When you walk through a storm
by chuckofish
It’s been a difficult week, but daughter # 1 came into town and we dealt with it like the ladies we are.
dual personalities
Month: July, 2012
July 13, 2012
Dinner for the culinary-challenged
by chuckofish
Dinner is a perennial problem in our house. We never seem to know who will be there and when we can sit down to eat. I’ve learned to be creative. Sometimes my made-up dinners work and other times they don’t. I’ve had some brilliant culinary disasters in my day — the time I tried ‘easy’ lobster Newburg comes to mind (we threw it out).
One recent success involved a last minute attempt to stretch a small amount of leftover meatloaf into dinner for four. In case you’re interested, here’s my meatloaf recipe:
2 lbs. really good ground beef
one heaping teaspoon marmite 
a couple handfuls of oats
one egg
a couple of tablespoons minced onion (optional)
Mix thoroughly and pop in the oven at 350 to 375 for about 1.5 hours or until cooked all the way through. Drain fat, let rest five minutes, and then serve.
For the sandwiches:
First cook Pepperidge Farms’ Garlic Bread according to package directions but for half the time. Meanwhile saute some onions in butter and slice the meatloaf very thin. When the garlic bread is ready, top with the meatloaf, the onions, and some grated cheddar cheese. Pop in the oven and cook until cheese is melted (about 3-4 minutes). Cut into pieces and serve as open faced sandwiches. Feeds four if you have a side salad and/or fruit. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a picture of this.
But the recipe is endlessly flexible and a couple of weeks later, I adapted it for tuna as follows:
2 cans tuna (fancy albacore) in water
mayo to taste
half a red onion soaked in water for 15 minutes and then sliced very thin
tomatoes sliced thin
grated cheddar cheese
Follow the cooking directions as above.
This is how it turned out:
Easy tuna melt
Okay, the picture is not that appealing. I need to work on presentation, but the point is that you can make a meal out of whatever you’ve got lying around — deli meat, left over meat or roasted vegetables, bacon, lettuce and tomatoes… and in the end — hey, presto! — you have yummy food that will please the hungry hordes.
July 12, 2012
An epic fail
by chuckofish
Last night the boys and I searched Netflix “watch it now” for a Yul Brynner movie to watch in honor of his birthday. Since we’d recently watched the movies we own (Anastasia, the King and I, Kings of the Sun) and since “The Magnificent Seven” was not available, we settled for “Taras Bulba” with Yul in the titular role of course. Now I had seen the movie before, but not since I was very young and the only thing I remembered about it the scene where they jump the horses over the gorge. That should have warned me.
Yes, it’s very nice.
Yul was hardly in the movie; it was a Tony Curtis vehicle and quite frankly, terrible! Basically, the movie consisted of scenes of horses galloping around Argentina where it was filmed (nice scenery), Cossacks thumping each other, laughing heartily, drinking and dancing even on the battlefield, and Tony Curtis looking lovelorn. Next time you’re in the mood for a Yul Brynner movie, pick something else — anything else! To think we wasted our lives on this.
July 11, 2012
Macomb County, born and bred
by chuckofish
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee was first published on this day in 1960.
It was immediately successful, winning the Pulitzer Prize, and has become a classic of modern American literature. It’s a shame Harper Lee never wrote another novel, but I admire her for not giving in to the pressure her publisher must have put on her. She said what she had to say. It was enough. It must have taken everything she had.
I love the scene in Infamous where Sandra Bullock, playing Harper Lee, tries to explain what it takes out of a writer to write. She says, “America is not a country where the small gesture goes noticed…We want everything you have, and we want it as fast as you can turn it out.”
Of course, they made a terrific movie based on the novel in 1962. It is one of the few instances where the movie stacks up to the novel. It is also one of those movies that I and my dual personality were too young to go see at the theater. We only got to hear about it from our older brother who came home with our mother and raved about it. They both loved it. We had to wait until it came on television many years later to see it. As I recall, it was a dark and stormy night when we watched it, home alone this time. It was pretty scary! But we loved it too, and every time I see it I love it anew.
And, of course, it has the scene where if you were to stop me on the happiest day of my life and say, stop, watch this, I would be unable to stem the flow of ensuing tears. You know, it’s the Boo Radley behind the door scene. And that music. Absolute perfection.
I always loved Scout. I was not at all like her as a child (too timid), but I always thought I looked like the actress who played her and that was cool (not to mention unusual).
You have to admit, the resemblance is amazing.
So all hail Harper Lee.
President George W. Bush awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to author Harper Lee during a ceremony Monday, Nov. 5, 2007, in the East Room. “To Kill a Mockingbird has influenced the character of our country for the better. It’s been a gift to the entire world. As a model of good writing and humane sensibility, this book will be read and studied forever,” said the President about Harper Lee’s work. (White House photo by Eric Draper)
AMEN.
July 10, 2012
I want to go to there
by chuckofish
On this day in 1890 Wyoming entered the Union as the 44th U.S. state.
As daughter #1 says, quoting Liz Lemmon, I want to go to there. In fact, it is at the top of my list.
