Blog

  • Recipe Testing on My Very Busy Day

    It wasn’t the recipe’s fault, it was mine. I tried to fit too many things in today, when it was already busy enough. Time management might not be one of my strongest qualities.

    Point being that I am deep into testing a recipe, and I have to go get the kid from school, so this is the best I can do today.

    But here’s the recipe I’m trying out…

  • The Power of Patrick Swayze (Unedited)

    So, I was all gearing and ready to go, to sit down and knock out a blog for today. My wife had left the tv on as she was finishing her lunch, and being that I was planning on working on the couch, I needed to shut the tv off to concentrate. But what was on tv was the final fifteen minutes of Red Dawn. The real Red Dawn. The 1984 John Milius directed Red Dawn that started among many, Patrick Swayze. It had been a couple of years since I had seen it, and the ending is pretty good, with the brothers on the bench Ikiru style.

    And then Road House came on, (I guess it was a Patrick Swayze marathon) and I totally got sucked into that movie. Make no mistake, and I have written about both Road House movies before, the original Road House is a bad movie. But man! It sure is a fun bad movie.

    BUT… I had work to do, so I thought it best to talk about the Power of Patrick Swayze.

    Actually, I wanted to talk about bad movies, and how I find myself needing them more than ever.

    And I love movies. I love seeing them in a theatre. I love watching them late at night. I love reading about movies, and how they were made. And I agree with the notion that good movies, even gut wrenching, tragic, everyone dies dramas, will always leave you feeling better than when you started.

    But right now, with the way the world is, a bad movie that just wants to be entertaining, and that is what Road House is, feels correct for these times. Bad yet entertaining movies know they’re bad, and not good for you. But I know that eating ice cream and cookies for dinner is bad for me, but some nights, it’s what I need to make it to the morning, and try all over again.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Tottenham, Valentines Day, and The Resistance

    (‘Cause she’s heart and soul…)

    I don’t think I am a fair-weather fan, but I have to admit that Tottenham Hotspur’s season is over. I wish it wasn’t, but it is time to throw in the towel. Nothing has gone right after the first month, and even with two wins over Man City, they still can’t seem to get their act together. This doesn’t mean that I will stop watching their matches – no, I will be there for every one – but this does mean that I will stop the believing in the hope that they will turn things around. Things will not be turned around. There will be no extra play next season, and if they don’t put on the brakes soon, they could slide right out of the league. They are only 10 points off from the bottom three, though I think relegation is unlikely for them, I also thought they’d finish in the top four this season. Shows you what I know. Hey’s to next season!

    We are not a big Valentines Day family. We get treats for the kid, but for me and the wife, it has never been an important date on our relationship calendar. But! We do get cards for each other. And we play a game where we wait to the last minute to buy the cards at a local drug store. The more picked over the card section the better. It’s fun to get a card that was meant for a grandmother, or one thanking you for your support in my time of need. Technically, these sentiments are not inncorrect.

    I didn’t have my money on the US Attorneys in the Southern District and Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section being the first lead actors in the Resistance, but I sure am glad they have integrity and a backbone.

  • Earmworm Thursday: Karma Chameleon

    I was like six when this song came out, so I have a few vague memories about it. First was that my brothers watching the video on MTV, as we had just got cable. Second was my mishearing of the lyrics, as I thought Boy George was singing “Comin’ a Comedian.” And third was my very straight lace, and very Catholic mother trying to figure out if Boy George was a boy, and if he was, why was he dressing that way?

    I still love this song.

  • Short Story Review – “Séance at the Dinner Party” by Tori Palmore

    (The flash piece “Séance at the Dinner Party” by Tori Palmore first appeared at Rejection Letters on November 27th, 2024.)

    Families can suck, and in literature, this is fertile ground for inspiration which has been plowed many times over, and will forever produce material that will be harvested for our consumption. As I get older, family dramas have become more fascinating to me, and Tori Palmore’s “Séance at the Dinner Party” is a absorbing stream of consciousness entry into the field.

    The narrator takes us through their thoughts/experience/emotions at this family gathering, I believe it is Thanksgiving. There is the subtext of death and the loss of a sibling, perhaps the narrator’s safety at these gatherings, and the repetitive “Brother is Dead” adds a staccato rhythm to the prose, keeping the piece unsettled. I appreciated Palmore’s use of short sentences to build tension and keep the emotions and reactions moving forward. The piece never feels like it can stop, that it will perpetually play over and over again, not only in the narrator’s life, but also in the mind, even when they leave this dinner party of family. How the narrator is uncomfortable with their family, how they don’t feel accepted, to the point of micro aggressions signaling that they are not fully accepted. Yet the narrator keeps their rage, even grief, in check. Though the narrator does escape this evening with their family, the ironic knowledge is that this event will repeat itself again.

    Palmore’s “Séance at the Dinner Party” is the type of flash fiction I look forward to reading. It is direct, clear, and puts me in a moment or emotional state that I can relate to, or learn from. And in the piece, Palmore also creates a moment that also feels as if it exists outside of time, which adds to the resonance of the story.