We've finally had a gorgeous summery day. Sunny, warm, not too humid. It was perfect. The only extra thing that the husband and I could ask for is, ahem, for it not to be Art Fair weekend. The Art Fair was fun the first couple of years we lived here in the Cake Eater Pad; ever since, however, it's become an absolute pain in the ass. For three days we're inundated by people. Lots and lots of people. Who crowd out the way to our usual shopping destinations. Like the grocery store, the drug store, etc. They're all over the place, and, quite frankly, my greatest personal fear is that the husband and I are going to get caught up in one of these moo-ish crowds, that he (meaning the husband) is going to lose it entirely, and that there will be broken necks and blood running into the sewers. If people could just learn how to freakin' WALK, we wouldn't have a problem. Alas...suffice it to say, we're over it, even if there are a gyros or fried little donuts covered in cinnamon sugar suddenly within walking distance.

Anyway, today, as I mentioned, was gorgeous, but a little before six pm CDT, I noticed the sky was going dark gray. Everything went still around six, and then, about five after, all hell broke loose. The wind howled. The rain poured, and completely overwhelmed our gutters, bypassing the downspouts on both sides of the house, but, most importantly, I experienced something I'd never experienced before: a hail storm that lasted longer than five minutes.

Want to see what that sort of wreckage looks like?

Here's the steps on the front porch

Here's a quarter, for scale

Here's my freakin' shredded hosta. One of them. Everything's pretty much trashed.

Here's the street...all flooded and icy on the last day of May

See the tents in the distance? That's the Art Fair. The poor bastards. I'm fairly certain they closed early today. Again. Just like yesterday, because there was another storm then as well. Quite frankly, with the amount of wind, ice and water, I'm amazed that any of those tents are standing.

Some dude crossing the street in not the best choice of available footwear. That had to be cold.

At the time of this writing, it's 7:43 CDT. There is STILL hail on the grass and the sidewalks. Because the front came through, it broke the warmth and we dropped, oh, about fifteen degrees in five minutes. As the ground is warm, and the air is cold---we have a nice fog settling in. According to radar, there's another round coming in later. GOOD TIMES!

Posted by: Kathy at 06:45 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Harvey Korman, dead at age 81.

Everyone seems to be posting Blazing Saddles clips in tribute, so I shall go another way. I humbly present "Went With the Wind," The Carol Burnett Show's parody of Gone With the Wind.

Perhaps these clips don't showcase Harvey's talents directly, but the sketch simply would not have worked without him. It just wouldn't have. His Clark Gable impersonation is DEAD ON PERFECT.

I just don't know what to say, other than watch the clips and see him in action. And if you're really looking for something to while away the time, go surfing on YouTube. You'll laugh---and you'll laugh hard. That, perhaps, is the best tribute one could offer, and I'm sure he'd have liked that. Because, if nothing else, it's pretty obvious Harvey reveled in a good laugh.

Posted by: Kathy at 09:55 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Much like everyone else, I have one hundred and one different ways to cook chicken. Fortunately for us, because said one hundred and one recipes were becoming a little stale, I found a new one in a little magazine dearest Chrissy signed me up for last year, as a treat when I was suffering through chemo.

I thought I'd post it, just in case you were looking for your one hundred and second way to cook chicken. And, as it's a grill recipe, the seasonal timing is perfect. (For those of us who live in the Northern Hemisphere, anyway.)

Misted Ginger Chicken

Makes one chicken

Combine in a bowl:
1 tablespoon brown sugar
1 tablespoon fresh grated ginger
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon fresh minced thyme
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
Minced zest of one lemon

In a spray bottle, pour one bottle/can of ginger beer or really good ginger ale.

Spread the rub on the chicken bits (in the actual recipe, they call for a whole chicken, split on the backbone, with each breast, thigh, wing, and leg neatly folded into two, easily grilled bits, but as I had plenty of chicken in the freezer and none of it was in whole-form, I simply used the bits and bobs from a fryer.), making sure to spread the rub under the skin and on top of the skin.

Grilling the chicken is a bit of an adventure, because they call for you to use a technique called "indirect grilling" by which you place the chicken bits around the edge of the grill, and not directly on top of the flame. This takes longer, but the results, I guarantee you, are worth the extra time involved.

