FOOD AND FILM DAY

Today, I will summarize two more double-bills I saw this weekend, plus a couple of meals.  To start, from the New York Times this morning:

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  Bill Gates pursued women who worked for him, people with direct knowledge of the matter told The Times. Last year, he left Microsoft’s board during an inquiry into a prior affair, The Wall Street Journal reported.“
• "If you are not vaccinated, you are not safe,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the C.D.C. director, said yesterday. 

About the first statement, now you know the reason for the divorce.  That photo is with Ann Winblad as just one.  

The second?  The CDC again confused the nation.  Suggesting that those who got safely vaccinated can now avoid wearing masks, just with the admonition that you are not safe if not vaccinated, has cause a turmoil.  Go to a shopping center today and you will be able to get into some stores and not in others without a mask.  The honor system of mask wearing just does not work in the USA when too many have not yet and will not get vaccinated.  Plus that asymptomatic problem.  Today, perhaps a third of the nation might be safely immune.  Do you think all the others will continue to wear masks?  Plus, it appears now that children will not be vaccinated until next year.  Thus, all families with them will continue to be vulnerable.

The White House seems a bit too afraid that any kind of nationalized vaccine passport would be some kind of serious threat to personal freedoms.  We have long lived with international travel passports and driver's licenses.  What's the big deal with another one to deal with a deadly pandemic?  Better yet, all three of them can now possibly be combined into an electronic version.

I generally have a weekly posting on my cuisine and viewing entertainment.  Today, let me start with the second of the triple crown, the Preakness Stakes, which was held at Pimlico in Baltimore on Saturday.  The Mint Julep is the beverage of the Kentucky Derby.  The Preakness features the Black-Eyed Susan, so named because that is the state flower of Maryland.  While the winner of the Derby gets a blanket of roses, the Preakness victor Rombauer got Black-Eyed Susans.

This drink mixture keeps evolving:  

The current official Preakness recipe calls for vodka, bourbon, orange juice and sour mix, garnished with an orange and a cherry. 

I had all the above, except for the cherry, and I wasn't about to buy a whole bottle just for one.  The sour mix is just a mixture of citruses.  Orange curaçao is Triple Sec, and orange is the dominant citrus in this drink.

My meal itself was a particularly healthy salad.  Note in the background is Steve Kornacki, who you will remember as a highlight of the presidential election campaign.  NBC televised the Preakness, so he now provided all that information you need to better appreciate what was happening at the Pimlico track.

I rarely show my breakfasts because I do very little enhancement.  But this is one:

Did I consume all of that ?  Nope.

Another meal this weekend was artichoke with cheeses, truffle foie gras pate, croissant and a lot of vegetables:

About my TV viewing, this weekend I saw two more double-bills.  I've featured director Ed Wood several times in the past, and Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959--this is the entire 1 hour 18 minute movie in glorious black and white) has regularly been mentioned as the worst movie ever made.  Rotten Tomatoes gave it 68/45 ratings, and mumbled something like it was so bad it was good.  How can  you go wrong with Bela Lugosi, Vampira (of TV hosting fame) and wrester Tor Johnson, with narration by Criswel?  

The accompanying partner film was a table reading of Plan 9 from Outer Space.  Not sure if you'll ever get a chance to see this spoof (actually, found out that it is streaming on HBO Max), for it was a special presentation by TCM, an airing of SF Sketchfest's 2021 version featuring people like Bob Odenkirk, Bobcat Goldthwait, Janet Varney, Laraine Newman and an impressive cast of other comedians.  A nice rendering.

The first of the second double bill came last night from Netflix, and not only were they totally unrelated, you can't find two more so different.  Oxygen (2021, Rotten Tomatoes: 89/78), a French production, worried me because it featured just one actress stuck in a life pod of some kind, the type you generally see on long space journeys.  I'm a bit claustrophobic, but it turns out that my mind says I'm watching the program in a safe room and there is no need to be so affected.  Full of symbolism, high tech, mystery and intrigue, well worth your time.  I don't want to say much more except to hint about cloning and  a virus pandemic with 100% mortality rate.

The second film on TCM was made by a Japanese crew in 1984 about Antoni Gaudi, that famous Spanish architect remembered for the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, that artistic monstrosity of a Roman Catholic church which was begun in 1882 and is not yet finished.  Rotten Tomatoes gave it 100/75 ratings.  Strange film with weird music ideal for exploring a giant underground cavern.  That 100 rating is something special, but the 75 audience rating indicates this is not for everyone.  I particularly identified with it after visiting that city.  Read about my true adventure on flights from Delhi to Munich to Barcelona.  This posting featured Gaudi.

As this is also food day, watch this video on my kind of cake:

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