What is Peculiar About Your State?

People in Michigan always use their hands to show you where something is located in the state.  What is something peculiar to your state?

Enduring Appeals

An interesting article in the Sunday NYT magazine, recounted the story of the author's lifetime obsession with John McClane (Die Hard).

But I have my own secret vices. There are a few sitcoms which I will watch repeatedly. And I am talking about watching certain episodes a dozen times. Not sure why except that sitcoms are like a tranquilizer for me. If I need to relax....

I never watch an episode of a drama a second time, just sitcoms.

The list would include FRASIER, CHEERS, SEINFELD, THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW and THE BIG BANG THEORY. You like what you like.I don't watch any of these consistently but when I need comfort TV, I come back to them. Doesn't matter that I've seen the episode before.

What is your enduring obsession? What interests you as much as it did the first time you stumbled on it.What can you read, watch, search for, do over and over?


My review of HOLY MOTORS, a most unusual movie, is up on CRIMESPREE MAGAZINE. 

Respectability

I am reading Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell)'s THE CHILD'S CHILD.. Much of the book looks at the question of respectability across two generations.

I remember my mother and grandmother being very concerned with this in the fifties and sixties. I think my mother was indeed plagued by the responsibility of having a respectable family--one that wasn't gossipped about. I am afraid I gave her some cause for concern in my fourteenth and fifteenth year. (Nothing that today would have even been glanced at though)

When did "respectability" begin to fade as a concern for lower middle-class families? I had a friend who got pregnant circa 1963 and disappeared for six months. I hope she was at some point reunited with her child.
You can also look at those convents in Ireland (The Magdalene Sisters) who took in girls that in any way worried their families.

Other than in extremely religious communities, respectability has faded. (Look at Bristol Palin for example). Where did these convention go and why?

LOST!!

Our GPS is quirky, annoying but has sometimes saved our behinds. Today we were coming out of a movie theater in a part of San Diego we had never been. ( I will see movies no matter what).
I had worried about getting home before dark throughout the entire movie because since I don't drive and Phil has absolutely no sense of direction going new places is a challenge.

I somewhat confidently punched in HOME on the system and we set out. It was 4:30 PM. Just as we passed what I thought was the freeway we needed to take I noticed the GPS had an estimated time of arrival of 8:45 AM. God knows where the sucker was taking us but that was sixteen hours in the future. Portland? Seattle? Who knows? Did the gadget want a road trip we had never planned? Had someone made it in Vancouver?

We did get home but the anxiety level in that car was high.

Do you fear getting lost? What was the most lost you ever got? I can tell stories to make your hair curl. Like going around a roundabout in England twelve times.

Your Favorite Sandwich?

Kieran was talking about a great meatloaf sandwich, which reminds me of a new one I have come up with that I have had almost every day. I alternate it with cheerios for lunch for weight control.

It is a slice or three of avocado, some freshly cut parm-reg cheese, a slice of an heirloom tomato (or the best one available) on thinly sliced multi-grain bread. The avocado stands in for mayo or mustard. All you need it a few cranks of the pepper mill and you will be in heaven. 

This graphic omits the cheese. Don't. If you want to be bad, add some bacon.

What's your favorite sandwich?

Things That You Really Can't Explain

And one for me is why I love THE BIG LEBOWSKI. Sure it's got Jeff Bridges in it but beyond that it is really a movie that speaks to you or does not.

Phil had an odd love for chalkware. These pieces were given out as carnival game prizes before stuffed animals took over. Amateurs painted them. The more dilapidated, the better. We have dozens of them.  All in Phil's study, of course.

What idiosyncratic taste can you not explain?

What Entertainment Are You Willing to Pay Money For?

I thought of this topic as I told Jerry House today what comedians I liked. I realized then though that I would never pay to see any of them perform live. Not Louis CK nor Lewis Stone, nor any of them. The live act would be too blue for me and too much money for the pleasure I derived.

Nor would I pay to see most musical groups. Or even individual singers. I can hear them just fine on a CD or elsewhere. I don't need to see them perform.

What I am willing to pay for are plays as I guess you all know. I will see almost any play. Not Broadway-type musicals as much as real plays. Well okay, both to some extent. But not the sort of musical that is just about big performance numbers written by middling song writers.
Guys and Dolls, yes.

It's funny what entertainment works live for us and what doesn't. What entertainment are you willing to pay for? I don't count movie because five bucks or so doesn't count.

Crazy/Not Crazy

As my father aged, he began to give donations to anyone who asked. Not big amounts, mostly five dollars.

Today I made a donation to Wikipedia. Someone I live with said that was crazy. Wikimedia might not even be Wikipedia.

You vote.(and by the way, I told them I would alert people to their cash flow problems)

All the News That's Fit to Print

I rarely watch the evening news for various reasons, but Phil still turns it on and last night I couldn't help hearing that the bad review in the NYT of Guy Fieri's new restaurant on Times Square was mentioned. On the news! The review in the Times yesterday was perhaps the worst review of anything I have ever read. My favorite line was that the marshmallows taste like fish. Why marshmallows I wanted to ask?

But why was the restaurant or the review mentioned on the news? Fieri is certainly more of a celebrity than a chef--is this why? Will this bad review and the media delight in it hurt or help him? Perhaps tourists, clearly the intended patrons of a restaurant on Times Square, will only remember his name and it will be a huge success. I know (ahem) a lot of men who love his FOOD NETWORK show.

If you google his name today, not a single publication or news outlet fails to mention this review. Maybe there is not such thing as bad publicity but read the review and you will wonder.

With all that's going on in the world, can an 18 minutes network newscast afford to waste time on this? Well, yes, because the news spends its last 5 minutes on similar stories every night. Stories geared to the aging population that hasn't discarded its habit of getting their news this way.

Do you listen to the evening news? How do you get your news?

For the record, I read the NYT in the morning although not thoroughly. And I listen to NPR off and one over the day. And I catch bits and pieces from MSNBC, which is on after five here, pretty much nonstop. 

Ocean City, New Jersey

We were a poor family. But every summer, for one week, we took a vacation at Ocean City, New Jersey. It was a family town, a place for people who wanted to spend time on a beach, to go to a modest amusement park at night, to go to a family restaurant.. No drinking, no gambling--the kind of place you could take your kids.

This is Ocean City, New Jersey today.There is no way, Ocean City, New Jersey, a half an hour south of Atlantic City is going to come back without help. Please donate to the New Jersey Food bank right here. Donate to the New York foodbank too.

Odd Little Things that Drive Me Crazy

When they show someone reading in a movie and don't let you know what book it is. Show me the title.

When a chapter ends in a book with words like...they would never meet again. Or...later, we would regret that night. Have it happen, don't just sum it up.

When a waiter in a restaurant asks, "Are you still working on that? Or says in response to asking for something like water, "No problem."

What drives you crazy?

Help A Fellow Book Lover and a Nice Person Too

http://www.indiegogo.com/feeding-kate

This is a website that is raising money for jaw surgery for Sabrina Ogden, a terrifically nice person whose health care policy will not pay for the procedure. This is not elective surgery to anyone other than cost-cutting health care systems. This is necessary, indeed critical. Sabrina is a great friend to the crime fiction community. You are not helping a stranger but someone who shares your interests.

In return for your $5.00 you will get a volume of short stories by many of Sabrina's friends--all writers. Plus you will have the pleasure of helping a dear young woman out.

HERE'S HER OWN STORY. THEN TELL ME WHY WE DON'T NEED OBAMACARE