"Yes it's me -Clark"
I love my little rat
Pink is everywhere! It’s not just pink ribbons for breast cancer awareness anymore. My two granddaughters have taken PINK to a whole new level.
We’ve had pink coats, pink hats, pink dresses, pink Uggs, pink socks, pink shoes, pink bows, pink tutu’s, pink chairs, pink princess costumes, pink wands, pink dishes, pink sippy cups, pink leotards, pink tights, pink ballet slippers, pink pajamas, pink nail polish, pink blankets, pink tea sets…well you get the pink picture! Last month we had a PINKALICIOUS birthday party where both girls wore pink chiffon dresses and Pinkerella and her ladies in waiting entertained about 25 kids ALL wearing pink. Most adults had pink on too! There was pink cotton candy, pink M & M’s, pink lollipops, pink gummy bears, pink lemonade, pink Prosecco, pink plates, pink napkins, pink balloons everywhere, and more pink than you could imagine.
NOW Halloween has turned into pink – no longer a garish orange and black celebration. Finley Ray and Francesca dressed for this candy-grabbing, mischief-making holiday in what eles? PINK!
Finley was a delicious Cotton Candy Fairy. My daughter’s friend, Michael, a very talented Broadway dresser, created this confection and it was truly pinkalicious. Francesca donned a furry pink Piggy outfit and she was as cute as a pretty little girl could be dressed as a Piglet.
- So happy to be Cotton Candy
"This is my Fairy wand"
I'm a pink and sweet Cotton Candy Fairy
This little Piggy had candy
Posted in Finley Ray, Frankie | Tagged Breast cancer awareness, Costume, Cotton candy, Finley Ray Clar, Finny, Francesca, Frankie, Halloween, Nail polish, Piglet, Pink, Pink ribbon, Prosecco | Leave a Comment »
I found this recipe in a magazine and thought it sounded delicious. It was part of an article by Donatella, renowned Italian chef in New York City. Tonight I invited my friend, Dilara to dinner and this is what I served.
2 bunches of asparagus or broccoli
1 # gemelli or fusilli
1/2 cup pine nuts
1 lb. bulk Italian sausage
1 medium onion, chopped
1/3 cup whipping cream
1 Tsp Kosher salt
1 cup whole milk ricotta
1/3 cup Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese
10 fresh basil leaves
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Bring large pot of water to boil with 1 TBS salt
Cut top 2 inches from asparagus stalks. Cook in boiling water for 3-4 minutes just until tender. Transfer to colander and run under cold water to stop cooking.
Bring asparagus water back to boiling. Add pasta and cook until just tender to bite. While pasta is cooking, spread pine nuts on baking sheet and bake until golden.
Meanwhile, in large skillet cook sausage and onion in until meat is browned and onion is tender. Drain fat. Add asparagus tips, all but 1 TBS pine nuts, the cream, and salt; simmer two minutes. When pasta is almost done, use a skimmer or long-handled strainer to transfer to skillet, reserve cooking water. Increase heat to high; toss until pasta is well-coated, about 30 seconds. Add Parmigiano and toss again. Transfer to platter; top with reserved pine nuts and basil. Serve with additional ricotta. Makes 6 servings
Posted in Tasty Tidbits Tuesday, We Called It Macaroni (Pasta recipes) | Tagged asparagus, Chef, Cook, Donatella, New York City, Parmigiano-Reggiano, Pine nut | Leave a Comment »
I’m calling Saturday’s snow storm a freak because I don’t think I’ve ever seen so much snow in October! I don’t know if the weathermen are referring to it as a freak event but I don’t remember snow storms in October.
Saturday’s snow storm brought us Sunday’s Sad Story: Murray went into Central Park today as did many of the City’s residents to observe the destruction, the wind and snow left in their wake.
New York City and Central Park really got hit by this storm. Apparently much of the damage was due to the fact that the trees still had their leaves which served as additional surface for the snow to collect. The snow was wet and heavy and well the pictures tell the story better than I can.
Toppled by snow
Branches Down – Leaves Fallen
A Maple Tree Falls on a Maple Leaf
Branches Snapped Off
Downed!
Uprooted!
Checking Out the Damage
“What happened?”
In plain sight
All photos courtesy of Murray Head
Posted in Fab Fotos, New York Speaks, Only in New York | Tagged October 29th snow storm | Leave a Comment »
This past Thursday would have been Emily Post‘s 139th birthday! In honor of the occasion, the website, Mental Floss posted 10 tips and admonitions from that great arbiter of appropriate behavior. These 10 items are interesting although probably more suitable to life in the mid-1960’s!
- On Eating Corn on the Cob: “To attach the corn on the cob with as little ferocity as possible is perhaps the only direction to be given, and the only maxim to bear in mind when eating this pleasant-to-taste but not-very-manageable vegetable is to eat it as neatly as possible. The real thing to avoid is too much buttering and greedy eating.
