GYM NAUSEAM

My friend Gary, like me, knows the Protocols and Etiquette of the Men’s Locker Room. You go in, take your shower, dry off, get dressed. Eyes above waist level. No unnecessary talking. These are The Rules. Unwritten they may be, but nonetheless engraved as if in iron.

But once in a while, someone will violate The Rules spectacularly.

I’m not talking about pissing in the shower (generally rude if there are no partitioned shower stalls, otherwise OK) or shaving in the steam room. That last one is usually frowned upon by Gymnasium Management, with signs posted prominently to that effect, but often ignored by those who know that there is no finer shave on the planet.

No, I’m talking about Freaky Behavior. Not the kind that will get you arrested, or punched in the cojones - but jes’ plain freaky.

And Gary seems to run into more than his share of these nutjobs.

Last week, he was in the locker room, cleaning up after a Sweaty Workout. And he noticed a guy who was using one of the blow dryers.

This, in itself, was not strange or unusual. The Management provides blow dryers so that their Male Clients may dry their hair after a shower.

But this guy was drying all of his hair.

Head hair. Armpit hair. Nutsack hair. Yep, he actually propped his foot up on a bench and started drying the Crotchly Area with that blow dryer.

Friends, this is simply not done.

But all Gary could do is shake his head in bemused wonderment. To confront the man would have violated the “No Unnecessary Talking” rule, which takes precedence over the “Do Not Gross Out The Clientele By Drying Your Nuts With The Blow Dryer” rule.

And besides, this is not the most heinous Locker Room Activity Gary has seen.

One time, as he was taking his shower, he noticed a gentleman get into one of the nearby shower stalls while still clad in his Tighty-Whities. OK, Gary thinks - some guys are modest. But this is where things get strange.

Once in the shower, the guy removes his briefs, then proceeds to soap them up (OK, this may be legitimate, too - washing your shorts in the shower isn’t too weird) and then uses them as a washcloth to wash himself. Armpits, ass, crotch, face, the works.

Eeeeeeeewwwwwwwww.

And when the guy finishes his shower, he steps out, wrings the pair of undershorts out, and puts them on again. Then he gets dressed, in a business suit, no less...with those damp, wrung-out (but presumably clean) briefs on underneath.

For my friend Gary, a real WTF Moment.

Just Damn!

BOGUS BUX

“It’s Crackers…to slip a rozzer the dropsy in snide.” – MAD Magazine, late 1950’s

The obscure quotation above is supposed to mean “It’s crazy to pay off a cop in phony money.” It’s one of the bizarre catchphrases with which the MAD Magazine of the late 1950’s and early 1960’s was sprinkled...along with gems like “Potrzebie,” and “Osgood z’Beard.”

Most of us don’t ever see phony money, except for the occasional bad check. Fake currency is rare, but there’s an ever-evolving Arms Race between the counterfeiters and the people who print our greenbacks. As copier technology has become more sophisticated, the security devices incorporated in our currency have had to keep pace.

Today, at the local supermarket, I paid for my purchase, as is my custom, with my debit card. Since I needed to replenish my Portable Liquid Assets – folding money, you know – I asked for $20 cash back.

[Pernicious option, the old Cash Back. So easy it is, to tap into the Font o’ Funds right at the source, as it were. It’s a path that is fraught with danger…but I digress.]

The cashier handed me my Double Sawbuck...but immediately, I sensed that something wasn’t right.

The bill felt strange, as though the paper had a fuzzier, softer texture than the crisp bills we usually see. I held it close, the better for to eyeball it. It was one of those newfangled peachy-greeny twenties, the ones with Andy Jack’s smiling phiz unencased in a frame. But the colors were off...muted, they seemed.

Closer examination showed that the engraving was slightly blurry, lines broken. It didn’t look at all like the razor-sharp steel engraving on genuine currency. The color-shifting ink used to print certain devices on the face of the bill was absent. The watermark – a feature used for many years on many foreign currencies but only recently incorporated into ours – was missing, as was the thin plastic security thread.

I told the cashier, “Please give me a different $20 bill. This one is counterfeit...and you might want to let your management know.”

I got my (real) cash, and the bag boy took the bill over to the service desk. The manager looked at it and quickly agreed that it was bogus. I suggested that he report the matter to the police.

I feel bad for the cashier. The bill somehow had landed in her drawer, most likely by her accepting it from a previous customer. If somebody was going to be out $20, it was likely to be her. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that counterfeiting is a victimless crime.

I’ll cop to being a bit of a Coinage and Currency Nerd, but this is one time I’m happy to have been paying attention to my money. How about you? Could someone pass you Bogus Bux?

CARNIVAL OF THE CATS #96

The lovely and talented Meryl Yourish hosts the 96th Carnival of Kitties...this time, without the assistance of The Incredible Hulk.

NICE SHOES

Eric, the Straight White Guy, is notably proud of his Fancy Footgear, and I can see why.

Not everybody has the wherewithal to purchase Serious Shoes like Eric. I’m talking Big-Time here: exotic leathers, handcrafted construction, with an extreme level of Attention to Detail.

Picture this: a pair of lace-up Saddle Oxfords. “Brown” does not do justice to their rich, mellow tone, a color midway between burnt sienna and raw umber. Heels and toes are covered in buffalo hide. No, not just buffalo hide. Water buffalo hide, tanned with the finest Old-World techniques and New-World technology, with a Mohs hardness approaching that of feldspar. The saddles are done up in Wyoming elk leather, a rare and expensive alternative to the more common Bull Moose.

The real attention to detail shines through when you look at the eyelets. Each one is painstakingly hand-crafted from the carefully harvested Ringmeat Muscle of a free-range organic brown rat. Sure, farm-raised White Rat Sphincters are much less expensive and far easier to obtain, but at a trade-off in durability. Who wants frayed eyelets after a few thousand hours of wear?

The laces have the tensile strength of suspension bridge supports. Not surprising, since they are braided from the nose-hairs of wild goats that have been fed a diet rich in Steel Cans.

A pair of shoes like this will set you back a few bills, for sure. But Eric will tell you all day long, it’s worth it. No other shoe will hold up under the extreme conditions of his lifestyle. No other shoe is equally at home at the elegant bar at The Palm in Buckhead – Atlanta’s tony entertainment district – and the shit-filled back alleys of Bangladesh. No other shoe makes the ladies swoon and the men fume in envious rage.

Hush Puppies? Fuck’m. Hush Puppies are for poseurs, and Merrells are for Girlie-Men. These babies are shoes for Real Men. Even Manolo’s Shoe Blog agrees:

Manolo says, the Eric, he is the Man who is knowing the Manly Shoe, the Shoe that is so manly that it makes the Manolo to make the Painful Hemorrhoid from the excessive excitement.

You want a pair just like ’em, you say?

Get your order in early, and be prepared to unlimber your wallet. Them free-range rats is mighty hard to catch this time of year.

HAVEIL HAVALIM #54

The latest edition of Haveil Havalim, AKA “Vanity of Vanities,” is up at Random Thoughts.

CARNIVAL OF THE RECIPES #75

is up at Morning Coffee & Afternoon Tea.

Perfect. Morning Coffee, Afternoon Tea, and Evening Kishka. Yummers!

PILLOW TALK

Oh, you were wanting to use this?

So sorry, it is occupied. Please be so kind as to wait whilst I simultaneously warm your pillow to a pleasant 90°F and deposit a quarter-pound of Cat Hair upon it.

Thankyew.

PARTS IS PARTS

...quoth the Perdue Chicken Man.

And all Parts is created equal.

But, as George Orwell might have said, some Parts is more equal than others.

Even if they’re not really Parts...but items parted from us.

I speak, of course, of William Shatner’s kidney stone, that self-same Stone that fetched upwards of $25,000, as reported just a few days ago. The happy owner is the GoldenPalace.com online casino, with the proceeds earmarked for donation to Habitat for Humanity.

[You can’t make this shit up, folks. Had it been April 1, I would have been convinced that it was a gag. But no.]

Not a bad price for a stone. Its former place of residence in Shatner’s ureter makes this unassuming lump of calcium oxalate more valuable than a water-white diamond.

With this precedent firmly established, think of the possibilities.

• Leonard Nimoy’s ear wax. [Given Spock’s huge ears, supplies should be more than sufficient to meet demand.]
  
• Mick Jagger’s nasal mucus.
  
• Michael Jordan’s toenail clippings.
  
• Britney Spears’s used tampons. [SOLD]
  
• Catfish’s hemorrhoid.

Heck, I might as well offer my parched, withered soul up for sale after having written this...because, like these other Objects, it is clearly a Mere Superfluity.

