her contemporary friends began to get ill or even pass away. I would get a phone call from her telling me that Mimi or Ruby couldn't make the performance tonight at Lincoln Center and would I like to go...I saw my first Shostakovich with her and my first Tudor ballet...and my first opera...(a four-hour Semiramede where I didn’t realize that Marilyn Horne was supposed to be playing a man).

She introduced me to the Manhattan cocktail...she couldn't drink anymore, but she wanted me to order one so it sat on the table through dinner so she could smell it...she ordered it the way she liked it: gin, dry vermouth, a dask of bitters and a twist lemon peel.

She was a teacher, but also, always a scholar. Into her eighties she was taking classes at Columbia University. In her late seventies she decided she needed to read the Bible and took a class. I would get a call from her. “What do you know about The First Nicene Council?”  or “Have you read Aquinas?  Let’s have a nosh and talk about it.”  So I would wrap up in a scarf and coat and gloves and take a cab from my East 55th Street apartment to her West 89th Street penthouse and we’d get coffee and something to eat and discuss religion and inevitably movies.

I moved to Los Angeles over twelve years ago and only corresponded with Ellie at first by phone and letters and then dwindling to a few emails and a long Holiday card.

I wasn’t there for the dementia or the need to put her in a home, or for the end where I am told she simply refused food and shortly after, died.

To live such a life and to take it to age 91...Not bad Ellie, not bad at all. You are remembered and cherished...tonight over a Manhattan, Ellie-style.

Saturday Musings: "Bringing It All Back Home' Edition

Where to begin...

"Credit Suisse Group AG (CS), Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) and Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc (RBS) each borrowed at least $30 billion in 2008 from a Federal Reserve emergency lending program whose details weren’t revealed to shareholders, members of Congress or the public."

This is awesome… The United States Congress didn’t know about these loans nor did the governments of the country where these banks are located…

So who controls the Fed?  Where does the Fed’s money come from?

This is America; we don’t get to ask those questions.

-----

But what we do get is a Democratic President that signs an extension on the Patriot Act from Europe… yes the Patriot Act, one of the those hopey, changey things the folks who voted for President Obama thought he was going to help us out of… like Banking De-regulation and Health Care Costs and ending the wars in the Middle East with his all powerful Nobel Peace Prize... the list is growing...

Oh well, what does he care, look what is running against him in 2012, the GOP is mounting the field with a pack of morally degenerate, financially spoiled, politically disingenuous , morally corruptible and intellectually devoid candidates.

What would John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin make of these mopes?

-----

Speaking of morally degenerates, Pope Benedict the XOXO’s First Officer of The Pedophilia Inquisition… (I have to go for the link to this one.)

"Father Riccardo Seppia, a 51-year-old parish priest in the village of Sastri Ponente, near Genoa, was arrested last Friday, May 13, on pedophilia and drug charges. Investigators say that in tapped mobile-phone conversations, Seppia asked a Moroccan drug dealer to arrange sexual encounters with young and vulnerable boys. "I do not want 16-year-old boys but younger. Fourteen-year-olds are O.K. Look for needy boys who have family issues," he allegedly said. Genoa Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco, who is the head of the Italian Bishops Conference, had been working with Benedict to establish a tough new worldwide policy, released this week, on how bishops should handle accusations of priestly sex abuse."

Like shooting fish in a barrel… or like putting the fox in charge of the hen house… or like putting Barack Obama in charge of re-regulating Wall Street…

-----

Oh, sorry, I’m not done with Barry O, yet… now on to Israel and the Second coming speech he made over there... this ‘1967 borders’ speech did not go over so well with our allies in Israel... Welfare Queen Bibi Netanyahu is not interested in anything America is selling right now... don’t get him wrong, America’s global socialism is always appreciated, but don’t try to dictate to dictators and keep your nose out of Jerusalem.

It seems to me Obama’s Israeli/Palestinian peace initiatives may be coming from Secretary of State Clinton and Obama is simply relaying the message. There is no love lost between a Clinton and a Netanyahu… what a mess. A lot of unfinished business there.

-----

Madam Secretary Clinton is also over in Pakistan trying to sweep up some of the collateral damage done by her boss’ decisive move to kill Osama bin Laden, with no help from the previous President who cannot and will not speak ill of the dead…

-----

If only Clinton had a stronger President, the work she is doing could be so much more focused on actively changing things for the better instead of trying to keep them from spinning out of control.

President Obama’s failure, and the single thing that will keep him from achieving anything except keeping the Oval Office chair warm for the next Republican President, was not taking control of the Financial Industry reform when they broke the world and were on their knees.

That was the moment... the once in a generation moment when Progressive politics could set the rules… it doesn’t last and the chance doesn’t come often, but our laissez-faire economy does have its cycle… the Great Depression brought on the New Deal, which enabled America to become the greatest nation on earth for a while, ending the Depression and fighting World War Two with a dedicated, united and determined middle class… the pendulum swung back, Republicans moved in and the world almost ended… and President Obama didn’t do the heavy lifting required for change…. Unless you count the bags of money he helped carry out of the United States Treasury…

Anyway… here we stand… heading into President Obama’s re-election… I’m more interested in what Hillary Clinton’s next move will be.

-----

HBO’s Game of Thrones is getting better each week and stranger….  If you have not read the books by George R. R. Martin, you are in for some crazy television over the next month… winter is coming…

-----

Books: I’m kind of trapped in the post-World War Two world of both fiction and non-fiction… I’ve been nostalgic for New York City lately and have been looking for books that take place or are about the city that never sleeps… two left of center novels, Gore Vidal’s In A Yellow Wood and James Baldwin’s Another Country offer a look at life in New York City, basically at the same time, but from two very different viewpoints.

Vidal’s book follows a waspish, white WW2 vet into his post war life on Wall Street … with an option for something else that he may have left behind in Europe…

The Baldwin novel follows a black man living in Greenwich Village and the civil rights movement is only beginning to stir in the public consciousness… he too has to choose between staying in America and making his life work, or heading off to Europe…

-----

Music has drawn be back to these times as well… I got a hold of The Miles Davis Quintet’s’ four album cycle Workin’ Cookin’, Relaxin’ and Steamin’ that came out of the 1956 sessions with Rudy Van Gelder.

Also, Bob Dylan at 70…?! And still crazy after all these years… in fact, as I write this, Bringing It All Back Home is playing for the neighbors to hear.

-----

So have a relaxing and thoughtful Memorial Day Weekend comrades, rest you weary feet, listen to some good music, smoke some smoke, drink some drink and eat unhealthy food… we have a long summer ahead of us… and Gingrich and Palin and our Republican Congress ain’t going nowhere…

Saturday Musings: 'I Tweet, Therefore I am' Edition

I woke up to NPR this morning to hear a Republican politician criticizing President Obama’s statement on oil industry profits and executive bonuses vs. gas prices, etc..

All very conservative/psychotic/corporate/anti-American…  NPR says the above Republican asshole’s statement were in response to the President’s Saturday address… so they lead the story with the Republican response?!

And don’t allow the President a sound-bite…?

When all you have left is the fall, the fall matters… 

If the Republicans in Congress told NPR they would stop picking on them only if Ari Shapiro were dead… we would find Ari Shapiro floating in the Potomac River with Hillary Clinton’s scarf in his pocket.

To make it worse, they followed this Republican/Corporate/Oil Company propaganda with Newt Gingrich and fucking Rick Santorum criticizing the Obama Administration about… you know,?..  I’m not even sure… they were just both going on about how badly managed America is under Obama… and this time, NPR didn’t even mention a Democratic response… the story simply was about giving Gingrich and Santorum a platform….

The next  segment was NPR asking for money.

I wish the public humiliation wasn’t so public… Don’t ask me to pay for it.

-----

I cooked Mario Batali’s recipe for Lamb: Roman Style… except I used Newman’s Own Caesar Dressing for the lamb marinade instead of following Mario’s recipe which basically had all the same ingredients as Newman’s Own Caesar Dressing.

-----

When the tornado ravage victims of the Confederacy line up for FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) assistance this week, they should be required to show a long form birth certificate before receiving any Federal/Tax payer funds… What if we need them for a corporate bailout or bank failure?

-----

I was sick last week and sat on the couch watching Sam Peckinpah movies. The kids today think SAW, SAW II, SAW III, SAW IV, SaW V, SAW VI and SAW 3D are violent and that Ludacris, Vin Diesel and that wrestler-Rock guy are tough,.. How about I unleash a little fucking Warren Oates on your ass!

Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia will make your girlfriend get up and walk out the door. .. But if you watch The Getaway, you will know how to get her back and behave herself… Ali McGraw her ass and she’ll be putting the DiGiorno in the oven and popping the cap off your beer.

It started with Major Dundee, a film I haven’t seen in decades. TCM was showing a ‘director’s cut’ of sorts with footage and scenes cut out by the studio before the film’s original release.  I enjoyed the acting, the cinemaphotgraphy, the directing, the script. I must have needed a little macho, Americano…  From there I had to watch The Wild Bunch and then Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid. (Slim Pickens and Katy Jurado!!!)...

Oh the violence… poetry and death in slow motion… and the scripts are smarter than I remember. Lots of interesting history going on in the background.  Clint Eastwood can bite me… Little Bill, my ass.

-----

I’m finding myself drawn-in to the Game of Thrones series on HBO. Kind of like Lord of The Rings, but without elves, orcs or hobbits… there is a dwarf, but he is a real dwarf, not a mystical, magical nanny  dwarf or anything like that. And there is lots of HBO-sex, too… boobies and butts.

-----

I’ve been interested in the Republican Town Halls that have been going on this recess… Republican Congressmen getting booed and hissed at and not answering questions, or holding the meetings in churches so they can arrest and mace Democrats from their districts and get away with it…

Where is the media coverage that captured the Tea Party Express as they interrupted Democratic Congressmen and Congresswoman Town Halls in 2010?  Not interested anymore?

-----

And on the technology front. I got an iPhone 4… and have no idea what to do with it. It sits there and I watch it and I wait for it to do something.  Once in a while it buzzes and that means I got an email, but when I’m at work I am sitting in front of my computer, so I know I just got an email… and I refuse to touch the fucking thing if it buzzes while I’m driving home on the 405 freeway doing like 70 miles an hour… although that does not seem to stop my fellow commuters… and the text key pad is too small for my fingers, it takes me four or five tries to get the word ‘the’ written.

Some of the younger co-workers have these things sewn into the palms of their hands. They gave me a list of “apps” I simply must have… So I bought … yes bought the Twitter app… but DeRosaWorld has been on Twitter for a while and I can’t see the difference between the Twitter app and the Twitter website, other than one is on my lap top and one is on my phone, now… which is I guess the point, so I can tweet when I’m not in the office… or at home… or just because I can on my phone, now… which I would pay for as part of my data plan… instead of for free on my laptop…

One of the younglings got frustrated trying to explain to me how to use one of these apps and said: “You sound just like my mother when I brought her an iPhone… just use it.”

I’m told it will change my life.

All I know is when I was a kid… TV was free, I owned the records I bought and I didn’t have to sign a multi-year contract to make a phone call.

-----

Speaking of records...A bunch of old-timers have come out with ‘releases’… we don’t say albums anymore, I’m told, in just the last two weeks: Willie Nelson & Wynton Marsalis, Robbie Robertson, Greg Allman, Paul Simon, Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams… to name a few. Where are these artists get played today? Satellite radio? Or do they just jump on iTunes and hope someone will find them.

