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That’s a wrap!

Michael 2 Comments

It’s been ages since I published a post in Thursday. I routinely did twice a week posts until I realized I just didn’t have that much to say – even to myself! So I dropped back to just Monday. Here that is. Many of you  know I also write a second blog in a second site ROAMcare.org. I was sitting here today working in new ideas for that one for next year when I thought to myself, between these two, I really did write some good stuff to wrap up the year. (If I say so myself) So, I invite you to wrap up your year with some of my favorite thoughts, from here and there.

Nov 9, ROAMcare

Today is only a day away

What do you do with a day that’s cloudy and gray? Don’t wait for tomorrow. Start a new day today! The sun that will come out tomorrow is already up there. Let the light in!

https://www.roamcare.org/post/today-is-only-a-day-away

Nov 16, ROAMcare

For the people who love us into being

From our earliest day there people molded us into the who we are now. They have been those who loved us into being. Thank the people who make us the who that we are.

https://www.roamcare.org/post/for-the-people-who-love-us-into-being

Nov 21, The Real Reality Show Blog

On being loved into being

Gratitude is not an exercise in saying thanks for what we have, for in truth we will not always have. We should be expressing thanks because we are, because even when we do not have, we always will be. Be grateful you have people who have loved you into being. Say thank you to them, because without them, you are not the who you are.

https://therealrealityshowblog.wordpress.com/2022/11/21/on-being-loved-into-being/

Dec 14, ROAMcare

If you could do it again…

If you could do it all over again, would you? Could you? You shouldn’t even have to ask if you take time now to review where you are in life and get ready to reset for the new year.

https://www.roamcare.org/post/if-you-could-do-it-again

Dec 21, ROAMcare

A Winter Carol

Christmas is just ahead and winter holds many holidays. It is when we remember something special shared with special people at a special time.

https://www.roamcare.org/post/a-winter-carol

Dec 26, The Real Reality Show Blog

Finding joy

We are responsible for our own happiness for if we rely solely on someone else to bring us joy, we always be living by their definition of happiness. It isn’t that the world gives us sorry. It’s that it isn’t the world’s job to make us happy. Happiness is out there. We take what the world gives us and make it something joyful.

https://therealrealityshowblog.wordpress.com/2022/12/26/finding-joy/

Dec 28, ROAMcare

The gift of gratitude

Didn’t get everything on your wish list? Fill that wish with something else. Gift yourself the gift of gratitude.

https://www.roamcare.org/post/the-gift-of-gratitude

Oh there were others, maybe more profound even, but these were my favorites from Thanksgiving on. Words that warmed me in some of the coldest days I’ve seen, and boy have I seen a lot of days!!

Happy New Year everybody. I’ll see you again in 2023.

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The sort of annual way too talked about Christmas movie controversy and why I’m right again

Michael 12 Comments

It’s the Monday after Thanksgiving and that can mean only one thing. Well it could mean billions and billions of things but if you’re here (and clearly you are) it means it’s time for this year’s My Favorite Christmas Movie post. If it’s my favorite why do we need to rehash this every year? Because, “I say my current favorite because like children there can be no real favorite among Christmas movies. The favorite is the one making you smile today or remember yesterday, the one encouraging a perfect alternative to an imperfect world and providing an escape from the ordinary.” –Me, 12/5/2019. One more thing. It’s the sort of annual because I missed a year here and there. Maybe more than here and there but I’ve done a lot of them!

This year I started watching Christmas movies early and I’ve already seen close to a dozen of them. And only one of them had “Christmas” in the title. And that got me wondering, how many movies have been released as Christmas movies and included the word Christmas in the title? There are plenty of movies and you often know from the title you are going to be in a holiday themed show, but in the grand scheme of things, precious few come right out and mention the word “Christmas” or even “Holiday” and leave no doubt. (Just so there is no doubt, Twentieth Century Fox and John McTierman could have shimmied out on that limb and title the 1988 disaster of a flick “Die Hard on Christmas Eve” and it still wouldn’t be a Christmas movie.)