- On Proper Attire for Dates: ” It’s always better to be under-than over-dressed. Should your date be dressed for bowling and you are in a cocktail dress, excuse yourself for 10 minutes-no more-and change into something more casual.
- On the Behavior of an Engaged Couple: It’s unnecessary to state that an engaged man show no marked interest in other women.
- On Greeting Guests Before A Wedding: It is proper to smile and bow slightly to people you know, and even to speak briefly and quietly to a friend if they are sitting next to you. However, if among strangers, you should just sit quietly till the procession starts.
- On Refusing to Dance: Refusing to dance with one man and then immediately dancing with another is an open affront to the first one – excusable only if he was intoxicated or so offensive that the affront was justifiable.
- On Dressing for an Audience with the Pope: The rules of dress for visitors to the Pope are not so strict as they once were. But even now for a private or special audience, men usually wear traditional evening dress with tails or sack coat and women long-sleeved black dresses with a veil over their hair. No one may wear more than the most functional jewelry.
- On Women Dining Together: When several women dine together, the problem of the check is one that can concern to and confusion among the waiters, the nearby diners and the women themselves. Women are so seldom able to separate the check into several parts with grace and speed that the cartoon of feminine heads clustered around the waiter’s tab, captioned, “Now Ethel, you had the tomato surprise.”, is all familiar to us.
- On Refusing Wine: If you do wish wine, it is best because it is the least conspicuous to allow a little wine to be poured into your glass. Unless your host happens to be looking at your glass when the wine is poured, he will not know later on that your almost empty glass was never filled. On the other hand if he does notice, he could not feel that much wine was wasted.
- On Eye Makeup: Heavily made up eyes belong only on the stage or in the chorus line.
- On the Similarities Between Being Witty and Opium Addiction:
“In great danger of making enemies is the man or woman of brilliant wit. Sharp wit tends to produce a feeling of mistrust even while it stimulates. Furthermore, the applause that follows every witty sally becomes in time breath to the nostrils, and perfectly well-intentioned people who mean to say nothing unkind in the flash of a second ‘see a point’ and in the next second score it with no more power to resist than a drug addict has to refuse a dose put into his hand.”
I paraphrased some of her 10 Tips in an effort to streamline the post.
- The Polite Glass of Wine
Posted in Thursday's Top Ten | Tagged Clothing, Emily Post, Mental Floss, People, Pope, Shopping, Thursday, Women | 2 Comments »
Roman Polanski
Two nights, two movies back to back !
It was HYSTERICAL – CARNAGE (spoiler alert)
With the title CARNAGE, you don’t exactly expect to howl throughout the movie. However, that’s what happened as the audience roared, laughed, snickered and giggled all the way through to the credits. Roman Polanski‘s latest film is a not- quite-dark adaptation of a darkly humorous play. Actually, instead of the black farce is was meant to be, I found it to be more light gray.
Fifteen minutes into the movie, I thought I was watching a comedic version of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolfe? . I’m not sure it was meant to be quite that funny but it was. I wondered if it was hysterical because the characters were more like caricatures? Maybe, but for that matter, Martha and George caricatures. No one laughed out loud watching Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton turn a social evening into a knock-down, drag-out verbal battle waged throughout the night.
Shot in the style of a Woody Allen film, four people are figuratively locked in the Brooklyn living room of Penelope (Jodie Foster) and Michael (John C. Reilly) Longstreet, the parents of Ethan. Presumably an amiable meeting is to take place between Nancy and Alan, the parents of Zachary who attacked Ethan and disfigured him by knocking out some teeth. These graphic descriptive accusations are sharp retorts from the horrified Penelope. She is just so shocked by the parenting skills or lack thereof of Nancy (Kate Winslet) and Alan (Christoph Waltz). Nancy and Alan just want to avoid a lawsuit and get the hell out of there! NOT an easy task ! Although they make it out the door a couple of times and even get as far as the elevator, they cannot leave. They are repeatedly pulled back into the web of guilt woven relentlessly by Penelope.
Jodie Foster was well-cast as the uptight, self-righteous, know-it-all Bohemian mother hen. She is so brittle, you’re sure she will crack and crumble the next time she tightly wraps her arms around herself. She was believable as Penelope up to a point. However, by the end of the movie, Jodie is shrieking like a banshee with her face contorted like an appopletic lunatic. I blame Mr. Polanski for this over-the-top performance. A shame, because prior to this melt-down, Penelope and her shoulds were amusing.
Kate Wynslet delivered a superb performance as the resigned wife of a rude, self-involved attorney a la Betty Draper (Mad Men), right up to the blonde French twist hair-do. The audience roared when the prim and properly groomed Nancy tosses her cookies onto the coffee table and all over Penny’s precious Oskar Kokoschka book – OH the horror of it all!!