Saturday Musings: 'What Are They Preparing Us For?' Edition

If the news media is not belittling, mocking and effectively ending the CPAC gathering of racists, morons, traitors and insane, anti-American assholes, then they are not doing their job… or are they?

What are they preparing us for?

-Another neo-con administration?
-A supply-sider?
-A Tea Bagger Partier?
-A latent homosexual?
-The first and last woman President?

I can’t think of a single person who spoke at CPAC that should be taken seriously as a candidate, let alone survive the Sunday morning pundit round-tables.

Look, President Obama was a major Democratic mistake, but the scum that has risen to the top of the Republican Party is not an alternative, it is the end-times.

-----

Speaking of end-times… how’s that Egyptian foreign policy agenda going? I don’t think anyone in our government has the faintest idea what just happened in Egypt.

Americans have been led down a near-sighted foreign policy path with only Middle Eastern Terrorists hiding in the hills waiting for the roadside bombs to go off.

Americans watching TV have no idea what they are looking at when they see the streets full of the youth of Egypt, their social networks in-hand demanding a democratic election.  We are baffled and if, by chance we turn to our corporate media… it just gets more confusing. Our reporters talk and talk and talk and explain nothing to us.

America, the guiding light of democracy for half a century is being left behind as the democracy it claims to love withers on the vine back home and our young people (and some of our elected leaders) can only think of sending naked pictures of themselves to each other over the social networks… kind of like fiddling while Rome burned… and remember where the fires started for Rome.

-----

…And Israel, dear sweet Israel needs to wake up from its Netanyahu pogrom planning and smell the breeze in the air that is blowing all around them.  What if there are youthful, democratic uprisings in all the Arab nations surrounding Israel… including Egypt… and they decide they do not like the anti-democratic way the Palestinians are beg treated… The people of Israel may be judged and held responsible for the actions of their government… imagine that…

-----

As for America and the upcoming Presidential election in 2012… I can only see an Obama game plan of waiting for the Republican Party to nominate a fool… if they don’t… or they nominate a fool the media can sell to the American people… America will succumb to the same fate as Queen Mab in legend… she will scream and holler, but people will stop listening and turn their backs… and she simply disappears.

-----

But fear not, America... Francis Ford Coppola Winery has introduced a Malbec. We are safe for a while.

J.D. Salinger Ate Burg King's

 

He had a reputation as a literary recluse, but a trove of previously unseen letters written by J.D. Salinger to a British friend reveals a sociable man who took bus trips to Niagara Falls, ate fast-food hamburgers, enjoyed watching tennis and claimed always to be writing new work.

If JD Salinger can go to Burger King, then I don’t want to hear any crap about the unhealthy effects of the Whopper. The man lived to be 91. I know the article is trying to tell us that J.D. Salinger was a regular guy who went outside and ate burgers... he ate fast food burgers!

Even the thought of me eating a Whooper makes my friends and family hang their heads in shame. The Lipitor Mafia comprised of my elderly aunts and older sisters run a black market blood pressure medicine ring; dealing in my old neighborhood. They are not concerned with exercise or reducing the sodium content in their fried meals. They want to eat whatever they want and the medicine makes that possible.

Me telling my sister I had slightly high blood pressure was treated back home with congratulatory phone calls, Facebook postings and even Twitter Tweets.

Every member of my extended family is on blood pressure medicine, including the kids.

The illegal sample Lipitor packets are on their way with a care package of soft pretzels, Tasty Kakes and a three foot circle of pepperoni. All I have to do is take a pill, do a half-hour on the Wii Fit and only drink decaf after 9pm… oh and don’t eat fast food anymore.

My problem is I love fast food  . The golden arches make me salivate when I see them approaching. And Wendy’s or Roy Rogers, the classier fine-dining establishments… I love the hierarchy of fast food.

But Wendy’s are hard to come by in the middle of the night when you're driving and tired and just have to have some fries and a burger you can eat with one hand and you are not going to wait for an Arby’s to show up in your headlights.

Popeye’s Chicken!

The first bite of Quarter Pounder is the best. The sugary bun and the sour pickle… too much mustard and ketchup… the onion bits… a fist full of fries.

Now, I can either admit my age, exercise and eat more fruits, vegetables and fish... or take the medicine and have onion rings AND fries with my burger... and keep your apple slices... they are for the phonies.

Champagne Day

Some pre-Halloween and pre-Election Day fun...

The Champagne Bureau is excited to announce that this Thursday, October 28 will be Champagne Day around the world.

No matter where you are you can join in the festivities by enjoying Champagne and blogging, tweeting, posting and sharing your thoughts and experiences. Tastings will occur internationally, including events in New York City, Napa Valley, Washington, D.C., Mendoza and Champagne.

The Champagne Bureau encourages an explosion of Champagne Day celebrations. If you need some ideas about how to celebrate or what to write about--check out the following to Top 10 ways you can join in and enjoy the bubbly!

1. All of your friends and followers will be posting and tweeting about Champagne, join in to help it trend Champagne Day all day long!

2. It’s a chance for all you foodies to check out those French restaurants you’ve been dying to try--pair Caviar and Champagne or try a more outrageous pairing…Champagne and hot dogs anyone?

3. There are already scheduled tastings happening internationally, including events in New York City, Napa Valley, DC, Mendoza, and Champagne—join them through Twitter or organize your own tasting with friends.

4. It is a Thursday night! You were going to be drinking anyway!

5. There is no better status on Facebook or Twitter than “I’m sipping a glass of Champagne at INSERT HOT SPOT here to celebrate Champagne Day!”

6. According to scientist Bill Lembeck there are 49 million bubbles in a 750ml bottle of champagne. Why don’t you try counting them yourself?

7. It is Champagne! No wine is more fun to celebrate with.

8. Desserts and Rosé Champagnes are the perfect end to any day, especially with some delicious chocolate covered strawberries.

9. Upload photos of your favorite bottle of Champagne to your Facebook page and include your tasting notes for friends.

Hey Everybody. It's The Weekend, So Pig Out... Lentil Breakdown Turns 'One'

The funny, funky and smart food blog Lentil Breakdown is celebrating it's first blogiversary.

LB travels and eats and cooks and eats and writes odes to food and eats... did I mention how scrumptious the posts are?

Look Like The Innocent Flower, But Be The Serpent Under It

"The makers of high fructose corn syrup want to sweeten its image with a new name: corn sugar. The Corn Refiners Association applied Tuesday to the federal government for permission to use the name on food labels. The group hopes a new name will ease confusion about the sweetener, which is used in soft drinks, bread, cereal and other products.

Americans' consumption of corn syrup has fallen to a 20-year low on consumer concerns that it is more harmful or more likely to cause obesity than ordinary sugar, perceptions for which there is little scientific evidence.

However, some scientists have linked consumption of full-calorie soda — the vast majority of which is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup — to obesity.

The Food and Drug Administration could take two years to decide on the name, but that's not stopping the industry from using the term now in advertising..."

Saturday Musings: 'What's Wrong With Happy?' Edition

Shoes and eggs were thrown at Tony Blair on his book tour in Dublin.

Wow, remember when Tony Blair was the new young super star of European politics and considered a jr. version of Bill Clinton? We love us our Tony Blair...

Then he fell in love with George Bush, Jr. and like all the rest of the people who have ever done that, their lives are destroyed and they become pariahs.

Shoes and eggs.

Sad, really. 

I thought the 21st century was going to be led by the likes of Tony Blair and Al Gore… what a mess. I wonder if we’ll ever recover.

-----

I heard the Democrats were going to call on Bill Clinton to hit the campaign trail this fall to try and remind voters of better times and the evils of the Republican Party… the current Administration finds that too difficult a task, I suppose.

Do you think President Obama has any idea of what is coming if the Republican Party controls Congress and… god forbid… the Senate? He better have the original of his birth certificate ready.

-----

I saw a story about a young sailor who was thrown out of the Navy by the DADT policy because his superiors found pictures on his cell phone of him with his boyfriend on vacation. The story published one of the vacation pics and the sailor looked so happy in that picture.

So, what’s wrong with happy?

Two days later I read about people at the Pentagon downloading child pornography… I’m sure the kids in those pictures were not so happy.

-----

Speaking of happy, let’s get off politics for a moment.

September hit like a John Carpenter movie... how’s that for an opening sentence?

For some reason, Southern California, The Valley excluded, did not get a summer. Our weather was cooler than usual almost every day this past summer, and come September 1st, fog in the morning and cold nights.

Speaking of good writing… there is a unique book out there on Amazon.com waiting for those readers who want more than 175 page novels about how hard it is to be rich, young and dumb... or vampires.

Mark Zipoli’s  The Long Habit of Living is a novel to get lost in, but believe me, in reading it you will find your way back into enjoying reading and getting lost in language and plot and characters that make you think, laugh, cry and appreciate the joy of living and loving.

As far as music goes, I am lost in an infatuation with Lucinda Williams. I just found her Lucinda Williams debut album and can’t stop listening to that over and over and I especially love the live stuff I've found… any gal who can write a song called Real Live Bleeding Fingers and Broken Guitar Strings demands my respect.

Food and drink: I finally seem to have mastered mussels and clams in spicy tomato sauce. I’ve been reading a food magazine, La Cucina Italiana and getting a lot of great recipes. 

There is a new cocktail invention from Dale Degroff, The King Cocktail in the latest issue that included St. Germain. If found a bottle of the stuff and have been imbibing a bit too much of the French Gimlet.

So now you have an idea of how I am spending my Labor Day.

A Euro-Journalist In Teddy Roosevelt's Court

The BBC's Franz Strasser travels to Roosevelt Avenue in Queens, NY as part of his documentary about immigrant populations in today's America.

I spent a lot of time in Queens when I lived in New York and the changes that can take place in a decade are astounding.

I sure would like to be able to go to lunch up and down Roosevelt Avenue today.

'Love, Politics and Ice Cream

 

My friend Adair at Lentil Breakdown lays bare the soul of Al Gore and his private /public banana split with Tipper. A must read on a Saturday Morning.

Saturday Musings: 'Hit The Decks' Edition with Guest Bloggers Gore Vidal and John Meroney

John Meroney interviewed Gore Vidal for The Atlantic. 

Here are some excerpts from Meroney's whirlwind interview. There is lots more from Meroney and Vidal if you follow the above link to The Atlantic.

You  said earlier this month that you now wish you had supported Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries instead of Barack Obama. You said that she would make a better president.

Well, I was in a thoughtful mood.

Do you really wish you had supported Mrs. Clinton?

She would have been a wonderful president. As for my support for Obama, remember that I was brought up in Washington. It was an all-black city when I was a kid. And I’ve always been very pro-African-American – or whatever phrase we now use. I was curious to see what would happen when their time came. I was delighted when Obama appeared on the scene. But now it seems as though our original objection to him – that experience mattered – was well-founded.

The death of Sen. Edward Kennedy prompted a flood of coverage about him and his career. In 1969, you said in an interview, “By 1972, Kennedy will be just another politician whom we have seen too much of, no doubt useful in the Senate but nothing more. By 1976, Camelot will not only be forgot but unrestorable, if for no other reason than that Arthur’s heir will by then be – cruelest fate of all – unmistakably fat.”

I should think that’s rather well observed.

What is Ted Kennedy’s real legacy?

