The Blog I'm Not Writing

The new line drawing is here!  The new line drawing is here! [1]

Scarletta Press‘s managing editor/idea guru Nora Evans came up with a wonderful idea to cap off the cover design of my book.  Instead of using the standard, black & white thumbnail photos of the author and artists she’ll have The Mighty Quinn’s illustrators, Aaron and Katie DeYoe, do line drawings of the author and artists, in the style of the book’s text illustrations.

I’ve always wanted to attain artist’s rendering status.  The Picasso-esque [2] sketch college roommate LMW drew of me ~ 30 years ago doesn’t count.

The picture will be something ala this style, without the spaghetti-flinging.

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Insert your own, favorite (and graceful) segue here.  ‘Cause I’m all out of ’em.

One of the most intricate, fascinating, and overlooked (IMHO) aspects of The Gun Thing ®  is the research into what happens during actual gunfights; i.e., real, live human beings shooting at one another, as opposed to dueling computer game avatars, one-shot-takedown cinematic secret agents, or politicians shooting off their mouths.

No matter what you think you think about the various proposals to have armed guards in every nook and cranny and orifice in America, it would be worthwhile to acquaint yourself with “Your Brain Under Fire,” (Time Magazine, January 28 issue). This article gives an overview of the science behind how your brain reacts when you are shot at, or when you shoot at someone.  It’s a fascinating read – a mere three pages of text, should only take ten minutes of your time.  Or twice that if you are a NASCAR fan or were home-schooled at the Michele Bachmann Academy of Historical Reading Comprehension [3] or are a regular viewer of Toddlers & Tiaras.

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Sitting on our counter is a delicious slice of Marionberry [4] goodness.  Not as in His royal badness, former DC mayor, Marion Barry

What’s on the counter is the remainder of a piece of Marionberry pie I hid in the freezer a couple of weeks ago (I wanted a taste of it before my son K used his I’m-returning-to-college-tomorrow excuse to finish it off).   Mere words cannot describe the berryliciousness of this treat, but since I’m not a fan of interpretive dance, language will have to suffice.  Yummers.

For the past x weeks we’ve been the beneficiaries of friend LAH’s project to cook her way through Rustic Fruit Desserts: Crumbles, Buckles, Cobblers, Pandowdies, and More, the cookbook from Portland’s legendary chef, restaurateur and James Beard Award winner, Cory Schreiber.  We’ve had fruit cobbler in the refrigerator, chocolate cake on the table, and more.  We’ve had cheesecake on the counter…but none in the boudoir.

Cheesecake in the boudoir

Believe it or not, Ripley, this particular segue will eventually make sense.

Televangelist Pat Robertson, arguably the first person to survive a partial brain abortion, has fought a lifelong battle with chronic AIM (ass-in-mouth) syndrome.  The unintentionally comical Robertson  can always be counted on to produce a bizarre brain boner during a slow news week.

Robertson’s face-palm worthy howlers have included attributing same sex attraction to evil spirits , earthquakes to voodoo,  tropical cyclones to legalized abortion , endorsing wife-beating and nuking the State Department .  The latest manifestation of his AIM comes in the form of his blaming “awful looking women” for marital monotony.

Which, of course, made me think of cheesecake in the boudoir.

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Please give me some good advice in your next letter. I promise not to follow it.
(Edna St. Vincent Millay, Letters)

As an adolescent growing up with politically conservative parents, I looked at friends’ copies of the LA Times for actual news reportage, and read the Orange County Register [5], the only newspaper in our household, for entertainment. Besides The Register’s editorial page, few of its regular features were more entertaining than The Worry Clinic, a syndicated advice column written by George Crane .

The Worry Clinic was a six days a week venture for Dr. Crane:  two days to worry about love and marriage, and one day each devoted to worrying about business, child-rearing, personality development, and what Crane called “mental hygiene.” (As Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Green noted, apparently Dr. Crane saved the seventh day so that he could worry himself, after worrying for everyone else the other six days.).

I don’t remember if The Register printed all of The Worry Clinic columns; I do remember they ran the ones that dealt with relationships and child-reading.  Dr. Crane, who somehow managed to receive several degrees from Northwestern University, liked to say that he learned most of what he needed to know working as a farm hand during summer vacations from high school and college. It showed.

Each of The Worry Clinic‘s columns was illustrated with a line drawing of a woman and/or a man, whose clothing and hairstyles were 1940-50s suburban caricatures.  No matter that it was the 1970s, few men sported hats, let alone fedoras, and women/housewives (the terms were synonymous in Dr. Crane’s world) seldom wore Betty Boop dresses and pearl necklaces when doing the dishes.

