July 30, 2017

Girls Trip was fun, a good summer movie. Tiffany Haddish as Dina made it special.



By Dawn's Early Light and Agenda for Murder are two Columbos on tonight. They each won an Emmy for Patrick McGoohan. DVR was set.

July 29, 2017

Davy's off of Rte 80, Taylor Ham and egg on the way, Chili Dog on the return.



Golf Trip was good, going to the driving range before the trip paid off.



Course bar had Flying Monkey's Smashbomb Atomic IPA.



Twilight Zone pinball too.



Cards at night included Indian Poker.



Sunset over the course.



Side trip to Lake Hopatcong.

July 25, 2017

The Searchers on demand. Had never seen it. Love the the buttes and spires of Monument Valley.



Also on demand, House of Women. Barbara Nichols is great.

July 24, 2017

Perfect score !



Getting in gear for golf trip. Hit 120 balls at a driving range.



Schaefer 12 pack was $8.99, couldn't resist.

July 23, 2017

Perfect score !



Nighthawks by Edward Hopper at the Art Institute of Chicago.



Hopper: "[Nighthawks] was suggested by a restaurant on Greenwich Avenue where two streets meet. Nighthawks seems to be the way I think of a night street.
Question: Lonely and empty?
Hopper: I didn't see it as particularly lonely. I simplified the scene a great deal and made the restaurant bigger. Unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city." - quoted in Katharine Kuh, The Artist's' Voice: Talks with Seventeen Modern Artists, p. 134



Matthew's Seafood- Ocean Beach, Fire Island, NY.



$70 win, $95 for the weekend.



Bart: Nights.I wake up sometimes. It's as if none of it really happened, as if nothing were real anymore.
Laurie: Next time you wake up, Bart, look over at me lying there beside you. I'm yours and I'm real.

July 22, 2017

Ocean Beach, Fire Island.



Dock the boat, eat.



Fire Island Beer.



$25 win !



Restaurant Week starts tomorrow. Scarpetta is on my radar.

From Italy Magazine: Fare la scarpetta is a phrase in the Italian language that’s close to the heart of everyone who has enjoyed a delicious plate of pasta with sauce. Meaning “make the little shoe,” it refers to the small piece of bread used to mop up the last of the sauce on your plate.

This end to a meal ritual is vastly popular all over Italy; however, where it originates is still open to debate. There’s one theory that the practice began in Venice, though bread wasn’t usually served with pasta in northern Italy, whereas it was in the south of the country, therefore it is implausible to assume it originated there.

In his book about medieval eating habits, Fabrizio Vanni proposes that the act took place following the introduction of tomatoes to the Italian diet back in the late 16th century. Before this time sauces tended to be thicker and more robust; with the introduction of the tomato, sauces became lighter and therefore required mopping up.

Another suggestion regarding the origin of la scarpetta is that back in a time when wasting food was frowned upon, the bread merely became a tool to be used much like cutlery.

A Calabrese friend of mine who tells me the phrase has its origins in Southern dialect prefers to have a more romantic notion regarding la scarpetta. He is convinced it stems from the heart of cucina povera (poor cuisine), from a time when people were literally so hungry they’d have eaten the soles of their shoes. He says when you are unsure when you’ll eat next, it made sense to mop up every last drop of sauce.

As with many Italian expressions, the reasoning behind the phrase is visual: during the practice of sweeping the bread across the plate the finger becomes the leg that pushes the bread which becomes the shoe. It’s not only an essential part of an Italian meal, but it is seen as a way to extend the pleasure of the repast.

July 20, 2017

Perfect score !



American Gothic by Grant Wood.The figures were modeled by Wood's sister, Nan Wood Graham, and Wood and Graham's dentist, Dr. Byron McKeeby. The small white house was built in the Carpenter Gothic architectural style.



Close-up

July 17, 2017

Gauguin exhibit at the Art Institute of Chicago. He asked that the ceramic Oviri be placed on his grave.



The Tribune Tower has famous building fragments embedded in the walls.



Giordano's Deep Dish Pizza was delicious. 40 minute wait, so you know it is made fresh.

July 16, 2017

Sue the T-Rex at the Field Museum. Special Dino Beer available at the Bistro.



Navy Pier was good, puts the NYC South Street Seaport to shame.



Art Institute of Chicago: Magritte and Picasso.



Chicago skyline, they love their architects there.

July 9, 2017

Perfect score !

July 5, 2017

Went to a New Zealand place near the Seaport, Nelson Blue. Food was good, $5 beers and a special July 4th menu.



It is across the street from an old favorite: Jeremy's



Tainers to go and hanging outside was an old Friday tradition.

July 4, 2017

Happy July 4th !



Reading begets reading, now I have to read this Burr biography.



Have to get this one too.

July 3, 2017

Perfect score !

July 2, 2017

Perfect score !



My blog notes say I read it but I don't recall. I liked the author's George Washington bio. This is in preparation for the play in Chicago.



This is the book in my library, perhaps I confused it with the Chernow book. Chernow's book is a lot bigger, over 700 pages to Brookhiser's 217.

Here's something from the play:

"The ten-dollar founding father without a father
Got a lot farther by working a lot harder
By being a lot smarter By being a self-starter
By fourteen, they placed him in charge of a trading charter."



As good a biography on Machiavelli as any I've read, and I've read at least three. Great insertions of quotes during different phrases of his life. You really get a sense that irony was more present in his writings than you would think.



Just in time for my trip: Packing Tips.



I forgot I had a classic margarita glass.



From Wiki:
"Bread and circuses" (or bread and games; from Latin: panem et circenses) is metonymic for a superficial means of appeasement. In the case of politics, the phrase is used to describe the generation of public approval, not through exemplary or excellent public service or public policy, but through diversion; distraction; or the mere satisfaction of the immediate, shallow requirements of a populace, as an offered "palliative". Its originator, Juvenal, used the phrase to decry the selfishness of common people and their neglect of wider concerns. The phrase also implies the erosion or ignorance of civic duty amongst the concerns of the commoner.