Archive for the ‘Food’ Category

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Cereal experiments lame.

Monday, January 2nd, 2023

Mike the Musicologist and I have a tradition, dating back quite a while: if we find ourselves in a grocery store, we go look in the cereal aisle…for silly cereals.

Over the weekend, we went by a WalMart Supercenter because we were looking for a specific silly cereal.

Yes, that is “Elf on the Shelf Hot Cocoa Cereal with Marshmallows”. That was the only flavor (and the only box) WalMart had, but there’s also “Sugar Cookie” flavor and “North Pole Snow Creme” flavor.

Other things that we found, but did not buy, because we’re not that silly.

Kellogg’s Frosted Pandora Flakes. Do you suppose that anyone at Kellogg’s thought about the symbolism of opening a box labeled “Pandora”?

“Wendy’s Frosty Chocolatey Cereal With Wendy’s Frosty Flavor”. “Frosty” is not a flavor.

“IHOP Mini Pancake Cereal”, for when you want the taste of IHOP pancakes, but don’t want to deal with the Mongolian fire drill that IHOP has become.

Not cereals, but on the same aisle:

“Mrs. Butterworth’s Fruity Pebbles Flavored Syrup” and “Cap’n Crunch’s Ocean Blue Artificially Maple Flavored Syrup”. There are so many things wrong with these, I can’t even.

I’ll throw in one more photo from the weekend that’s totally unrelated. I like the way this came out, though I did manually adjust the exposure and crop. (I thought it came out a little dark: it was more overcast than I thought it was.)

Christmas “tree” at Garrison Brothers Distillery in Hye, Texas.

Posted in Christmas, Food, Mixology | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: December 23, 2022.

Friday, December 23rd, 2022

Ali Ahmed Aslam.

He is frequently credited with inventing chicken tikka masala.

In Aslam family lore, it was a local bus driver who popped in for dinner and suggested that plain chicken tikka was too spicy for him, and too dry — and also he wasn’t feeling well, so wasn’t there something sweeter and saucier that he could have instead? Sure, why not. Mr. Aslam, who was known as Mr. Ali, tipped the tandoor-grilled pieces of meat into a pan with a quick tomato sauce and returned them to the table.

…

Chicken tikka masala boomed in the curry houses of 1970s Britain. Soon it was more than just a dish you could order off the menu at every curry house, or buy packaged at the supermarket; it was a powerful political symbol.

…

As the curry house established itself as a British institution, more flourished around Shish Mahal. In 1979, when Mr. Aslam renovated the place, he reopened with a clever gimmick: all of the original 1964 prices, for a limited time. This led to long, frenzied lines down the block. In photos taken around this time, Mr. Aslam is handsome and beaming, in a tuxedo jacket and bow tie, with the thick, floppy hair of a movie star.

…

Though two of his sons took over ownership of Shish Mahal in 1994, Mr. Aslam never officially retired, and he continued to drive his white Jaguar to work and to wear the exquisite suits he had tailored on Savile Row. Known for his relentless work ethic, he considered himself a proud Glaswegian, a Scotsman through and through.

Maggie Thrett, actress. Credits other than that minor SF TV show from the 1960s include “Run, Joe, Run”, “I Dream of Jeannie”, and ‘The Wild Wild West”.

Posted in 1970s, Food, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 1, 2022.

Tuesday, November 1st, 2022

Gael Greene, noted restaurant reviewer for New York magazine.

After graduation, she was hired by United Press International, which on one memorable occasion sent her to cover a show by Elvis Presley in Detroit. She wangled an invitation to the singer’s hotel room, where one thing led to another. As she left, Presley asked her to order him a fried egg sandwich from room service.
Later, she wrote in her 2006 memoir “Insatiable: Tales From a Life of Delicious Excess,” she could not remember much about the sex, but the sandwich stayed in her mind: “Yes, the totemic fried egg sandwich. At that moment, it might have been clear I was born to be a restaurant critic. I just didn’t know it yet.”

