The Menu

Coming out of a downtown cafe this evening a few minutes  after 6, I passed a man holding a mobile phone and asking someone on the other end: "Do you have on your menu a macaroni and cheese dish?"

Evelyn of Sahara

At one o'clock this warm and sunny afternoon I walked home from the Saturday farmer's market at a shopping center's parking lot, where I bought fresh Italian pasta for $8 from an old tie-dyed hippie and a thick bunch of pesto for $1 from Cambodian farmers. A mile and a half, maybe two mile walk.  Crossing a commercial district I bought three heads of garlic for the pesto ($1.27) from a small Chinese grocery that's been there for ages and where I usually ventured in the past whenever I needed dried mushrooms for soup, and that's going out of business any day now, the owner doesn't know when, only that he's trying sell his stock.   The place consisting of two adjacent stores is for rent.

The street runs one block away parallel to the subway line, which at that point runs over ground, as the cities lacked political muscle to force it underground when it was built.  I passed hundreds of single family homes, a couple of small apartment buildings, a whole gamut of architectures, some very beautiful houses, front yards, most of them well taken care of, many with flowers and tropical flora, narrow straight street lined with cars on both sides, I crossed the borders of three cities, and while the street name, Evelyn Avenue, doesn't change, the numbering system probably does (I forgot to check.)

And during all this walk, which took altogether 45 minutes, I saw only one person in the front yard, his back to me, watering his plants.  A car or two passed me, in the distant a bicyclist rode on a cross street and a young man wearing a yarmulka, also at a cross street, was returning home from a temple. A desert in the middle of the day.  Luckily or wisely I had purchased a drink named Honest Tea at the shopping center's drugstore before starting the journey.  I'm finishing it now.

When I finally turned left from Evelyn to catch a shortcut, about where the subway submerges underground, and reached the path that travels along the tracks, a woman appeared behind me engaged in a conversation on her mobile phone, a person who wasn't quite there either.

Life is...

Life is supposed to be like your penis 

   —simple, relaxed and hanging freely.

It’s the women who make it hard.

Witchcraft and Sorcery

NEWS ITEM, WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 14, 2011: 

A Saudi woman was beheaded after being convicted of practicing "witchcraft and sorcery," according to the Saudi Interior Ministry, at least the second such execution for sorcery this year.
The woman, Amina bint Abdulhalim Nassar, was executed in the northern Saudi province of al-Jawf on Monday.
A source close to the Saudi religious police told Arab newspaper al Hayat that authorities who searched Nassar's home found a book about witchcraft, 35 veils and glass bottles full of "an unknown liquid used for sorcery" among her possessions. According to reports, authorities said Nassar claimed to be a healer and would sell a veil and three bottles for 1500 riyals, or about $400.

A story and script idea, Saturday December 17, 2011.


A young American couple breaks up.  The man is distraught, heartbroken, the woman, as usual, doesn't care.  He travels to Saudi Arabia, and practices there what the Saudis consider "witchcraft and sourcery".  He is arrested and tried, sentenced to death by beheading.  The case gets wide coverage all over the world. The American ambassador issues a formal protest, Amnesty International protests, the case drags on.  The young man, in Saudi prison is unreachable, by his own choice.  He wants to die, and does not respond to the pleas of his family or his former fiancee.   In the end, the international brouhaha, the posturing by politicians and celebrities, comes to naught,  he is executed.

Good

"I'd rather be lucky than good", said the legendary New York Yankees pitcher Lefty Gomez. So would anyone, come to think of it. Being good and unlucky can be a curse, can it not? Luck trumps goodness every time.  Luck trumps ungoodness as well.  Who's ever good and lucky at the same time?

Fatal Production

At the end of film Fatal Attraction, the character played by Glen Close commits suicide.  Well, no (I haven't seen the film), she actually gets shot.   She gets shot because the preview audiences felt that the character must be punished. So, the ending scene was reworked and re-shot.

And that change was suggested by a powerful man in Hollywood, who recently passed away, named Joseph Farrell.  There were many other films that have been altered following tests using preview audiences.

"Joe Farrell has ruined more films than anybody in Hollywood," writer-director John Milius told the Los Angeles Times in 2006.

New Olympic Sport

They are called 'Chuckits', after the company that manufactures them and probably holds a patent.  They are ball launchers for dogs. Made of flexible plastic they can throw a ball from what I have seen as far as 200 feet.  You hold it above your head, swing it, and the ball, usually a tennis ball, flies.  The dog runs after it to fetch it.  (Not my dog!)

How about a new Olympic sport?  Without the dog, needless to say.  The launcher and the ball would have to be standardized, some reasonable rules invented, and off we go. Sportsmen of all ages, I imagine, could participate.