FRIDAY RANDOM TEN

The Eternal Weekly Cycle rolls ’round once again, bringing us to Friday, that most anticipated of days. (Well, among the most anticipated of days.) And thus we are pleased to present this week’s Random Assortment from the iPod d'Elisson:

1. Vega-Tables - Brian Wilson
   
2. Sunflowers - Paul Cantelon
   
3. Twilight - Squirrel Nut Zippers
   
4. Baby, I Need Your Lovin’ - The Four Tops
   
5. Heroin - The Velvet Underground
   
6. I Me Mine - The Beatles
   
7. Look at You Look at Me - Dave Mason
   
8. Wacky Adventures of Abe Lincoln - Laurence Simon
   
9. Good Morning Good Morning - The Beatles
   
10. Uf Dem Anger - Reie Swaz Hie Gat Umbe - Chume, Chum, Geselle Min! - Christian Thielemann, Orff: Carmina Burana
    

It’s Friday. What are you listening to?

SHALOM BAYIT

Shalom Bayit is a venerable Hebrew expression meaning “peace in the household.”

Couples that have managed to stay married for a long time – f’r instance, She Who Must Be Obeyed and I, with a marriage that’s well into its 29th year – generally learn to master the art of maintaining Shalom Bayit.

You learn the art of compromise.

You learn to accept your mate’s minor flaws, and sometimes even a major one or two. [Not you, darlin’.]

You learn to live with your spouse’s leaving piles of mail and filthy clothing all over the house, and he learns to live with the occasional failure to replace the empty Bunwad Roll.

You learn to pick your battles, on those (rare) occasions when battles must be fought. And you learn to never go to bed angry, if at all possible.

If inconveniencing yourself in some way is necessary to keeping your Other Half happy, you do it...and you don’t piss and moan about it.

It’s give and take. Take and give.

It’s love.

Of course, here at Chez Elisson, I make use of some of the many valuable lessons I learned from my mother while she was alive, and those lessons have contributed mightily to Peace in Our Household.

Mom was a Master Shopper. It’s too bad she’s not around anymore, because she and our good friend Laura Belle are cut from the same cloth in that respect: members of the Legion of Those Who Happily Exchange Money for Goods and Services. I would give anything to be able to see the two of them lay waste to one of the local Shopping Malls. It is she who taught SWMBO that if you see something you like, buy it in at least two different colors.

And thus it is that I maintain peace in the household. When the Missus sees something she likes, I tell her to purchase it. Works every time...and my creditors love me for it.

Shalom? Buy it!

FRIDAY ARK #70

The Friday Ark is up at the Modulator.

Stop by...and wish Steve well. If I interpret his Cryptic Alert properly, he’s having some sort of medical procedure that involves General Anesthesia later today.

Based on my own experience, General Anesthesia is not a bad thing. Makes me loopy, and cuts way down on the screaming.

I WANT A NEW DRUG

Quickly, Jeeves! Fetch my medicaments! I feel a bout of catarrh coming on, and I fear that my erysipelas is acting up once again.

Arrgh! This damnèd scrofula afflicts me mightily!

CREATIVE CODING

There’s a collection of hyper-creative pieces of code available at yugop.com. Go there immediately and check it out. In an earlier version of this post, I had a window in which you could watch several of the scripts running, but it was annoyingly noisy. So click on the link.

If your machine has Javascript enabled, you can tinker with the various scripty gew-gaws by mousing over the numbered blocks. Block 04 runs a script (“Claygrid”) that is silent (in case the beeping sound of the “Jampack” script is too annoying), and you can click on “Info” to get some background on what the site is all about. And there’s even more crap in the Archive.

Block 05 (“Amaztype”) is a mind-bender. Type in a search term - say, a band’s name, such as “Beatles” - and the script will gradually build a picture of the search term as a mosaic of tiny images - in this example, covers of albums by that band. Click on any tiny image and you get some basic information about the album - click again, and you go to the Amazon site’s page. Un-be-fucking-lievable.



This is the same guy that came out with the Industrious Clock I featured here several months ago.

Whatever medication he’s on, I want me some.

MARILYN AND ME

Eric’s recent post about Marilyn Monroe got me to thinking about all of that weird Six Degrees of Separation business.

It was May of 2004 and She Who Must Be Obeyed and I were on the Senate floor in Washington, D.C., along with a small army of my college classmates. We were guests of Senator Bill Frist - another classmate - who was in the process of giving us a personal tour of the Senate chamber.

I had, for the purpose of resting my legs whilst listening to the good Senator expound on the Rich History of the room, parked myself at a conveniently located desk. A quick look at the brass nameplate attached thereto established that it was, in fact, Teddy Kennedy’s desk. “Mr. Chappy Q. Dick,” his ownself.

Surprisingly, the desk was located in the back row, instead of being front and center. After all, one of the privileges of Senatorial Seniority is that you get to move to the front of the room, just like an eager kindergartner.

And it was right about then that Frist explained that Kennedy was, indeed, entitled to sit up front based on his seniority, but that he preferred to sit in the back of the chamber - at the selfsame desk his brother Jack had used.

Holy Crap, thought I. My ass was warming the same chair that John F. Kennedy used to sit in back when he was an up-and-coming Senator. [And with JFK, you gotta use the term “up-and-coming” very discreetly.]

Think about some of the Six-Degrees Permutations, chirren:

• My ass - JFK’s chair - JFK’s ass - Jackie Kennedy’s ass.
  
  
• My ass - JFK’s chair - JFK’s ass - Marilyn Monroe’s ass.

The mind boggles, I tell ya.

WHAT DREAMS MAY COME…REPEATEDLY

Recurring dreams are a phenomenon that many of us have experienced at one time or another.

Sometimes the details are different, but the general framework of the recurring dream is always the same. Whether it is a good dream or a bad dream depends on many things: one’s state of mind, what one had for supper that evening, some deep-down psychic hole that is unfilled.

I have dreams from time to time that involve recurring elements. There are the Tornado Dreams and Tsunami Dreams, both of which have been mentioned in posts here. And there’s the Slow-Motion Jet Airliner Dream, in which I find myself flying in an airplane that moves slowly, at low altitude – or, alternatively, zooms along an ethereal Aerial Roller-Coaster Track. Always, always, the fear of an impending crash. Horrible.

But any discussion of Recurring Dreams must include some mention of the infamous School Dream.

The School Dream is one that many of us have experienced at one time or another. You find yourself back in school – college, high school, it matters not. But you are back in school, and it’s obvious that you are Not Prepared, whether it be for an exam, a paper, or some other task that is critical to your success. Scary, not least because the Unpreparedness Factor in these dreams is primarily a distorted mirror-reflection of stress and uncertainty in your Real Life.

I’ve had those School Dreams, too, but there’s a variation that makes mine especially unsettling.

In my typical School Dream, I’ll be back at college. Why I’m there, faced with another four years of degenerate partying grueling coursework, never is completely clear to me. But, regardless, I am there, moving my stuff into a dormitory room, getting ready for a semester’s worth of Ridiculously Continued Education.

As I move my stuff in and wander the campus, I’m disoriented, ill at ease. Something’s not right; the world is out of joint. There’s a terrible feeling of loss, of utter desolation, gnawing at the back of my brain. And it dawns on me:

Where’s my wife? What became of my children?

Why am I here, so terribly alone? Did I even have a family? Or was it some distant, hopeful dream?

And that is usually when I wake up, heart racing. I reach out across the bedclothes, and She Who Must Be Obeyed is there, to my deep and total relief. The School Dream - my School Dream – was just a dream, thank Gawd…until I have it again.

CARNIVAL OF THE VANITIES #174

There is no Free Lunch, so they say.

There is no Free Money.

But there is a Free Money Finance, and that is where you will find the latest edition of the Carnival of the Vanities.

POLITICS

Yet another Demotivational Poster.

AN ALL-TOO-OFTEN OVERLOOKED TASTE SENSATION

There’s one item on the Jewish Bill o’ Fare that gets short shrift these days, and it’s time that situation was corrected.

Bagels? Aw, c’mon. Everybody knows bagels. You can buy bagels in Salt Lake fucking City. You can get (gag) a bacon and egg bagel at McDungheap’s. They may not be good bagels, but bagels they are.

Gefilte fish? Maybe. File that one under “Dishes the Non-Jews Generally Don’t Monkey With.” And rightly so, especially if it’s the commercial kind that comes in a jar, complete with plenty of Fishy Jell-O Sauce.

Borscht? Schav? P’tcha? Nope. Too arcane. Plenty of folks know about borscht, that yummy beet soup, but ya gotta be a Master o’ Culinary Cabbala to be familiar with schav (sorrel soup) or p’tcha (calf’s foot jelly, intensely flavored with garlic). My mother was a p’tcha fan, but the recessive gene that confers Love of Weird Crap was not passed on unto mine own Germ Plasm.

I’m talkin’ ’bout kishka.

Kishka, ambrosia of the Eastern European table. Kishka, former Side-Dish Staple, found on every catered wedding or Bar Mitzvah dinner plate, sitting beside the meat in its own little pool of warm, brown gravy, cleverly described on menus as “Stuffed Derma” so as not to horrify the uneducated. Kishka!

Kishka: a kosher beef intestine, stuffed sausage-like with a mass of flour and bread crumbs compounded with Beef Suet, eggs, garlic, and spices. On Passover, the flour and bread crumbs would be booted out unceremoniously, with matzoh meal taking their place. Baked, sliced, and served with beefy gravy, kishka was the Ultimate Indulgent Side-Dish. Like chopped liver, enough of it would stop your heart - but what a happy way to go!