“Miracle on 34th Street” could be about any inexplicable event happening in New York City in December but it’s pretty clear we’re talking Santa, and “Elf” could be about cookie bakers living in hollow trees but again Santa clarifies that point. The majority of Christmas movie titles themselves can be addressing almost anything. “Love, Actually” could be a garden variety romcom. “The Polar Express” might be an Agatha Christie mystery gone north. “Home Aline” could be about the plight of inner city latch key kids, “The Apartment” might be a prequel to “Rent,” and “Meet Me in St. Louis” a travelogue. Even my favorite from last year, which is still a favorite in any year, “Remember the Night” might be about the sinking of the Titanic if your memory is just a little faulty.

So I did some research and I tried to dig up all the Christmas movies with Christmas in the title. Naturally I mean theatrical releases, not Hallmark or Lifetime or any other movie mill cable network holiday offerings. It’s not an exhaustive list but a list until I became exhausted by it. (And you won’t find “Black Christmas” and “Christmas Evil” among them because even though they have Christmas in the title, see the Die Hard in Christmas Eve explanation above. And unfortunately you will not find “A Charlie Brown Christmas” among them either because it was released directly to television.)

  • A Christmas Carol (all 20-some versions)
  • A Christmas Story
  • A Christmas Story 2 (really, from 2012)
  • A Christmas to Remember (I didn’t)
  • A Muppet Christmas Carol
  • Christmas in Connecticut
  • Christmas in July
  • Christmas with the Kranks
  • National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation
  • The Nightmare Before Christmas
  • White Christmas

Almost all worthy to carry the word Christmas in their titles, there are a couple that stand out for me. “Christmas in Connecticut” stars Barbara Stanwyck and that’s never a bad thing, and “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” made moose head egg nog cups complete with antlers THE gift in the early 1990s. But of them all, my favorite Christmas movie with Christmas in the title has to be “White Christmas.” It has singing, dancing, comedy, romance, a gruff old guy and a gruffer old gal. It’s one of only two movies with Vera-Ellen that I can name off the top of my head (“On the Town” is the other), and it’s just plain fun. How can you not look at the final scene when the wall opens and the first snowfall of the year is blanketing the Vermont countryside and not smile about it.  

What was that I said? “The favorite is the one making you smile today or remember yesterday.” I’d say “White Christmas” does a little of both. 

Merry Christmas Movies everyone!

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There aren’t any post about Christmas movies but there are lots of articles on refreshing your enthusiasm for life and finding the motivation to push through the day everyday at ROAMcare.org. I’d be honored if you were to visit.

Next One Up

Michael Leave a comment

Sometime last week a friend mentioned she was going to pick up a copy of the new book by the the author of her favorite book. She was pretty sure of this favorite book because the memory cells in my brain perked up at the title and recognized it as one she has previously named as her favorite book. Of course in the conversation she had to ask what is my favorite book. Umm.

For as many books as I’ve read I couldn’t come up with a favorite then. I said I’d have to think about that. I’m still thinking about that. Can I single out a favorite or are books like children? All are my favorites. My own of course. Which is easy because I have only one. Children, that is. Err, child, that is. I really have given this some thought. Every time I think of one book that I like more than another, another comes to mind that I like more than that one.

I thought some more. Some books have a personal connection. I love Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods maybe because I’ve been on the Appalachian Trail. Not all if it though so maybe that’s why I like it because I can see the parts I’ve part and the parts I haven’t. Yet it doesn’t resonate with me as much as his Neither Here Nor There and I’ve never been to Europe. Any parts of it. I just finished Larry’s Kidney: Being the True Story of How I Found Myself in China With my Black Sheep Cousin and His Mail-Order Bride, Skirting the Law to Get Him a Transplant … and Save His Life by Daniel Asa Rose, a topic clearly near my heart (but lower and more toward the back and sides) and thought it was the most enjoyable memoir I ever read until I thought about Neil Simon’s Rewrites, and Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom, and Twelve Years a Slave by Solomon Northup, and Ernest Hemingway’s  A Move able Feast, and … you get the idea.