It’s nothing. But I predicted that at the beginning, when Jack started backing him for his U.S. Senate seat. Historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., who was a loyal Kennedy courtier, agreed. But Jack was funny about it. He never took Arthur seriously. He always called him “the movie critic.” (Imitating JFK’s accent) “What does ‘the movie critic’ have to say about this issue?” He liked to tease Arthur.

What did Schlesinger say about Ted Kennedy?

On his own, he went to Jack and said, “It’s in the papers that you’re working behind the scenes to support Teddy. You can’t do that. You’re making an awful lot of trouble for yourself. You’re going to be accused of nepotism and worse for backing a boy who isn’t considered first-rate.” Teddy had been caught cheating at Harvard – and all the things that Republicans like to write about. I asked Arthur, “What did Jack say to that?” And he answered, (imitating JFK’s accent) “Teddy’s not running against George Washington.”

So where is President Kennedy’s place in the pantheon of liberalism?

Jack was not a liberal. Why does anyone want to pretend that he was? When it came to matters of race, he behaved pretty well. But he wasn’t terribly interested in it. When he famously rang up Mrs. Martin Luther King after Rev. King had been jailed – well, Harris Wofford thought that one up. It was all the work of others who were liberals.

They were his closest advisors.

I remember when he was putting together his cabinet, he said (imitating JFK’s accent), “Do you know anybody who’s suitable for Secretary of Agriculture?” I said, “No, I don’t. And I don’t want to know anybody who’s suitable for Secretary of Agriculture.” Jack said (imitating JFK’s accent), “Well, that’s my problem. I don’t know any people.”He came up with Dean Rusk. He said (imitating JFK accent), “Who the hell is Dean Rusk?” I said, “Well, he’s your Secretary of State, I’m told.” Jack said (imitating JFK’s accent), “Oh, yeah, that’s right. He is.” When Jack got bored, he would tap his front teeth with his index finger.

Shouldn’t this be a golden age for the Democrats? They finally control both houses of Congress and elected a president.

But they don’t have a reason.

Do you blame Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi? Isn’t she a good leader?

Well, I’m not in the House, so I can’t tell you. If one wants to know about running the United States House of Representatives, look at Henry Clay. He ran it. But he’s totally unknown now, of course. I think, “Dear God, if only Henry Clay were speaker.”

One question that has been repeatedly asked since the economic recession began is, What exactly got the country out of the Great Depression? Do you think President Roosevelt’s policies were responsible for fixing the economy?

It was mainly luck. By 1939, the Depression was back. Unemployment was huge. Roosevelt didn’t have any quick fix. Remember, the New Deal, Works Progress Administration, and Civilian Conservation Corps – all that happened years before. Roosevelt was riding a storm.

So what policies of Roosevelt do you most admire?

I had supper with Mrs. Roosevelt at Hyde Park, and she said (imitating Eleanor Roosevelt’s voice), “My Franklin and I were very impressed with something our son James did when he got back from serving in the war.” Mrs. Roosevelt said (imitating Eleanor Roosevelt’s voice), “You know, it was James who convinced the President to create the G.I. Bill of Rights.” That policy changed the whole class system in the United States. Before it, you had to be a doctor’s son to go to college. After that bill, everybody could go.

In one recent interview, you referred to FDR as a great man.

He was a very great man.

But you opposed his foreign policy.

Well, of course. FDR was damaging the Republic by his imperial ways.

You’re pictured in this book doing an imitation of FDR during World War II.

Yes, I was in Alaska, the ideal place. Roosevelt sent me there.

You and Ronald Reagan have at least one thing in common: he did an excellent imitation of FDR as well.

Mine is better.

In September, director Roman Polanski was arrested in Switzerland for leaving the U.S. in 1978 before being sentenced to prison for raping a 13-year-old girl at Jack Nicholson’s house in Hollywood. During the time of the original incident, you were working in the industry, and you and Polanski had a common friend in theater critic and producer Kenneth Tynan. So what’s your take on Polanski, this many years later?

I really don’t give a fuck. Look, am I going to sit and weep every time a young hooker feels as though she’s been taken advantage of?

I’ve certainly never heard that take on the story before.

First, I was in the middle of all that. Back then, we all were. Everybody knew everybody else. There was a totally different story at the time that doesn’t resemble anything that we’re now being told.

What do you mean?

The media can’t get anything straight. Plus, there’s usually an anti-Semitic and anti-fag thing going on with the press – lots of crazy things. The idea that this girl was in her communion dress, a little angel all in white, being raped by this awful Jew, Polacko – that’s what people were calling him – well, the story is totally different now from what it was then.

What are “American values”?

Lying and cheating. There’s nothing better.

So you’re saying that a non-Jewish director wouldn’t have to worry about getting caught up in a sex crime scandal? Such a thing wouldn’t be an issue for Martin Scorsese?

Well, he’s an absolutely sexless director. Can you think of a sex scene that he ever shot?

You describe the New York Times as a newspaper “notorious for its dullness and hostility to excellence of any kind, other than thievery.” What do you mean by that?

Ask anyone who was a writer in the 1940s and 50s. If the ghost of Ernest Hemingway were here, he would explain it to you. The paper was a bunch of dull hacks.

During that period, the paper didn’t review any of your books. You’ve said this “blacklisting” was a blessing.

It was. My first book was in 1946. Eighteen years later, when I published the novel Julian, the paper caved in and finally reviewed me. Everybody told me that Julian, a very complex story about the apostate emperor of Rome, wouldn’t sell. But it was number one. The Times’ reviewer, Orville Prescott, came out of retirement to knock me. Now that’s dedication. I complimented him in public.

The Hearst newspapers wouldn’t review your books either. Is that ban what led you into writing for Hollywood?

Yes. You don’t think I wanted to write “Ben-Hur,” do you? I was stuck. One right-wing rumor about me, which I don’t appreciate, is that I came from an enormously rich family. I never inherited 50 cents from my family. They didn’t have it.

In a 1969 interview, you say that you’ve been on your own since you were 17.

Yes. That’s when I went into the Army. It saved me.

So Hollywood was a way to write and make a lot of money?

Well, you didn’t really come to Hollywood to make a lot of money. You could, however, make a living. But I had two hit plays on Broadway back-to-back. That seldom happens.

Did the process of writing a screenplay come naturally to you? Was it difficult?

I’m a writer. I write whatever I choose.

Who is the best leader in the Democratic Party right now?

 Do you mean, Who can give the best speech? Who can raise the most money? Look, I’m not a sentimentalist. Nor am I a romantic. I don’t believe in the Great Man theory of history. Great men come along very seldom – and when they do, it’s pretty bloody. But, as Chancellor Bismarck once observed, God looks after alcoholics, little children, and the United States of America.

Saturday Musings: 'Long Live Rock' Edition

I haven’t seen any of the ten(?) Oscar nominated films this year.

A friend of mine just saw Avatar and her review sums up the state of the American film industry: (I paraphrase... and she's from Brooklyn)

"They were blue. So what? I sat there for three hours with these stupid 3D glasses on my face.

I went hoping that maybe, because of how much money this thing was making and how everyone was seeing it, that maybe there would be something worth seeing, but no. All I got was a headache.

The effects were impressive I guess, these blue things and flying creatures, but who cares. The dialog all sounded like it was written by a 13 year old. And there is supposed to be an ‘important message’. Again, who cares? After a while I was just embarrassed sitting there and wanted to go home."

And the winner for Best Picture…

-----

America is just a group of spoiled preteens. We are out of shape, undereducated and cocky about it. We have lots of technological gadgets that do not enhance our lives. We have phones that text and cars that talk and computers that give you TV shows to download in case you missed them when they were broadcast… over cable, which you pay for AND have to watch commercials during... and of course music. I'm slowly buying my entire fucking record collection for the third time in my life.

Our food is killing us. Our air is killing us. We take more drugs than our bodies have symptoms for. We depend on TV commercials more than doctors to tell us what drugs to take because we can’t afford doctors.

We do have nice teeth, even if they aren’t all real they are at least mostly white and straight... kind of like Republicans.

-----

I went to buy some clothes at Macy’s and everything in the Mens Department was for teenagers. And by teenagers I mean 15 year old, skinny Disney music stars with their own TV shows. That didn’t stop grown men in their 30s, 40s and even 50s from buying t-shirts with graffiti art and Sports Team logos on them. They even sell jeans with words on them, written down the leg. I think they were quotes form either Kobe Bryant, Kanye West or President Obama. I bought some socks and left. I guess I need to shop in Sears.

-----

As for politics. I am waiting to see if President Obama has this meeting of the minds with the Republican Leadership and asks them to take over the health care reform legislation and then I will be officially through with him. I thought I was voting for a black, intellectual, closet-socialist from the Chicago School of Hard Knocks and I got a guy who is right of the Blue Dogs in his Party.

President Obama is a very lucky politician. When he ran for the Senate in 2006 his Republican opponent was Alan Keyes. Next to Alan Keyes Michele Bachmann seems like a Green Peace whale-boat chaser. And when he runs for President he gets John McCain and Sarah-fucking-Palin? All he had to do was stand there and not talk to seem liberal and sane.

We didn’t get what we thought we voted for in 2008. And I assume in 2012, that we will have to vote for Obama again because the alternative will be even worse. The alternative is always worse.

-----

I bought the new WHO: Greatest Hits Live, a retrospective of their hits performed live throughout their long career. It rocks. It rocks so much harder than anything out there. And it ends with A Man In A Purple Dress. So if you like the Super Bowl half-time show, you’ll love this album. Long Live Rock.

-----

I am going to make Fallenmonk's Chicken Cacciatore today and drink red wine.

Saturday Musings: "Resolutions" Edition

Musings on 2010 resolutions:

Support Progressive Democrats running in this 2010 election cycle. It is important to increase the Democratic majority in both Houses, especially the Senate beyond the margin of having to deal with the Republican Party at all… except on television of course.

No matter what the press says, I can not believe my fellow Americans would vote for any Republican running for Congress or Senate in 2010… not after the last 10 years.

-----

Reduce American Corporatism in my life...

Eliminate my living room television viewing. If an entertainment show comes on that I want to see, I'll catch it online when I have the time; same with movies. I have gone TV-less in my house since December 1st, 2009. It has made the evenings more pleasant: More conversation and music. I spend a more time online reading the news and blogs. And I cook more.

Change to a smaller, local bank. I tried this last year, but that Bank got eaten by CHASE and I can not stand even seeing their logo on a piece of mail or having to go online to their site for any transaction.

Lose weight not by dieting for a short time, but by eating less meat and more fish and veggies daily.

Walk more. I have one of the most beautiful walking paths on the planet at both sunrise and sunset. I resolve to use it more.

Drive slower and use my drive time to listen to music and not news.

Listen more. This will probably be the first resolution to go out the window. When I listen to other people I usually realize they are fucking idiots and I lose my patience… see. This will be a tough one.

Oh, and drink more wine.

There And Back... LAX To PHL Holiday

Flying out of LAX on the red-eye, I was still that good, post-9/11 American who showed up at the airport two-hours early. There was NO ONE in the security line and I breezed right through, shoes -off, belt off... was at the gate, bored, sitting for two hours before a 5 hour plane ride. I was asleep before we reached cruising altitude.

PHL had long security lines for the first flight out of their day before Christmas Eve, I stood on the moving floor and watched the miserable faces as I glided by. I was shivering. It was 27 degrees and there was two feet of snow on the ground all the way back into New Jersey.