Esteemed Readers, it is time to bring Kishka out of the closet.

I can see it now. On Iron Chef, Chairman Kaga whips back a cloth covering a mound of the secret ingredient: “Ki-shi-ka! Ar-rei Ku-i-jin! [Kishka! Allez cuisine!]”

And then there’s the Bubbe Gumpowski Kishka Company, with their Comprehensive Menu of All Things Kishka: Kishka étoufée; kishka gumbo; fried kishka; baked kishka; kishka Florentine; chicken soup with kishka dumplings; spam, spam, spam, spam, kishka and spam; and onwards, ad infinitum.

If you haven’t tried it, don’t hold back. Starch and grease, ya gotta love it!

Feeling brave? Here’s a recipe for kishka that you can make at home, without the muss and bother of dealing with Lengths of Beef Intestine. Yes: a Kishka-less Kishka, but it’s getting harder and harder to stay completely Old-School in these matters.

Vegetarian Kishka

½ cup vegetable oil
2 stalks celery
2 carrots
1 onion
1½ cups flour
1¼ tsp salt
1 tsp paprika
Freshly ground black pepper to taste

In a blender, puree the vegetables with the oil until you have a thick paste. Empty the glop into a large bowl and add the flour, salt, pepper, and paprika. Mix well; you should have a nice doughy mass.

Roll the mixture into a thick cylinder and wrap securely in aluminum foil. Place the kishka on a cookie sheet and bake at 350°F for 90 minutes. Slice and serve it forth.

This recipe makes a (parve) vegetarian kishka, but if you wanna doll it up with some beefy gravy, be my guest.

Kishka! It’s what’s for dinner!

INTERTWINED DESTINY

At post-Minyan breakfast this morning, I heard a strange tale of intertwined destinies.

Debbie is a regular at our Thursday night Minyan. A group of us meet at the shul, we do a ma’ariv service – the daily evening worship service, for all y’all who are Judaically Impaired – and then go out as a group to have dinner. Debbie’s mother passed away last Friday, alas, and she returned to town yesterday after flying to New Jersey for the funeral. We’ll be holding evening services in her home the rest of the week as she observes the remainder of shiva, the traditional seven-day period of mourning.

But this morning, she came to Minyan. At breakfast, she was describing her flight to Newark, a bumpy affair thanks to high winds enroute, with a fearsome last-second dip of the left wing just as the plane was dropping down onto the runway.

At the funeral home, she was telling one of her cousins about the landing. He’s a pilot for Northwest; scary landings are part of his training regimen, and she was sure this one was one he would have enjoyed.

Said cousin has a twin brother, and therein lies a most peculiar tale.

The brothers, being twins, were always close while they were growing up. Like peas and carrots, you could say. They were never apart from one another until they reached that age when it was time for each of them to strike out on his own.

Cousin One wanted to be an airline pilot, so he enrolled in a flight school in Vero Beach, Florida. At the same time, his brother - let’s call him Cousin Two - ended up working for Smith Barney in lower Manhattan. His offices were in one of the buildings at the World Trade Center complex, albeit not in one of the Towers themselves.

Cousin Two was at his desk the morning of September 11, 2001. He saw the plane hit Tower One, the flames and debris raining down. When the tower collapsed, it buried his building, but he managed to get out alive.

Cousin One, it turns out, had been attending flight school with a number of taciturn Saudi Arabian men, men who generally kept to themselves. Men who, as it turned out, had a grisly mission.

Strange, isn’t it, how the brothers’ lives were tied together by the threads of Fate, despite their geographic distance? What mysterious connection did these twins share? And who knows what secrets are woven into that Mysterious Tapestry o’ Destiny?

CATCHING UP WITH THE CARNIVALS

She Who Must Be Obeyed and I have just returned from a long weekend in Savannah, where we and our friends JoAnn and Gary had a fine time feeding our faces and visiting with the Mistress of Sarcasm.

In our absence, of course, Bloggity-World rolls on apace. Just in case you may have missed ’em, please note that Carnival of the Recipes #74 has been posted at The Common Room.

And Carnival of the Cats #94 is up at Niobium. Hmmm. It’s not every person that’ll name a blog after a Metallic Element, but who’s to argue? Especially in the face of all that Kitty Goodness.

Speaking of Kitty Goodness, Hakuna was so happy to see us, she even let SWMBO pick her up and give her some Up Close and Personal Skritchies. Even more surprising: she didn’t run away after SWMBO let go of her. Hell, it’s been only ten years. Maybe she’ll eventually figure out that we don’t plan to choke her.

FRIDAY EARLY SATURDAY MORNING RANDOM TEN

Was Elisson in Houston this week?

No, he was not.

Therefore, he cannot use an an excuse for being tardy posting the Friday Random Ten, that he was toiling under the frequent Cat o’ Nine Tails lashes of his Corporate Overseers. No, he was just lazy.

Better late than nevah. Here’s this week’s List of Choons from the Little White Choon-Box:

1. Delhin Yot - Alamaailman Vasarat
   
2. I’m Gonna Booglarize You - Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band
   
3. A Night In Tunisia - Dizzy Gillespie
   
4. Taxim - The Klezmer Conservatory Band
   
5. I’ll Be Your Mirror - The Velvet Underground
   
6. The Red Weed (Part 2) - Jeff Wayne’s The War of the Worlds
   
7. I’m In Love With A Girl Named Spike - Skankin’ Pickle
   
8. A Case Of You - Joni Mitchell
   
9. Shade - Silverchair
   
10. Teeth - Mitch Hedberg
    

It’s Friday Too Damn Early on a Saturday. What are you listening to?

DINNER WITH MR. DEBONAIR

Mr. Debonair likes an evening meal that is elegant, yet is easy to throw together at a moment’s notice. This one took just three days.

First, go to your neighborhood Purveyor of Meaty Products. Purchase two fine Duck Breasts and take them home.

Once home, remove the Duck Breasts from their wrappings. Give them a quick rinse and dry with a clean kitchen towel, for you know not on whose meat your Meat Purveyor’s hands have been.

Mix together 1/4 cup coarse kosher salt and 1/4 cup cracked black peppercorns. Rub the duck breasts thoroughly with this mixture, wrap in plastic film, and refrigerate for 24 hours.

After the breasts have sat in the salt and pepper rub for a full day, take them out and rinse them off in cold water. Dry thoroughly with a clean kitchen towel.

Place the duck breasts in a flat glass dish or some other inert container, preferably one with a snap seal. Mr. Debonair uses Tupperware, the plastic container that is, alas, well known for burping. Schmear the breasts well with about 1/2 cup or more of Steen’s 100% Pure Cane Syrup. Throw in 4 chopped garlic cloves, a tablespoon of dried juniper berries, and about 10 whole peppercorns. Cover well and stick in the refrigerator for 2-3 days.

When you're ready to enjoy your King-Hell Duck Breast Sammitch - for that is, indeed, what Mr. Debonair is preparing - take the duck breasts out of the fridge and scrape off the goop. Preheat your oven to 400°F.

In an oven-proof skillet, heat 1 tsp olive oil. Add the breasts, skin side down, and let cook on medium heat for 10 minutes.

When the skin is nice and crispy, turn the breasts over and cook for another 10 minutes. Then, stick the entire skillet in the oven for 5 minutes (if you like your meat medium rare) - 10 minutes for medium-well. Remove from the oven and let the meat rest for a few minutes before slicing across the grain.

While all this is going on, lightly toast a couple of English muffins - or use a nice multi-grain bread of your choice. Sometimes Mr. Debonair has to make do with whatever the hell is in the house.

Get out your blender. Into it, lob one whole egg, a teaspoon of Colman’s dry mustard, a couple tablespoons of freshly-squeezed lemon juice, and four peeled garlic cloves. Start your blender, and while it’s running, s l o w l y drizzle in 2 cups of olive oil. The stuff will start to thicken up nicely after you get about 1/2 cup of oil in there. Mr. Debonair only used a total of 1 cup of oil, and it worked out nicely; then again, he wasn’t cooking for a God-damned army, was he? Is the stuff nice and thick yet? You’ve just made aioli: garlic mayonnaise.

Now to assemble your King-Hell Duck Breast Sammitches.

Get your bread, English muffins, whatevah, and spread each piece liberally with the aioli. Now, add a layer of sliced duck breast meat. Slice up a few thin pieces of Brie cheese and bury that duck under the Brie. Add some mixed greens to add a little bulk, and you’re good to go. If you want, jack it up even more by adding a few rashers of lean, grilled bacon. [Mr. Debonair elected to have the bacon-free version.] Cut the Sammitches up if you wish, then serve them forth.


A couple of King-Hell Duck Breast Sammitches.

Excluding the three days you will need to marinate the breasts, you can put these Bad Boys together in about 30 minutes. And you’ll have a heap of aioli left over for other uses. Like Tuna Fish Salade Mort de Vampyr. One bite, and you’re safe from Count Dracula and his undead buddies for a solid week.

AND THE RAINS CAME

After which they went away, leaving this.

