Random Acts of Thursday - Wherein I bare my soul to the movie gods

Some of you may have figured out I'm a bit of a film nerd.  Some of you may recall that I keep a list of the films I've seen, which currently numbers well over 700 (and I keep finding films I forgot about seeing until they cross my path again....)  It suggests that I've seen a new movie every 2.5 weeks since birth.  An impressive waste of good time, and that doesn't count the films I've watched ten times over or more, like most of the James Bond oeuvre, 'Mad Max', any Eastwood western or Dirty Harry film, and 'The 39 Steps'.  It's a wonder I get any sleep at all.

However, this is my list o' shame, films that I want to see, or probably should see, lest I be called out on my total lack of film nerdiness.  I've seen bits and pieces of a few of these, but never start-to-finish.  And that's just sad.  Worse, even if any of these show up on IFC or AMC, I'll be forced to sit through commercials and that's not happening, kids.  Even the ol' DVR can't get me past those breaks in continuity.

Vanishing Point
Be Cool
From Dusk til Dawn
Citizen Kane (it's been saved on the DVR for months)
Natural Born Killers
Blood simple
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?
North by Northwest
Rear Window
The African Queen
Chinatown
The Two Jakes
Evil Dead
Dawn of the Dead
Night of the Living Dead
Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid
Pennies From Heaven
Paper Moon
Gypsy
The Rose

There are probably more, feel free to mock my unworthiness below.  Also, gift subscriptions to NetFlix are quite welcome, feel free to click on the 'donate' button to the right.

Dinnertime - Ham-tici-pea-tion

I enjoy ham.  This should come as no surprise to anyone who knows me.  (Forgive the download, but it really is necessary. Enjoy.)  Sadly, as much as I enjoy a good ham dinner, it's not as though I can, in good conscience, make ham every week.

Okay, I could.  But as it stands, we don't.  However, we did have a glorious ham for Easter, bone-in and spiral cut, and I was in soup mode over the weekend.  Pea, bean, potato?  What could be the best combination of starch and pork?  I decided on pea, this time around.

Spiced Yellow Pea Soup

2 cups diced onion

1 cup diced carrot
1 Tbsp salt
1 tsp olive oil
1 Tbsp curry powder
1 tsp dried basil
1 tsp dried dill
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 bay leaf
1 - 14 oz bag dried split yellow peas
1 ham bone
2 cups diced or shredded ham
2 cups baby carrots, halved
3 quarts cold water
Salt and Pepper to taste

Optional Garnish
3 strips of bacon, cooked (Did I really say 'optional'?)
1 Tbsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp clove powder
1 tsp cinnamon

In a large kettle, heat oil and add onions, diced carrots and salt.  Sweat until tender, then add curry powder, dill, basil and cinnamon.  Stir until spices become aromatic.  Add one bay leaf, split peas and ham bone, then cover with three quarts of cold water.  (If you're using a small measuring cup, that's 12 cups of water.)  Stir together and bring to a boil, then reduce heat to a simmer and cover for an hour or until peas are just tender.

Remove the ham bone and the bay leaf, then puree the soup in a blender or with a stick blender.  Remember that if you do this in a standard blender, take the plug out of the lid and cover with a towel, or you'll have an Exorcist experience all over your kitchen.  Return soup to pot with ham and remaining carrots, and simmer an additional two hours or until soup is reduced by 1/4. 

For the garnish, combine the bacon and spices in a food processor (thank you, Magic Bullet!) and process until fine.  I used pre-cooked bacon for this, and microwaved it for 20 seconds with the spices before processing. 

This makes eight hearty servings, and if you feel you need to wait for cooler weather to have soup, the bone will freeze well. 

And okay, so you could use the green split peas.  However, even though I like most every shade of green out there, I find something unappealing about pea soup green.  Either way, this was delicious.

A Poor Excuse

Two months to go...

For my three followers who actually read CDS for the articles, many apologies.  I've been busy, and we all know that my concept of the passage of time is foggy at best.  Recently I was reminded of just how old I'm getting when someone I don't remember posted the entire yearbook from my senior year of high school, and I was looking at the skinny, pasty-looking kid with the bad haircut.  It took me back to my past laziness, when I ended up taking my own photo a week before they were due since I never bothered to have senior portraits done. 

I feel guilty for not posting much of late.  It's been a very busy 2011 so far and often I write half a post that never gets finished.  New, completed posts are coming, though.  We here at CDS Enterprises (A Division of NFG Worldwide, Ltd) have been thinking hard, making sure nothing but the highest quality drivel is made available for your reading pleasure.

For the 95% of you who just come here looking for semi-naked pictures of celebrities (and what was up with Tatum O'Neal last month?  2800 hits on one post? Did I miss something?), continue to be disappointed.

Nah, just kidding.  I figure if Danica McKellar and Natalie Portman get me hits, how well will the CDS skyrocket to popularity with a little Diane Kruger?