…

In no time, her swaggering, fearless style made her one of the magazine’s star writers. She made short work of the Colony, an old society standby, and skewered the snobbery of Manhattan’s finer French restaurants.
In a town where snob, snoot and snub flower in perpetual renaissance, Lafayette is the ‘most,’” she wrote in one review. “Here the spleen is infinitely more memorable than the sweetbreads.”

Julie Powell, of the “Julie/Julia Project” and later Julie and Julia: My Years of Cooking Dangerously (affiliate link). She was 49.

In 2002, Ms. Powell was an aspiring writer working at a low-level administrative job in Lower Manhattan. She was about to turn 30 and had no real career prospects. It was, she said in an interview with The New York Times, “one of those panicked, backed-into-a-corner kind of moments.”
To lend structure to her days, she set out to cook all 524 recipes from her mother’s well-worn copy of Mrs. Child’s 1961 classic “Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1.” But as an untrained cook who lived in a small Long Island City loft, she found the road to be long, sweaty and bumpy.
In a blog for Salon.com that she called the Julie/Julia Project, she wrote long updates, punctuated by vodka gimlets and filled with entertaining, profane tirades about the difficulties of finding ingredients, the minor disappointments of adult life and the bigger challenges of finding purpose as a member of Generation X.

…

Ms. Powell’s second book, “Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession,” published in 2009, dived deeply into their relationship, which sometimes flourished and sometimes faltered. She described in detail her struggle with an extramarital affair she had and, later, one her husband had. This time, the food connection was darker: She juxtaposed her apprenticeship as a butcher with a dissection of her moods and the marriage.
Without the sauciness and celebrity connection of her first book, “Cleaving” was not well received, and although Ms. Powell continued writing, it was her last book.
“She had so much talent and emotional intelligence,” said Judy Clain, editor in chief of Little, Brown, who was Ms. Powell’s editor. “I only wish she could have found the next thing.”

Posted in Books, Elvis, Food, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 31, 2022.

Wednesday, August 31st, 2022

Richard Roat, actor. Other credits include “The F.B.I.”, “O’Hara, U.S. Treasury”, the good “Hawaii 5-0”, “Columbo” and “McMillan & Wife” (he missed “McCloud” for the trifecta, but also did “Hec Ramsey” and “Banacek”), and “Westworld” (1973).

William Reynolds. Where is my “The F.B.I.” box set, darn it? Other credits include “Dragnet 1967”, “Pete Kelly’s Blues” (the TV series), “All That Heaven Allows”, “Francis Goes to West Point”, and “Project U.F.O.”

Roland Mesnier, former White House pastry chef.

The French-born Mr. Mesnier served as a member of the chief executive’s kitchen cabinet for nearly 25 years. He catered to the idiosyncratic tastes of five presidents, their wives and their guests, an experience he chronicled in several books.
Mr. Mesnier was hired in 1979 by the first lady, Rosalynn Carter, and served until he retired in 2004, during the administration of George W. Bush. He worked from a modest space in the East Wing, armed with about 300 original pastry molds and an eclectic set of tools, including an ice pick, a coat hanger and a tire-pressure gauge.
Despite the president’s background as a legume farmer, he reported, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter disdained peanuts and sweets in their family’s recipe for a sticky cheese ring — a recipe, Mr. Mesnier said, “that no one tried to steal.” He rated it on a par with Bill and Hillary Clinton’s “atrocious concoction of Coca-Cola-flavored jelly served with black glacé cherries.”
Nancy Reagan often skipped meals but partook of dessert. (She routinely denied her husband chocolate, but Mr. Mesnier smuggled mousse to President Reagan when the first lady was out of town.)

…

In 2001, Mr. Mesnier took three weeks and 80 pounds of gingerbread, 30 pounds of chocolate and 20 pounds of marzipan to construct a replica of the 1800 White House for the Christmas holiday.
He sometimes served flaming desserts — but, he said, he gave that up after a woman’s fox shawl caught fire when she leaned across the table at a holiday reception.