MOTIVATION

Most of my Esteemed Readers are probably familiar with those Stoopid Motivational Posters that festoon boardroom walls throughout this great land.

Thanks to this snazzy website, you can now make your own. It’s like the Church Sign Generator, except it generates Useless Motivational Posters.

I discovered this by the grace of Zonker, who in turn got it from Sandy at the Pea Patch. And Sandy has posted a few excellent examples of what can be done.

Of course, my tastes run toward the cynical, so my idea of a Motivational Poster is the kind of stuff they offer at Despair.com.

And, therefore, here’s mine own Demotivational Poster:

BIG DEAL

Now making the rounds of the Bloggy-Sphere, this fine Web-Based Application that allows you to see how big your dick is how many links there are that connect both your name and your site. I guess. Actually, I have no fucking clue what it’s supposed to measure.

For all I know, it measures a person’s tolerance for Shirley Temples. Which would explain this:

FRIDAY ARK #69

The Friday Ark is boarding once again at The Modulator.

Please keep Tiny, one of the Resident Kitties at sisu, in your thoughts and prayers for a speedy and complete recovery.

THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON, REVISITED

[I posted this back in November 2004, but thanks to the Video-Blogging capabilities of YouTube, it’s worth revisiting.]

THE WISDOM OF SOLOMON

is now available in easy-to-take blog form.

No, I’m not talking about King Solomon, the Biblical figure who was renowned for his baby-splittin’ wisdom. I’m talking about Mike Solomon, the cherubic-looking guy in the picture below.


Michael Solomon: minyan guy, fellow blogger.

Mike is one of the regulars at our morning minyan. More often than not, he’s the one who passes around the pushke, the little collection box into which we stuff our daily charitable donations. He’s a frequent attendee at the group’s Thursday night dinners. And did I mention that he’s the recording secretary for our Men’s Club Board of Directors?

Mike has also taken his first steps into Bloggity World. You can visit his site here.

As a kid, Mike was called “Royteh” – the Redhead. Red hair usually bespeaks a fiery temperament, but Michael is a pussycat. Unless you call him “Mikey,” in which case he is liable to kick your ass.

But what you may not know is that you just might have seen his face before - if you’re old enough, that is. Years ago, he made a living appearing in various TV commercials. One of these got quite a bit of attention back in the day, even winning a Clio award in 1980.


Just click on the arrow to play the video.

Yep, that’s him – the guy in the old Federal Express ad who yanks the phone booth right out of the ground. “All you have to do is pick up the phone,” indeed.

TOUCHED

Elder Daughter and Khody got me this snazzy Flying Spaghetti Monster T-Shirt for Chanukah.

Have you been touched by His Noodly Appendage?

THE LITTLEST CAR THIEF

This morning, as She Who Must Be Obeyed and I were performing our respective Morning Ablutions, our attention was caught by a news item on the Boob-Choob in the bedroom.

Seems an erratic driver led police on a merry chase last night. Driving every which way, knocking over signs, running lights, smacking into any and all in his path. Eventually, the car was forced to a stop and the driver apprehended.

Drunk? Insane? Nay.

Seven years old.

I am amazed that the little shit could reach both the steering wheel and the pedals.

The young man is being charged with reckless endangerment, failure to obey traffic signals, evading arrest, leaving the scene of an accident, driving without a license, speeding, and Being a Fucking Seven-Year-Old Driving A Car. It is not known whether he will be tried as a post-pubescent. If convicted, he could be sentenced to time-out in the corner, and possibly having his Tushy Spanked.

HEADS UP, PIE LOVERS

National Pie Day - January 23 - will be upon us before you know it, much as a cream pie upon Shemp Howard. Thank you, O thank you, American Pie Council.

Yep - pies got councils.

I’m already planning the menu.

For breakfast? Quiche Lorraine would be an obvious choice, but quiche is for Fancy-Boys. I’ll have waffles, thank you.

Lunch? Russian Cabbage and Onion Pie. Maybe some spanakopita - Greek spinach pie.

Dinner? Chicken pot pie. Shepherd’s pie. And for dessert, some of the deadliest, most serious chocolate pie on the planet: Chocolate Cream Pie from Greenwood’s on Green Street.

Fattening? Of course! A good pie crust is nought but Flour and Grease. But oh, so flaky good.

Feel free to make suggestions of your own in the Comments. On January 23, what time is it? It’s Pie o’Clock!

THEFT

Jim, he of the Place to Pull Off the Road and Pee, has had some issues recently with Content Theft.

Seems that some Thievin’ Asshole in Singapore (we think) lifted the content of one of his recent posts, word-for-word. Verbatim.

In Bloggy-World, linkage and snipping little bits of other people’s material is common practice. But there are rules, and there is etiquette. The Forms Must Be Obeyed.

When you use someone else’s material, it’s polite to get permission. If the material is covered by a Creative Commons license, it’s usually no issue to borrow from someone else, provided you attribute it properly and you are not using it to make Filthy Lucre. If it’s covered by a standard copyright, advance permission is required, except for purposes covered under the Fair Use doctrine.

Music and video downloads? I ain’t touching that one here. But free content isn’t always free for the taking, in a moral sense. The only real question you should ask yourself is, “Would Momma approve?”

Normal practice, when borrowing the Intellectual Property of others, is to excerpt it and include a link back to the source. That way, the creator of that Intellectual Property is assured of proper credit, and at the same time has the opportunity to share some of the traffic it generates.

And when using someone else’s image files - or similar-type content - it’s appropriate to host them on your own server. Hotlinking - slapping an image up on your site and having the HTML img tag refer to the other person’s server URL - is a No-No. It is, simply put, theft of that person’s bandwidth.

The Gaping Asshole that stole Jim’s post - go to his site for the details - did none of the Right Things. She (we think it’s a she) lifted Jim’s post in its entirety, with nary a word of attribution or a link back to Parkway Rest Stop. And, as bad as that was, she also hotlinked the photograph that accompanied Jim’s post.

A quick survey of the Offending Site revealed that just about every photograph on it appeared to be hotlinked. This person, whoever it is, either doesn’t have a clue, or just doesn’t care.

After Jim asked her to remove the post, he was ignored. Well, not ignored, exactly. She took down her bulletin board and shut off commenting. “If I can’t see you, I can ignore you” seems to be the operating philosophy.

I haven’t included a link to the offending site for a couple of reasons: One, if you want to see the site, Jim has a link in his post. I don’t want to direct any more traffic there. Two, the site is a real clusterfuck, a Dog’s Breakfast of bad writing, stupid photographs, and horrible music videos that play automatically when the page loads. Trust me: it ain’t worth the aggravation.

As far as Blog d’Elisson is concerned, I haven’t had any issues with Content Theft. I’ve had some of the pieces I’ve written for McSweeney’s lifted from time to time, but in all cases either McSweeney’s or I were credited. That’s good. On the other hand, it may mean my stuff is Shite that is inadequate even to attract thieves.

I have had experience with plagiarism, though.

Back in the late Cretaceous era when I was in university, I was involved with the campus Humor Magazine, a venerable publication with a history stretching back to 1882. In - what? - 1971, thereabouts, we published an article entitled “Frank Merriwell Returns,” a satirical look at what would happen if the hero of a turn-of-the-century series of Boy’s Stories came back to school today. Naïve vintage-1900 Rover Boys type meets early 1970’s drug-and-promiscuous-sex culture; hilarity ensues. That sort of thing.

It was a semi-forgettable piece, but I remember it well unto this day.

About a year later, we received in the mail a copy of the Phoenix, Rensselaer Polytechnic’s humor rag. I’m still not sure why they sent it - whoever “they” were. A backhanded thank-you? Currying favor with the Big Boys?

But in that magazine there was something that got our attention. There it was: “Frank Merriwell Returns,” word for word, complete with copies of the exact same illustrations we had used in our article. Copies: it looked as though they had been crudely, yet painstakingly, hand-illustrated, using our pictures as models. No credit; no explanation; no nothing.

What the fuck?!!?

Now, here’s something to chew on. These self-same Content Thieves - who knows unto what depths their depravity went? Did they cheat on exams? Undertip their Painted Women? We can only guess...and we can only wonder which buildings, chemical plants, weapons systems, and aircraft they subsequently went on to design.

Remember: When you steal Intellectual Property, the terrorists win!

JEWISH WISDOM, FROM AN UNLIKELY SOURCE

Denny and I - among many others - receive regular heaps of e-mail from the legendary Catfish. Jokes, cartoons, mostly funny stuff. Occasionally a more serious “touchy-feely” piece.

And Denny, when he’s feeling a little lazy (admit it, bwah) will post one of those Catfishy pieces. With appropriate credit, of course.

Yesterday, Denny posted a joke that was not only familiar, but one that brought back some nice memories.

It’s an old chestnut about an old guy who prays at the Western Wall. I won’t quote it here, nor will I spoil the punchline - go and read it at Denny’s site.

Old? Yeah, it’s been around a while.

