Fair food!

July 15th, 2021

The State Fair of Texas is coming. And with that, fair food!

KXAN has a rundown of the 32 semifinalists for the “Big Tex Choice Awards”.

It seems like there’s not a lot on a stick this year. But out of 19 “savory” dishes, I see three “deep fried”, three “fried”, and seven that include “fried” in the description but not the title.

Our Deep Fried I-35 is a deep-fried Texas road trip on a plate! We start out in Parker County, Texas, which is famous for its peaches. Next, we move down I-35 to West, Texas, where we stop and pick up a dozen of our favorite kolaches. We can never decide which type of kolaches we like more – sweet or savory – always such a dilemma. The only solution? Sweet AND Savory. Next, we head south to Dublin, Texas…famous for, you guessed it, Dr Pepper®. After a few hours of driving and a few hours of snacking on I-35 treats, we finally arrive in Austin, Texas, home of some of the best smoked brisket in the world. We combine these ingredients into a sweet and savory decadent tribute to the Texas road trip…the Deep Fried I-35! First, we fry up our kolache dough, leaving a divot in the center for our filling. We top our fried kolache with smoked beef brisket. Our peach juice combines with the Dr Pepper® to make a sweet and tangy BBQ glaze which we drizzle over our brisket kolache. We garnish this roadworthy concoction with peach slices and a sprinkling of powdered sugar. Voila, y’all!

That does sort of invoke I-35 for me. Specifically, it invokes a multi-car pileup on I-35 during rush hour.

This new Fair food comes from an old recipe that was a Louisiana favorite and brings your taste buds to life after just the first bite. We begin with a tried-and-true favorite, a slow smoked extra-large turkey leg. This juicy, tender leg is smoked extra-long to allow the meat to fall off the bone. After the smoked turkey is at its most tender, we stuff the middle with savory crawfish etouffee. The crawfish étouffée is also cooked a long time to bring the flavors of the “Cajun Trinity” to its fullest flavor. We serve with a side of rice, so you do not miss out on any of the amazing flavors of the sauce. Turkey Legs have never been so amazingly savory. 2021 is going to be the best of the best at the State Fair of Texas, and stuffed turkey legs will be leading the way.

Out of 13 “sweet” dishes, I count six that contain the words “deep fried”, three more that are just “fried”, and two more that do not use the word “fried” in the name, but are fried as part of the prep.

Deep Fried Halloween

Our trick-or-treat experience starts with a delicious large chewy pretzel that is dropped in the fryer. As it becomes golden brown, we quickly bathe it in candy corn syrup, followed by some rainbow sprinkles and powdered sugar. Now the fun begins – piping in orange and white buttercream icing, then stacking some of our most favorite Halloween candies, like M&M’s®, Reese Pieces, Mini-Twix®, Oreo cookie crumbles, and candy corn just to name a few. Topped with a delicious marshmallow whip cream and a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup as the crown, we put the final touches of Hershey’s chocolate syrup caramel sauce and candy corn drizzle on this beautiful desert.

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Happy Bastille Day!

July 14th, 2021

This is a little more off-the-cuff than usual, as I had to go see the bone guy this morning.

Did you know you can get casts in black? I didn’t know they offered a variety of colors.

I’m now very low speed, high drag, but with a tacticool cast. If I apply myself, I may even be able to rig some MOLLE attachment points to it.

Anyway, happy Bastille Day to y’all. Guzzle some wine and listen to “Revolutions” starting right about here. You can thank me later.

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Obit watch: July 13, 2021.

July 13th, 2021

Charlie Robinson, actor.

We have “Night Court” on sometimes on Saturday mornings when we’re getting ready for excursions. That was a swell show, and not just because of Harry Anderson or John Larroquette: everybody is great in it. Including Mr. Robinson.

Among other credits, he was in “Gray Lady Down”. (Which, sadly, we have watched recently, so no tribute night.)

Paul “Mr. Wonderful” Orndorff, professional wrestler.

He participated in the first WrestleMania at Madison Square Garden in March 1985 in a fight with Roddy Piper against Hulk Hogan and Mr. T., according to WWE. Mr. Hogan and Mr. T won the fight. The next year, Mr. Orndorff fought against Mr. Hogan in an event that drew more than 60,000 spectators to Canadian National Exhibition Stadium in Toronto, which Mr. Hogan won by disqualification.

Lawrence sent over a more local obit for Henry Parham.

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Administrative note.

July 12th, 2021

Saturday night, I broke my left wrist.

It was just about the stupidest accident possible: I was at the top of Lawrence’s stairs, lost my balance, and fell all the way to the bottom of the stairs. I gather it was quite spectacular to watch: as best as I can remember, it was somewhat spectacular to experience.