(Obligatory.)

Posted in 1970s, Food, Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Barbecue Law!

Wednesday, August 24th, 2022

La Barbecue is a popular Austin joint. It is in the Texas Monthly Top 50, though not in the Top 10.

The owner and manager of La Barbecue have been criminally indicted.

[Leanne] Mueller and [Allison] Clem are each charged with two counts of fraudulent securing of document execution.

What does that mean? Here’s how the Statesman explains it. La Barbecue didn’t have worker’s comp insurance, and hadn’t had it since November of 2014. Sometime in July of 2016, one of their employees was hurt “while operating a piece of kitchen equipment”. It sounds like the injuries were pretty serious: I’ll get into that in a minute.

Four days later, Clem contacted Paychex Insurance to get workers’ compensation coverage, something the restaurant had been without since November 2014.
Clem did not disclose her employee’s injuries to the agent but asked that the new policy be backdated to July 1, 2016, three weeks before the employee was hurt, the Texas Department of Insurance reported.

This kind of strikes me as equivalent to being in a car accident, then calling your insurance agent to get backdated coverage. I would call this “insurance fraud”. But: I am not a lawyer.

“It is perfectly legal to obtain a backdated policy in Texas,” said the women’s attorney, Brian Roark.

Which may be true. But it is legal to obtain a backdated policy, then make a claim against that policy for an accident that happened while coverage was not in place?

Mueller then submitted a signed application for coverage, claiming the business had no previous losses, and the policy was approved by Travelers Casualty Insurance Co. of America, the department said.

According to the article, Travelers paid out “$350,000 in medical and indemnity benefits”. In addition, “The insurance company is also responsible for lifetime care of the injured employee.”

“The insurance company determined early on that they didn’t believe they should have to pay for the claim, yet continued to pay for it anyway,” Roark said. “Regardless of the insurance company’s determination, La Barbecue, Leanne Mueller and Allison Clem believed they were acting in good faith at all times when they signed the application that had been provided to them by the insurance agent. All the monies paid for the employee were paid to the employee or directly for his medical expenses and not to La Barbecue, Leanne Mueller or Allison Clem. We believe once a jury hears the facts, that La Barbecue, Leanne Mueller and Allison Clem will be exonerated.”

If they are convicted, supposedly the two can be made to pay restitution “up to double the amount Travelers already paid to the injured worker in benefits”.

I’d hate to lose a good barbecue joint (though I’ve never had a chance to eat at La Barbecue). But I think this goes to show at least one thing: it’s just ignorant not to have worker’s comp insurance.

(More from eater.com. Crossposted to The Logbook of the Saturday Dining Conspiracy.)

Posted in Beef, Food, Law | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: July 27, 2022.

Wednesday, July 27th, 2022

James Lovelock, Gaia theory guy. He was 103.

But his global renown rested on three main contributions that he developed during a particularly abundant decade of scientific exploration and curiosity stretching from the late 1950s through the last half of the ’60s.
One was his invention of the Electron Capture Detector, an inexpensive, portable, exquisitely sensitive device used to help measure the spread of toxic man-made compounds in the environment. The device provided the scientific foundations of Rachel Carson’s 1962 book, “Silent Spring,” a catalyst of the environmental movement.
The detector also helped provide the basis for regulations in the United States and in other nations that banned harmful chemicals like DDT and PCBs and that sharply reduced the use of hundreds of other compounds as well as the public’s exposure to them.

I’m setting aside, for the moment, the arguments over the legacy of “Silent Spring”. Folks are welcome to discuss that in the comments if they’d like.

Later, his finding that chlorofluorocarbons — the compounds that powered aerosol cans and were used to cool refrigerators and air-conditioners — were present in measurable concentrations in the atmosphere led to the discovery of the hole in the ozone layer. (Chlorofluorocarbons are now banned in most countries under a 1987 international agreement.)
But Dr. Lovelock may be most widely known for his Gaia theory — that Earth functioned, as he put it, as a “living organism” that is able to “regulate its temperature and chemistry at a comfortable steady state.”