Then I said to myself I don’t know why I’m going nonfiction. Maybe because I just finished Larry’s Kidney I had life on my mind (in more ways than one), but I’m more apt to read fiction than anything else. That’s such a broad category. Not a category really. More a phylum. Maybe even a kingdom. And that shifted my thinking so fast I almost got mental whiplash. I’m not a liberal arts guy, I’m a scientist! Shouldn’t my favorite book be scientific? Can a scientific book even be read like a book or aren’t they all just references. I checked out my bookcase and found indeed lots of references. And among them a slim volume, Laughter: The Drug of Choice by Nicholas Hoesl, given and inscribed to me by the author. I hadn’t thought of that book in years and although seeing on the shelf didn’t jog many memories of the content it did of sitting with the author and trading manic medical memories. Does that make a favorite book, a personal copy being a very personal copy?

I thought of another slim volume, recently directly received from and inscribed by the author, The Woman in the Window by W D Fyfe. If that name is familiar you may have read his blog. You should also read his book. It’s a wonderful collection of short stories, none that end like you thought they would. And that set me off in another direction. Modern fiction.

LibraryTruth be told my most enjoyable reading comes from modern fiction. Not “literature.” Mystery, murder, intrigue, spying. My favorites authors are people like Sue Grafton, Lawrence Block, Lawrence Sanders, and Jonathan Kellerman who write books that never ended like you first (and sometimes second and third) thought they would. Could I find my favorite book amount those? Or do I go back a generation and consider a book famous for not ending as even the author thought, The Big Sleep? True. While working on the screenplay for the movie version, William Faulkner and Leigh Brackett couldn’t figure who murdered a particular character. They phoned Raymond Chandler, who said the answer was right there in his book. Later he returned their call to say he couldn’t figure out who killed that character either. Now there’s a whodunit!

Speaking of Faulkner, the Nobel, Pulitzer, and National Book Awards winner who I better know for his screenplays than his novels although his short story “A Rose for Emily” is a favorite. But is it the favorite?

Since we’re into more classics what about some of the classical classics? I have actually read the Divine Comedy (probably taking longer than Dante took to write it) and Don Quixote (definitely taking longer than Cervantes took to write it). I am glad I did but I wouldn’t go back and reread them. Still… Closer to our time I also can put Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables in my “have read and enjoyed” list although I more enjoyed Alexander Dumas’ The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. I suppose even in the 19th century my tastes run more to adventure. How adventurous does a favorite book have to be?

What about the works too long to be a short story but too short to be a novel. When I was working these were often my go to readers. A full shelf is devoted to the novella from Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s to Grisham’s Playing for Pizza. So is there a favorite among these? I really just don’t know.

What about the books I didn’t read but we’re read to me before I even knew that if enough words are put together in a particular order, they can hold such a power over me as to make me wonder some day what particular set of them might be my favorite. I’m sure I once counted Pat the Bunny by Dorothy Kunhardt as my favorite book, way back before I could count. Should it not be at least a favorite now?

I just don’t think I can come up with a favorite book. If I did I’d just be in danger of having it replaced by a new favorite whenever I read, reread, or remember something at a newer given time. I think instead my favorite book might be whatever one I’m reading now. Or maybe the one I just finished. Or better still, the next one up.

 

 

All Stuck Up

Michael 7 Comments

It’s time for me to come clean. I don’t have a favorite mayonnaise. Hellmann’s or Kraft is ok with me. I couldn’t tell the difference between a store brand and Duke’s. Whether regular, light, or olive oil based, I don’t care. Once I even made my own. For all the work involved, any advantage was lost on me. Sorry. Mayo is mayo and as long as it’s thick, white, and has a little tang it fills my mayo need.

On the other hand, every other condiment in the world has gone through extreme testing and I have strong preferences. These fall into two categories. Those I like and use and those I would rather do without. Rather do without. That doesn’t mean I don’t bend if I have to. If I’m at friends’ house and they are serving one of those other mustards at their cookout, I won’t turn my nose up and whip out my brand from a handy condiment belt. I’m not a snob. Except …

Except for honey and syrup. You might say that when it comes to honey and syrup, I’m pretty much stuck on what I like. I got to thinking about this because I just used the last of my honey this past Sunday when I made the glaze for the Easter ham and the last of my syrup on this morning’s breakfast pancakes.

(If you have a good memory you know in my last post I mentioned that we went out for our Easter dinner. That’s right, we did. But that didn’t stop me from baking a ham.)

(Some traditions die harder than others.)

(We now return you to your regularly scheduled blog post.)