The broken wrist is the worst of it: I have a few bruises, but no head injuries and nothing else broken.

This is just to say that I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox…er, I mean, blogging might be a little slow while I deal with the fallout from this.

UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this IMPORTANT Information is ENCOURAGED, ESPECIALLY to COMPUTER BULLETIN BOARDS.

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Obit watch: July 12, 2021.

July 12th, 2021

Edwin Edwards, former governor of Louisiana.

In January 2011, Mr. Edwards was released from a federal prison in Oakdale, La., after serving more than eight years of a 10-year sentence for bribery and extortion by rigging Louisiana’s riverboat casino licensing process during his last term in office.
Six months later he married. And in the fall, he rode in an open convertible through cheering crowds waving Edwards-for-governor signs at an election-day barbecue. “As you know, they sent me to prison for life,” he told them. “But I came back with a wife.”
Before Mr. Edwards, no one had ever been elected to more than two terms as governor of Louisiana. Indeed, the state constitution prohibits more than two consecutive terms. But from 1972 to 1996, with a couple of four-year furloughs to stoke up his improbable comebacks, Mr. Edwards was the undisputed king of Baton Rouge, a Scripture-quoting, nonsmoking teetotaler who once considered life as a preacher.

Henry Parham. He served in the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion during D-Day.

Recognizing Mr. Parham’s service in remarks on the floor of the House of Representatives in June 2019, when the 75th anniversary of D-Day was commemorated, his congressman, Mike Doyle, Democrat of Pennsylvania, said, “He is believed to be the last surviving African American combat veteran from D-Day.”

…

His battalion hoisted large balloons to heights of up to 2,000 feet over Omaha and Utah beaches between D-Day and August 1944, carrying out the mission during the night hours so the balloons would not be spotted by incoming German planes. The balloons were tethered to the ground by cables fitted with small packets of explosive charges. German planes that became entangled in them were likely to be severely damaged or downed.
Mr. Parham’s section of the balloon battalion had reached Omaha Beach in the hours after the arrival of the first waves of infantrymen. (The other section was assigned to Utah Beach.) When the balloonists stepped off small boats, they witnessed a scene of carnage. The American forces, raked by German fire from high ground, had taken heavy casualties.
“We landed in water up to our necks,” Mr. Parham once told The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “Once we got there we were walking over dead Germans and Americans on the beach. Bullets were falling all around us.”
Mr. Parham told CNN in 2019: “I prayed to the Good Lord to save me. I did my duty. I did what I was supposed to do as an American.”

He was 99.

Thomas Cleary, noted translator and writer.

His books included “The Inner Teachings of Taoism” (1986), “Book of Serenity: One Hundred Zen Dialogues” (1991), “The Essential Koran: The Heart of Islam” (1993) and “The Counsels of Cormac: The Ancient Irish Guide to Leadership” (2004). Among the most popular was his version of “The Art of War” (1988), written by the Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu more than 2,000 years ago.

William Smith, prolific actor. He has 274 credits in IMDB, including the good “Hawaii 5-0”, “Rich Man, Poor Man”, “Darker Than Amber”, “Any Which Way You Can”, and “Kolchak: The Night Stalker”.

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Pointless trivia (suitable for use in schools).

July 9th, 2021

Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom is reportedly a fan of beer cheese. It is reported that she took some home with her after a visit to Lexington.

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Obit watch: July 9, 2021.

July 9th, 2021

Dicky Maegle.

Maegle was an all-American as a senior in the 1954 season, when he ran for 905 yards and 11 touchdowns and finished sixth in the balloting for the Heisman Trophy, presented annually to college football’s most outstanding player. The trophy was won that year by the Wisconsin back Alan Ameche (who went on to fame with the Baltimore Colts for scoring the winning touchdown in overtime in the storied 1958 N.F.L. championship game against the New York Giants).
The San Francisco 49ers drafted Maegle in the first round of the January 1955 N.F.L. draft. He was a 49er for five seasons, playing mostly at right safety and occasionally as a running back, then concluded his pro career with the 1960 Pittsburgh Steelers and the 1961 Dallas Cowboys. He intercepted 28 passes, running one of them back for a touchdown.
He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1979.

But he’s best remembered for something that happened in 1954 at the Cotton Bowl in Dallas:

Taking a handoff at Rice’s 5-yard line in the second quarter of its matchup with Alabama, Maegle cut to the right and raced down the sideline. When he passed the Alabama bench while crossing midfield, on his way to a virtually certain touchdown, the Crimson Tide fullback Tommy Lewis interrupted his rest period and, sans helmet, sprang onto the field and leveled Maegle with a blindside block at Alabama’s 42-yard line.
The referee ruled that Maegle was entitled to a 95-yard touchdown run. Rice, ranked No. 6 in the nation by The Associated Press, went on to a 28-6 victory over 13th-ranked Alabama.