Or a little more Diane Kruger...

Let's find out.

Merry Christmas, Ms. Moneypenny...

 

Have yourself a merry little one, kids.

Movie Mania Monday - Delays, delays.

So Cleveland has been hit with the first significant snowfall of the season.  It's been snowing more often than not since Friday, I think. 

As such, Movie Mania Monday is closed for the safety of our readers.  In the meantime, click here for some helpful advice, in the event you've never seen snow before or have lived in sub-tropical climates for the last three winters.  For true-to-life advice, I prefer this one.

Cheers.

Movie Mania Mercredi - knock a self a pro, Slick!

Okay, so this is a cop-out.  I apparently picked the wrong week to quit drinking, because I couldn't do something as simple as post Monday's post on Monday.  But that's okay, my eight years of French class have come in handy to bail me out here.  Oh, how I love technicalities.

Oh, I love trick questions, too.  Last week's quote, though used in the classic Airplane!, was actually a quote from Zero Hour!, the 1957 suspense film used as the basis for much of Airplane!'s storyline and dialogue.  

So there you have it, kids.  I'm hoping to return to regularly scheduled programming next week, stay tuned!

An observation

I'm not sure if you see the recent crackdown on condiment abuse in your neighborhood, but in mine they've grown quite serious.  There is an allowable 'nugget-to-sauce' ratio that cannot be breached.  Want barbecue AND honey mustard?  Too bad, that'll cost extra. 

Are the youth of today getting a sugar buzz from downing sweet-and-sour shots after school, high-fructose corn syrup coursing through their veins?  Is there a rash of tomato-based meth labs spreading across the heartland of America that we can no longer have ketchup pumps in plain view?  What's next, are we to provide our name and address, photo ID's checked and double-checked if we ask for two jellies with our English muffin?  Black-market counterfeit ranch dressing dealers in the back lot of Wendy's?

Where does it end???!?!

Evenutally, I think we'll see the grocery store bagging our condiments in plain brown paper.  And I don't want to live in that world.

Unless, of course, there's some real money to be made in black market condiments.  If so, I'm there.

Trendy? Me?

**Author's note.  My apologies, this was originally scheduled for 8:00 this morning, but it never published. 

So I've never been a trendsetter, nor have I ever been a follower.  I've kind of made my own way, and nobody seems to care what that is one way or the other.

But if putting fried eggs on bacon cheeseburgers is a trend, haul me up onto that bandwagon, baby! 

I'm up in the greater Cleveland area again this week, and eating restaurant food far more often than I should.  By chance last evening, I found the B Spot.  Beer, brats, burgers, bologna (fried), it's quite the place.  How often do you go someplace that has a pickle bar?  Not often enough, in my opinion.  Pickled onions, green tomatoes, spicy pepper relish, hot sweet pickle chunks, garlic dills and house-recipe ketchup.  Fresh rosemary on the crispy sliver-cut fries.  Yolk running down my fingers and commingling with juices from a truly rare burger. 

(Really, dark pink, soft and beefy, just the way a burger was meant to be.) 

I was surprised, during my meal, to look down at the paper holding my fries to see Chef Michael Symon's name on the logo.  I knew he opened a few more restaurants since my last major visit to the city.  But this was a sight to behold.  An entire page of beers, many of them on draft?  Pulled pork and pickled jalepenos on fries, the midwestern answer to the nacho?  A vanilla bean apple pie BACON milkshake?

I'm not a fan of 'celebrity', of style over substance, but I have to say, I like what I'm seeing and I want more.  I'm ready to take back most of the less-than-kind words I may have had for Chef Symon in the past.  Only time will tell.

Oh, and an amusing rental car anecdote, for those of you who can't get enough of it.  Monday night at the restaurant, I caught sight of a car behind me, out of the corner of my eye, as I was pulling gracelessly into a parking space.  When I turned my head, it was gone.  But, convinced I must have missed it, and concerned that I might back up to straighten my park job and strike someone's beloved automobile, I looked again.

The Grand Marquis is so sporking big, so...damn...huge, that I mistook my own rental car in my peripheral vision for AN ENTIRELY SEPARATE VEHICLE. 

Gee. Thanks, Enterprise.  Way to make me look forward to Friday.

Fun Fact Friday - Talk Amongst Yourselves

I'll give you a topic...how has the Internet allowed the world to become smaller, making my cross-country moves nearly insignificant in the lives of most people with whom I interact? Discuss.

Forewarned is forearmed. So are these guys.

I start a new job in less than two weeks, 1000 miles from our current home. We are selling our current home, and trying to find a nice place to live in parts unknown, so we can be full-time Ohioans by the second week of May. Before I start that new job, I have lots to accomplish in the current one, to make my departure less painful. (That's my ego, they're probably planning the party already.)

As such, I have no 'fun fact' today. Because nobody has taken advantage of the email button in the upper right to Ask the Nerdy Fat Guy the 'question of the ages', and because I'm a little preoccupied, there's very little in the way of content today.

