May 2006 – RectorSite

Mem Day Meat in Maine

Real Time Maine Meat: 3:45pm Monday

Like most Memorial Days weekends I’m barbecuing — well, actually closer to smoking my meat as a kick-off to the summer barbecue season. Unlike most recent years, however, it is HOT and SUNNY in Monroe rather than cool and rainy, which is a nice change. For the past few years I’ve gotten carried away with all the apple and cherry and red oak wood that we have in plenty around us and will be trying to mitigate the smoke applied to a two pound hunk of London Broil that I’m attempting to ‘cue like a brisket using the North Carolina pork barbecue technique of wrapping the sumbitch in foil after an hour or two to finish cooking with a liquid baste. With pork bbq you add your cider vinegar ‘sauce” to the meat; here I’ll be using beer. I’ll update with results.

And despite success with Cooks Illustrated’s excellent general barbecue sauce for the table, I’ll be making a “Texas Ranchouse BBQ Sauce” to make the meal more brisket-like in atmosphere. What are y’all grilling on the Holiday?
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The Notorious Betty Page

A Review

Slim pickin’s on the movie scene. We walked to the Lumiere last night to see The Notorious Betty Page. Coming out of the theater, Carol said, “That was fun.”

“I was just going to say that myself,” I said.

It’s the story of a naive and open young girl from Nashville, abused by her father, growing into a naive and open woman in New York and taken advantage of by certain sleezeballs, befriended and sheltered by a nice husband and wife team who happen to do bondage photography.

What I knew: Betty Page is a pin-up queen; a wholesome, girl-next-door type who was totally built, but wasn”t terribly sexy. As noted in the movie, “She can be nude, without being naked.”
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What Took You/Us So Long?

Please! Okay. Friedman writes a fine piece:

How could there still be 29 percent of the people who approve of this presidency?…I think a lot of Americans in recent months have simply lost confidence in this administration’s competence and honesty…Is there no job in this administration that is too important to be handed over to a political hack? No…And that is the core of the matter: the Bush team believes in loyalty over expertise. When ideology always trumps reality, loyalty always trumps expertise.

Nice hook, heart in the right place, good examples, etc. But what gets me about these kinds of pieces is that it’s been obvious since Day 1 what DB’s m.o. has been and the American press gave him such a long honeymoon that you have respected columnists writing pieces like this NOW, almost 6 yrs into this dark age and two years into his second sham term!
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KABOOM 2006

This year we knew where to where to park and how to deal with the whole enchalada, so we took a picnic of sorts, pumped up the car radio, relaxed and let the show come to us.

The accolades I heaped on KABOOM last year still apply, so in case you missed it, here’s last year’s journal.

KABOOM 2005
KFOGs 12th Annual Music & Fireworks Show
And a beautiful day it was. One of those perfect San Francisco days when the sky is blue and clear, the sun is soft and warm on your skin and there is just that hint of cooling breeze that makes a loose overshirt feel just right. (Of course, if one has the right body, a tight tee shirt works too. We saw a few of those.)
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Big Food Wins?

If there’s one thing I remember fondly about Tifton, it was the gut-busting preponderance of good BBQ. Like to about killed me (as they say down south).

One can certainly eat well here in France but it’s a different kind of eating down there. I guess here they emphasize really fresh, simply prepared vegetables and then do really creative things with meat. There they give you a pure, simple, huge piece of meat and cook the vegetables to death. Either way, there are some places that make you glad that you have to eat three times a day (or 12 like the subjects of this NYTimes article…).

What a Festival It Was

Ready For Work

Imagine going to 13 movies in 21 days and not seeing a single car chase, or building explode, or a guy jump from the top of a building onto a moving bus. When the lights dimmed and the projector whirred into action, we saw a rolling list of sponsor logos with new age background music, and then the Chinese characters for Perpetual Motion appeared on the screen. No commercials, no Previews of Coming Attractions accompanied by ear splitting sound, no “visit our snack bar in the lobby” please.
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SFiFF xiv: A Prairie Home Companion

A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION (2006)
USA 103 minutes
Directed by Robert Altman, Written by Garrison Keillor

Cast:
Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline, Virginia Madsen, Tommy Lee Jones, John C. Reilly, Lindsay Lohan, Lily Tomlin, Woody Harrelson, Garrison Keillor

prairie title.jpg

Closing Night. Lily Tomlin and Virginia Madsen were present for a Q&A after.

The movie was just plain fun, unencumbered by much of a story, and the blazing stars that Robert Altman brought along were sufficient to overshadow the sappy, stage hogging Garrison Keillor.

mrating * * * * *
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Spring Chores

(click for larger version)

Spring on our Maine farm also means ‘shearing the sheep,” job I truly dread since it requires hours of my time hunched over a squirming fragrant animal when both of us would rather be elsewhere doing other things. (We used to hire someone to do this for us using the more efficient electric shears, except there are very few professional sheep shearers available these days, and those that do are reluctant to travel and set-up for two or three sheep…) As a result I often put off the job until the black flies begin to appear, which turns an unpleasant job unbearable (these flies, which I promise to describe in detail soon for those unfamiliar, fly in clouds and naturally gravitate to your head and face to land and begin biting… if you don’t inhale them first…). This is one of the biggest reasons we now use cows to mow our fields instead of more sheep.
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Joie de Julep

pre-muddle The Kentucky Derby is a great excuse to enjoy a Mint Julep once a year, especially when I’ve been able to coax a clump of our mint in our hoophouse to grow early enough to include it. It was a beautiful sunny early spring day, and we enjoyed our frosty juleps with our neighbors Liz and James alongside crackers and yogurt cheese mixed with the other herbs from our hoophouse (chives, tarragon, and chive blossoms) watching Barbaro rocket round the final turn for a true stretch run and win.
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SFiFF xiii: Domestic Dramas

DOMESTIC DRAMAS (2005)
Total running time 114 minutes

These narrative shorts convey the humor and tragedy that make up the most common spheres of our existence and the upheaval that results when the things we most desire refuse to come to fruition or are achieved in unexpected ways. [SFiFF Program Guide]
Seven are on the program; I saw five, as I had to leave for work.

domestic title.jpg
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Month: May 2006