DeRosaWorld

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.