I may have even mentioned before that I can be a honey and syrup snob. There aren’t specific brands of either that I have hitched my wagon to. Rather there are specific sources. Local sources. Local is always better. Think about last summer and the green beans you got at the farmers’ market versus those you got at your snow bound mega-mart’s produce section on your last shopping trip. I prefer the summer stock also, but that doesn’t stop me from eating green beans in January. But honey and syrup. Those are two different stories. If I can’t get local, I don’t get.

Fortunately, our local maple festival is this weekend. Those little plastic bottles of refined tree sap will soon fill my pantry! Honey isn’t a big seller at a maple festival. In fact, it’s not a seller at all at this one. Fortunately, right outside the park hosting the festival is a farm store where the natural nectar fills the shelves. So it looks like in one smooth motion I’ll be able to restore honey harmony and syrup snobbery to my kitchen.

And I, for one weekend, will be the most stuck up guy in the country.

 

Just Like Mom Used To Make

Michael Leave a comment

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when I ask where your favorite food comes from?  Now, what is the first thing that you think of when I ask where the best food comes from? Although not mutually exclusive, they are also often not consistent.

Often, though not always, a favorite food is home cooking. This makes sense since you are your best personal chef. If not you then your mom, dad, spouse, child, significant other, or, for some, your personal chef knows what you like, how you like it, and makes it often enough and well enough that you probably have a recipe file full of favorites. But the best stuff is partly the best stuff because it isn’t done at home. It’s something you can’t make, can’t get the ingredients for, can’t master the technique of, is something special, is a treat, is made, served and cleared by somebody else.

My favorite food is pizza. Any pizza, though I have a soft spot for pizza margherita. I’ll make it, I’ll buy it, I’ll fashion it out of foods that probably shouldn’t even go together. Chicken, bacon, spinach, and ricotta with garlic ranch dressing come to mind. There’s something quite comfortable about pizza. There must be. It’s managed to work its way into a few handfuls of posts, including one devoted entirely to pizza.

Where do I feel the best food comes from? Mind you, not the best single dish I ever had but in general the consistently best food I can count on having at any given time. It’s not at home. I’m pretty good but I can screw up a meal on a frighteningly regular basis. (And I really have to move that smoke detector a little further away from the kitchen. The neighbors always know when I’m working on a stir fry.) The best food I ever and always have is at a little neighborhood diner. In general I like diners. They also have appeared in more than a few posts here including one that combined diners and pizza (before this one). But this particular diner is the best of the bunch. The gravy is a cardiologist’s nightmare (or dream if he happens to need to make a couple of boat payments), and everything has the option to include an egg on it, including the pizza. I have never walked out of there without saying to myself, “I’d order that again” yet have never ordered the same thing twice. I’ve tried to order the Reuben omelet twice but it’s only available on the second Saturday of the month and I usually sleep in on that one.

What’s your favorite food choice? What’s the best food to you? Are they the same? Try answering those questions without thinking. Just jot down the first thing that comes to your mind. Then give it some thought. You might find yourself spending more time that you think over that one.

And you might find me having pizza for lunch today.

That’s what I think. Really. How ‘bout you?

Our New Favorite Sport

Michael Leave a comment

For another four years the Olympics are over.  Well, four for the Winter Games.  The summer Olympiad will be around in just a couple.  One of the best things about the Olympics, winter or summer, is that we get to see sports that we’d never see anywhere else.  There are some sports we suspect that are designed specifically for the Olympics.

Some competitions you aren’t going to see anywhere else without doing some hard digging.  How often do you get to see curling, the biathlon, or the skeleton.  In the summer you could look for a while and not find competitive badminton, judo, or canoe slalom on a Saturday afternoon sports show.   Our favorite new sport (or new to us) is the Snowboard Cross.

You all know Snowboard Cross.  It’s Motocross without the trail bike.  Six Snowboarders come down the mountain at the same time, over bumps and lifts, around bends and turns, and try not to wipe out thus sending themselves and half of the remaining field into the side barricades.  That part always happens.  We didn’t see one heat, men or women, that saw the entire field make it to the finish line standing up.  Now that’s competition!