Christmas Eve was cold and the snow hadn't budged. We traveled back into Philadelphia to visit some ancient relatives who still live in the 'old neighborhood'. The old neighborhood looks kind of like Baghdad. The driving was rough because Philadelphia can't afford to plow the streets anymore, but there was plenty of Italian food waiting: a pot of sausage, a pot of pepperoni, a pot of Aunt Rose's meatballs and plenty of lasagna and ravioli.

The Christmas Eve drive back into New Jersey was a little dicey with all the snow and ice that late at night, but it was Christmas Eve and the heat was set on maximum and Christmas songs were on the radio.

Christmas Day was nice. Everyone was coming over and I didn't have to move. It was my Mother's turn to present the pot of sausage, pot of pepperoni, pot of Aunt Kitty's meatballs with lasagna and ravioli. (Mom can't cook anymore, so the sisters did all the work to perfection).

Presents for the kids. Paper ripping, Wii games. Food coma.

Next day: Rain, 50 degrees, no more snow, but flooding.

A tradition that started with the release of The Godfather Part 3 is to go to the movies as a group on the day after Christmas. This year it was Avatar. I some how managed to skip it with the promise to mind Mom while everyone was away. We watched cooking shows. She likes Chef Ming.

Chinese Food take out feast that night. (egg rolls!!!!!! with duck sauce and hot mustard).

Final day: Cheesesteaks for lunch and the night flight back to LAX. Security, even after Amsterdam declared war on us, was minimal and easy. Sat and watched a Terrorism Special on CNN with my fellow travelers. The flight was six hours of which I slept five.

Got home midnight. Watered the Christmas tree. Opened a bottle of wine. Drank it and passed out.

I post this as I am about to go pick up the preciouses from The Holiday Hotel For Cats.

My Christmas presents consisted of a flannel shirt, bedroom slippers, a map of the Allied Invasion fleet into Normandy, June 6, 1944 (love it), an art print from an Etsy artist and two lovely books: my history major nephew gave me In The President's Secret Service by Ronald Kessler and my younger sister gave me Genoa and the Sea 1559-1684 (Lo amo).

The Somerset Maugham novels didn't seem to cause the hysteria among the family as did the Wii. Maybe as they read them, they will appreciate them more than the Wii games that they all distributed among themselves.

I need a salad.

Happy Thanksgiving

"One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating." - Luciano Pavarotti

Have a Lentil Breakdown with a new food blog. The author is a writer, traveler and culinary inquisitor.

She shops, she cooks, she comments... she even cleans up.

Stop by Adair's new blog and enjoy the stories and the recipes.

It's Not Going To Get Any Better.

When a war has no end game, there is no end. If we can't take the capital city and win the war, maybe we shouldn't be fighting it. That seems to be the lesson of last century, but we are making the same mistakes in war as we did during the entire last half of the 20th Century.

What is victory in Afghanistan?

Saturday Musings: 'Having A Cuppa' Edition

It would be nice if all the progressive blogs, especially the A-list ones, simply didn’t report on what FOX News and Glen Beck said that day.

That way only the people who watched FOX News would know. We can start by picking one day a week for not telling everyone what FOX News said. Then try expanding that to one week of not relaying FOX News headlines, them maybe FOX News will wither on the vine or go to just being what the Republican Party actually is, a side-lined, fringe group.

I’ve been trying it on this blog and my traffic has increased. I thought it would go down if I wasn’t always on the Republicans and their Media, but there are other ways of presenting liberal views while not raising the opposition to a position of authority by making them the only alternative voice.

For example, instead of reporting what Chris Wallace thinks, here are some statistics from President Franklin Roosevelt’s’ Works Progress Administration or WPA: The breadth of WPA public works and social programs was enormous: It built 65 0,000 miles of roads, 78,000 bridges, 125,000 civilian and military buildings, 800 airports (built or improved), and 7 00 miles of airport runways. It also served almost 900 million hot lunches to school children, and operated 1,500 nursery schools. It presented 225,000 concerts to audiences totaling 150 million people, performed plays and circuses before another 30 million, and created 475, 000 works of art.

That’s something people can sink their teeth into. Their Government doing good things for them when Democrats are in control. Arguments against ring hollow.

-----

And I wouldn’t mind hearing a speech from Secretary of State Clinton now and again, maybe interrupt the news cycle or games shows and show Americans their State Department in action. She made a good one at the UN General Assembly last week.

-----

I do hope President Obama hasn’t completely missed his ‘New Deal’ moment. They don’t come along very often.

-----

Well, the summer is over. That was quick.  Rush hour traffic is back to full capacity. It’s getting dark earlier and earlier. I needed a hoodie the other night when I went out.

-----

Music: I somehow fell into a time warp and am exploring the early Abbey Road Studios. The Pretty Things and Pink Floyd are getting a work out.

Books:
In the Bathroom: Nothing To Fear (FDR’s Inner Circle And The Hundred Days That Created Modern America) by Adam Cohen.

On the Night Stand: The Turnaround by George Pelecanos and The Peppered Moth by Margaret Drabble.

-----

And right now I am enjoying a strong cup of Scottish Breakfast Tea from Taylors of Harrogate… with a splash of milk.

Beluga VS. Bolognese?

You call this a trattoria?

One of my first posts was about two of my favorite Italian restaurants in the Beverly Hills neighborhood where I used to live. Not all of Beverly Hills is TV and movies stars. There are some sections where regular working folk live.

I eventually moved away from there because I grew tired of apartment dwelling and wanted a house and could not afford the Beverly Hills rates.(Which may not apply anymore) But I found paradise near the beach. I even have a yard!

I occasionally go back to the ‘old’ neighborhood which lies about 20 miles north and east. I made this trip this weekend with the intention of timing my chores so I could eat dinner in Trilussa. This restaurant had the best tomato sauce I ever had outside of my own… maybe even a little better. I once asked the owner about the recipe and he told me that when he was auditioning chef’s his test was to simply make a tomato sauce. The best sauce won the job.

Well, after my day of running around,  I was looking forward to sitting down to a nice Italian dinner. Trilussa was gone. Replaced by… I don’t know what. A sort of Russian inspired lounge-like restaurant whose menu was as confusing as its new décor.

The new Beverly Hills ‘working class’, the remnants of the Cold War, middle-European and Russian men and women dressed like it was either prom night or an Oscar party gone very wrong.

You couldn’t get a decent bowl of pasta. But no one in the restaurant wanted a bowl of pasta. That would be too working class… these were not comrades of the old Soviet Empire. These folks were the new American Dream chasers.

I don’t like caviar, penne al a vodka or cigarettes.

Saturday Musings: 'Bipartisanship Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry' Edition

Actually, according to the RNC Play Book: Bipartisanship: Democrats suck it and Republicans promise not to cum in their mouths...we lie.

-----

Imagine an America where John McCain was President and trying to salvage the economy with Lindsey Graham.. and Sarah Palin was going to talk to Europe today.

-----

I want…I voted for…a SPENDING stimulus. I’m voting against anyone who does not give it to me.

-----

I want rich people and corporations to pay MORE taxes…this in answer to John McCain’s concerns about the budget deficit.

-----

I want to see more Democrats on the TV news programs or I will only get my news from the Internet. TV news can go the way of magazines and newspapers.

-----

Frank Sinatra comes to iTunes! Those of us addicted to iTunes downloads throughout the day can now access a lot more Sinatra.  Frank’s first album with Don Costa Sinatra & Strings (1962)  just became available. Recorded in the heart of Sinatra’s ‘golden years’…the mid-50s to mid-60s sessions that made him the Chairman of the Board. This is a masterpiece from that era. This version of Night & Day will stun you.

-----

In these hard times I suggest Jamie Oliver’s new cookbook: The Ministry of Food. You need to have it dispatched from Amazon UK, but it will be worth it in the long run. Healthy meals prepared simply and economically. He looks back at how England dealt with food during World War Two. Great fun, a great read and great food.

Saturday Musings: Chevy Volt Edition

The best the Republican Party can do is Newt Gingrich? Every time I turn the TV on, one of our right-wing, suck-ass News shows is interviewing the biggest loser from the 1990s.

Where are the Republican leaders? Where are their smart people? And don’t give me this Sarah Palin bullshit.

Are there no Senators or Congress-folks from the Republican Party that are not consider freaks by any normal American? I guess not because there are none available…and my cable news babble is 24/7.

The Republican Party is deader than dead in the water. Looks like their policies, both domestic and foreign, have left their philosophies and their 'brand' in tatters…as well as leaving the nation shipwrecked.

So why not just not interview any Republicans? Nobody wants to hear from them. We want to know what the Democrats are thinking.

-----

I don’t like Bill Richardson, never have. But I do think it is very interesting that President-elect Obama would talk to Senator Clinton about the Secretary of State job. Boy, what a Democratic whammy that would be.

The professional Clinton haters, both conservative and liberal progressive, are already screaming reasons why Bill would fuck things up if his wife were in such a prestigious job.  But think about it; think of how Democrats voted in this last primary. It sure would be tempting to have Hillary around and Bill only a phone call away, even if just bounce ideas off of.

----- 

Well, there just doesn’t seem to be any good news for Americans as the holidays approach. Our kids are so used to getting anything they ask for and this season that may just not be possible. It will test our mettle as a ‘brat-nation’. We’ll see if our kids still love us when they can’t have a new Wii or iPhone...or worse, have to drop out of college...or move with the family out of your house and into an apartment.

I don’t want to debate a New Deal; I just want a rocket lit under one.

-----

I have a credit card that has moved between four different banks since the summer.

-----

Question of the day…I would call it the question of the week, but we may not have that much time…Will the Volt save Detroit?

-----

I couldn’t wait for Christmas. I bought myself the latest installment of the Oxford History of the United States, From Colony To Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations Since 1776 written by George C. Herring. 1000 pages of history. Yummy. It’s going straight into the bathroom.

-----

My favorite song this week is Elvis Presley’s Tomorrow Is A Long Time, a cover of the Bob Dylan song. I have listened to this song over a hundred times this week. It is a great version and brings out the best in both artists. I wish Elvis had done more serious work like this song. He never seemed to trust himself to take himself seriously…or had doubts others would. This song shows why Elvis is the once and future King.

-----

I’m out of Port! That will not stand. Today’s mission is to venture out and re-supply.

Homemade Pasta A Success

DeRosaWorld has created its own semolina pasta. Now if I could only make red wine in my tub, I'd never have to leave the house.

As I posted earlier. This was eaten with homemade tomato sauce and some pepperoni.

Rosemary Clooney was played throughout the process.

Saturday Musings - 'Two Weeks Out' Edition

Senator John McCain has no dignity left.

The automated phone calls filled with lies and hate will be his campaigns' final legacy. A sad end to a sad political death. He can't blame this one on Palin. This is his shame.

Does Viagra work for dirty phone calls?

-----

The fact that this race isn't over makes me very nervous. With the Republican ticket and their campaign this should be way into a Democratic double-digit lead.

-----

Can you image what this election cycle would have been like without the Internet or the blogs? If all we had was TV?

-----

How's that financial system bail-out going? Every rich guy get what he needed?

----- 

I saw Oliver Stone's W. A review will be following shortly, but let me say this: Fuck you George Jr.! And your whole fucking family. Because, guess what...it does apply to your entire fucking family.

-----

I posted a video of Joan Baez singing from her new album, Day After Tomorrow. This is a very moving folk record. Produced by Steve Earle, Baez performs a collection of Americana songs that are compelling and powerful and very moving. Her performance is understated and the production is very sparse. A very beautiful collection.