Chick Vennera, one of those knock-around actors. Credits include “Thank God It’s Friday”, “The Milagro Beanfield War”, and a lot of TV, including “The Golden Girls” and voice work on “Animaniacs”.

James Kallstrom, FBI guy.

In his 27 years with the F.B.I., Mr. Kallstrom helped convict the bosses of New York City’s five Mafia families with cleverly concealed wiretaps and spiked meatballs. And he investigated the 1993 terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center, expanded the bureau’s surveillance purview to include cellular phones, and recovered a half-million dollars in diamond jewelry that had been stolen by a baggage handler at Kennedy International Airport in 1995 and that had belonged to Sarah, the duchess of York.
In the investigation of the crash of Flight 800, he became the face of the F.B.I. in daily briefings as he and other authorities sought to understand what caused the explosion that sent the jetliner plummeting into the waves off Long Island on July 17, 1996 — one of the deadliest aviation incidents in American history.

He may also be known to some folks as the guy who introduced episodes of “The F.B.I. Files”.

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Deep philosophical question.

July 8th, 2021

Fans were barred from the pandemic-postponed Tokyo Olympics that will open in two weeks, following a state of emergency issued on Thursday.
The ban was announced by the International Olympic Committee and Japanese organizers, reducing the games to a made-for-TV event.

Why are we still doing this?

(Yes, Lawrence, I know what your answer is: “M-O-N-E-Y!”)

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Obit watch: July 8, 2021.

July 8th, 2021

Noted for the hysterical record: four of the alleged six assassins of Haitian president Jovenel Moïse have been killed. Two are in custody.

Robert Downey Sr. Variety. THR.

Suzzanne Douglas, actress. She did some theater work:

Douglas starred in such productions as The Threepenny Opera opposite Sting, The Tap Dance Kid and It’s a Grand Night for Singing. Other theater credits included Arthur Laurent’s Hallelujah, Baby! — Douglas was the first African-American to play Dr. Bearing in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play — and Wit and Crowns, which won an Image Award for ensemble performance. She also starred in productions of Henry V, Julius by Design and Regina Taylor’s The Drowning Crow.

She also did some film (“How Stella Got Her Groove Back”, “School of Rock”, among others) and a lot of TV work.

Lawrence sent over a memo from the Burning in Hell Department: Ahmad Jibril. He headed the Palestinian terror group PFLP-GC:

Among the group’s attacks on Israeli soldiers and civilians were 1970’s bombing of Swissair Flight 330 that killed 47 people; a 1970 attack on an Israeli school bus that killed 12, most of them children; 1974’s Kiryat Shmona massacre of 16 people; and 1987’s ‘Night of the Gliders,’ in which members of the group flew into an Israeli base and killed six soldiers.

He was 83, and it sounds like he died of “natural causes”. (And not the “He was hit by one of those sword missiles fired from a drone, so naturally he died” sort of “natural causes”.)

Posted in Movies, Obits, Politics, Theatre | Comments Closed

Real estate watch.

July 8th, 2021

For those of you in the UK.

The asking price is £1,100,000 (which works out to about $1.5 million). But: five beds, three bathrooms, 2,954 square feet, a “utility room” and a cellar (that’d be great for your wine collection), plus “reception room”, “garden room”, and “dining room”.

And you can’t put a money value on the prestige of being able to say, “Yes, I live in the old Alan Turing place.”

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Obit watch: July 7, 2021.

July 7th, 2021

This is bizarre, and I think a little scary. It is also being covered elsewhere, but for the record: Jovenel Moïse, the president of Haiti, was assassinated over night in his home.

FotB RoadRich sent over an obit for Brad “Launchpad” Marzari from Plane and Pilot magazine. Mr. Marzari was a blogger and podcaster: he was killed when his plane crashed on approach to Skylark Field in Killeen over the weekend.

I didn’t know him, but he sounds like a pretty cool guy whose passing leaves a void in the world.

Posted in Obits, Planes | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: July 6, 2021.

July 6th, 2021

Richard Donner. THR. Variety.

I feel like he’s been getting the tributes he deserves, and don’t really have much to add to those. Other than: what a career.

Hash Halper. No, you never heard of him: this is one of those kind of obits the NYT does well.