Buried in the Archive d’Elisson, there’s an old VHS tape that we recorded 21 years ago, back when we were living in Atlanta the first time around. We were visiting the ’Rents d’Elisson in the herbaceous suburbs of New York at the time, and someone had managed to latch on to a videocassette recorder. Big and cumbersome it was, but it worked just fine.

One night, I had the machine set up to record Eli (his ownself) telling jokes. Eli was, and is, a consummate storyteller, and he can make the most horrible jokes sound funny. One of his specialties is telling jokes in (moderately ungrammatic) Yiddish, which adds greatly to the comic effect - provided you understand it to begin with. There’s one that, translated, goes like this:

A teacher is reviewing the idiomatic expression “It seems to me” with her class. She asks little Mendel to stand up and tell a story that includes a sentence containing the words “it seems to me.”

“This morning, my father got up and went into the bathroom. He shaved, took a shower, and got dressed. Then he had some cereal and coffee for breakfast. Then, he picked up his briefcase and went out the door. It seems to me that my father is going to work.”

“Very good, Mendel. You may sit down. Deborah, please stand up and tell us a story with ‘it seems to me.’”

“Today I went to the food market with my mother. She bought eggs, milk, butter, flour, nuts, and raisins. It seems to me that she is going to bake a cake.”

The teacher thanks little Deborah and calls upon Josh.

“My 17-year-old sister is taking piano lessons. Yesterday, the piano teacher came over, and the two of them went into the music room and closed the door. One minute, two minutes, three minutes go by, and I don't hear the piano. So I go and look in the keyhole.

“And I see the piano teacher with his pants down around his ankles, and my sister has got her dress lifted up over her head. And it seems to me...

“...that they’re gonna piss on the piano.”

Yeah, I know. It’s funnier in broken Yiddish.

But that night, my Dad told the joke about the old man praying at the Western Wall. I have it on tape: Dad sitting on an ottoman with my Mom behind him, holding him about the waist, using her hands to punctuate the story as it’s being told.

It’s fun to take out those old tapes and watch ’em from time to time, but it’s bittersweet as well. Mom’s been gone for almost eighteen years now. Yet watching those tapes, hearing her voice (with a Lawn Guyland accent you could cut with a knife) - it all brings back some warm memories.

So: thanks to Denny and Catfish for the trip down Recollection Road. Cat, you’re a Good Man in more ways than one. Heh.

HAKUNA MATATA

[Sung to the tune of “Hakuna Matata”]

Hakuna Matata! What a wonderful phrase
Hakuna Matata! Ain’t no passing craze
It means no worries for the rest of your days
It’s our problem-free philosophy

Hakuna Matata!
Hakuna Matata?

Yeah. It’s our motto!

[What’s a motto?]

[Nothing. What’s a-motto with you?]

Those two words will solve all your problems

That’s right. Take Matata here
Why, when she was a young kitty cat...

When I was a young kitty cat

[Very nice]

[Thanks]

She found her aroma lacked a certain appeal
She could clear Atlanta to Savannah after every meal

I’m a sensitive soul though I seem thick-skinned
And it hurt that Hakuna never stood downwind

And oh, the shame [She was ashamed]
Thought of changin’ my name [What’s in a name?]
And I got downhearted [How did ya feel?]
Everytime that I...

[Hey! Matata! Not in front of our Esteemed Readers!]

[Oh. Sorry...]

Hakuna Matata! What a wonderful phrase
Hakuna Matata! Ain’t no passing craze

It means plenty of kibble for the rest of your days

It’s our problem-free philosophy
Hakuna Matata!
Hakuna Matata! [Hakuna Matata!]
Hakuna Matata! [Hakuna Matata!]
Hakuna Matata! [Hakuna Matata!]
Hakuna Matata! [Hakuna -]

It means no worries for the rest of your days

It’s our problem-free philosophy
Hakuna Matata!
(Repeats)

I say “Hakuna”

I say “Matata”

[Matata, won’t you quit bitin’ on my ass?]

SOMETHING FISHY

Something is fishy in Atlanta…and it just may be the Georgia Aquarium.

The assembled Clan d’Elisson and its various hangers-on spent several of the closing hours of 2005 at this, the newest Tourist Attraction in the city of Atlanta.

I’ve seen a lot of Big-Ass Fish Tanks in the fifty-three odd years that I’ve walked this planet. Visits to Florida in my Snot-Nose Days were never complete without a trip down the Rickenbacker Causeway to Key Biscayne, there to while away a day at the Miami Seaquarium. I’ve pissed away Tourist Bucks at Seaworld, had fancy dinners at the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. But this…this was something else.

The Georgia Aquarium is touted as being the largest aquarium in the world, with over 100,000 fish and other assorted Marine Fauna representing over 500 different species. It is an Olympic Size Swimming Pool next to which the others are mere blow-up wading pools.

Owing to the need for Morris William and his brood to get on the road for their return trip to Texas, we were only able to stay a few hours, which meant seeing only a few of the multifarious Fishy Attractions. But what we were able to see was Mighty Damned Impressive.

Beluga whales, for one – a tank with several of ’em. As whales go, they’re not Leviathans, but they’re still fairly large animals. Disturbingly human, they looked – almost as though they were men encased in white, waxy, living sarcophagi. Playful, too: one of their favorite games was to exhale a puff of air to make a perfect ring-shaped bubble, which they would then swim up underneath and snap right up.


Beluga whale: disturbingly human.

It’s easy to imagine them being intelligent, although without opposable thumbs, a tool-building, mechanized warfare-making, income-tax-driven lifestyle is most likely beyond their capabilities. [Which may mean they’re really intelligent.] Do they enjoy their life in the big tank? Do they have a sense of humor? Do they have enough brain-wattage to think we’re assholes?

Fascinating as these beasts were, I was hoping to see something really impressive. With fishtanks, as with dicks, size matters. Length. Girth. Depth. And the Ocean Voyager exhibit had it all, including a tunnel right through the heart of the tank.

Good Gawd. Whale sharks. Huge-ass fish. These were juveniles – impressively large, yet well short of the 40-foot length they will ultimately attain. As they swam though the tank, they were surrounded by clouds of smaller fish, no doubt under contract to provide essential services:

“Yeah, buddy, could you scratch my back, there? Yeah, right there...about a foot to the left of my dorsal fin. A little higher...yeah, right there...aaaaahhhhhh.”



Looking up from the tunnel at the bottom of the tank, you could see a mosaic of manta rays – hundreds of ’em – silhouetted against the firmament, moving along the upper reaches of the water, resembling nothing so much as one of those M. C. Escher lithographs in which repetitive patterns change shape and blend into one another - an eerie underwater tapestry.


A mosaic of manta rays.


Hammerhead shark.

Our little nephew William was goggle-eyed - and so was the rest of our little mob. Seeing Remarkable Things somehow awakens the awestruck kid in each of us, and that Inner Child of mine was bouncing against the walls as if he had had a caffeine enema. We left reluctantly, resolving to come back before too long. Since the Missus and I have purchased annual passes, that shouldn’t be too hard to do.

If you needed an excuse to visit Atlanta, now you have one. Besides the opportunity to be in close proximity to alla them fine Jawja Blodgers, that is.

BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES #132

The latest pile of Bloggy Nether-Nuggets is roasting merrily away at The Business of America is Business, home port of Professor Starling Hunter. Great job, ’Fess.

FINALLY

A foolproof recipe for Roast Turkey.

The problem with roasting a turkey - for neophyte cooks, anyway - is that it’s hard to know just how long to cook the bird. Too little oven time, and you have an undercooked bird, with a chance for salmonella poisoning to boot. Too much, and the damn thing dries out. And those “pop-up” thingies are not always reliable.

Here is a turkey recipe that includes the use of popcorn (!) as a stuffing. It is unusual, surprisingly tasty, and perfect for people who need a little extra help figuring out the roasting time.

10-12 lb. turkey (fresh, or thawed if purchased frozen)
1 cup melted butter
1 bag stuffing (Pepperidge Farm is good.)
1 cup uncooked popcorn (Orville Redenbacher’s Low Fat)
Salt, pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350°F. Brush turkey well with melted butter; sprinkle all over with salt and pepper. Fill cavity with stuffing and popcorn.

Place in baking pan with the neck end toward the back of the oven. Listen for the popping sounds. When the turkey’s ass blows the oven door open and the bird flies across the room, it’s done.

Foolproof, I tell ya!

[Tip o’ th’ Elisson fedora to Mayer (Hizzoner) Smith.]

A MYSTERIOUS AND EXOTIC ELIXIR

Actually, the only thing mysterious about an Egg Cream is its name: it contains neither egg nor cream. And as far as being exotic is concerned, it is only exotic to those who have never walked the streets of Brooklyn.

Hmmm. I guess that would make it exotic. To most residents of these parts, anyway.

She Who Must Be Obeyed and I were visiting our friend Gravel-Voiced Larry and his wife Ina in the hospital yesterday. Larry, a retired Miami cop, is still dealing with the aftereffects of a heart attack that struck him about the same time Hurricane Katrina laid waste to N’Awlins. And, as with N’Awlins, the recovery has been slow, difficult, and painful.