The films best lines were all Alan’s, with his omnipresent cell phone. After the 15th annoying ring, I lost count. A rude, crude misogynist, bored with his wife, his life and certainly this ridiculous charade of meeting. The cobbler doesn’t do much to assuage his ennui, but the single malt scotch is right on.
Michael morphs from Mr. Nice Guy into a blustering insensitive boor who openly admits to freeing or murdering (depends on who’s speaking) his daughter’s hamster. I felt the transition was not clear or obvious, again this is the work of the director.
And the hamster lived happily ever after!
I was going to comment on It was Historical – A Dangerous Method but this post is already long and it’s after midnight, so check back in a day or two!
Related articles
- New Clip from Roman Polanski’s CARNAGE (collider.com)
Posted in From My Point of View - Personal commentary on Movies and Books | Tagged Christoph Waltz, Jodie Foster, John C Reilly, Kate Winslet, Oskar Kokoschka, Roman Polanski, Woody Allen | Leave a Comment »
Everyone knows the colors of Autumn are glorious. Trips through New England are annual pilgrimage for hundreds, maybe thousands of people. Here in New York City, the weather is warmer longer and we are south of the New England states. The leaves are finally turning in the park and the season’s last flowers are in full bloom. Take a look!
A Bee Bends Over
Yellow Daisies of Autumn
Carpet of Color in Central Park
Posted in Amuse-bouche du jour | Tagged Amuse-bouche, New England, New York City | Leave a Comment »
Contagion is what happens when the wrong pig meets up with the wrong bat.
Sitting at a bar, you reach into the bowl of peanuts, a waiter picks up an empty glass, the school nurse takes a young boy’s temperature…all these and more seemingly innocent and every day occurrences are caught on camera and through the genius of editing, the lens lingers ever so slightly longer than normal. And there you have it; the path of a rapid, virulent, super bug virus as it swiftly travels along the road paved with human touch. We don’t realize how much of what we do, and what we touch affects other people until something like this heretofore undiscovered and unnamed virus begins its deadly trip around the world.
The movie moves forward while flashback snippets in the form of video surveillance camera footage step backward and show us just how Beth (Gwyneth Paltrow) became patient zero and set off an outbreak of MEV-1 and a pandemic nightmare. The portentous device of posting the day and date timeline on the screen brings the horror of how quickly a virus can multiply and spread exponentially, decimating the huge populations of such cities like, Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis, and more.
Director Steven Soderberg brings his genius of fast-moving, everything-happening-at-once style he used so effectively in Traffic to this his latest work. There’s no grandstanding, no spiritual or religious overtones to wring out your emotions. No, this film plays it straight and factual. We are terrified, horrified and shaken, but not because we’ve been exposed to (no pun intended) to half-dead zombies stumbling across the screen. Instead, the camera pans through a deserted airport, sweeps over trash littered streets and lines of desperate citizens standing in line for government hand-outs of food.
The real heroes in this movie are intelligent government employees and level-headed scientists. Matt Damon gives a fine performance as the cuckolded husband of Beth, his best moment is at the hospital when he fails to comprehend the fact that his wife is dead. Kate Winslet delivers a solid performance as the field agent who gets sent out to Minnesota to head up government disaster containment.
By far in my opinion, Jude Law was the outstanding star in the movie. It was hard to believe that the scuzzy guy with the bad complexion and rotten teeth was really Jude Law. Playing a disgruntled left winged blogger, he incites the masses with his inflammatory, accusatory diatribes against the CDC and the pharmaceutical companies. Conspiracy theories are full blown!
This movie is certainly worth the price of admission. It’s a brilliantly directed film dealing with a terrifyingly grim subject, and one that the audience quickly realizes is all to close to reality. With SARS, H1N1, AIDS and ebola and ecoli outbreaks in our recent past, this movie resurrects the fear of contagion and births new concerns about biological warfare…and well it should.
SARS Virus
Posted in From My Point of View - Personal commentary on Movies and Books | Tagged AIDS, Contagion, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jude Law, Kate Winslet, Los Angeles, Matt Damon, Severe acute respiratory syndrome, Steven Soderbergh | 3 Comments »
It’s a sunny Sunday in October, one of those peculiar days in that time of the year when it’s warmer outside than it is in the house. I feel like I have to open the windows to let some warm air in. The angle of the sun is just so warming, I wish I was sitting in the back yard instead of the cold living room. Peter is replacing some of the screens in the doors with storm glass and that for sure is a sign summer is over!
1. The Morning Glories are getting really scraggly and dying, and pots of purple, rusty red, orange and yellow mums are omnipresent on porches all over town.