Sometime around 2014, little hearts drawn in chalk mysteriously began appearing on the streets of downtown Manhattan. Some materialized in clusters on sidewalks, while others cascaded along blocks. The hearts inevitably faded away, but for New Yorkers who encountered them, they offered a respite from the harshness of city life.
At least that was the intention of their creator, a street artist named Hash Halper, who started drawing the hearts as a gesture of affection for a woman he was dating. The relationship didn’t last, but the hearts made him feel better, so he kept drawing them. Mr. Halper soon began spreading the healing properties of his hearts, calling himself New York Romantic.
“A heart makes you feel good when you’re not feeling good,” Mr. Halper told Channel 7’s “Eyewitness News” in 2018. “And a heart makes you feel great when you’re feeling great.”

…

Tall and shaggy-haired, Mr. Halper could be seen wearing stylish hats or a red suit covered in hearts while he planted himself on streets for hours, bringing his hearts into existence with pieces of pink, blue and yellow chalk and a swift swoop of his hand. Over time, he became something of a downtown folk hero, cherished for his ability to conjure up positivity with a humble shard of chalk.
Once, when he learned that a woman was having a rough time with her romantic life, he began chalking hearts outside her workplace; she met someone special a few weeks later.

But:

He grappled with sobriety. When he had jobs, he didn’t hold them for long. He was at times homeless and would sleep on the benches of Washington Square Park or the couches of friends. His family had paid his rent over the past year in an apartment on Broome Street that he shared with roommates.
“He didn’t tell people that he was troubled because it was dissonant with his public persona,” his brother Omkar Lewis said. “He was the heart guy, so he couldn’t reveal his problems to the world, because he was the guy carrying other people’s pain.”

…

Shortly before his death, Mr. Halper, who was also a painter, had been preparing for a solo exhibition at a venue on Hudson Street that would showcase his artwork. But, his family said, his paintings were destroyed during an altercation with someone who attacked him in his Lower East Side apartment. Rattled by the incident, he took to the streets and was seen two days later walking barefoot in SoHo.

According to his family, he jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge on June 11th. He was 41.

The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). If you live outside of the United States or are looking for other help, TVTropes has a good page of additional resources.

Posted in Art, Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 2, 2021.

July 2nd, 2021

John Erman, TV director. Credits include episodes of “Roots”, “Roots II: The Next Generation”, “The Outer Limits”, “Peyton Place”, “My Favorite Martian”, and one episode of a minor 1960s SF TV series.

NYT obit for Robert Sacchi.

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

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#69 in a series)

July 2nd, 2021

A corrupt Chicago alderman? Quel frommage!

Under a cloud for two years since her ward office was raided by federal agents, 34th Ward Ald. Carrie Austin was indicted on federal bribery charges Thursday along with her chief of staff.

…

Between them, they allegedly got new kitchen cabinets, granite countertops, bathroom tiling, sump pumps and an HVAC system for free or at a discount.

Remember, it was granite countertops that brought down Ray Nagin.

Austin, 72, was charged with one count of conspiring to use interstate facilities to promote bribery and other charges, according to prosecutors. She became the third sitting Chicago alderman currently under federal indictment and the second to face charges this year.

Sun-Times:

It also leaves the council’s two most senior members facing federal criminal charges. Ald. Edward M. Burke (14th) is the council’s longest-serving alderman and faces a 2019 racketeering indictment that accused him of using his position on the city council to steer business to his private law firm. Austin, appointed to the council in 1994, is second in seniority to Burke.
In late April, a federal grand jury also indicted Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson (11th), the nephew and grandson of Chicago’s two longest-serving mayors. Thompson faces charges involving what prosecutors say was a massive fraud scheme at a Bridgeport bank, Washington Federal Bank for Savings.

I had the Burke story, but I missed the Thompson indictment.

This is…interesting.

Told of Austin’s indictment, Ald. Roderick Sawyer (6th) said, “Oh, no. Her and Chester both? I have great relationships with both of them. Known them for way longer than I’ve been on the council. I wish nothing but the best for them. I hope she’s OK.”
Sawyer called the outspoken Austin a rare breed in politics who says what she thinks and never stabs anyone in the back.
“I love her candidness and her straight talk, if you will. She’s not gonna tell you something just to make you feel better. She’s gonna tell you the truth,” said Sawyer, son of former Mayor Eugene Sawyer.
The epitome of old-school Chicago politics, Austin didn’t hesitate to put her relatives and friends on the city payroll and made no apologies for it.
Sawyer said he respected that quality as well because, as he put it, “They got the job done.”

Perhaps the time has come for adult supervision in Chicago.

Posted in Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 1, 2021.

July 1st, 2021

As promised, Donald Rumsfeld: WP (through archive.is). NYT.

Posted in History, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

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