As we all sat together and talked about this ’n’ that, the topic of Egg Creams came up.

The Egg Cream is the quintessential Soda Fountain Drink from Olde New York. Simply put, it’s a chocolate soda. But, as with so many things in life, the devil is in the details.

Egg Creams hearken back to the days when seltzer water was sold in heavy glass siphon bottles. Two-Cents Plain, it was called in the soda fountains, because that’s how much you paid for a glass. If you wanted flavoring, you paid extra. Prepackaged soft drinks were not an option, as you might gather.

Today, the Two-Cents Plain is a distant memory. If you want a bottle of Carbonated Water, you may end up with some fancy-pants imported Fizzy Stuff: Perrier, San Pellegrino, et alia. And it ain’t cheap. Two-Bucks Plain, is more like it.

But I digress.

To make a Classic New York Egg Cream, squirt about an inch of Fox’s U-Bet chocolate syrup into an 8-ounce straight-sided glass tumbler. You may substitute other brands of chocolate syrup only at the peril of your immortal soul.

Next, pour in an inch of cold milk.

Now, dump in ice-cold seltzer water to fill. The Classic Technique involves using an old-fashioned soda siphon (think Clarabelle the Clown and that damned seltzer bottle), squirting the seltzer into the glass onto an inverted spoon. This directs the seltzer to the edges of the glass and ensures the optimum Foam-to-Liquid Ratio. If you do it right, the drink will have a big, frothy head.

Stir and serve immediately.

There is no beverage that better summons those old, warm memories of growing up in New York...even for me, just a suburban kid. It was almost like a Secret Handshake. You couldn’t bottle it; you couldn’t fake it. Simple perfection, it was. And still is.

I’m sure this post will elicit plenty of comments from those of my Esteemed Readers who have their own Egg Cream Memories. If your technique is a little different, share it with us!

Update: With a tip o’ th’ Elisson fedora to Velociman his ownself, who mentioned Lou Reed’s salute to the Egg Cream - the lead-off song on Set The Twilight Reeling - in the comments, I now present for your delectation the following:

Egg Cream

When I was a young man, no bigger than this
a chocolate egg cream was not to be missed
Some U Bet’s Chocolate Syrup, seltzer water mixed with milk
you stir it up into a heady fro, tasted just like silk
You scream, I steam, we all want egg cream
You scream, I steam, we all want egg cream
Now you can go to Junior’s, Dave’s on Canal Street
and I think there’s Ken’s in Boston
there must be something in L.A.
But Becky’s on Kings Highway, was the egg cream of choice
and if you don’t believe me, go ask any of the boys
You scream, I steam, we all want egg cream
You scream, I steam, we all want egg cream
The only good thing I have to say about P.S. 92
was the egg cream served at Becky’s, it was a fearsome brew
For 50 cents you got a shot, choco bubbles up your nose
that made it easier to deal with knife fights
and kids pissing in the street
You scream, I steam, we all want egg cream
You scream, I steam, we all want egg cream
So the next time you’re in Brooklyn, please say hello for me
at Totonno’s for Pizza and ice cream at Al and Shirley’s
But mostly you go to Becky’s, sit in a booth and say hello
and have two chocolate egg cream, one to stay and one to go
You scream, I steam, we all want egg cream, ah
You scream, I steam, we all want egg cream
You scream, I steam, we all want egg cream

[Lyrics copyright (c) 1996 Lou Reed]

A PLEASANT SURPRISE...

...is a Tit full of Whisky.

The quote is from B. S. Pulley, nightclub comedian and actor - you may remember him for his role as Big Jule in the 1956 production of Guys and Dolls - and a favorite of my friend Irwin, AKA “Moishepipik.”

CARNIVAL OF THE RECIPES #73

Techno Gypsy hosts the seventy-third Carnival of the Recipes - this week, with a Russian Christmas theme, seeing as how Eastern Orthodox churches observe Christmas according to the Julian calendar.

“Gregorian calendar? Who was this Gregory, anyway? We don’t need no steenkeen’ Gregories...”

How my Waffle Recipe fits into a Russian Christmas is anybody’s guess, although all y’all Eastern Orthodox types still eat breakfast on Christmas, am I right?

Anyway: plenty of good eatin’ there. Go visit the Gypsy and tell him Elisson sent ya.

CARNIVAL OF THE CATS #94

Pages Turned hosts this week’s Carnival of the Cats, with the generous assistance of Claudius, Nicholson, and Ellie. It’s a sizable Carnival, meant to be savored.

Much as Hakuna and Matata savor their daily ration of Food-Pellets. Harh.

IN THE COUNTRY OF THE DEAF...

the one-eared man is king.

WHAT - FIFTEEN ALREADY?

Dad and Toni. Photo taken last May on his 80th birthday.

Yesterday, my Dad - Eli, his ownself - and Toni celebrated their fifteenth wedding anniversary. Fifteen years, being a Year That Is Divisible By Five, qualifies as a Major Anniversary.

Their marriage is now old enough to get a Learner’s Permit in the State of Georgia.

Dad and Toni are celebrating their Big Day by piling in the car and driving to their new winter home in Florida. It will be two full days in a sedan packed with luggage - six months’ worth - and Sam, their Reclusive Cat. Then, it will be several days of Arranging Crap: telephone installation, appliance delivery, all of the Fun Stuff attendant on establishing a new household. They’re a little nervous and a lot excited.

Meanwhile, I wasn’t sure what the Traditional Fifteenth Anniversary Gift was. I mean, I know the third anniversary is leather, and the seventh is Molded Rubber Devices (Batteries Not Included), but I was drawing a blank on fifteen. Papier mâché? Prunes?

But thanks to the kind offices of Google, I was able to establish that the traditional gift on the fifteenth wedding anniversary is Crystal. Modern-thinking sorts may also consider Watches...although, when you think about it, a watch does have a crystal, doesn’t it?

[Not that they will see any crystal from me...except maybe for the vase their flowers come in. For we have arranged for flowers to arrive at their new pied-à-terre in MiddleofFuckingNowhere, Florida the day after they do. Flowers always look good...for a few days, anyway.]

Happy Anniversary, to the guy who provided me with a loving home, a fine education (in so many things!) and 50% of my DNA - and to the lady that is the apple of his eye and the light of his life. Health, happiness and love for many, many more.

HOMECOMING

Being on the road can be a Royal Pain in the Ass.

When I was working a sales territory for the Great Corporate Salt Mine - either as an Account Representative or as a Regional Sales Manager - I was gone for at least a few days almost every week of the year. And in my various international sales and marketing assignments, I’d be throwing in the occasional 2-3 week overseas jaunt.

Going away for a lousy one-nighter, therefore, is Not A Big Deal.

Except, of course, when it follows a week of vacation with a house full of friends and relatives to keep you happily occupied.

My Thursday-Friday jaunt this week was pretty routine. Fly out to Sweat City Thursday. Rent car. Drive to office. Work until late o’clock. Check into hotel. Sleep. Drive to office. Leave early enough to catch flight. Act amazed when flight actually leaves on time.

I love that 32-mile drive to the airport. It’s a two-tollbooth stretch on the Sam Houston Tollway. And no matter how many times I drive that road, it never ceases to amaze me what Tollroad Fucktards they grow in Texas.

Get in that Exact Change lane, and you can make book on there being at least one Gaping Asshole who will either have nothing but a Double Sawbuck, or who will rummage throughout the entire cabin of his or her vehicle, looking for the exact change that they almost certainly don’t have.

Morons.

Behavior like that would get you shot and skullfucked on a New York toll road.

They even have gone so far as to relabel the “Exact Change” lane to say “Coins Only.” Just in case you are one of those idiots who think Exact Change on a tollroad includes paper money.

But this is just carping, for I got to the airport in plenty of time, and the flight was neither overcrowded nor late. We arrived in Atlanta a few minutes ahead of schedule, and, thanks to some well-timed traffic signals, I was able to get to Chez Elisson within an hour of stepping off the aircraft.

She Who Must Be Obeyed greeted me upon my arrival with a glass of wine in her hand and a “come hither” look in her eye. There would be no Friday Evening Blog-Posting, no, no.

Time to make some waffles...

FRIDAY RANDOM TEN - SLIGHTLY LATE

Of course, where would I be on the first Friday of 2006 but at the headquarters of the Great Corporate Salt Mine in sunny Houston? Occupied with actual work as I was, I had no time to post my usual Friday Random Ten...so here’s my Belated List of Choons from the Little White Choon-Box:

1. I Should Have Known Better - The Beatles
   
2. Saved By The Buoyancy - Mitch Hedberg
   
3. You To Thank - Ben Folds
   
4. Where The Wild Roses Grow - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
   
5. Across The Universe - The Beatles
   
6. Reality Blows - Laurence Simon
   
7. Get On Top - Red Hot Chili Peppers
   
8. Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi - Christian Thielemann, Orff: Carmina Burana
   
9. Where’s The Money? - Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks
   
10. How Could I Be Such A Fool? - Frank Zappa
    

It’s Friday Saturday. What are you listening to?

