Santorum

This is exactly how I eat a good New York strip steak.


  • Finally found the Goldilocks zone on the new coffee maker.
  • The Zappa catalog is back on eMusic, people. And to think I was just about to cancel.
  • Chapter 22 in my new book, “Today’s Republican Party Would Run Goldwater Out On A Rail And Would Make Ronald Reagan Sit In The Corner Wearing A Funny Hat
  • South Avenue in Rochester is like the Bermuda Triangle. I went out looking for Sully’s and ended up finding John’s Tex Mex. A happy accident, although my appetite was truly set on some good pizza (rated A- by the Pizza Guy). John’s is great though; you could just order the refried beans and rice and be perfectly content.
  • So I notice the media only pays attention to the white, attractive fictitious girlfriends of college athletes. Such bias must not go unchallenged. #Manti
  • Attention, homosexuals: Rick Santorum spends a lot more time thinking about what you’re doing with your tingly parts than you do, I suspect. I also suspect that him thinking about it more than you do is a difficult thing to achieve indeed. Whatever. It’s downright creepy.

We Have To Do Something

It was a Friday.

I rolled out of bed by my usual time of, you know, 1 p.m. I needed breakfast. I got my shit together and was headed out the door to one of my favorite new neighborhood joints, the Marshall Street Bar & Grill. Actually, I think it may have been the first time I had ever gone there. In fact, I think I was actually thinking of visiting the Acme Bar & Pizza, but then in driving to there, I noticed the Marshall Street Bar & Grill and then drove down Marshall Street and in the process of turning around, I noticed the Abundance Cooperative Market. Then I went into the Marshall Street Bar & Grill and I drank a beer and ate a hamburger with waffle fries.

On the giant television screen behind me was coverage going on of the murders in Newtown, Conn.

Eventually, the bartender changed the channel because she couldn’t watch any longer. I told her I got that. There was some football on I think maybe, and on another TV was some hideous movie from the ’80s.

Nonetheless, the fact remains that that day was stained, and that I will always remember it, and that I personally have experienced enough such stained days to suit me.

I think in light of that stained day, it takes a lot of nerve to piss and moan about one’s own gun rights and one’s vague notion that those rights are about to get trampled somehow. I think it’s somewhat inhuman. I think it’s downright shitty. Five and six year olds. Five and six year olds. Five and six year olds, for humanity’s sake.

We have to do something.

There is nothing in the New York law recently passed that is ridiculous or obscene. There is nothing that President Obama outlined today that smacks of an outlandish power grab. They are nothing more than a nation’s necessary motions toward ratcheting up a bizarre, terrifying culture of violence that has finally stooped so low as to make five and six year olds face death at the hands of a projectile that can travel 1,000 to 4,000 feet per second.

Whine all you like about your rights being trampled. Make up and believe weirdo conspiracy theories. Lock yourself up with your guns for all I care. But this nation is on a tear on this issue today. Good gravity for them.

Django

In 1966, film director Sergio Corbucci directed an Italian western film that starred Franco Nero in the lead.

Nero was a prolific actor. He played Sir Lancelot in Joshua Logan’s Camelot in 1967, Horacio in Luis Buñuel’s Tristanain in 1970, and was in a slew of films, including 1990’s Die Hard 2 in 1990. He has played the late Gianni Versace. He lent his voice to Cars 2.

But he will always be recognized first and foremost for his original, and somewhat groundbreaking, original role. As the original Django. And as star of the most violent film ever at the time.

Django is a drifter who drags around a closed coffin. And it just gets better from there. Let’s put it this way: Reservoir Dogs was not the first to feature a severed ear.

Tarantino, clearly, drew inspiration from the film, which I think the trailer here smacks a little of Italian Spiderman (though that might just be the dubbing). In fact, the director flat out lifted the film’s eponymous theme music.

The point of all of this, of course, is that Franco Nero, the original Django, has a cameo in the current blockbuster, Django Unchained.

Which means I must go see it again.

Because You’re On Television, Dummy

A proposed change in editorial policy for, one might hope, one of the major 24-hour news grinders.

Ahem.

“[Network Name Here] realizes that one of the driving forces of tragic events such as the recent mass shootings in Connecticut, Colorado, and upstate New York to name a few is unrelenting news coverage. It is clear that one thing that motivates these people is that they desperately hope to get their names up in lights. And we need to fill a tremendous news vacuum, and we need eyeballs on us instead of the other guys, so we report the living hell out of it. And this is how we have done it for years. And the mass shootings continue ad nauseam.

“Well, no more. Starting today, [Network Name Here] is introducing a new editorial policy. We will no longer provide wall-to-wall coverage of mass shootings in the United States. We will adopt more traditional journalistic guidelines: Unless the perpetrator is arrested or is on trial, we will not broadcast their pictures and we will not report their names. We will tread equally carefully in our reporting about the victims. We will do our best to report the five W’s regarding these events and to fulfill our obligation to inform the public. But we will endeavor to balance this obligation against our obligation to avoid sloshing fuel onto the fire.

“In fact, as a televised news medium, we are taking one extra step to ensure that our coverage of mass shootings in America is bland and uninspiring, but nonetheless informative. For the time being, coverage of such events, at least in the immediate aftermath, will be broadcast not in color, but in black-and-white. Such hideous acts do not deserve to be brought to you in color and their perpetrators do not deserve to be viewed with such brilliance.

“To those of you who may be pondering or even planning yet another little Armageddon in America, know this: On our air at least, you will not be lionized, and if you die in carrying out your hellish deed, you will not be gibbeted, at least not by [Network Name Here]. We will approach your story as would Joe Friday—just the facts. We will report the news, but we will do everything in our power to deny you the infamy you seek.

“We will report the news. That is all.”

I wonder if that might put a dent in all this nonsense.

(I’ll tell you what. If Fox “News” opted to go with this, I’d even throw a few points their way.)

Bad News for Bears (And the Rest of Us, Too)

“Evidence for climate change abounds, from the top of the atmosphere to the depths of the oceans. This evidence has been compiled by scientists and engineers from around the world, using satellites, weather balloons, thermometers, buoys, and other observing systems. The sum total of this evidence tells an unambiguous story: the planet is warming.” (The National Climate Assessment, January 11, 2013 | Executive Summary)


I Did Not Lose My Poor Meatball

mmmmeatballs

Marinara Sauce from The Stinking Cookbook: From the Stinking Rose, a Garlic Restaurant

Ingredients
1/2 Cup Olive Oil
4 Medium Diced Onions
8 Cloves Minced Garlic
1 Bunch Chopped Fresh Parsley
1 Teaspoon Crushed Red Pepper
2 28 Ounce Cans of Tomatoes
2 Bay Leaves
2 Teaspoons Anise Seed

Heat oil in a large pot. Saute onions. Add garlic, parsley, red pepper and saute for two minutes. Add tomato, anise seed, bay leaves. Simmer for two hours.

(I added salt though it is not called for here.)

How you say, “pungent?”


Filed under “I Am Home…”

Keep Rochester Weird

Django Unchained

The P Is Silent

I will say this about Django Unchained.

Avoid it if you object to human and animal heads looking like exploding bloody bursting water balloons. Also, if you object to a certain pejorative being thrown around like you’re saying “hello,” you might avoid this film.

Otherwise. Run. Don’t walk. And see Django Unchained. If for no other reason than that it is another opportunity to look at Kerry Washington. Also: I believe this to be the best thing Mr. Tarantino has done since Pulp Fiction. And it is certainly the most satisfying movie I have seen since The Usual Suspects. Brilliant.

Three hours long and you will not ever snooze.