-----

K.C. Constantine kicks Tawni O'Dells' ass. Sorry Oprah.  Grievance is literature, not just a mystery, but Back Roads is just a mystery and not literature.

-----

We brought an electric pasta maker! I am going to get so fat, it's going to be awesome. Tonight: black pepper pasta. arriabbiata sauce with pepperoni and slightly chilled chianti...followed by heartburn and TUMS. Tomorrow, a day of rest.

-----

Go Phillies!

Pepperoni

We made spaghetti tonight with pepperoni.

We made the sauce with extra crushed red pepper flakes and garlic. Spicy, but not killer hot.

Then we sliced up Margherita pepperoni and boiled that in some of the sauce in a separate pot.

When the spaghetti was done and the sauce was poured all over it, we threw some of the pepperoni 'coins' into our pasta bowls and there you have it. Heaven. 

Something Else To Do Instead of Watching The Olympics - Day Six: Bake a French Chocolate Cake

NBC Olympic Coverage: Thursday, August 14th (prime time)

8 p.m.-1 a.m. — Women's Gymnastics - Individual All-Around Gold Medal Final (LIVE); Swimming (LIVE): Gold Medal Finals: Men's 200-meter Backstroke, Men's 200-meter Individual Medley, Women's 200-meter Breaststroke, Women's 100-meter Freestyle and Men's 100-meter Butterfly semifinal; Beach Volleyball; Men's Volleyball - USA vs. Bulgaria

Instead of watching the Bulgarian beach volleyball team tonight, how about baking a cake for the family. Here is a the Le Cordon Bleu Home Cookbook Collection recipe for French Chocolate cake. It doesn't take long, but you do have to concentrate. There is a little timing and coordination of ingredients. the result is not a high and airy cake, like a traditional box cake. It is a flatter cake, more like a brownie. It will be a fun evening with a great pay-off.

½ cup unsalted butter (room temperature
¾ cup of semi sweet or bittersweet chocolate
3 eggs, separated
½ cup sugar
2/3 all-purpose flour
(confectioner’s sugar to dust)

1. Preheat the over to 350 degrees F. Line an 8-inch diameter 1/1/2 deep cake pan with wax paper. Grease the paper with butter and dust with flour.

2. In a bowl, beat the butter until creamy (use a mixer or spoon). Bring water to a boil in the bottom of a double boiler then remove from the heat and put the chocolate in the top broiler and place on the bottom broiler to melt. Stir the chocolate until it all melts. Remove the top broiler and let chocolate return to room temperature. Stir in the butter to the chocolate and set aside. Beat the egg yolks and sugar in a bowl. And the chocolate mixture to this bowl and fold to combine. In a large bowl beat the egg whites until still peaks form, but do not beat so much that the egg whites look dry. Using a spatula, gently fold the whites in the chocolate mixture in three additions. Sift the flour and gently fold the flour into the mixture until well combined. (you may use an electric mixer at this point to really combine all the ingredients).

3. Spoon into the pan and bake for 25-30 minutes. Let cool for 10 minutes before turning the cake out of the pan and peeling off the wax paper. Serve warm with a dusting of sifted confectioner’s sugar.

Something Else To Do Instead of Watching The Olympics - The Opening Ceremonies

I will be posting some alternatives each night to watching the Olympic coverage on NBC.

FRIDAY: Olypmpic Opening Ceremonies from 7pm - 11pm (Lame-assed Chinese propaganda about how they too are as gross as America)

FRIDAY: Turner Classic Movies Evening Lineup starting at 7:30pm (Michael Caine night)

7:30 PM Alfie (1966) 
  A British womanizer refuses to grow up until tragedy strikes. Cast: Michael Caine, Vivien Merchant, Shelley Winters. Dir: Lewis Gilbert. C-114 mins, TV-14, CC, Letterbox Format

9:30 PM Pulp (1972) 
  A pulp fiction novelist fights to survive an assignment to ghost write a controversial star's memoirs. Cast: Michael Caine, Mickey Rooney, Lizabeth Scott. Dir: Michael Hodges. C-95 mins, TV-PG, Letterbox Format

11:10 PM Short Film: Lion Roars Again, The (1975) 
  An MGM promotional featurette advertising its resurgence into the movie industry in the mid-1970s. Showcased movies include "Logan's Run" (1976), "The Sunshine Boys" (1975), and "The Wind and the Lion" (1975). C-17 mins.

11:30 PM Get Carter (1971) 
  A small-time gangster searches for the truth behind his brother's death. Cast: Michael Caine, Ian Hendry, Britt Ekland. Dir: Mike Hodges. C-112 mins, TV-14, CC, Letterbox Format 

All young men should watch Alphie and Get Carter. They are rites of passage.

Saturday Musings

-- Senator Obama’s trip abroad has not exactly been Beatlemania. The longer he stays away, the more people don’t care. He kind of punked out to the Israelis and the Left Wing of the Progressive left wing blogshphere group have stopped waiting for a parting of the Red Sea. Ich bin just another American politician.

Liberal, Democratic, Progressive, New Left icon Robert Scheer had a mostly ignored article on Truthdig about our Democratic Messiah. Not something the D-Party wants to hear in the middle of a presidential campaign. "Barack Obama is betraying his promise of change and is in danger of becoming just another political hack."

BHO is becoming a bore.

-- The Olympics are coming and I intend to miss every moment of them.

-- Hey, if President Bush, Jr. is in the middle of impeachment proceedings as his term ends. He can’t pardon anyone. That is reason enough to put impeachment on the table and go at it like a Thanksgiving Day turkey.

-- “We have been visited.”  FORMER NASA astronaut and moon-walker Dr Edgar Mitchell - a veteran of the Apollo 14 mission - has stunningly claimed aliens exist. The Catholic Church is even preparing the Faithful by telling its flock that aliens are God’s children, too. I’m wearing a tin foil hat to Confession.

-- Our Secretary of State is hanging out at girl’s schools in Australia and talking about going shopping after destroying the world.  Girls Just Want To Have Fu-uun.

-- As far as music goes, I am still on my The Who kick. The more mature music of Willie and Linda and Emmylou have been replaced on my drive-time playlist by Quadrophenia: "Her fellah''s going to kill me? Oh, fucking will he."

-- I am in summer reading overload. My bathroom nightstand has a tower of books with toilet paper bookmarks stuck 2/3 through them all.

I just received my first Andre Gide (The Counterfeiters) from my transplanted, east coast friends. Seems like the kind of book I would read in the Fall, when it starts to get chilly out, school is back, I have long subway rides and time to kill at lunch …wait, I’m in California now. I’ll read it in the car.

-- Rigatoni with arrabiatta sauce tonight.

Fuck Politics. Let's Eat

This is a post for Fallenmonk, a blog that understands the balance in life.

I went to a French restaurant for a Bastille Day dinner. Here is the menu:

(There was unlimited champagne, but we also ordered a 2003 Margaux.)

THE MENU

Amuse Busch
Shot of chilled fennel-leak soup with roasted almond pesto

First Course
Rilette of duck with pickled baby artichokes, mission figs and grilled country bread

Second Course
Grilled organic peach and prosciutto salad with Gorgonzola, arugula and balsamic glaze

Third Course (choice of one)
Fresh Atlantic Cod Basquiase sautéed with garbanzo beans, saucisson Toulouse and pipérade
or
New York Steak au Poivre with pomme puree, baby vegetables and cognac-peppercorn sauce
or
Poulet Roti à l'Ail with potato gratin, cippolini onions, oyster mushrooms, haricot vert and sherry-garlic jus

Dessert
Chocolate roulade - chocolate pistachio mousse croquantine

I had the New York Steak.

 

Saturday Musings

- - Some political notes from the field and a DeRosaWorld poll: I was in Pennsylvania and New Jersey last week and talked a lot of politics with a lot of people. I think Senator Obama is going to take both states by a large margin. Most people I spoke with were Hillary supporters, but it is any Democrat against McCain for them. These are the 'Archie Buckers' the Obama campaign painted with racist colors during the primaries. They have forgiven him.

They are so sick of the Republican Party and President Bush, Jr. that they are supporting Obama. Race may or may not be an issue for them, but not a show-stopper. They are afraid of McCain and despise the policies of the Republicans that have brought about the housing foreclosures, the high price of gasoline, and the Iraq war and shame. Shame, a word I heard repeated.

They are also tired of all the right-wing media bleating on and on and on in defense of the Bush, Jr. Administration. They don't believe it anymore. They are afraid that their sons will be drafted. These are the things they are talking about.

The politics of fear worked too well and now the electorate is afraid of the Republicans.

There is a concern about Obama out here, but it is not the color of his skin. They are worried because they know nothing about him. They are afraid of his inexperience. They are afraid he will fail before he can turn things around. They are now pinning their hopes on an unknown. That is how desperate they are. So if the skinny kid with the funny name doesn’t have any more Larry Sinclairs out there with pictures of him snorting cocaine off his boner, then I think we are going to have ourselves a Democrat in the White House come November…and he is going to get a lot of white support, both male and female, rich and poor.

- - The progressive blogosphere was of a mixed mind this week. Some wanted to be mad at Senator Obama for caving into the FISA bill…and they are right to be mad. What was he thinking?

Others were begrudgingly clapping for Senator Clinton for supporting their man…and they are right to be happy. The Hillary supporters are going to come out strong for Obama in November. Could the same be said of the Obama supporters if the Democratic Party nominee were Senator Clinton?

- - The Stonewall Riots began on June 28, 1969 in New York City on Christopher Street at the Stonewall Inn. The NYC cops got as good as they gave that day. This day is still celebrated in the bars of the West Village. Before Stonewall is a great documentary about the gay community and the times leading up to the riots.

- - I couldn’t fit Don DeLillo’s Underworld into the carry-on, so I took two slim Gore Vidal novels with me, hoping the Office of Homeland Security didn’t open my bag. In A Yellow Wood and Dark Green, Bright Red are two very honest and unique novels. They have been reprinted in England; you cannot get them in America. I got them from Amazon UK. (Beware the weak dollar vs. the euro.)

Two post World War Two novels that the New York Times either didn’t care for or refused to review because of The City and the Pillar scandal. In A Yellow Wood (1947) is a rare look at life in New York City immediately after the war as veterans come home and take up the business of America. And in that glorious time between VJ Day and the Communist witch hunts when American artists thought they could be honest with us and themselves. This is the time of film noir in Hollywood. Something was wrong. The defeat of fascism didn’t bring peace, just prosperity. There was something new out there that was in charge now, and to be afraid of …and it turned out to be us.

Dark Green, Bright Red (1950) is a great example of the cliché “ahead of its time”. This book shows us what America was up to in Central America before most Americans could find Guatemala on a map; empire building, with a little sex in it. If there was ‘special rendition’ in 1950, Vidal would have been shipped off to the basement of the Pentagon for revealing state secrets.

- - Yes, I did have a soft pretzel and of course cheese steaks. Three cheese steaks in fact. I also had some decent Chinese Food, something California is in as short supply as water. How hard is it to make an egg roll with a little hot mustard on the side?

- - Get yourself some good sipping whiskey and buy Emmylou Harris’ All I Intended To Be. At first you’ll sit and feel sorry for yourself and feel the aches and pains of middle age, but by the end you will be refreshed and ready to get up and face the world. She captures that middle-aged need to put your feet up feeling. Fuck the young; let them suffer with the High School Musical soundtrack. This album was made for adults by adults.