My parents clipped select TWC columns and scotch-taped them on that most passive-aggressive of family communication devices: the refrigerator door.  I penciled snarky comments next to the columns’ particularly flaming, WTF? passages, and enhanced the illustrations with moustaches and googly eyes.  I was never called on that vandalism editorializing by my parents, who therefore, I reasoned, never re-read the columns they’d taken the time to clip and post.  The postings themselves were evidence that my parents read TWC, and for different reasons than I, who used them as a horrifying/amusing, negative barometer of sorts. Indeed, Crane’s “advice” provided many of the formative, click moments that reinforced my growing feminist understanding of the world.

 There was certain egalitarianism to Crane’s counsel.  No matter if the advice seeker was man or woman, young or old – TWC advice, in a nutshell, [6] consisted of three tenets:

1.  If wives are not slavishly praising their husbands they are nagging their husbands.
There is no  in-between.
2. All marital/family discord is due to wives not serving their husbands
enough “cheesecake in the boudoir.”
3. See (2)

Your husband ridiculed your father’ s re-telling of his How I Single-handedly Won the Battle of Iwo Jima story during Christmas dinner, and now your parents aren’t speaking to you? You obviously aren’t serving your husband enough Cheesecake in the boudoir. 

Your children are doing C- work at school and smart-mouthing you at home?  The wife should be serving her mate more Cheesecake in the boudoir. 

Although you correct them at every opportunity, your in-laws refer to your disabled daughter as “that cutesy-wootsy Mongoloid?”  Hubby needs Cheesecake in the boudoir.

Ashamed by your failure to be a loving husband after you criticized your wife for developed a bleeding ulcer when your son returned from the Vietnam War a heroin-addicted, double amputee?   Your wife needs to serve you more Cheesecake in the boudoir.  

Boudoir-free Cheesecake

This crust-free version has way less calories and fat grams, and thus less guilt (pre- or post-feminist), than your typical cheesecake.

– ½ c sugar
– 2 T all purpose unbleached flour
– ½ T pure vanilla
-16 oz Neufchatel or nonfat cream cheese, softened
-2 whole eggs
-3 ounces sweet baking chocolate, melted. (optional). [7]

1. preheat oven to 325.  Put a kettle of water on to boil.
2. Combine sugar, flour, vanilla & cream cheese in a mixing bowl.  Use an electric beater on medium speed to mix the ingredients until they are well-blended.  Add eggs, one at a time, mixing well after each addition.
3. lightly oil or spray four 5 oz custard cups with neutral [8] cooking spray/oil.  Place cups in an 8″ or 9″ square baking pan.
4. poon cheesecake batter into the cups. Drizzle spoonfuls of the melted chocolate over the surface of the batter and use a toothpick or thin-bladed knife to make as many swirly chocolate designs as your foo-foo heart desires.
5. transfer pan to oven; add hot water to the pan, enough to come halfway up the sides of the cups.  Bake for 45 minutes.
6. Use oven mitts to oh-so-carefully remove the custard cups from what is now their very hot water bath.  The individual cheesecakes will be puffy, and will “fall” a bit as they cool.  When cool enough to handle, cover the cups and refrigerate them overnight, or at least for two hours.

Serve as is, or top with one or more of the following: slices of fresh berries, a dollop of lowfat sour cream or greek yogurt  whipped with vanilla or a dash of lemon juice, shavings of best quality dark chocolate, crushed peppermints or crumbled chocolate creme de menthe thins, (or for a real treat, Ghiradelli’s Peppermint Bark )

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Department of StartingTo Sound Like The Old Folks

All together now:  How can it be February, already?

‘Tis a relatively brief but important month, filled with several way-cool happenings, including my daughter’s birthday (number 17, yikes). February 1 has hosted its share of significant cultural events. I shall mention only the most important two:

* the 1954 birth of writer-producer-musician-actor Bill Mumy, beloved by aficionados of bad sci-fi TV as Lost In Space‘s Will Robinson.

* the 1964  attempt by Indiana Governor Mathew Walsh to ban “Louie Louie” for obscenity. Really.  The FBI started an investigation into the matter and concluded, THIRTY ONE MONTHS LATER, that they were “unable to interpret any of the wording in the record.”  Of course, adults tittering over the need for such an investigation was like blowing a dog whistle to horny American teenagers,[9] who spent hours listening to the Kingman’s famously garbled hit single, trying to figure out what the Feds thought they heard and what the rest of us thought we’d missed.  Many a youthful fantasy was shattered when kids finally bought the sheet music for the song and discovered there was not a whole lotta shakin’ going on.

In hindsight, the Your Tax Dollars At Work department should have scheduled J. Edgar Hoover for a 5 minute tutoring session with a middle school grammar teacher, who could have explained to the closeted, cross-dressing, racist, evidence-planting, Commie-baiter defender of American Values the difference between obscenity and unintelligibility.

I would have paid good money to watch those hijinks ensue.

Thanks for stopping by.  Au Vendredi!