Place the chicken bits on the grill, away from the heat source, and don't move them for the entire cooking time. You don't need to flip them at all, as they will cook nicely without your efforts. All you need to do is, every ten or fifteen minutes, mist them with the spray bottle of ginger beer/ale to keep the skin moist, and to flavor it. The ginger ale/beer lightly carmelizes under the heat and provides a nice flavor and crispiness to the skin. And that's it. That's all you have to do.

It took about forty minutes or so to cook two thighs and three legs. If you cook the breasts, I would suspect it would take a bit longer, simply because most chickens nowadays have huge boobs. But the flavor of the ginger entirely transformed the chicken. To paraphrase the husband, most chicken dishes taste like, well, chicken, and don't transform into anything new. The ginger brought a entirely different flavor out of the chicken. He enjoyed it tremendously, particularly because I served it with the first of the sweet corn I could find, and a salad. It was a nice, light supper on a warm day.

Highly recommended.

Posted by: Kathy at 09:25 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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It's very dry, but Freeman Dyson's review of two global warming tomes in The New York Review of Books is well worth the time it will take to muddle through.

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A billionaire who doesn't own a home. Or a car. Or any of the other trappings that come with massive wealth.

After making his billions, Mr. Berggruen, 46, lost interest in acquiring things: They didnÂ’t satisfy him, and in fact had become something of a burden. So he started paring down his material life, selling off his condo in New York, his mansion in Florida and his only car. He hatched plans to leave his fortune to charity and his art collection to a new museum in Berlin.

For him, wealth is about lasting impact, not stuff.

“Everybody is different and I think that we live in a material world,” he told me. “But for me, possessing things is not that interesting. Living in a grand environment to show myself and others that I have wealth has zero appeal. Whatever I own is temporary, since we’re only here for a short period of time. It’s what we do and produce, it’s our actions, that will last forever. That’s real value.”

When I pressed him on why he no longer got much enjoyment from acquiring more “things,” he said this: “First, I don’t need it. Secondly, maybe in a bizarre kind of way, I don’t want to be dependent on it or have the responsibility. I don’t get that much enjoyment out of saying ‘I own it.’ ”{...}

Curious.

Because when I say I don't have a problem not owning a car right now, particularly when gas prices are as high as they are, people freak out---and they do freak out, and in the process wind up treating me like a freak. They can't get their heads around the notion that you could live without one. Then they quiz you incessantly about how you manage to survive, whilst they're not very subtly trying to suss out the "real" reason you don't have a car. Or haven't bought a house, or whatever else it might be that they own and you don't.

I wonder if his billionaire cronies give him shit for not having a mansion and a Ferrari. Or if they simply let him be "eccentric." Because if they do let him off the hook, well, that would be something different, wouldn't it? Because it doesn't seem like middle class people let you off the hook if you choose not to follow the same thirty-year payment plan that they do.

Because, if you're not wealthy, I guarantee you, there is no such thing as "eccentric." There's "crazy" and "bat shit loco."

You can probably guess what most people think I am when I tell them I get around by bus and rent the Cake Eater pad, instead of paying a mortgage on a depreciating house.

Posted by: Kathy at 04:54 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Ok. Finally, I've gotten around to figuring out how to upload all of the posts Kathy made on Blogspot before moving here. You can now find the archives (low on the left column) that were missing from August 2003 to December 2004.

The pictures didn't come across and the formatting is hash, but they're now available.

(You have no idea what a pain in the ass this was.)

Posted by: MRN aka "The Husband" at 10:49 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Ahem

I waited nineteen years for this piece of shit?

Posted by: Kathy at 09:56 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Someone with too much time on their hands animated some of Eddie Izzard's funniest bits by means of Legos.

Most likely not safe for work for language. Use some headphones.

Death by tray it shall be!

Do You Have a Flag?

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It is May 22, 2008. Today Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is released to the general public. Meaning me.

Good God. I'm tweaked.

C'mon Kath. You know what a cautious fellow I am.

And that's precisely the problem here.