WAFFLING

It might have been during the recent Family Invasion Week that She Who Must Be Obeyed suddenly decided that we needed a new Household Appliance.

At one point during the week, she had cooked up a big Mess o’ Pancakes. Pancakes are a very occasional treat at Chez Elisson, and there is no better time to have them than when there is a house full of people. Hot off the griddle, slathered with just-melting pats of fresh creamery butter and drizzled with pure maple syrup...ahhhh, that is heaven, bruthuh.

And it was likely with the warm smell of those flapjacks drifting through the house that the idea crystallized in her mind. That smell sparked a mysterious mental connection, perhaps a reminiscence of the free continental breakfasts at the Cheap-Ass Lodging House at which we stayed on our last trip to Savannah.

“Honey, don’t you think we need a waffle iron?”

“Why…yes! I believe we do!” So easy was it to gain my assent to this Essential Acquisition.

Understand this: I grew up in a Waffle-Free Household.

Back in my snot-nose days, we had no waffle iron in the house. In the New York suburbs of the 1950’s and ’60’s, Waffle Houses were thin on the ground; nay, nonexistent. Sometime in the 1960’s, we had the International House of Pancakes – but who orders waffles in a Pancake House, anyway? It’s perverse. To us, the very concept of waffles was just this side of being alien. Pancakes, si, waffles, no, in Chez Eli.

In 1964, the World’s Fair came to New York, and among the Exotic International Foods that came along with it were Belgian Waffles. Big, inch thick waffles, sprinkled with powdered sugar and topped with a huge dollop of whipped cream, amidst which was nestled a strawberry. But I did not have One Fucking Belgian Waffle in the two years that the Fair sat in Flushing Meadow.

[As an aside, do you know what they call Belgian Waffles in Belgium?

Waffles.

No, really. Actually, they spell it wafels, and they are everywhere, in a seemingly infinite variety. Honkin’ thick ones; thin, crisp ones; syrup-encrusted stroopwafels. Belgium is Waffle Heaven, friends. Getting a wafel in Belgium is easier than buying a Coca-Cola here.]

Of course, as a result, I lusted after waffles. It was more than just the elusiveness, the unobtainability, the foreignness. Fact is, they tasted damn good. Like pancakes...but with syrup traps!

So we went to the local Household Articles Shoppe. It boiled down to a choice between three irons: a rather flimsy-looking Cuisinart that made thin, round Waffle-House style cakes; an Emeril Lagasse model with interchangeable plates – you could make waffles, pizzelles, and panini-style sandwiches, but each plate bore an insufferable “BAM!” imprint; and a solid-looking Krups machine that had the deep plates needed to make Belgian waffles. The only Krups left was the floor model; we snatched it up.

And, finally, this morning She Who Must Be Obeyed and I put the iron though its paces.

Here’s a useful All-Purpose Waffle Recipe:

2½ cups all-purpose flour
½ tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
4 tbsp granulated sugar
3 eggs, separated
2 cups milk
½ cup vegetable oil

Sift together the flour, salt, baking powder, and sugar. That’s what the standard instructions tell you, anyway. Screw that. I just aerate the flour with a dry wire whisk before I measure it, and I use the same whisk to mix the dry ingredients.

Combine the egg yolks and the milk: mix well and add to the dry ingredients. Add the vegetable oil. [Today I used only ¼ cup of oil and it worked just fine.] Mix well.

Beat the egg whites in a separate bowl (add just a pinch of salt) until they form soft peaks. Fold the egg whites into the rest of the batter.

Heat up your waffle iron and you’re good to go. I found that with our model, four minutes gave us waffles that were crispy and brown on the outside, yet just perfect in the center – not overdone. You will, of course, need to adjust the timing to your own machine’s needs and to your taste.

To these fine waffles, all that was necessary to add was a little dab of fresh butter and some 100% pure maple syrup. But waffles are extremely versatile, and you can top ’em with almost any damn thing you like. Fresh fruit? Honey? Confectioner’s sugar? Go wild! It’s your waffle!

POSTSCRIPT:

So this morning She Who Must Be Obeyed and I were sitting in shul, and our friends Gary and JoAnn came in and joined us, sitting next to us in our pew. We exchanged greetings, and then JoAnn asked, “So, what have you-all been doing this morning?”

“We made waffles.”

JoAnn leered at me. “So that’s what they’re calling it these days.”

It was obvious right away that in her house, “making waffles” has an entirely different, far more lascivious meaning. Gary’s lewd wink confirmed my speculation.

“Yeah, we ‘made waffles,’ too.”

“Well, then, I guess we ‘made waffles’ and then we made waffles…”

Gotta love them waffles!

FRIDAY ARK #68

Come visit and ride the Friday Ark.
It’s the Modulator’s weekly Zoological Park.
The perfect place, if you wanna
Get your dose of Virtual Fauna.
A spot in the Bloggy-Sphere with no politics –
Just kitties, doggies, snakes, birds, and jolly ticks.

MONTHLY STATEMENTS

Being a compilation of the first lines from the first post of each month of the past year. [Moom stolen shamelessly from here.]

January: What a way to begin a New Year.

February: 99.9% of the acting, singing, and dancing talent in Family d’Elisson resides in the collective bodies of Elder Daughter and the Mistress of Sarcasm.

March: In October 2001, She Who Must Be Obeyed and I, along with the Mistress of Sarcasm, took a mini-vacation up in the Boone - Blowing Rock section of North Carolina.

April: Jeezum Crow, there are so many Carnivals these days, I feel like the barker at the side-show.

May: I inadvertently stumbled upon the Magic Summoning Ritual that causes Matata to appear instantly...and it doesn’t even require a can opener.

June: Yep, the Bonfire is now in its hundredth crap-spewing incarnation.

July: The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. - Mark Twain

August: Pete Vonder Haar (A Perfectly Cromulent Blog) has shit on my dinner table tagged me with a meme, and since those who live by the meme die by the meme, I am honor bound to play along.

September: There are plenty of people who see God’s hand in the devastation that has struck the U.S. Gulf Coast.

October: Kimberly, who understands that life without Music and Cats would be Boring and Pointless, hosts the eightieth edition of the Carnival of the Cats.

November: The Smegmaster at smegmaster.com (sounds nasty if you parse it just so) hosts the 122nd Bonfire of the Vanities, complete with snazzy non-flaming Official-Looking Seal.

December: At breakfast today, my Morning Minyan compadre Barry R. told me a story of a colleague of his that is, in his words, “dumber than soap.”

It occurs to me that there are way too many Blog-Carnival and cat posts represented here, given the Random Sampling. It also occurs to me that you could have some fun with this meme moom. F’r instance, you could post the last sentence from the last post of each month. Or you could, you know, just ignore this stupid crap.

CARNIVAL OF SATIRE #15

I never tire
Of Satire.
It’s a downright miracle -
My love of Things Satirical.

Mark A. Rayner has posted the fifteenth Carnival of Satire at the skwib.

BREWSTER COCKIE

Copyright (c) 2006 Tribune Media Services, Inc. All rights reserved.

Brewster Rockit, Space Guy, that is.

Ya gotta love a comic strip that slips a Fecal Humor gag past the syndicate.

CARNIVAL OF THE VANITIES #172

Harshly Mellow (gotta love that name!) hosts the latest edition of Carnival of the Vanities.

Was it my imagination, or did last week’s Carnival never get posted? Just curious...

...and Zeuswood, the Harshly Mellow One, has filled me in. Carnival #171 was posted at Chicken Soup 4 the Damned on December 28. Hmmm...musta missed it in the midst of the Frenetic Holiday Rush.

DUCKS REDUX

It’s not exactly a Wildlife Preserve we live in here, in this, our Little Patch o’ Suburbia, but every so often we see a scene right out of Nature, Red in Tooth and Claw.

Here we present Mr. and Mrs. Future Turducken Mallard, out for an afternoon stroll.



A handsome couple, to be sure, but why is it that I am seized with a sudden desire for Sauce Bigarade?

ALL QUIET ON THE ELISSON FRONT

Alas, it is quiet at Chez Elisson, with the Mistress of Sarcasm having returned, along with Significant Other Mickey, to Savannah this morning. Elder Daughter and Khody took off yesterday afternoon, flying out to Boston and Washington, D.C., respectively.


Elder Daughter, Morris William, and the Mistress of Sarcasm.

The rest of the clan - Morris William, Rebecca, and little Nephew William - headed out Saturday afternoon, so we had a Gradual Familial Houseguest Decompression. [When everybody leaves at once, the Sudden Decompression can cause the Emotional Bends.]

It’s hell, it is, having our daughters go back to their respective homes after over a week in their company here. We’ve always been close with them, and it’s easy to forget that they don’t still live here with us. It is the natural order of things to have one’s offspring move out and move on, but that knowledge is but cold intellectual comfort. Saying goodbye is tough, even if you know it’s only for a while.

The good thing - if a Silver Lining must be found - is that the Excessive Holiday Face-Stuffing Season is now officially over. Because it’s so much fun to Consume Mass Quantities when family is around.

What makes it worse is, both the Missus and I like to cook. And since we play well together, we take turns.

