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June 19, 2005
Blog Stew: Summer Seafood Stew
This week's recipe and catch-all title features the only stew recipe I could find with the word "summer" in the title: Summer Seafood Stew.
1. Katie Holmes Gets Engaged To Psychotic Cult Leader. At one time, Katie Holmes was on my famous top 21 list... until Erika, who went to college in the town where Dawson's Creek was filmed, informed me that Katie was often seen around town with cigarettes hanging out of her mouth. If she ever had a chance of getting back on that list, it's gone now -- after the news this week that's she's gotten engaged to that brainwashed psychotic cult freak, Tom Cruise.
You know, Defamer had it right when they called this development an "unholy partnership." Partnership is right - if you believe that Tom's sleeping with her, then you'll believe I'm sleeping with her. Look, kids: Tommy's grown himself a beard! But the real question now is how soon it is before we find Katie in purple Nikes in Guyana at Cruisetown with a cup of Kool-Aid in one hand and Dianetics in the other.
2. Bush to City: Drop Dead. It was one of the most famous New York tabloid headlines ever; in 1975, when President Ford told the city of New York that the federal government would not help the city deal with its fiscal crisis, the New York Daily News characterized Ford's response with typical New York bluntness. 30 years later, another US president is giving the city a similar cold shoulder. Only this time, it's far more shameful.
George W. Bush has based his entire presidency on the swaggering image of himself standing at the ruins of the World Trade Center with the rescue workers. And of course, New York City was good enough to drape himself in during last year's Republican convention. But apparently, Bush looks at New York in Kennedyesque fashion: ask just what New York can do for you, not what you can do for New York.
The president and party that wrap themselves in the flag -- and would have a photo of the WTC at every press conference if they could -- have stripped rescue workers of $125 million in funding to cover their medical bills and provide other relief.
This is the kind of person George W. Bush is, and the kind of people Republicans are: they cynically exploit the tragedies that happen to our nation in patriotic-er-than thou fashion... but when you look behind the image, there's nothing there but an ice-cold, Machiavellian heart.
3. Sex, Drugs, and Rachmaninov: Frankly, classical music usually puts me to sleep. Who knew it could be so steamy?
Former New York Philharmonic oboe player Blair Tindall has blown the, uh, whistle (huh huh,heh heh huh) on the seedy underbelly of the classical music world - claiming in a new tell-all book that she earned most of her jobs not by playing a mean oboe, but perhaps a different kind of flute.
Tindall claims that sex played a decisive role in her musical career. She says she was simultaneously involved with three leading New York oboists -- two married -- who gave her work in their orchestras. One had a maxim: "The section that lays together plays together."
She describes leaping naked into a hotel pool with a leading member of a touring Andrew Lloyd Webber production who subsequently made love to her in his hotel suite as "exuberantly" as he performed music. He then lit a postcoital cigarette and offered her a job on Lloyd Webber's new Aspects of Love in New York. "Why, I thought, did I bother with an answering machine?" Tindall writes. "Between XXX and my former oboist boyfriends, I got hired for most of my gigs in bed."
What? Someone trading sexual favors for chairs in the orchestra pit? Horrors! Being the intrepid reporter I am, I wanted to see the source of these scandalous allegations. So I did a Google search for Ms. Tindall. And after finding her, all I can say is that maybe I should have been an orchestra director.
4. Lost In Translation. I was watching one of the basic cable stations the other night -- maybe it was Spike? -- and saw Pulp Fiction on TV. I tried watching it. It was a mistake.
Don't get me wrong - I think it's an outstanding film. But the script is based on George Carlin's seven words you can't say on television. (For the record, while I usually find cavalier vulgarity to be unncessary and a crutch for the writer, I think Tarantino did it brilliantly in this work.) And since you have to cut those words out of broadcasts, you lose 1/3 of the dialogue and much of the character development.
And while "little sucker" is a decent syllabic match and does rhyme with one of the script's most common phrases, it's just not the same to hear Samuel L. Jackson's Jules Whitfield shouting, "English, little sucker, do you speak it?" There are some movies that are just aren't supposed to be on regular TV, and this is one of them. Watching Pulp Fiction without the vulgarity is like watching golf on TV.
5. Locked Out. Is there any moment that invokes more finality than the moment you get your key back? Whatever's been said before then, whatever has happened, no matter how over things look, there's always a "maybe" or "you never know" left... until they put that key back in your hand. Then you know that there's not going to be anymore coming home to find them there unexpectedly, or any of those late night, "just let yourself in when you get here" phone calls. When you get your key back, it's the definitive statement that you're each moving on, and there's not going to be any going back.
We returned keys this weekend; I'm single again. It's not a bad thing - it's very amicable, in fact, and it's probably best since we've been trying to stop for a few weeks now, only to have one or the other break down a few days later with the famous "I know what we said, but could you come over tonight?" phone call. Yes, I know that all this means is that she has to buzz the door now, or I just have to ring her doorbell... but I don't think it will be that way. And so it goes.
6. Random Musings. I hate the Black Eyed Peas, mostly because the damn song they do on that Best Buy commercial gets in your head and won't freaking go away. "Louder!" Grrr.
-- iTunes flexes its muscle: Tim McGraw's song "Live Like You Were Dying" was a hit more than a year ago. It peaked on the pop charts at #21 last summer, and faded off. Then a week ago, McGraw's music finally became available on iTunes... and this week, "Live Like You Were Dying" has re-entered the pop charts at #29. A year old song goes online, and a week later is back on the charts? Don't tell me iTunes and online downloads haven't changed music forever.
-- God help me, but after seeing her TV Guide cover this week, Kelly Ripa is crawling dangerously close to my top 21 list. I am a sick man and am in desperate need of help.
Comments
Sorry to hear you two broke up...I know how it is.
Posted by: Brent at June 19, 2005 08:04 PM
Thanks, Brent - but it's just a thang. To quote Silence of the Lambs... "Best thing for him, really -- his therapy was going nowhere." There's a lot of affection there, but for a lot of reasons too boring to go into here, it just wasn't going to go anywhere in the long run, and we both knew it. But: I had fun, she's a delightful, wonderful girl, and I have both some very fond memories and (I hope) a long-term friend.
So... onward and, uh, upward.
Posted by: Curmudgeon at June 19, 2005 08:54 PM
Two things:
(1) Woodwind players are better lovers. Period. I'm a flutist married to a sax player. From what I've heard and experienced, it's true.
(2) Keely Ripa is funny and snarky and cynical, not as perky as one might imagine. Hell, I'd put her on *my* list.
Posted by: eden at June 20, 2005 11:50 AM
Eden -
I thought about going there -- between the symbolism of the oboe, and comments about a woman used to sucking on reeds, and all the rest. However, I decided I'd danced on the edge of propriety enough for one post.
Thanks for giving me the chance to go there anyway. :-)
Posted by: Curmudgeon at June 20, 2005 02:35 PM
