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Showing posts from January, 2014

First Feast: A Fulfilling Start to 2014

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Men in Plaid: Billy, me, Mark, and Will as we happened to be seated at last night's First Feast.  The theme was Mediterranean, not plaid.  That part was happy coincidence. Last night marked the annual First Feast gathering for Jennifer and me and our 'Dillo friends .  A lucky 13 gathered for the usual assortment of fine dining, drinking, music, and (often zany) conversation. This year's event featured a Mediterranean theme. Food highlights included more appetizers than I can recall but personally I was drawn to Jennifer's wonderful dates stuffed the goat cheese along with a plethora of various types of olives brought by different people. The main course was a combination of "sea bass" (broiled snapper) and a lamb roast recipe. The accompaniments were superb. There was an excellent arugula salad and some awesome mashed potatoes along with several other excellent choices. Too many different kinds of wines to remember. Topped off by gelato and a decadent

Watching American Hustle

American Hustle and Gravity garnered the most Academy Award nominations recently.  Each film received 10 nominations of various kinds.  While this certainly does not guarantee anything and, in and of itself, does not make them the two best pictures of the year, it did cause me to take notice and want to see American Hustle since I enjoyed Gravity so much several months ago.  American Hustle is about con jobs and the really crafty, somewhat quirky people who do them. Not small time jobs. Large con operations.  Until, as ( somewhat historical ) circumstances reveal in the film, the two big con artists are finally caught by the FBI.  Instead of serving any prison time, however, the two cons luck up and begin working with an FBI agent to run an elaborate bribe operation to catch a handful of politicians including one famous US Senator.  The film is filled with unexpected twists and turns, as you might expect, so you have to be on your toes when you watch it.  Following the vari

Neil Young Does Carnegie Hall

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Neil Young just finished a four-night sold-out stint at the famous Carnegie Hall .  I have a bootleg CD in my rather robust Neil Young collection of his first performance there in 1970 .  He was there again in  1973 .  But, last week was the first time he has been back.  This return visit seems of have been a huge success both financially (you can't top four sell-outs) and critically.  My favorite review of one of his performances was from the third night as covered by Vanity Fair magazine .  Those bourgeois intellectuals attempt to parse-out and lyrically judge Neil's songs.  Yet they were all enraptured, stating that Neil "blows Carnegie Hall away." The Economist even covered the event from the British perspective.  Of course Neil is Canadian so it sort of fits.  Billboard was impressed though not enraptured with Neil, labeling the second night's solid performance as "classic performances of classic songs."  But the praise and critique that s

A Big Chill Upon Us

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This was our high on Monday.  With 20+ MPH gusts outside. Uber-Brrrr.  For fun compare this reading with the photo I took of this one in 2012 .  Quite the contrast. It is supposed to be uncool to talk about the weather. Hip people from mild climates find discussion of the weather to be mundane, unimaginative, and a sure sign of someone being dull. But, past posts will indicate that rain and snow and wind mean something to me. Living in the countryside, in the serenity of nature, has many advantages but it also amplifies the your vulnerability to the weather. Earlier this week we experienced the coldest temperatures at my house since 1995. It was 6 degrees at my house Tuesday morning, with a constant breeze and a wild chill of minus 10. Ouch. Fortunately, we knew it was coming and spent a lot of time last weekend (when it was 55 degrees) winterizing our property in ways we haven't done in almost 20 years. Record lows were set across much of the nation. It was the c