2. We made our seasonal pilgrimage to Delicious Orchards, loading up on apples and cider donuts. If this were summer, we’d be at Matt’s buying corn and tomatoes.
3. Hard as it might be to believe, I have packed away my flip-flops and even my Tevas, not sure how my feet are going to react to real shoes.
4. Somewhere between Labor Day and Columbus Day, the urge to take the crock pot out overcomes me and I begin to think about Hearty Beef Minestrone, Chilli, and One Pot Chicken. Slow cooked meals are a hallmark of Autumn.
5. The air conditioner units are out of the windows and put into storage, the door-draft snakes are out of storage and the lawn furniture is cleaned and ready to store for the winter.
Mum's the Word!
Related articles
- Crock Pots to the Rescue! (oceanfulloflemons.wordpress.com)
Posted in BY THE WAY, Ha-P 2 B in OG | Tagged Air conditioner, Broth, Chicken, Columbus Day, Cooking, Home, Labor Day, Slow cooker | 1 Comment »
-
Recent Posts
- T T T April 7, 2024
- Deruta-Ceramics in Medieval Times July 21, 2019
- ASSISI-Born in Poverty-Rich in Tourism July 20, 2019
- Buongiorno and Benvenuto July 11, 2019
- Follow Pbenjay's Blog on WordPress.com
myTaste
Facebook icon
Find me on FB
Bill Ding
Bill Ding and his band of clowns are the security patrol for this blog site. He is a favorite toy from the 50*s. By the way sometimes a blog is just an ego-maniacal stream of conscience.
Categories
- 100 Word Challenge
- Amuse-bouche du jour
- BY THE WAY
- Conspiracy Theory Wednesday
- Everyday Food
- Fab Fotos
- FAMILY & FRIENDS
- Finley Ray
- Frankie
- Friends
- From My Point of View – Personal commentary on Movies and Books
- Ha-P 2 B in OG
- HWSNBN (A Political State of Mind)
- I Scream For Ice Cream
- Marthaspeak
- Mental Health Monday
- New York Speaks
- Nick & Nora and Flora & Fauna
- Obscure Origins of Common and Not So Common Phrases
- Only in New York
- Peter Coddles
- Six Word Memoirs
- Smooth or Crunchy
- Tasty Tidbits Tuesday
- Thursday's Top Ten
- Travel-Where in the World are Peterlori?
- Uncategorized
- We Called It Macaroni (Pasta recipes)
Pbenjay's Blog 
It was Historical – A Dangerous Method
October 28, 2011 by pbenjay
Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung
In the opening scene of A Dangerous Method , we see a young woman screaming and fighting, desperately trying to escape the restraints of two men. The carriage pulls up to a large building set in the beautiful landscape of Switzerland and she is dragged into the psychiatric hospital of Dr. Carl Jung.
As the movie unfolds, we are witness to both the evolution of a burgeoning science as well as the growing relationship between Jung and Freud and Jung and Sabina (Keira Knightly). At times, it was difficult to discern if the movie was a drama about an illicit love affair, the inner turmoil wrought on a physician who crossed a line or a historical pseudo-documentary about the struggle to get psychiatry recognized as a viable means to cure mental illness.
When a movie can’t decide which genre it is, it’s usually in the purgatory between the two. I didn’t love the movie: It was slow-moving, quiet, and fairly dry. It’s not that I wanted to see psychotic scenes such as there was in the movie, Quills. No fortunately we were spared the fascination with excrement and masturbation.
In my opinion, the best part of the movie was watching Keira Knightly portray a severely mentally disturbed woman. Sabina’s illness manifested itself in violent bodily contortions, grinding teeth, chin jutted out, eyes rolling wildly. There have been some reviewers who called her performance over-the-top, however, I think Keira was extremely compelling. And as her treatment progressed, she deftly portrayed a woman emerging from the depths of despair and depression to an articulate student of psychiatry, only to become a renowned psychiatrist in her own right years later.
Viggo Mortensen played a somewhat arrogant Freud, stubborn and rigid in his beliefs, very well. Michael Fassbender portrayed the elegant Carl Jung equally as well.
If you like period movies, this one is shot accurately and beautifully. As for historical facts, we are allowed to peek into the lives of the two greatest psychiatrists of the 20th Century. Perhaps to add some spice to the movie (sex sells anything, they say), you also get to be a bit of a voyeur as the affair between Jung and Sabina plays out. Unfortunately or fortunately, the spice is not so much in the sex but in S&M foreplay. Not quite titillating enough to be steamy but replete with historical facts, the movie, overall, is somewhat entertaining and adds another dimension in David Cronenberg’s exploration of the human mind.
Related articles
Rate this:
Posted in From My Point of View - Personal commentary on Movies and Books | Leave a Comment »