- - One last word on flying in modern America. It sucks and the airline industry should be ashamed of itself. If they don't want to do the job anymore, give it up and let us have a lot of smaller, independent airlines with the American, small  business mentality. Let's make the FAA do its fucking job and in this new century let the major airlines go the way of TV news, movies, rock & roll, cheap gasoline and other 20th century Americana. Something needs to change because Americans need and want to travel around this great country of ours and the current major airlines do not deserve our business. Americans do not deserve being treated like this.

Saturday Musings

- Tim Russert didn’t want to learn the lesson all working class Irish, Italians and Jews learn the hard way. Never trust the WASPS.

- The Great Game in Afghanistan took a hit this week. About 870 prisoners escaped during a Taliban bomb and rocket attack on the main prison in southern Afghanistan that knocked down the front gate and demolished a prison floor, And in western Afghanistan today, a roadside bomb exploded near a U.S. military vehicle, killing four Americans.

- Bush, Jr. is still in Europe.

- The Cedar River was a force to be reckoned with this week in Iowa. And Des Moines’ levees were ruptured by the Des Moines River today. Let’s hope the government response matches the task.

- The Supreme Court decided that habeas corpus is an important part of the American Constitution. Bush, Jr. said he would nod his imperial head and abide by the Court’s ruling, although it was only a 5-4 decision….huh?

- The world continues to shake and quiver. Northern Japan took a hit yesterday. Is mother nature trying to tell us something, like “get off”.

- Speaking of getting off earth, NASA’s latest Mars lander, Phoenix has collected particles that offer a snapshot of millions of years of life on the Mars. NASA is hoping to find evidence of the existence of water and life-supporting organic minerals in the polar region. Now wouldn’t that be a kick in the head?

- I hope that lift off clip thing that fell off the Space Shuttle doesn’t fall and hit me in the head. Something else to worry about.

- I’ve been under the weather lately, knocked down by one hell of a cold, with a slight fever, heavy chest congestion and lots of runny nose. Yesterday I made a lunch out of a can of imported tuna in olive oil from Genoa, Italy, a clove of fresh garlic and some rigatoni. I felt a lot better. I try to hold off the American over the counter medicine if I can, but not this time. Mucinex and Afrin are my bff.

- Glen Campbell has an album coming late summer in which he covers his favorite rock songs. I am so excited. There will be some Green Day and some U2 and god knows what else. That old boy can sing and play the guitar.

- Emmylou Harris, the reigning queen of alt-country also has a new album. All I Intended To Be. I need to catch up with Emmylou. She’s keeps churning out records and changing partners and I just can’t get enough of her.

- Don DeLillo’s Underworld…okay, so the opening is Pafko At The Wall, a tour de force of sports writing that seems like he turned his manuscript over to Oliver Stone to edit. I don know. There is something so un-noble about this so noble a moment in baseball. The kid listening alone on the rooftop and the people spilling out in to the streets captures the uniqueness of the moment, but most of the characters are out of the film noir era, post WW2 America that scared the hell out of the Republican Party and J. Edgar Hoover (and enamored the French). It is a big book and I will blog about it here each week until finished. The opening is certainly crafty, but am I reading the great American novel? I’ll let you know.

Saturday Musings

- Senator Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. (D-IL) age 46 is the presumptive Nominee of the Democratic Party for President in 2008.

- Arianna Huffington can finally relax. Hillary won’t be the nominee.

- The white, male talking heads exploded all at once across the networks when Hillary gave her campaign wrap-up speech after the South Dakota and Montana primaries earlier this week and did not concede the election. Russert, Matthews, Obermann, Toobin, Gergen. It was awesome. You could see they wanted to kill her. MSNB even split the screen like Hollywood Squares so they called all scream at once.

- One thing to be concerned about, Senator Obama lost eight out of the last ten contests to Senator Clinton.

- The Senate Intelligence Committee finally gets to release its 2004 report that proved Bush, Jr. lied to America about the need to go to war in Iraq. Who arrests the President?

- NASA tells us that Bush, Jr. lied to us about their findings on climate change and even changed the data in their reports. Does anybody in the Press want to ask him about this?

- How about those gasoline prices? Ready to throw garbage at Bush, Jr. public appearances yet? No, let’s wait to blame the new President.

- Was talking to a 9/11 conspiracy nut and she said, If everything Bush, Jr. ever told us was a lie, and then challenged me to prove her wrong and I couldn’t, then why would he tell the truth about 9/11? The argument gave me pause.

- Don DeLillo’s Falling Man may be the first really big book about 9/11. I’m preparing myself to sit down and revisit that day. I think this read requires I sit in my chair over a long weekend and don’t get up until the end.

- Bo Diddley has left the stage. My introduction to him actually comes from George Thorogood’s cover of Who Do You Love. As a youngster, I loved to track back music I liked to its roots. Artists like Janis Joplin led me back to Bessie Smith. Elvis Presley led me back to Big Mama Thornton. Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac led me back to Etta James. Fleetwood Mac started out as a blues band with Peter Green that led me back to many of the great blues artists and guitarists from the 1940s and 1950s.

- Netflix movie review: There Will Be Blood coming from my eyes if I have to watch this movie to the end.

- This Saturday is Chicken Parmigiana day. First I make the tomato sauce. I have two double chicken breasts. I pound them. A little salt and pepper. I mix egg, milk and a lot of various Italian spices, especially oregano into the mix, dip the chicken. Coat the chicken in Progresso Italian Style bread crumbs, fry it up. Then I put the water on, cook the spaghetti. And of course Chianti.

Saturday Musings

- As the primary season comes to a close with a surprise progressive hero, Senator Barack Obama coming from nowhere to claim the leadership of the Democratic Party in the post-Bush, Jr. (and maybe the post-Republican) era, the party bosses are gathering this weekend to try and wrap up the confusing and fucked up nomination process before the actual convention.

With the final primaries being held this week, Obama hasn’t actually won, yet. Arianna Huffington has the champaign on ice, though. The celebration is about to begin. Change and hope and pride in America is right around the corner. Out with the old. In with the new.

- Republicans have no wins on their card to run on. If Democrats don’t sweep both houses of Congress and the White House this year, they might as well shut the Party down.

Conservatism has lost and lost big time. Hit McCain on the issues: The Republican economy. The Republican health care system. Republican Party perversion and corruption.

Make John McCain defend the last eight years: Republican gas prices. Republican-run war in Iraq and Afghanistan. Republican Veterans Hospitals. Republican Education.

How can he defend any of it? Just ask McCain if he is a neocon? I’d like to see him answer that question.

- Isn’t is awesome having oil men in the White House? And after taking over the country with the 2nd largest oil reserves in the world….Americans can’t afford to fill both their cars and their bellies at the same time. How’d that happen?

- Sydney Pollack is a great loss to Hollywood and movie lovers. He was one of the last producers of films made for grown-ups. Since he died, I can't get scenes from his films out of my head: Robert Redford in the snow in Jeremiah Johnson. The dancers in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? Barbra Streisand's sad face in The Way We Were. Sally Field's indignation in Absence of Malice. Meryl Streep and Robert Redford in the airplane from Out Of Africa. Robert Mitchum kicking through paper walls in The Yakuza. Dustin Hoffman walking down a New York City street in drag from Tootsie. Thanks Sydney!

- I have not seen Iron Man. I will not go to see Sex and the City.

- I’ve been listening to a lot of The Doors’ music lately: Strange Days and Waiting  For The Sun. They are my drive-time background music. Ever since I watched the season finale of American Idol I have not been able to get David Cook’s mock-rock screeching out of my ears. Jim Morrison had some pipes and some spooky rock chops.

- Hey, John McCain’s favorite book is Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom The Bell Tolls.

- I was told recently that I needed to read Michael Chabon. He’s the pseudo-gay writer of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh (a memoir of the 2008 Pennsylvania Primary) The Wonder Boys (The secret love story of John McCain and Joe Lieberman) and something called The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, the Pulitzer Prize winner from 2001. I picked that book up and put it down a half dozen times. (One of them decides he’s gay). So now I have Summerland, a children’s book about baseball and elves. I’ll try, but it is an awfully fat book for a children’s book. I haven’t finished Julian Green’s Memoir’s yet, and I’m getting old.

- I’m goint to try to eat more apples.

Saturday Musings

- In the unlikely event that Hillary Clinton takes the Democratic Presidential nomination (and she will literally have to take it at the the convention) many progressive Obama supporters will not vote for her and will probably find solace in voting for a third party, Republican sponsored, progressive candidate, thus giving the election to John McCain.

- If Obama wins the Democratic nomination, the Press and the Republican Party will see to it that he loses 49 out of 50 States. (A large part of the Democratic Party machine, sitting on their hands or unwelcome in the Obama campaign will watch bitterly from the sidelines).

- When John McCain becomes President the world will once and for all turn their backs on America as a serious influence in the world. What possible use would Europe or Asia or South America have for us? We are a nation of bridge burners.

- Economic Musing: By the second half of this century your grandchildren will be sewing blue jeans for $5.00 a week for Chinese export.

- President Reagan did away with most of the College Student Grants in the 1980's so Americans had to go into debt to educate themselves. Now the Student Loan network is collapsing. This didn't come up at the ABC debate in Philadelphia. (learn to sew blue jeans)

- Our television shows are not going to be needing commercial breaks to sell products. (That damned mute button should never have been allowed on remotes.) Products are going to be incorporated into the programs so its more of a brainwashing. NBC is starting with some on-line experiments and well, we'll keep watching. Just another thing changing this century...for the worse as movies, internet, games, TV all blend into one system that makes us capable of doing nothing else but...sew blue jeans.

- A friend of mine just gave me The Complete Tom Sawyer novels by Mark Twain. (This includes Tom Sawyer, Detective !) I am going to sit in my yard and let myself drift back to a more youthful, more innocent time. With a drink in my hand of course.

"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education."  - Mark Twain

Spanish Wine On the Rise

We have been dipping into the Spanish wines at DeRosaWorld. Two that are becoming our staples are the low priced Ergo and the moderately priced Salmos.

The Ergo is a favorite weekend afternoon sipping wine. It also goes great with pizza with fresh garlic and pepperoni. It is a dependable bottle to share with friends.

Winery Notes: Tempranillo from Rioja is considered to be of the highest quality. ERGO is  a modern-styled Rioja, exhibiting dark, robust, plush fruit and agreeable tannins with full-bodied structure.

You can get Ergo for about $15. What I like about this wine is you know you are not drinking French or Italian (or California). It has a distinctively Spanish taste. Spanish wines are catching on in the US, but this is a new experience for a red wine.

Salmos has been partnered with lamb chops served with a side of spaghetti marinara or a any rigatoni with bolognese sauce. Salmos is something special and you can linger over the bottle. Take your time and enjoy each glass. The bottle hangs in there with you.

Winery Notes:  Dark in hue and almost opaque, it is fragrant and mineral on the nose while on the palate it is luxurious and oily, but also silky and with a long finish. This darkly colored wine is reminiscent of jam and liquorish, over a smooth spicy and toasted background, which comes from The French oak barrels. Salmos. A present day wine that speaks to us of the past.

Share this wine with close friends. It has a very special taste and compliments good food. It costs about $35, so treat yourself.