Just to illustrate, Monday evening, She Who Must Be Obeyed put together a little Mexican-style dinner. Tortilla chips and her made-from-scratch Best Frickin’ Guacamole On The Planet. Chicken enchilada casserole. Pinto beans. Frijoles negros refritos. Spanish rice. And, for dessert, her Infamous Cherry Cake, the recipe for which is a closely-guarded family secret.

And last night - exactly a year since I posted about cooking up a big ol’ pot of gumbo - we all were attacked by that selfsame Early January Gumbo Jones. And thus it was that I found myself stirring up a cauldron of that most excellent brew.

Tonight?

Tonight it will be just the two of us. Leftovers will be on the menu, with that gumbo topping the bill.

And, alas, it will be quiet at Chez Elisson.

BEAR WITH ME

Now that Grizzly Man, the Werner Herzog documentary about the late self-styled naturalist Timothy Treadwell, is available on DVD, the Assembled Multitudes at Chez Elisson all got a chance to see it.

It’s a strange movie, filled with gorgeous scenic vistas and remarkable photographs of wild animals in their natural habitat. It’s also a meditation on the monomaniacal folly of one man, alternately sobering and hilarious. Sobering, because Treadwell paid the ultimate price for his folly. Hilarious, because, well, the man was a fucking nutjob. Unintentional comedy, to be sure, but Jee-Zus, was this guy amazing.

Werner Herzog deserves a huge amount of credit for fleshing out this portrait of what was clearly a very strange, very unusual, very driven man. Using Treadwell’s own video footage, Herzog constructs a three-dimensional picture of Treadwell, with all his passion as well as his absurdity. It must have been a challenge, avoiding the all-too-easy potshots. The trick to this movie was making sure Treadwell did not end up appearing too ridiculous.

Let’s face it. You have here a man who would warble ecstatically while resting his hand on a steaming pile of bear shit: “This was just in her! This came out of her butt!” OK, sure, but, Tim, it’s shit. And bear shit ain’t any better than human shit unless Size and Partially-Digested Berry Content are virtues.

It’s easy to dismiss Tim as an Enviro-Lefty Nutjob, but I’m here to tell you that more serious environmentalists, lefties or no, would consider him as a borderline psycho. You can see the paranoia growing; you can see the increasing tendency to be hostile to (most) other humans. Tim, perhaps, did not want to be human. Or he was unhappy with the human he had been, and found comfort in his new-found identity as a Lover of Bears.

The bears, alas, did not love him back. They were not friendly men in bear suits, at the end of the day - they were dangerous wild beasts. Treadwell himself often commented on how dangerous they were, but it is questionable whether he really took his own words to heart. In the end, he - and his girlfriend - suffered the fate one could say he deserved...possibly the fate that he really desired.

Back in August, when the movie first came out in theatres, I wrote a few snarky haiku about Mr. Treadwell. My cruel little poems still ring true, albeit in a minor key:

Oh, Mr. Choc’lit -
Hold me in your warm embrace.
Nibble on my face.

Bears are so cuddly.
Look at that one, cuddling Tim
In his intestines.

Bears shit in the woods.
It’s their nature - what they do.
Tim Treadwell: Bear Shit!

Ahh, rest in peace, Timothy Treadwell.

You have followed in the footsteps of other humans who, in the fullness of time, have had close encounters with Grizzly Bears. For the delectation of my Esteemed Readers, I provide some possibly familiar examples below, courtesy of Warner Brothers and the great director Robert Clampett:






Copyright (c) 1941, Warner Brothers.

HOT KITTY SKRITCHING ACTION

Matata, the Grey Slut-Kitty, loves getting her belly rubbed, especially when she parks herself on my shoes. Click on the frame below to see Miss M enjoy over half a minute of Skritchy Fun.



[Caution: If you are Rob Smith, this video may cause you to bust a blood vessel. You have been warned!]

EIGHTH NIGHT

Today is the first day of the year according to the Gregorian civil calendar.

If you’re into Meaningless Religious Trivia, that would make it the day of Jesus’s B’rit Milah - his ritual circumcision. So it’s appropriate for Christians to celebrate the day with wine and cookies, maybe a nice catered bagel and smoked fish lunch. Or even a cold cut tray from the local deli.

For us Jews, until sundown, it was the first day of the month Tevet. It’s pure calendrical coincindence that the days of Tevet 5766 will coincide with the days of January 2006.

And this evening at sundown, the last day of Chanukah began.

Haneirot halalu anachnu madlikin, al hanisim v’al hanifla-ot v’al hat’shu-ot v’al hamilchamot, she-asita la-avoteinu bayamim haheim baz’man ha-zeh v’al y’dei kohanekha ha-k’doshim. V’khal sh’monat y’mei chanukah haneirot halalu kodesh heim, v’ein lanu r’shut l’hishtameish bahem ela lir’otam bil’vad, k’dei l’hodot ul’haleil l’shimkha hagadol, al nisekha v’al nif’l’otekha v’al y’shuatekha.

These lights we kindle to recall the wondrous triumphs and the miraculous victories wrought through Your holy priests for our ancestors in days of old at this season. And for all eight days of Chanukah these lights are sacred; we are not permitted to make ordinary use of them, but we are to look at them and thus be reminded to thank and praise Your holy Name for Your miracles, Your wonders, and Your deliverance.

[A technical note: The lights pictured above are NerLights olive oil lamps. They are little glass ampoules, each containing a wick and enough olive oil to burn several hours, sold in convenient sets of 44 - enough for all eight nights. To use ’em, you just crack off the tops of the ampoules and set ’em down in your chanukiyah, and you are ready to roll. No drippy wax...and they burn smoke-free, glowing with a beautiful warm light. Olive oil - just like Back In The Day, am I right?]

CARNIVAL OF THE CATS #93

The lovely and talented Rahel, host of Elms In The Yard, has started the New Year right with her excellent assemblage of Kitty Love: the ninety-third Carnival of the Cats.

Hakuna, Matata, and Neighbor all wish Carnivalgoers a Happy (Gregorian) New Year, filled with Love and Skritches.

CARNIVAL OF THE RECIPES #72

The seventy-second Carnival of the Recipes is up at Caterwauling. Plenty of tasty treats, with a holiday theme to ties things (loosely) together. Enjoy!

For, as it is said: Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow, we diet.

ELVIS, SCHMELVIS

Elvis, Schmelvis, indeed. There’s only one King...and that’s King Kong.

All others are mere pretenders to the throne.

Last week, I spent a pleasant afternoon with Don (Mr. Laura Belle) and Khody, taking in Peter Jackson’s epic reimagining of King Kong. I had deliberately gone in with modest expectations. I have a jaundiced eye when it comes to remakes in general; when a Beloved Classic is involved, disappointment is even more a statistical likelihood.

To me, the 1933 original version of King Kong is not only a Filmic Classic, it may be my favorite movie of all time. As many times as I have seen it over the years, it still never fails to move me, with its heartbreaking story of a King-Hell Brute snatched away from the land he ruled, only to meet an ignominious death. It has all the elements of great tragedy, including a protagonist who is all too human despite having the outward form of a giant gorilla.

Kong works so effectively because gorillas are so close to us on the Great Tree o’ Evolution. Dark cousins, as it were. Giant man-eating, city-destroying lizards (Godzilla notwithstanding) just don’t pack the emotional wallop that a Big-Ass Gorilla does, because we can all see ourselves in that gorilla’s eyes.

Jackson’s remake, unlike the Dino de Laurentiis botch in 1976 that starred Jessica Lange, Jeff Bridges, and Charles Grodin, was not only a technically brilliant retelling of the story, but a respectful homage to the original Kong. The inclusion of some of the old Kong set design and the brilliant Max Steiner score as components of the New York stage show was a great way to incorporate these elements without being heavy-handed. The scenes aboard the steamship Venture did a much more effective job than the original of conveying the filth, the rough seas, and the claustrophobia of a long ocean voyage.

And King Kong his ownself, as envisioned and made real by Jackson’s effects team, was wonderful. I say this as one for whom the old King Kong was the iconic Movie Character, primitive as he was.

The only thing that didn’t work for me was Naomi Watts’s interpretation of the Ann Darrow role. Sure, Fay Wray screamed a whole lot, but Naomi gets a little too emotionally involved with the Big Guy. It strains credulity, is what it does.

But this is a quibble.

The 2005 King Kong will never replace the 1933 original. But it stands on its own as a great movie, and it’s a damn sight better than most of the crappy Big-Effects Moveez out there today.

Only one question remains, however. This new Kong is a perfectly imagined Magnified Gorilla in so many ways. Why, then, does he not throw his Volkswagen-sized turds at his adversaries? Mr. Jackson, explain yourself!

HAVEL HAVELIM #51

So much going on all at once!

It’s the seventh day of Chanukah.

It’s the first day of the Hebrew month of Tevet. [Rosh o’ th’ Chodesh to ya!]

And it’s time for the 51st edition of Havel Havelim, AKA Vanity of Vanities. Go pay a visit over at Shiloh Musings for your weekly ration of Jewish-themed posts.