Month: August 2025

The Perfect Proportion

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I was going through my feed on X and I saw someone liked a comment I made.  As is my habit I went back to the posts from this individual to see if it was of interest.  And as I clicked, I saw a picture of what was supposed to be a pizza.  It was a thin crust but it had about two inches of what looked like chopped meat cooked onto it.  I was horrified.  But all things considered, lots of things called pizza don’t seem to resemble what was called pizza back when I was a kid in Brooklyn.  There was a pizzeria on Avenue X that served the typical Neapolitan pie.  It was a large round thin crust with marinara sauce, mozzarella and various cheeses to taste.  For meat lovers you could get pepperoni or sausage garnishing the surface.  But that was about it.  And that was plenty good.  Watching the cooks shaping the dough and twirling it in the air was an entertainment all its own.  Coming hot out of the oven and served on a piece of wax paper with a coke to wash it down was paradise.  If you were rich, you might even buy two slices.  But a slice was a nickel so one was all I could afford and no coke for me.

Later on in life I found out about rectangular pizza with thick crust.  Camera Girl’s mother was Sicilian and that’s how they made pizza.  And that was very good too.  And they had some different ideas about toppings.  They would introduce the seafood motif; anchovies, and even bluefish.  All very heretical to me.  But still delicious.

But her I am sixty years later and what do I see?  Chaos.  Pizza without tomato sauce, without mozzarella, without cheese, vegan pizza, pineapple pizza, pizza without dough!  It’s too much.  And then there are the chain pizza joints.  They stuff cheese in the crust.  What the hell is that?

Well, I guess it’s just the way of the world.  We live in a global environment.  Cuisines from everywhere exist in this world civilization and are adapted to the business environment and every other factor.  It only makes sense that a successful product will morph to expand its popularity.  After all I don’t complain that the Chinese or Thai recipes I like probably aren’t authentic cuisine but instead a version that works for a restaurant competing in an American marketplace.  Why should pizza be any different?

But then I saw that monstrosity with the mound of chopped meat on top.  That must be the sign of the end times and the four horsemen of the apocalypse must be somewhere nearby.

But one good thing came from seeing that.  It made me think back to that pizzeria on Avenue X and the perfect proportion of crust, tomato sauce, olive oil and cheeses.  On a summer afternoon after playing ball and hanging around with the boys from the neighborhood we’d go to that pizzeria and watching the pie being made and waiting for it to bake was the best feeling in the world.  Because you almost didn’t want to start eating it because it would be finished before you knew it.  The anticipation was the thing.  Good times.

The Chiropteriad

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So last night around midnight I was trying to fall asleep in bed when I heard some noise coming from a window.  In the summer this window has one of those screens with the bracing handles that snugs into the frame of the window.  I had noticed that it wasn’t completely sealed into the window frame but figured it would keep 95% of the bugs out so I didn’t bother to fiddle with it.  Anyway, it was dark so I couldn’t see anything but there was a scurrying and scratching noise.  So, I turned on the light and almost immediately a small black object fell to the floor under the window and immediately opened its wings and flitted around the room.  It was a bat.  I woke Camera Girl and like the good woman she is she ran screaming from the room.  Being a man of action, I started swatting at it with a sweatshirt I had on hand.  That proved to be less than useless.  So, I procured a kitchen broom and ran around the room swatting at it.  No go.  I opened up the door to the balcony and tried to force him out that way.  When a second bat entered the room by the door, I reconsidered this tactic and closed said door.  Now I was ineffectually swinging a broom at two bats that were swooping around the room.

Having a low tolerance for useless effort I closed the doors to our closets and bathroom and beat a hasty retreat to the hallway outside where Camera Girl confronted me on my failure as a protector of the marital bedroom.  I declared a temporary retreat but swore a terrible oath on the River Styx that in the morning I would reconquer our sacred homeland and evict the flying vermin with all of my strength and cunning.  So, we were marooned in one of the spare bedrooms and greatly was I wroth.  After a surprisingly comfortable sleep I woke up raring to settle the score with these winged interlopers.  I brought a six-foot ladder, a child’s butterfly net and a stiff piece of cardboard to trap the beasts inside the net.

After a somewhat thorough inspection of the ceiling, I couldn’t locate my enemies.  Then I looked behind the blinds of one of the other windows that was opened and found one of the critters wedged in the upper corner between the screen and the frame.  I lowered the open window as far as I could while still allowing my hands to force the screen outward and then pushed.  Now the screen was hanging below the window on the outside of the house.  I assumed the bat would fly off in fear.  I was mistaken.  The stupid creature was clinging to the screen.  I got my head and shoulders out of the window and with the leverage I now had I banged the screen against the wall and finally the bat let go and ended up on a flat roof below the window.  Apparently stunned, he later flew off.

I went back and made a closer inspection of some curtains and found the other varmint tucked between the wall and a curtain rod.  I angled the butterfly net and the cardboard as close to the critter as possible and then scraped him off the wall with the cardboard and trapped him with the net.  With Camera Girl nervously entering the room to open the balcony door (and quickly shutting it behind me!) I was able to shake the flying invader out of the net and whoosh; he winged into the woods.