Salmos has an entertaining website: http://www.secretsalmos.es/

Saturday Musings

-The gruesome body count of US soldiers is on in Iraq as we approach the magic number 4,000 killed. Then we will forget again until 5,000. No judgments from the media. No condemnation. No protest. Dick Cheney fishes and parties with his freaky billionaire friends in the Middle East. The President is stupid and says mean, hurtful and foolish things.

-Barack Obama spoke this week in Philadelphia. It wasn’t quite the second coming or an Elvis encore, but the pundits liked it. We were told that history was spoken that day. My impression was that the Senator needs a psychiatrist.

-John McCain spoke this week, too. The stupid, old-man ramblings over Iran and the war in Iraq. Man, he seems old. President Reagan never gave off the impression of an old man. McCain oozes it. They say The Gipper’s mind was slipping during the second term. McCain seems to have lost his already.

-Senator Clinton seems poised to win big in Pennsylvania. This thing is a street fight. She spoke this week on Iraq, too. Her sensible moderation may be too little, to late. She seems to be the only person left standing who understands Iraq, but her words are no longer echoing.

I guess we leave it up to the racists to see if she can pull this out. Her strength is the economy, or lack of economy, right now. I think people are voting their pocket book when they vote for her, not their racial prejudices.

-Speaking of racism and economics. In Philadelphia, there was a plan to make the entire city WI-FI friendly. Internet for everyone, rich and poor…then the companies did the math and there was no profit to be made in the poorer, mostly black neighborhoods, so they are changing their minds. Something similar happened in the 1980s in Philadelphia when cable TV was being introduced across the country. No company wanted to lay cable in the poor neighborhoods where the population was mostly black. Philadelphia became one of the last major cities to have cable TV. So maybe the Archie Bunkers aren’t just living in the wilderness of Pennsylvania. They are also in the penthouse suites of communication corporations including some Gen-X and Gen-Y favorites.

-Arthur C. Clarke died this week. Kids today will have no idea what they have missed if they do not seek out his works. His fiction inspired reality in young scientists’ minds. Your cell phones and satellite technology for example.

Arthur C. Clarke formulated the following three "laws" of prediction:

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Go for it! It’s the 21st century!

-Anne Garrels is a senior foreign correspondent for NPR's foreign desk. She has spent the past four years in Iraq. She did a retrospective series of reports this past week. What caught my ear at one point was a harrowing story in which her transport came under attack, but she said” Al-Qaeda was firing on our vehicle!” I thought, how did she know who was firing on her vehicle? Suddenly her story started to smell of propaganda. I just don’t trust NPR. I wish I could. Sorry Anne.

-Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico endorsed Senator Obama for President. He worked for President Clinton as Ambassador to the United Nations, and as the Secretary of Energy and it was expected he would throw his support behind Senator Clinton's candidacy.  Richardson said that Obama has ‘something special’.

No endorsement yet from John Edwards. No word from Al Gore either. I wouldn’t be surprised if Gore did not endorse anyone. Why should he? No one endorsed him after he won the election in 2000.

It should have been John Edwards this year. If Big Al didn’t want it, Edwards was the guy. Democrats have made an historic mistake, here I think.

-Wow, I actually saw a skull appear over hot Dana Perino’s face during her press briefing this week. It was just like the ending of the movie PSYCHO. She was stuttering and spitting trying to roll back Bush, Jr.’s lies and stupidity. It was really cool. They really are devils!

-Made Fallenmok’s Spaghetti Punttanesca last night and it was delicious. Some folks aren’t used to the olive, caper, garlic combination. Sometimes that taste clashes with red wine. But if you follow his recipe, I think you will be hooked. (Just ask the whores of Naples)

-Stop everything! Buy Gnarles Barkley’s The Odd Couple. For the kids today who don’t know what TSOP is. Check this out and then go download The Stylistics, The Three Degrees, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, and The O’Jay’s.

iTunes has Stacey Keach reading The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. The drawback to this collection is the stories are not listed individually as tracks. It is one big track, so getting to a specific story is impossible. But Keach is the right person to read these stories. Hemingway's stories are very clear when read aloud.

Saturday Musings

If  I Can Make It There, I’d Make It Anywhere. It’s Up To You,  New York, New York.

-New Yorkers in the news:

-The Greatest President who never was, Mario Cuomo, has a solution for the Democratic Primary. Instead of CNN and MSNBC debates, make the candidates answer long, substantial questions on the issues facing America today. Sorry, Mario, Not in our life time. It is all about the sound-bite. Besides, would the average American understand the answers?

Ok, that’s being cynical, but come on, we just had two terms of a retard as President, and we really don’t seem to mind. We also pay $4.00 for gas and don’t seem to mind. We also went to war on an admitted lie, and don’t seem to mind. Jr. got in on a stolen election and we don’t seem to mind….on an on and on.

In a nation where the answer to Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader? is 'No', substantive policy talk is not going to help people decide who should be the next President. It is not a standard we ever held to Republican Presidents. Jr. has yet to form a complete sentence while in office. We mocked Bill Clinton and Al Gore for being policy wonks.

All politics are local and it’s the economy stupid work pretty well as a voting guide.

-Eliot Spitzer…WTF? You have a wife and three daughters.

-Geraldine Ferraro is not a racist. Neither is Ed Rendell or Bill Clinton. Josh Marshall and The HuffObama Post need to take a look in the mirror. Americans are not evil because they don’t necessarily support Senator Obama in the Democratic Primary. Americans are evil when they shout and point and scream like brats when they don’t get their way, like Rush Limbaugh and FOX News and the Republican Congress…not very good company, I’d say.

-Congress went into a closed-door session to debate the unconstitutional acts of the Bush, Jr. Administration when it comes to warrantless wiretapping, meeting in secret so national security can be preserved. Republicans hide behind national security when they’ve really done something bad. Remember, it became the motto of the Reagan Administration where everything from his Alzheimer’s to supporting Iranian Hostages and Contra Founding Fathers became matters of national security and could not be investigated in public. And how did that work out for us?

-Bush, Jr. is trying to keep another critical report by the military out of the hands of the public. Another report on how misguided and mismanaged our war in Iraq actually is and how there is more proof that the neo-con fascists that infest Washington are playing the American people for fools. The report is already on the internet, but CNN, FOX News, MSNBC can’t seem to find it.

-Bearn Sterns needs money. The Federal Reserve is going to give it to them. Okay, but when the average American can’t make a car payment, who do we call?

-The EPA is complaining that Bush, Jr. overstepped his authority again and made the air less safe for Americans and the world. We should add up all the damage this administration has inflicted on the world and compare it to the damage terrorist evil-doers have inflicted on the world. I would like to see a grid of damage: Bush, Jr. vs. Terrorists.

-Pope Benedict XVI has created some more sins. Ecological damage and genetic manipulation. How awesome is that? Catholics all over the world can no longer pollute nor grow or eat genetically modified foods! No more bovine growth hormones. They can only eat hamburgers made from organically raised cows.  Am I misinterpreting the new rules? Genetic manipulation covers our food too, right, Father?

-I’m reading The Life of Andrew Jackson by Robert Remini, not the three-volume set. I’m cheating and reading Remini’s one-volume version. I was watching television and The Wind and the Lion came on. One of those films that once I see a scene, I stay until the end. Mainly to watch Brian Keith’s performance as Theodore Roosevelt. In one scene he tells reporters that Andrew Jackson shot a man off the porch of the White House. When the movie was over I went on Amazon.com, looked up Andrew Jackson, read some reviews of his biographies, settled on Remini’s and ordered a nice used copy. Good reading.

Theodore Rex is coming soon, too.

- "I'm puttin’ on my top hat, Tyin’ up my white tie, Brushin’ off my tails." Tonight I’m getting out of the house and rubbing elbows at a concert of Respighi’s Roman Trilogy. Then off to a late dinner at a nice, local Italian restaurant. It’s been a long time since I’ve been to a classical music concert. Too, long. In fact I haven’t been to one since I’ve moved to the West Coast. I’m excited.

Saturday Musings

-Senator John McCain (Gipper II) --- squishy, old-people sex. Gross. The News likes him, though…especially NPR.

-Evil-doers are shelling the Green Zone in Iraq despite the fact the ‘surge’ is working.

-So according to the Bush, Jr. Administration, the Democrats in Congress have made us more, unsafe this weekend. Beware airplanes from above…or those strange clicking sounds on your phone.

-Hey, President Bush, Jr. went to Africa. He ate mealie and fufu and drank lots of tej and danced. He couldn't’t get over all the ‘colored folks’ there and offered them some military bases, but they didn’t want any. He was overheard wondering aloud if Africa was one of those god-less Blue States.

-A B-2 Stealth Bomber crashed in Guam and two F-15 fighter jets crashed over the Gulf of Mexico this week. See what happens when those damned Democrats get close to the White House.

-Speaking of Democrats getting close to the White House, the Conspiracy Theorist in me wonders if the tragic death of the motorcycle cop in Senator Clinton’s motorcade in Texas and the lapse in security at Senator Obama’s campaign stop in Texas were shots across the bow of ‘Change’… just musing.

-I’m having trouble telling the difference between The Huffington Post and The Drudge Report.

-Oscars tomorrow. I haven’t seen one film that is up for Best Picture. I guess that is my editorial comment on the state of the Motion Picture Industry in 2008.

-Just bought a bunch of Frank Sinatra records to help me get through the rest of this winter, the 2008 Presidential race, and, well, middle age: Nice & Easy, Close To You, No One Cares, Moonlight Sinatra, Francis A. Sinatra & Edward K. Ellington, Sinatra - A Man Alone: The Words and Music of McKuen, Sinatra & Company. It’s boozin’ time.

-Started reading Thomas Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon but had to stop. I need help with this one so I downloaded an on-line guide by Toby Levy. He spent nine months reading the book and making notes every three pages. I also went to the History section of the library and took out Drawing the Line : How Mason and Dixon Surveyed the Most Famous Border in America by Edwin Danson..and I found a copy of The Journal of Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon (Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society, v. 76) by Charles Mason. Pynchon's book better be worth it.

-I am hooked on Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles on FOX TV. I know, I know. What can I say?  Sarah Connor, shotguns, female terminators, flash-forwards to Skynet’s war. Must-see TV.  I feel like I’m cheating on Jamie Sommers, though.

-Made Swiss Steak for dinner this week! Bought a cheaper cut of meat and dipped it in flour and browned it with onions, then poured in some tomato sauce and scraped and mixed in the meat juices-stuff and let the whole thing simmer for four hours. Served with mashed potatoes and peas...and lot's of bread to dip. Yum! I'm not sure how, but I had some left-over and the next day threw some pasta into the frying pan with it, added the left-over peas and got two meals out of it.

-Keeping my head low and hoping for the best in the Ohio and Texas Democratic primaries on March 4th. Go Hillary!

Saturday Night In DeRosaWorld

It is cold and rainy here in the South Bay. Winter has set in and is torturing the natives. I went to the Sprouts Organic Market and bought a boneless chicken breast and some winter/root vegetables.

I chopped up the chicken and the rutabaga and parsnips and placed them in a glass Pyrex dish with olive oil and sea salt. Then I placed some baby carrots around and chopped up a tomato (I am Italian after all...see oregano later) Then put plenty of black pepper over the top, the aforementioned oregano and the generic 'italian herb mix' then Lady D added her two cents and sprinkled lavender on top while I was opening the wine. (Tavaglini Gattinara 2002 red wine).