Personally, I think Gaia is a bunch of hooey. But the man did science, and deserves props, even if I don’t necessarily agree with everything he said. Also, he was married to the same woman for 47 years, until she passed.

He first met his second wife, Sandy, at the age of 69.

The Choco Taco. I’ve always liked those, but it’s been a while since I’ve had one. Cause of death is given as COVID related supply chain issues. But I’ve seen assertions elsewhere that it was cancelled due to “cultural appropriation”. I’m not sure how serious that claim is…

Posted in Food, Obits, Science | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: July 25, 2022.

Monday, July 25th, 2022

Man, it got busy up in here all of the sudden.

Bob Rafelson. THR. Other credits include the “Poodle Springs” TV movie (with James Caan as Marlowe, based on Robert Parker’s continuation of an unfinished Chandler novel), “The Postman Always Rings Twice”, and “The King of Marvin Gardens”.

The Saturday Movie Group watched “Five Easy Pieces” not too long ago. I think I echo the general consensus when I say that it was very much like “The Last Picture Show”: a good movie that none of us want to see again.

David Warner, British actor. In case you were wondering, he’s the photographer who loses his head in “Omen”. Other credits include “TRON”, “Time Bandits”, the “Hogfather” TV movie, and lots of genre stuff, including some appearances on spinoffs of a minor 1960s SF TV series.

Diana Kennedy. She was well known (at least to me and I think to other people who follow food) as the woman who introduced true Mexican cooking to the US.

At a time when most Americans’ concept of Mexican food was limited to tacos and enchiladas, Ms. Kennedy unfurled an ornate culinary tapestry, exploring the distinctly regional nature of Mexican cooking, defined, like the cuisines of Italy and China, by local geography, climate and ingredients.
“The regional dishes of Sonora, or Jalisco, have practically nothing in common with those of Yucatán and Campeche; neither have those of Nuevo León with those of Chiapas and Michoacán,” she wrote in the book’s first chapter. In Oaxaca, she explained, “certain chilies are grown and used that are found nowhere else in Mexico.”
The Mexican food known to most Americans, she wrote, was a travesty: “a crisp taco filled with ground meat heavily flavored with an all-purpose chili powder; a soggy tamal covered with a sauce that turns up on everything — too sweet and too overpoweringly onioned — a few fried beans and something else that looks and tastes like all the rest.” This state of affairs she hoped to correct.

…

In “The Tortilla Book” (1975) and “My Mexico” (1998), Ms. Kennedy continued the journey begun in “The Cuisines of Mexico,” elaborating on her findings as she roamed the country in her pickup truck, quizzing local cooks, taking notes and developing, as a side project, an atlas of indigenous herbs and plants.
Along the way, she clued readers in on the secrets of making wasp’s nest salsa, roasting a whole ox or cleaning black iguana for a special Oaxacán tamale.
“There is always someone who wants to know how to clean an iguana, so why not?” she told an interviewer for the journal Writing on the Edge in 2011. All three books were gathered in one volume in 2000 under the title “The Essential Cuisines of Mexico.”

…

Ms. Kennedy spared no effort to track down information. She served an apprenticeship in a bakery before writing her tortilla book. She traveled dusty back roads by bus or in her truck, sleeping in the back, en route to remote villages in search of obscure recipes, questioning saleswomen at local markets or wangling invitations to home kitchens.
“I’m out to report what is disappearing,” she told The Times in 2019. “I drive over mountains, I sit with families, and I record.”
She took a dim view of chefs and writers who did not do the same, and her criticism could be withering. “They’ve not done the travel and the research that I’ve done,” she told Saveur. “None of them, not one. I have traveled this country, wandering — it’s why I’m not rich! — and taking time, and nobody else has done that. Nobody else has seen a certain chile at a certain stage in a market in Chilapa, and then gone back in six months and seen other chiles.”