Dunwich has many hazards.  Vampires, lycanthropes of various descriptions, ghouls and even Democrats haunt the swamps and graveyards of this cursed land.  But I feel that my actions today deserve some very special tribute.  Some kind of testimonial with perhaps a cash award would be reasonable, I think.  In a more creative era, the local poet laureate would dedicate an epic poem, possibly in dactylic hexameter, to immortalize my titanic struggle to make Camera Girl safe in her own boudoir.  Maybe I can get Grok or ChatGPT to put something together.

Let’s see.

Sing Muse of that hero skilled in the netting and ejecting of chiropteran monsters in all their horror

Who climbed to great heights and swung the broom to protect the goddess Camera Girl from any harm

Bring him to my mind’s eye and let me praise him with great praise.  What a man, what a man, what a mighty good man!

 

Or something like that.

The Honeymooners – Complete Series Review – Episode 5 – A Matter of Life and Death

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This episode is basically a comedy of errors.  The same week that Ralph goes for a physical examination at his doctor, Alice’s mother’s dog Ginger is brought to the vet by Alice.  Alice hides the vet visit from Ralph because it cost ten dollars and she knows Ralph will resent the expense.  When the vet’s report is delivered to the house Ralph assumes it’s his diagnosis.  The report says the patient has only six months to live due to a condition called arterial monochromia.  His symptoms will be loss of hair and blue tongue.  It is recommended that he be kept comfortable on the floor near the stove for warmth and given a daily pill with a saucer of milk.

After lamenting his fate he decides that he must provide for Alice by selling his sad story to the newspapers, thus providing her with $5,000 in her bereavement.

And unbelievably he is successful in his plan although the newspaper warns him that if he doesn’t die in six months they will prosecute him for fraud.  Eventually Alice gets wind of the plan and when she reads the vet’s report she starts laughing hysterically and tells him it’s the dog’s diagnosis and that arterial monochromia is called by excessive scratching at fleas..

Ralph is at first ebullient when he finds he’s not dying but immediately panics when he realizes he may be sent to prison for fraud.  Of course he immediately comes up with another scheme.  With Norton dressed in a checked jacket, wearing glasses and carrying a doctor’s bag the boys head for the newspaper office where they inform them that a miraculous therapy will cure Ralph.  He returns the check and heads for the door.  But the editor raves that this story is even better than the old one and begins pumping “Dr. Norton” for details of his medical history.  Of course disaster ensues and finally Ralph has to admit that he mistook the report from a veterinarian for his own diagnosis.

All turns out well when the paper realizes that a story making fun of Ralph’s stupidity will be more entertaining than the original story.

I believe the highlight of the episode is Norton finding Ralph fainted upon the floor and believing him to have died suddenly.  He starts mourning for the poor little fat kid who’ll never wear his little hat or his little socks and finally he picks up a pair of Ralph’s pants and says. “He’ll never wear these little pants again” as he spreads out the huge pants across the screen.

Definitely a good episode all around.  And I believe Doctor Norton may have been the inspiration for Cosmo Kramer’s Dr Van Nostrand.

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 24AUG2025 – Hollywood

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Sadly it seems that Mr. Whedon wants to get a little more, shall we say physical, with the talent if the Rumors out of the Buffy Series are true. This has always been an issue in Hollywood, sometimes they chase the ingenues and sometimes they chase the beefcake.
That aside what Whedon did is loved the material. He loved Captain America, he loved the Avengers and he wouldn’t change the material (more than a smidge or two). This strategy doesn’t always work. Brad Bird Loved/Loves the Barsoom mythos (and clearly knew it well based on how he plotted it). He gave Dejah Thoris more of a part (and far more of a costume) than in the original books, but he didn’t eviscerate/geld John Carter as a hero to do it. Here the issue was the Disney Princess based marketers couldn’t bring themselves to market A Princess of Mars . They couldn’t even bring themselves to call it John Carter of Mars they had no clue how to sell it and so its existence and nature was known only to the more rabid part of the Barsoom fans (e.g. myself). I took my wife and daughters (college/high school age for the girls) and they loved it. They wondered why the heck there was practically no one in the giant IMAX theater on a Saturday PM showing.

Loving the material is a start but is NOT enough. Peter Jackson LOVED Lord of the Rings but was constrained to make 3 movies (albeit nearly 9 hrs in standard form). He loved the Hobbit too but was given FAR to free a rein. In the interests of adding female characters and filling out 3 long films, he padded the heck out of The Hobbit and made a sloppy mess. George Lucas made the original 3 Star Wars films and loved his material and did fairly well until the damnable Ewoks. This is likely because he had his wife (later divorced) riding herd on him as editor. When he made the Prequel Trilogy no one could tell him no and loved himself a little TOO much and he made crap. Many years later Disney said “Hold my beer” and made the sequel trilogy that makes the prequels look like Casablanca or Citizen Kane.

So it looks like the recipe is get a director and/or screen writer that loves the material. Then make sure there is a check to their choices so they don’t go straight up fan boi/fan grrl.

And for heavens sake Disney, please try something NEW. There’s like 20+ marvel movies/tv shows, at least 11 Star wars movies plus hours of TV, Princess movies by the dozens and 4 Toy Stories with a 5th on the way. Try something new and exotic (for you) it can’t hurt more than the last dozen or so flops. And for the love of all that is Holy Send Kathleen Kennedy on an all expense paid 1 year trip to an isolated portion of Borneo with no phone or internet connections. And let Star Wars lie fallow for a couple years that horse (or wookie) is well and truly dead.