Go read a book or two instead. It's good for you.

Please take this as an apology, dear reader. You mean the world to me, expressing your joy at each and every one of my new posts (unless it falls on a Saturday.) However, because of the amount of travel and work coming in the next two months, posts may be sparse. Some of you may be called upon to take up the torch, to fill in the gaps, nerd-wise.

On the up-side, my sister, who claims I currently "write too much" for her to keep up with, might actually start reading CDS again. One can only hope.

If she does, I'll be verklempt.

Do you dream in color?

I've said it before, nobody pays me to say nice things about their products. Therefore, if I talk about something here, it's from the heart.

My friend, Sarah J. Bradley, is celebrating the release of her first novel, 'Dream in Color'. Through the miracle of the Internet, I just finished listening to her on Milwaukee radio, despite being 1300 miles away in Florida, and I can't express how happy I am about this book.

I met Sarah in a writer's workshop sponsored by the Waukesha Parks & Recreation department 13 or 14 years ago. She's insightful, intelligent and funny, and I've always enjoyed reading her work. She also has a borderline unhealthy obsession with Rick Springfield, but we mock forgive her for that.

When she started work on 'Dream...' six years ago, it felt good. It felt right, that Sarah found the perfect outlet for her voice and had truly built on the education she gained from her first and as-yet-unpublished novel. You can check out an excerpt at her publisher's site, Wild Rose Press. The book can be purchased there, or from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. She informs me that the book will be available for electronic download in the very near future if that's your preference, as is mine normally. This one, I want to make sure I get it signed. Make sure you check out her daily blog, too. She's got a lot of insight for writers and a great sense of humor for everyone else.

Just don't let her talk you into harassing me about my as-yet unfinished books. That wouldn't be very nice.

Where the days are longer, the nights are stronger

***I have been asked to place a disclaimer on posts where I might be a downer. This might be one of those posts.***

It is refreshing to see the faintest glimmer of daylight when I wake now. It doesn't help my already poor sleep patterns, but at least it doesn't feel like we've been plunged into eternal night. It's funny how that mid-Winter malaise can creep in, even when we don't have feet of snow blanketing our home. It's genuinely nice out, for February. My grass is starting to turn green again after our week of sub-freezing temps a month ago.

With all deference to Shakespeare, this hardly means that the winter of my discontent has been made summer by anything. Perhaps early spring, but not summer. I'm still adapting to working at home, and despite the fact that I'm working on central time, I keep waking up as though I still need to drive 40 minutes in traffic to arrive by 8, instead of walking fifteen feet to start at 9.

This does prove a benefit to you, cherished readers, since it means you get more consistency of posts. Of course saying it's a benefit is a wee bit biased, since it assumes that more Elliott is a good thing.

Speaking of which, I think I should start walking The Dammit in the mornings, I tore one of the few pairs of jeans which fit comfortably while Lori and I were climbing about an abandoned warehouse the other day, scoping out a new shooting location. It was very cool, like a modern version of the Colosseum, rows of columns and beautiful play of afternoon light. But the crux of things is that I've become even more of the Nerdy Fat Guy you've known and loved. And it's not more 'Nerdy' or 'Guy', I can assure you.

Of course, this means I'm down to one pair of jeans that are publicly acceptable, and I will not resort to either the public wearing sweat pants which is NEVER acceptable for a male in a non-athletic context, or the use of this. The Perfect Fit button is for when you've moved past the anger, denial and bargaining phases of your weight problem. I like how they suggest that you can also use it to reduce the waist size of your pants, as though that's going to happen.

As a completely inappropriate segue, I thought I'd post a picture of my pizza from Sunday. Mmm, pizza. I love that my grocery store sells fresh dough in the bakery, because while making dough isn't difficult, it is a bit messy and I'd rather not deal with that. I'm already messy enough without adding flour to the mix.
Strangely, though I have always known myself to have jars of sauce about the pantry, rely on it when time calls for a quick and easy dinner, there was none to be had. As such, I spread the crust with pesto, covered it with arugula (or raquette, if you prefer), cremini mushrooms, red peppers, Italian sausage and pancetta. Because everything is better with bacon.And I discovered a great site yesterday, had a little fun. My mood is starting to reveal itself though, and spring can't get here quickly enough.

Alligator lizards or not.

I can hardly contain the nerdiness

Did you ever have one of those days, where the excitement of something impending is just excruciating? As a kid on Christmas Eve, or during those last few days before summer vacation, or even now as an adult, those last hours before you leave for a big trip?

This is how I feel with my nerdy self. I'm so excited about tomorrow's Random Act, I can hardly contain myself.

In the meantime, go check this out, because I can't post tomorrow's post today. It just wouldn't be right to have a Random Act of Wednesday.

That'd be like opening your presents the night before Christmas, and that's just wrong.