…

In 2010, she gave The Chicago Tribune a terse assessment of her work. “I am tenacious,” she said. “And I love to eat.”

Johnny Egan, coach of the Houston Rockets from 1972-1976. He was 129-152 overall during his tenure.

The Hartford, Connecticut native played for six NBA teams: Detroit Pistons (1961–63), New York Knicks (1963–65), Baltimore Bullets (1965–68), Los Angeles Lakers (1968–70) and San Diego/Houston Rockets (1970–72). The guard played with the Cleveland Cavaliers for the 1970-71 season.

Melanie Rauscher, who was on “Naked and Afraid”. She was 35, and the circumstances seem particularly sad.

Corey Kasun, a rep for the Prescott Police Department, confirmed to TMZ that the reality star was dog sitting in the city while the homeowners were out of town. Upon their return, they discovered Rauscher dead in their guest room, near several cans of dust cleaner containing compressed air.
It remains unclear if Rauscher consumed the cans’ contents.

Posted in 1970s, Food, Movies, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

After action report: Concord, NC.

Thursday, June 23rd, 2022

Last week, I was in Concord, North Carolina (a little outside of Charlotte).

Why?

The Smith and Wesson Collectors Association symposium, of course.

Yes, I did have a great time, thank you very much. No, I can’t talk a lot about what went on at the Symposium, since it is a closed meeting. I don’t think I’m revealing too much by saying there was an interesting presentation on a very early production S&W (serial number five) and another presentation on tracking down old NYPD guns. Not just “was this a NYPD gun?” but who carried it, when they carried it, and even background about the person who carried it.

(Fun fact: at least for the period of time under discussion, there was no such thing as a NYPD “issue” gun. Police officers were responsible for purchasing and providing their own firearms, based on what the department approved. There are some very limited exceptions: the department did have some “loaner” guns for officers whose weapons were being repaired, and some “specialty” guns for certain situations. But generally, if you were a NYPD officer, you bought your gun, it had your shield number engraved on it, and the NYPD kept track of what type of gun and what serial number was used by the officer with that shield number.)

I picked up some paper (S&W instruction sheets and promotional items). I didn’t buy any guns (which legally would have to be shipped to my FFL anyway), though there were a couple that tempted me. Bones, one of my friends in the association had a 638 that he offered me at what I think is a fairly good price. If I hadn’t already bought that Model 38…also, there’s another gun that I have my eye on.

(I’ve been telling people “I have Smith and Wesson tastes, but a Jennings Firearms budget.” I used to say “…a Taurus budget”, but someone pointed out to me that Taurus firearms are getting expensive.)

There are always some folks selling books as well. Generally, it isn’t their main focus, but incidental to the guns/parts/accessories on their table. Another one of my good friends had two Julian Hatcher books on his table that I think were original Samworths. But when I went back, he’d sold both of them to someone else. We did end up having a nice conversation about the Samworths, though: both of us were happy to find another SATPCO fan. (And he’s offered to sell me some of his surplus Samworths.)

Someone else was selling a copy of Elmer Keith’s Safari. For $1,000. But: this copy wasn’t just signed by Elmer Keith, it was signed by Elmer Keith to Bill Jordan, and included letters between the two of them. I can see the associational value justifying the extra $600 or so, if you’re a serious gun book crank.

(The same guy has another book I want, but the price is giving me the leaping fantods. And they weren’t on sale, but there was a guy there who had a couple of books on H.M. Pope to accompany his display: S&W target pistols that had been re-barrelled by Pope. Since I’m already interested in barrel making, that’s another rabbit hole to go down. Fortunately, those prices are more reasonable. Relatively speaking.)

I did get some good barbecue at Jim ‘N Nick’s in Concord. Thing is, it seems like it was more Alabama ‘que instead of Carolina ‘que. But it was still good. As was the chocolate cream pie. And the cheese biscuits were excellent: I’d buy a package of the mix, except shipping costs more than the mix itself. (I didn’t bring any back with me because I wasn’t sure I could fit it in my bags.)