The lure of one of my childhood heroes coming back to the screen for the first time since I was fresh out of high school. Of course I'm going to go and see it. I have to go and see it. I can't avoid it. This is the equivalent of the husband missing the Star Wars prequels. I know it's probably going to suck, diminishing the entire series in the meantime, but I can't freakin' help myself. I MUST go and be reaquainted with Indy. Even though I know it will probably disappoint me terribly.

Sigh.

I have a bit of a confession to make: I actually wrote an Indiana Jones screenplay. Back in 1997. Well before they ever started talking about a sequel. It was one of my first forays into writing, and while I actually had no clue as to how to put a screenplay together (and still really don't, despite reading many books on the subject), I recently found it again, and I have to admit, it wasn't that bad. Except for the fact that a. I couldn't come up with a decent artifact and b. it lacks an ending. I set it in the summer of 1953 and the plot was centered around the young Shah of Iran. If you're not familiar with that point in time, it was pivotal in modern Iranian history, as Mohammed Mussadeq led the Iranian Majlis or parliament, to nationalize the Iranian oil industry. This shut down the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, which did not please, to say the least, the Tory party of Winston Churchill and future Prime Minister, Anthony Eden. They enlisted the help of the Einsenhower Administration, and the Brothers Dulles, to do something about that pesky Mussadeq, who was proving incredibly popular in Iran, thus weakening the Shah. Alan Dulles sent in Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of Teddy, to foment a military coup, to keep the Shah on the throne (because that was iffy at that point in time) and to marginalize (and that's a nice way of putting it) Mussadeq. Ultimately, Roosevelt was successful and, in the process, actually managed, to reassure the Shah that the Western powers were behind him, to get the British Government to have Big Ben strike the hour erroneously. (Yes, that's where the Bond people got that from. It actually happened.) The BBC World Service still, to this very day, begins every hour of programming with the chiming bells of Big Ben. When the bells rang one more time than was necessary, the Shah was assured of their intentions to keep him on the throne.

But I digress. While, ultimately, the Shah was kept in place, at that point it was iffy in the extreme.

Indy, at the time, was not-so comfortably ensconced in his professorial duties, and had pretty much put his derring-do's behind him. Until, one day, at a conference in New York, he was confronted by a young history professor, the daughter of diplomats, who'd spent the years of WWII as a teenage OSS courier in Teheran, where her father was stationed. An envelope of photos---some of Indy, some of Marion---has anonymously been mailed to her. She doesn't know why, but by coincidence, she recognizes Indy at the conference and confronts him with the photos, wondering what the hell is going on.

And we're off.

The young woman, Kate, of course, was Indy and Marion's child. She had been put up for adoption by Abner, Marion's father, and Henry Sr., who had cleaned up Indy's mess, of which, Indy was unaware. (The whole thing started off with a young grad student Indy and Marion hooking up, Abner finding out about it and being, understandably, PISSED OFF about his daughter's deflowering. After an entertaining chase scene through 1920's Chicago, Abner caught up with young Indy, the metaphorical shotgun was wielded, and while he was initially willing to go along with the marriage scheme, because he truly was in love with Marion, Indy ultimately couldn't go through with the plan and bolted.) I came up with this cockamamie idea after watching and rewatching the Nepalese bar scene in Raiders, and wondering, ultimately, what the story was. So, because I never got an explanation, I made one up.

Fast forward through CIA intervention, Marion's being held hostage, Indy finally realizing he's procreated, promises of the return of the Ark to Indy wielded in exchange for help in finding an artifact the Shah desperately believes he needs to stay in power, the Russians being not so cool about this, Indy learning that modern airplanes (well, modern in 1953) have hydraulics and when they're shot to bits, it's kind of hard to control a plane, a trip to Persepolis to retrieve an artifact Darius the Great (I think. I don't really remember.)had brought back from Ancient Greece with him...and you have a morass of a screenplay that never really got anywhere. I tried not to throw the kitchen sink in there, but I couldn't quite help myself. I eventually gave up and consigned it to the scrapheap of failed ideas, of which I have plenty.