The state flower is Indian Paintbrush.
And my favorite movie was filmed there.
Sigh.
July 8, 2012
Arrested Development?
by chuckofish
I recently came across this classic family photo.
What should the caption be?
July 6, 2012
Bottom line
by chuckofish
Bottom line is, even if you see them coming, you’re not ready for the big moments. No one asks for their life to change, not really. But it does. So, what are we, helpless? Puppets? Nah. The big moments are gonna come, you can’t help that. It’s what you do afterwards that counts. That’s when you find out who you are.
(Whistler, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, season 2)
July 5, 2012
Good news!
by chuckofish
July is Leslie Howard month on TCM.com! Here is the line-up for the Star of the Month.
So set your DVR for Tuesdays in July when they’ll be showing some well-known Leslie Howard movies like Pygmalion, Of Human Bondage and The Scarlet Pimpernel and some not-so-often seen ones like Berkeley Square and The Animal Kingdom. What a treasure trove!
You can see my favorite Leslie Howard movie The Petrified Forest (1936) next Tuesday–so mark your calendar! This movie was based on the play by Robert Emmet Sherwood, which Leslie Howard had starred in on Broadway. He insisted that Humphrey Bogart reprise his role as Duke Mantee, “the world-famous killer” in the movie. He did and the rest, as you know, is history. Bogart was duly grateful and even named his daughter after Leslie years later.
Bogart has lots of good lines which he makes the most of:
“Since I’ve been a grown up, I’ve spent most of my life in prison… I’ll probably spend the rest of it dead.”
and
“You can talk sitting down; I seen ya’ doing it.”
But Howard, as the dreamy Alan Squier, gets plenty of his own:
“So that was once a tree? Hmmm. Petrified forest, eh? Suitable haven for me. Well, perhaps that’s what I’m destined to become, an interesting fossil for future study.”
and
Gramp Maple: “But let me tell you one thing, Mr. Squier. The woman don’t live or ever did live that’s worth five thousand dollars!”
Alan Squier: “Well, let me tell you something. You’re a forgetful old fool. Any woman’s worth everything that any man has to give: anguish, ecstasy, faith, jealousy, love, hatred, life or death. Don’t you see that’s the whole excuse for our existence? It’s what makes the whole thing possible and tolerable.”
I even included an Alan Squeir quote on my senior page: “I had a vague idea I’d like to see the Pacific Ocean and perhaps drown in it. But that depends.” My mother raised an eyebrow at my teenage angst, but no one else ever commented!
Above all else, Leslie Howard was a great British patriot, who used his Hollywood fame to further the cause of England in WWII, by making several propaganda films like Pimpernel Smith and The First of the Few.
He died at the age of 50 in 1943 when the plane he was in was shot down by the Nazis. They thought he was a spy and they were correct. According to Sir William Samuel Stephenson, the senior representative of British Intelligence for the western hemisphere during the Second World War, the Germans knew about Howard’s mission and ordered the aircraft shot down. Stephenson further claimed that Churchill knew in advance of the German intention to shoot down the aircraft, but decided to allow it to proceed to protect the fact that the British had broken the German Enigma code.
I’m surprised no one has ever thought to make a movie about Leslie Howard. Wouldn’t he be an interesting subject?
July 4, 2012
I hear America singing
by chuckofish
As you know, the United States Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Second Continental Congress on this day in 1776. In our family we have always made a Big Thing about the 4th of July, because we are a patriotic family (of course) and because it is our brother’s birthday.
We always had a shindig (with favors) and set off firecrackers galore and other explosives. We blared Sousa marches from our open windows. Normally a quiet, reserved family, we were LOUD.
Sadly, we are experiencing a drought this year in our flyover state and so we will not participate in any of these fun activities. We may play some patriotic tunes inside this year, but God forbid we should open a window! The temperature is broiling out there. And we won’t be setting off any of our own fireworks either as there is a serious danger of fire due to the dryness issue. Almost all the local displays are canceled. Sigh. Only the big one on the big river will go on.
We will be sure to tip a glass or two, however, in toasts to our absent family and especially our absent bro who turns 61!
Since July 4 will be celebrated indoors this year, we will no doubt spend it watching movies first enjoyed with our brother: Stagecoach, Tall in the Saddle, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, How the West Was Won, El Dorado, The War Wagon…Sounds good to me.
It is also, we should note, the birthday of Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804), Stephen Foster (1826), Calvin Coolidge (1872), Louis B. Mayer (1882), and Stephen Boyd (1931)! Reason enough (and more) to party hearty.
P.S. I’ll be wearing my flag pin, made by daughter #1 years ago at Philmont. I know you’re jealous.
July 3, 2012
Sibs
by chuckofish
My dual personality wrote about our brother the other day, posting some pictures from her graduation weekend back in 1981(!). Here is another photo of the three of us just before we were about to leave for Bradley International Field in Hartford in our brother’s blue station wagon (the “Blue Goose”). We look a little worse for wear, don’t you think? We’d probably been up late celebrating. We were some wild and crazy guys back then.
dual personalities 