We’re not quite sure how this got added to the Olympics.  There are other snowboard events that seem to tie in very well with the “faster, stronger, higher” image of the games.  For example, the Parallel Slalom pits two snowboarders together in a snowboard version of the Super-G.  Very civilized as far as “falling off a mountain” event can be.  Then there are some events like the half-pipe that are reminiscent of the junior high school boy’s dream of winning the Olympics by being the best skateboarder in the neighborhood.  But the Snowboard Cross, that’s the right cross between mayhem and competition that makes you sit on the edge of your seat simultaneously wondering, “How do they do that?” and “You’ve got to be nuts to do that.”

One of the local sports commentators moaned on the opening day of the Winter Games that they should do something about the sports choices and put in more competitions that people care about like hockey and get rid of the ones that nobody wants to see like curling.  What he really was saying is that he has no imagination and no respect for anybody who dares like something that he doesn’t.  If he was a true sports “expert” he’d have been in front of his television every broadcast minute and drunk in the variety of competitions presented at the Olympics and no place else.

Perhaps your favorite new sport isn’t one of the Olympic events either.  But maybe it’s influenced by what’s happened over the past two weeks. The luge reminds us of an old fashioned snow shovel race.  Sort of.  And there are lots of things you can do with a snow shovel besides ride on one.  There could be competitive snow throwing – how far, how high, high flat, and/or how even can you make your driveway lining snow piles.  Or maybe you’re more influenced by the bob sled.  Dig out that old Flexible Flyer, find three of your closest friends, and see how fast you slide off your roof, over the front lawn, across the street, through the neighbor’s freshly made snowman, and into his garage.

It’s hard to imagine that with so many different sports at the same time that one cannot be fascinated with the sport itself.  Is it something completely new – or new to you?  Is it something that reminds you of your youth?  We know we’ve been moved by what we’ve watched during these competitions.  They gave us the opportunity to look at other parts of the world and see what those people think of when they think “faster, stronger, higher.”  We’re certain that with an open mind even Mr. Cynical Sports Show Host would have discovered a new favorite sport.  Maybe even Snowboard Cross.  After all, how often can you find a junior high school boy’s fantasy come true complete with real gold medals?

Now, that’s what we think. Really. How ‘bout you?

 

Odds On Favorites

Michael 3 Comments

The PowerBall and MegaMillions jackpots have been up again.  The Super Bowl was just a little while ago and word has it that in Las Vegas you really could bet that the first score would be a safety.  Around here everybody is betting on whether the weather will ever rise above freezing again.  What do these things have in common?  They all have odds of winning, or in the case of the last one, not freezing.

Once upon a time we took statistics to determine odds and what’s significant and what isn’t.  In fact, He of We recalls an assignment that required the fledgling statistician to determine the odds of him or her passing the course.  That was cruel but the odds weren’t all that bad.

When the PowerBall people reconfigured the number of numbers available to draw, the odds of winning went from something like one in a gazillion to one in infinity.  Yet people still win.  That got us to thinking.  If you stop to think about what are the odds of something happening the odds are pretty good that you will end up with a headache.  Don’t even think of gambling.  Just think of life.  What are the odds you’ll get to work on time every day next week?  What are the odds that you won’t slip on an icy sidewalk?  What are the odds that you’re next paycheck will be in the bank before you next have to fill up your car’s gas tank?  Everything has a chance that it will or will not happen.  Not that it might or might not.  It either will or it will not.

That led us to a most profound revelation.  The odds of anything happening are 50/50.  Or even of not happening.  Everything in life boils down to a 1 in 2 chance.  Either it will or it won’t.  It doesn’t matter if some world class statistician determined the odds that the first play from scrimmage in the Super Bowl would result in a safety were 6,000 to 1 or that the odds that Finland will win the women’s hockey gold medal in the Olympics are 16 to 1. There’s a headache starting to happen.  There are only eight teams in the women’s tournament so shouldn’t the greatest odds be 8 to 1?  It doesn’t matter.  The real odds are 50/50.  Either they will win or they will lose.

So now that we’ve shared our profound revelation with you, you can bet with confidence on next year’s Super Bowl, this year’s Olympics, or tomorrow’s weather.  Everybody deserves the good odds and you can’t get much better than 50/50.  Actually even that can be reduced to some pretty good odds.  Either you will or you won’t.

Now, that’s what we think. Really. How ‘bout you?