So, as you might imagine, I'm somewhat invested in viewing the new Indy. I want to know if my ideas were better. I wanted Indy to be extremely uncomfortable with the idea of having a daughter (who, of course, inherited Marion's hollow leg). I wanted Senior to be thrilled that he's finally allowed contact with his grandkid. I wanted Indy and Marion to hook back up, and for good. These were the ultimate goals of the film I envisioned, but I also wanted it to be the next goddamn Raiders. I didn't want it to suck. But it did. Badly. The original setting, and ideas might have been fairly decent, I needed help with the execution. I needed Lawrence Kasdan, and it was obvious I wasn't going to get him. I had all sorts of fantasies about how I would give the screenplay to an acquaintance who had moved to the Hamptons for a job, and he would, somehow, slip it to Spielberg. I was pathetic, and ultimately, it was pathetic. Besides, at that point in time Lucas was wrapped up in re-releasing the altered versions of Episodes IV, V, VI. Spielberg had, seemingly, moved on to bigger and better filmmaking, with Saving Private Ryan in his immediate future. And, most importantly, Harrison Ford had repeatedly said he had no intention of EVER revisiting Indiana Jones. It was unlikely, even if I had a. finished it and b. dramatically polished it up, that it would ever get made, so what was I wasting my time on? Hence, I gave up. Maybe I shouldn't have.

So, this thing HAD BETTER NOT SUCK. I am entirely worried that there are entirely too many reviews which list all its faults, but whose authors qualify their criticism with their overwhelming happiness that Indy is back. While I'm as happy as the next person that Indy is back (and that Marion is back, too.), I want his return to not have a sucky story attached to it. I do not want another Temple of Doom. I would prefer another Raiders, but that's unlikely, so I'll settle for something along the lines of Last Crusade. Something that leaves me with warm, fuzzy feelings for my favorite anti-hero.

But what the fuck am I saying? That makes me just as bad as the critics. How low have I, and others like me, let the bar drop when we say we just want Indy to come out alive. Fer chrissakes, I'm disgusted with myself for letting my expectations fall so low.

Alas, however, I shall hand over my nine dollars sometime over this long weekend, and I intend to vent my spleen if it, indeed, sucks.

Posted by: Kathy at 10:40 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Received via email from various friends and family.

Numero Uno: Why Did The Chicken Cross the Road?

BARACK OBAMA:

The chicken crossed the road because it was time for a CHANGE! The chicken wanted CHANGE!

JOHN McCAIN:

My friends, that chicken crossed the road because he recognized the need to engage in cooperation and dialogue with all the chickens on the other side of the road.

HILLARY CLINTON:

When I was First Lady, I personally helped that little chicken to cross the road. This experience makes me uniquely qualified to ensure -- right from Day One! -- that every chicken in this country gets the chance it deserves to cross the road. But then, this really isn't about me.......

DR. PHIL:

The problem we have here is that this chicken won't realize that he must first deal with the problem on 'THIS' side of the road before it goes after the problem on the 'OTHER SIDE' of the road. What we need to do is help him realize how stupid he's acting by not taking on his 'CURRENT' problems before adding 'NEW' problems.

OPRAH:

Well, I understand that the chicken is having problems, which is why he wants to cross this road so bad. So instead of having the chicken learn from his mistakes and take falls, which is a part of life, I'm going to give this chicken a car so that he can just drive across the road and not live his life like the rest of the chickens.

GEORGE W. BUSH:

We don't really care why the chicken crossed the road. We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road, or not. The chicken is either against us, or for us. There is no middle ground here.

ANDERSON COOPER - CNN:

We have reason to believe there is a chicken, but we have not yet been allowed to have access to the other side of the road.

JOHN KERRY:

Although I voted to let the chicken cross the road, I am now against it! It was the wrong road to cross, and I was misled about the chicken's intentions. I am not for it now, and will remain against it.

NANCY GRACE:

That chicken crossed the road because he's GUILTY! You can see it in his eyes and the way he walks.

PAT BUCHANAN:

To steal the job of a decent, hardworking American.

DR SEUSS:

Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a toad?

Yes, the chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed I've not been told.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY:

To die in the rain. Alone.