We put on Rosemary Clooney sings Johnny Mercer, drank the wine for an hour, then ate.

I served it all over a brown rice medley that absorbed the natural chicken/vegetable stock.The chicken was a little dry, but the vegetables were perfect. I set the oven for 425 degrees F. I would probably adjust the oven temperature down next time.

This was a hardy, healthy dish that hit the spot on a windy, cold night. A light Italian red wine was the perfect appetizer.

Philadelphia German Butter Cake

All I have to say, is I have never found this gooey, delicious cake anywhere else than Philadelphia.

My New Year's gift to the world...not just Butter Cake...not just Philadelphia Butter Cake, but German Philadelphia Butter Cake.

1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup shortening
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 large egg
1 envelope active dry yeast
1/2 cup warm milk
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon vanilla
Butter Cake Topping, recipe follows

Prepare dough by mixing sugar with shortening and salt. Add egg and beat with mixer one minute until well blended. Dissolve yeast in warm milk. Add flour, then milk-yeast mixture and vanilla to dough batter. Mix three minutes with dough hook or by hand. Turn dough onto floured board; knead one minute. Place in a lightly greased bowl, cover with a towel and set in a warm place to rise for one hour or until doubled. Meanwhile, prepare topping; set aside.

Divide dough in two pieces. Roll or pat to fit two well-greased 8" square pans or one 9x13X2" pan. Crimp edges halfway up sides of pan to hold topping in. When dough is spread, prick dough with fork to prevent bubbling. Divide topping; spread over dough. Let cakes stand 20 minutes. Bake at 375°F for 30 minutes or until done. Do not over-bake. Topping should be crusty, but gooey. Let cool before cutting.

Butter Cake Topping

1/2 pound (2 sticks) unsalted butter NO SUBSTITUTES
2/3 cup flour
2 cups EXTRA FINE sugar
2 extra large eggs
4 to 5 tablespoons milk

Cream butter. Stir together flour and sugar. Gradually beat sugar mixture in butter. Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. By the teaspoonful, add just enough milk to bring mixture to a consistency for easy spreading over the cake, being careful not to make it too runny. Use as directed in recipe for Butter Cake.

Enjoy and Happy New Year.

Let's Drink. It's Christmas Time.

Old-fashioned mulled wine always sounds tempting. But the complexity of the ingredients has scared me off. And I just don’t like cloves that much.

I found this simple recipe for Vin Brule that only has 4 key ingredients:

- 1 bottle of dry red wine (burgundy is best)
- 4 cinnamon sticks
- the peel of 1 orange
- 3-4 tablespoons of sugar

Put all ingredients in a medium sauce pan. Cover and cook on high. When it starts to boil, remove lid and light with a match. Be careful: A beautiful large blue flame will burst out. It looks very impressive with the lights low.

The flame should flash itself out, if it doesn't, cover the pan with the lid again until the flame is extinguished. Ladle the wine into mugs, leaving the cinnamon sticks and orange peel behind.

Serves 4.

What's The World Coming To?

A Seagull is reduced to stealing a bag of chips.

Summer Cocktails

In the bleak winter, after work or watching the evening news, it's a shot or two of Jameson's Irish Whiskey. Maybe a gin Martini if I'm making a pitcher.

But as the summer approaches and I want to sit in the yard and relax on the weekends, my thoughts travel to a lighter drink. Here are a couple of summer cocktails. I usually crave these drinks as the weather gets warmer then put them away in the winter with my sweaters and corduroys.

I mix these drinks individually in an old-fashioned glass.

Americano

• 1.5 oz. Campari
• 1.5 oz. Cinzano Rosso (Italian Sweet Vermouth)
  

  Preparation:
  Fill an old-fashioned glass with ice, add ingredients, top off with club soda, add a twist of orange.

Negroni (I agree with Count Negroni on his drinking philosophy. Whenever possible, put a little gin to it.)

• 1 oz. Campari
• 1 oz. Cinzano Rosso (Italian Sweet Vermouth
• 1 oz. Gin
  

  Preparation:
  Fill an old-fashioned glass with ice, add ingredients, top off with club soda, add a twist of orange.

Pimm's No. 1 Cup (you're on your own with the garnish)

• 1.5 oz. Pimm's No. 1
• Ginger Ale (some prefer lemonade)
  

  Preparation:
  Fill an old-fashioned glass with ice, add the Pimm's No. 1 and fill the glass with ginger ale, add a slice of cucumber. (really...or lemon or lime)

Saint Joseph's Day Pie

Saint Joseph's Day, March 19th was always a big deal in my family. We gathered at the house of one of my Italian relatives and ate and ate. Saint Joseph's pie for the adults, pizza for the kids.

This is an old and much disputed recipe from my Italian Aunts. Actually, no one from my generation actually remembers the specifics of this onion pie anymore, but I am going to take a crack at it.

Aunt Yolanda's daughters say tomatoes and Aunt Mary's daughters say no tomatoes. Aunt Yolanda's daughters say anchovies and Aunt Mary's daughters say raisins. I'm going with the tomatoes and raisins so I'm making them both look down in anger at me.

Saint Joseph's Day Pie (Onion Pie)

Filling:
1/4 Cup olive oil
2 lbs. onions sliced very thin
3 Tbsp. milk
16 anchovy fillets, cleaned and chopped
Cup pitted black olives, chopped
1/4 Cup Italian parsley
3 small tomatoes chopped
dash of garlic salt, salt and pepper

Heat the olive oil in a large frying pan. Add the onions and saute for 15-20 minutes until the onions are caramelized. Add the milk and cook for 5 more minutes. Add the anchovies, parsley, tomatoes and black olives. Mix well, continue stirring, cook until the sauce is thick and all the liquid has been evaporated. . 

Pastry: (Please bless me father, for I have sinned. I bought a ready-made pie crust)
2 Cups. flour 2-3 eggs (as needed)
1/2 Cup. butter and a pinch of salt

Combine flour and salt in a mixing bowl. Cut in butter, add eggs as needed and blend making dough. Divide the dough in half and roll out to the size to fill a pie pan. Lightly sprinkle corn meal at the bottom of the pan before lining with dough. Pour in filling. Roll out the remaining dough to fit on the top like a pie.  Poke holes in the the top crust to allow the steam to escape and glaze with an egg wash.

Cook in a 350° for 1 hour.

(Pie can be frozen and thawed and warmed to serve later!)

I'll Drink To That

 

I noticed my bottle of Jameson Irish Whiskey was nearly empty and I felt guilty about it, but then...

The team at the Harvard School of Public Health, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Wageningen University in the Netherlands...said I could!

Evening Vespers

Okay, let's start the New Year off right. No politics. I usually serve up recipes and cocktails on Friday's blog entry, but it New Years, so what the hell.

While back east visiting the family for the holidays, I rummaged through some boxes of old books I have stored there. I came across the entire Ian Fleming James Bond collection...and it reminded me that in Casino Royale, Bond orders his famous drink...the Vesper???

"A dry martini," he said. "One. In a deep champagne goblet."

"Oui, monsieur."

"Just a moment. Three measures of Gordon's, one of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet. Shake it very well until it's ice-cold, then add a large thin slice of lemon-peel. Got it?"

Dale DeGroff (King Cocktail) has the Vesper as his featured cocktail of the month:

VESPER

3 Parts gin

1 Part Finlandia vodka

1/4 ounce Lillet Blond

Shake with ice and strain into a martini glass. Garnish with an orange peel.

Friday Night Recipe: The Gimlet

The Gimlet as served at Trader Vic's in Beverly Hills.

From 'The Long Goodbye,' 1953

"I like bars just after they open for the evening. When the air inside is still cool and clean and everything is shiny and the barkeep is giving himself that last look in the mirror to see if his tie is straight and his hair is smooth. I like the neat bottles on the bar back and the lovely shining glasses and the anticipation. I like to watch the man mix the first one of the evening and put it down on a crisp mat and put the little folded napkin beside it. I like to taste it slowly. The first quiet drink of the evening in a quiet bar -- that's wonderful."

The first time I read Raymond Chandler's " The Long Goodbye" I ran out and bought a dozen limes. I came home and then I looked up a recipe for the Gimlet. It didn't include limes.

The gimlet recipe I like comes with the Plymouth Gin bottle:

1 1/2 ounce of Plymouth Gin

1/2 ounce of Roses Lime Juice

Fill a mixing glass with ice and pour in the ingredients. Still until very cold. Pour into a martini glass and serve with a lime wedge.

Friday's Weekend Recipe...A Treasonously Good Cake

Remember, remember, the 5th of November

Gunpowder Treason and plot...and a good cake too!

Guy Fawkes Day is November 5th, but has become associated with Halloween in modern times.

The plot was an attempt to assassinate the Protestant King James I of England (James VI of Scotland) and the members of both houses of the Parliament of England, by blowing up Westminster Palace during the formal opening session of the 1605 Parliament, in which the king would address a joint assembly of both the House of Lords and the House of Commons. Guy Fawkes was in large part responsible for the later stages of the plan's execution. His activities were detected, however, before the plan's completion. Following a severe interrogation involving the use of torture, and a trial in Westminster Hall by Judge John Popham, Fawkes and his conspirators were executed for treason and attempted murder. Guy Fawkes's failure is remembered with Guy Fawkes night or Bonfire night on November 5.

Remnants of the story ended up in the movie V For Vendetta. We may need a Little Guy Fawkes action if the House and Senate don't turn away from the Dark Side of the Force this November.

Here is a modern interpretation of a very old cake.

Guy Fawkes Day Cake

(recipe inspired by Le Cordon Bleu)

Ingredients:
1/4 cup molasses
1/3 cup unsalted butter
1/4 cup dark corn syrup
1/2 cup soft light brown sugar
2/3 cup milk
1/3 cup rolled oats, blitzed to powder in coffee grinder
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 eggs

Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Line an 8 inch cake pan with waxed paper. Grease the paper with butter and dust with flour.
2. Melt the molasses, butter, corn syrup, brown sugar and milk in a saucepan. Remove from heat and cool.
3. Put dry ingredients into a separate bowl: oat powder, flour, spices and baking soda. Pour in the butter mixture and beat. Beat in the eggs, one at a time. Continue beating until mixture becomes a smooth paste.
4. Pour the mixture into the prepared cake pan and bake for 35 minutes. Poke the center with a tooth pick. If it comes out clean, it is done. Leave in pan to cool for 5 minutes.
5. Turn the cake out onto a cooling wire rack, peel off the waxed paper and leave to cool.
6. Frost with ready-made dark chocolate icing. Cut cake into squares and serve.

Friday's Weekend Recipe

My favorite cupcake recipe, inspired by Nigella Lawson:

Ingredients:

3/4 cup self-rising flour
1/3 cup very soft unsalted butter
7 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 eggs
1-2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 tablespoons whole milk

-Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
-Put all ingredients (except milk) into food processor and mix thoroughly
-Scrape down the sides, then add milk in and mix again until you have a smooth batter
-Put paper muffin cups into cupcake pan
-Fill each about 3/4 full. The recipe should make 12. Mine usually only make 11 for some reason.
-Cook 15-20 minutes or until golden on top.
-Remove from ove, cook on wire rack.
-Ice the tops with chocolate frosting or whatever flavor you prefer.

Variations:
-Sometimes I make this as a one-layer cake in an 8-inch pan. Follow same instruction but cook a little longer.
-Try substituting almond extract for the vanilla, or try Frangelica or Framboise. Be brave and experiment.