Other than that, food was iffy. The hotel had an excellent free breakfast. Not a “continental breakfast”, but a real hot breakfast with an omelet and waffle station, eggs, biscuits and gravy, and etcetera. The hotel restaurant, on the other hand, didn’t have any wait staff: you had to order at the bar and a runner would bring the food out to you. And it honestly was not very good food.

Traditionally, there’s a “cocktail party” (which is really more like a full-blown dinner buffet, complete with prime rib carving station) and a sit-down banquet two nights during the symposium, so I didn’t go out those nights. My other meal out was at a Jason’s Deli with a bunch of my friends from the S&WCA so we could talk shop about some projects we’re working on.

I really didn’t do any touristy stuff. The convention runs Thursday through Saturday, and I spent all of that time gawking at guns and catching up with my friends. Sometimes there’s an excursion arranged as part of the Symposium, if there’s a point of interest nearby, but not in this case. Sunday was the only day I had free to explore. And I didn’t have a car. I looked into renting one just for Sunday, but that was so difficult I gave up the idea.

As it turns out, the hotel in Concord was almost right on top of Charlotte Motor Speedway. Apple Maps has it as two minutes (.5 miles) by car, and I could see the lights of the speedway from my (second floor) room. There is a tour offered, but it wasn’t available on that Sunday. Hendrick Motorsports is big in the area (the hotel is almost literally surrounded by various Hendrik auto dealerships). Their facility was also close to the hotel, and apparently used to offer tours: “Campus remains temporarily closed to the public.”

(It isn’t that I’m a huge NASCAR fan: I try to keep up with the sport as a background process, but not seeing the speedway or the Hendrik campus didn’t break my heart. On the other hand, I really enjoy going to obscure places even if they may not line up with my current interests: you never know when you’ll come out of a new place with another rabbit hole to go down.)

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a long Smith and Wesson related to-do list to work on. Only 363 days until the next Symposium.

Posted in Books, Cops, Food, Guns, NYPD, Smith and Wesson, Sports, Travel | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: June 3, 2022.

Friday, June 3rd, 2022

Brad Johnson, actor. Other credits include “The Outer Limits” (the 2000-ish revival), several appearances on “CSI: Original Recipe”, and “The Robinsons: Lost in Space”.

The last Howard Johnson’s. But there’s a quibble:

The Lake George, N.Y., location is closed, and the property is up for lease, listing agent Bill Moon of Exit Realty Empire Associates confirmed. However, Moon said, for the last several years, the restaurant wasn’t operated as a “traditional Howard Johnson’s experience.”
“It was a local lessee that was running a restaurant out of the Howard Johnson’s building,” he said.

Howard Johnson’s fried clams.

Apparently, there’s a Kindle edition of The Oranging of America and Other Stories by Max Apple. (The titular story is about Howard Johnson and his personal assistant. It is a fun collection. Affiliate link.)

Ten Restaurants That Changed America by Paul Freedman. HoJo’s was one of them.

The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen by Jacques Pépin. Mr. Pépin worked for HoJo’s in the early 1960s.

“Eat My Globe” interview with Mr. Pépin, which is notable for the following:

…But the dish that everybody loved was the fried clams from Howard Johnson’s.

Posted in Food, Kindleing, Obits, TV | 1 Comment »

NRA Annual Meeting day 3: show’s over, back on your heads.

Sunday, May 29th, 2022

The lens pen was from Trijicon. Yeah, like they need an endorsement from me, but consider this one anyway.

At the weird intersection of SF geekery and gun geekery:

The other thing I wanted from Speer/Federal/CCI, which I did go back and get:

Not that much new to report, really. As I mentioned yesterday, we used today to go back and re-visit various targets of opportunity.

I had a good conversation with the folks at XS Sights: I have ghost ring sights on my Marlin lever gun, and I want to set up my social shotgun the same way.