JERRY FALWELL:

Because the chicken was gay! Can't you people see the plain truth? That's why they call it the 'other side. Yes, my friends, that chicken is gay. And if you eat that chicken, you will become gay too. I say we boycott all chickens until we sort out this abomination that the liberal media white washes with seemingly harmless phrases like 'the other side. That chicken should not be crossing the road. It's as plain and as simple as that.

GRANDPA:

In my day we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the road. Somebody told us the chicken crossed the road, and that was good enough..

BARBARA WALTERS:

Isn't that interesting? In a few moments, we will be listening to the chicken tell, for the first time, the heart warming story of how it experienced a serious case of molting, and went on to accomplish its life long dream of crossing the road.

ARISTOTLE:

It is the nature of chickens to cross the road.

JOHN LENNON:

Imagine all the chickens in the world crossing roads together, in peace.

BILL GATES:

I have just released eChicken2007, which will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important documents, and balance your check book. Internet Explorer is an integral part of the Chicken. This new platform is much more stable and will never cra...#@&&;,^(C% ......... Reboot.

ALBERT EINSTEIN:

Did the chicken really cross the road, or did the road move beneath the chicken?

BILL CLINTON:

I did not cross the road with THAT chicken. What is your definition of chicken?

COLONEL SANDERS:

Did I miss one?

DICK CHENEY:

Where's my gun?

Personally, I think Einstein's contribution is quite clever.

The second, from dear friend Mel, who lives in Northern-ish England:

Working people frequently ask retired people what they do to make their days interesting.

Well, for example, the other day my wife and I went to Worthing and went into a shop. We were only in there for about 5 minutes. When we came out, there was a cop writing out a parking ticket. We went up to him and said, 'Come on man, how about giving a senior citizen a break?' He ignored us and continued writing the ticket. I called him a Nazi turd. He glared at me and started writing another ticket for having worn tyres.

So my wife called him a Shithead . He finished the second ticket and put it on the windshield with the first. Then he started writing a third ticket.

This went on for about 20 minutes. The more we abused him, the more tickets he wrote.

Personally, we didn't care. We came into town by bus.

We try to have a little fun each day now that we're retired. It's important at our age...

Heh.

Posted by: Kathy at 08:55 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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1 My favorite is always: ERNEST HEMINGWAY: To die in the rain. Alone.

Posted by: Margi at May 22, 2008 03:00 PM (M2NT5)

2 WWAFD? (What Would Al Franken Do?) Sorry. I hadda.

Posted by: Margi at May 22, 2008 08:36 PM (M2NT5)

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Devoted Cake Eater reader, Russ from Winterset, points moi to this post, where his final pre-diabetic eating experience is recorded for all the world to see.

See if you can spot him.

I know Russ recapped his experiences over at Ace's, but damned if I can find the post. Maybe Russ can help out here because, ahem, it's not like he doesn't have Cake Eater access, ya dig?

Posted by: Kathy at 09:24 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Per rabid commenter, Russ from Winterset's, recommendation we watched The Great Escape last night. Again. For, like, the fiftieth time.

All I can say really is, again, damn Steve McQueen to hell for making me CONSTANTLY believe he's going to make it over the fence. Grrrrrrr. I'm really getting tired of being suckered by him.

Oh, and another thing I noticed last night: whomever was in charge of continuity on that film really needed to pay more attention to Donald Pleasence's (Colin, the Forger, and the character who strikes a blow for blind guys everywhere to escape from Nazi POW camps) socks. They're white when he gets on the trolley to go down the tunnel, then they're gray when he's helped off the trolley by Richard Attenborough's Roger, then they're white again as he's getting into the plane with Hendley. Someone wasn't paying attention, ya dig?

Granted, however, it took me fifty viewings to notice this, so, perhaps, I'm being a little too picky.

Posted by: Kathy at 09:36 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Yes, my devoted Cake Eater readers, it's time to lighten things up a bit around here.

I present for your edification on this fine Wednesday morning....The Muppets.

If, perhaps, that was a bit too blowsy for you, well, then I shall give you a bit of depth. But the Muppet theme still rules, so it won't get too deep, hence negating the whole lightening of things.

Feel better? I do.

Posted by: Kathy at 09:23 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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