We also had a nice conversation with the husband and wife who run Gru-Bee scopes. Gru-Bee sells (among other things) a modern version of the old 4X “baby” Redfield scope. These look great on a Browning SA-22, and the eye relief is enough so I can actually get a good sight picture. I sense an order in the near future, good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.

The folks at Elite Tactical Systems are very nice, but I am a little frustrated with them. They make 7, 9, and 12 round magazines for the Glock 42. I thought the 9 and 12 rounders might be worth trying out: they had the 9, but did not have the 12 at the show. They did give me a card with a 20% discount code so I could order one online though. Except: the 7 and 12 round mags are out of stock online. The 9 is the only one that’s available. And the code expires June 1st, and there’s no backorder option. Sigh.

I see that I haven’t said much about food, other than the $14 bagels, coffee, and juice in the lobby. Breakfast has been pretty much catch as catch can. Lunch has been “what’s lunch?”.

We have had very good dinners, though, at all of the following places:

Tonight, since it is traditional as part of these affairs to have a good dinner on Sunday night: Rainbow Lodge.

Posted in Endorsements, Food, Guns | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 24, 2022.

Tuesday, May 24th, 2022

Simon Preston, organist.

Mr. Preston, who was admired as one of the most important English church musicians of his generation, was an archetypal product of a choral tradition that, with unstinting energy and an insatiable demand for high standards, he reinvigorated — and eventually moved beyond. His solo career took him to organ lofts across the world, and he recorded prolifically, including with the conductors Yehudi Menuhin in Handel, Seiji Ozawa in Poulenc and James Levine in Saint-Saëns.

…

But Mr. Preston, who maintained a vigorous solo schedule throughout that period, came to chafe at the tedious routine of playing and conducting regular services. He decided to leave the abbey and to concentrate on his freelance career, one that came to include more than a decade spent working with the Deutsche Grammophon label on the organ works of Bach, in whose more grandly scaled compositions he excelled.
“It was hard to imagine that anyone could have displayed the mighty Skinner instrument of St. Bartholomew’s Church, said to be the largest pipe organ in New York, more fully and effectively,” critic James R. Oestreich of The New York Times wrote in reviewing one of Mr. Preston’s many recitals in the city in 1992.

Noted:

While singing at King’s College, he trained under the organ scholar Hugh McLean, into whose prestigious former post he would move after studies at the Royal Academy of Music. He returned to King’s at an auspicious moment; the new organist and director of music, David Willcocks, was to markedly raise the stature of a choir now widely known for its Christmas broadcasts. Mr. Preston contributed an arrangement of the carol “I Saw Three Ships” that remains in festive use, at King’s and elsewhere.

Robert J. Vlasic, pickle guy. He was 96.

“We decided that pickles are a fun food,” Mr. Vlasic told The New York Times in 1974. “We decided we didn’t want to take ourselves or our business too seriously.”

Posted in Food, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Three things I’m kind of looking forward to.

Tuesday, May 3rd, 2022

1. The Bunk lies down on Broadway.

Wendell Pierce is ready for another run as Willy Loman.
The American actor, best known for his work in “The Wire,” first took on the titanic title role in “Death of a Salesman” in London in 2019, and even then he hungered to bring the performance to New York.

Rod Dreher and his family saw the London production, and he raved about it. This might actually be enough to get me to go to NYC. (Also, Mike the Musicologist and Andrew the Colossus of Roads were talking about Peter Luger on Saturday, and I’d like to take a shot at that.)

2.

(The Last Dangerous Visions explained, for those of my readers who are not SF fans.)

3. There’s a movie tentatively scheduled for February 2023. It sounds like trash, but fun trash.

Cocaine Bear follows an oddball group of cops, criminals, tourists and teens converging in a Georgia forest where a 500-pound apex predator has ingested a staggering amount of the white powder and goes on a coke-fueled rampage seeking more blow — and blood.

That’s right, a movie inspired by the true story of Cocaine Bear. How can you not be entertained?

Posted in Beef, Books, Food, Mammals, Movies, Theatre | Comments Closed

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