Today is memorial day and the day of our favorite yearly party - the George and Georgia party out near Veneta. G&G are our good friends and landlords as well. George was Tina's boss for years when she worked at Poppi's Anatolian restaurant. The folks that attend are often connected to Poppi's or just local hippies and people often associated with the Country Fair or local food industry. There is always a huge spread of food - mmmm! You know that makes me happy. Olives, pitas, hot dogs, pizza, 10 different kinds of pasta salad, vegan treats and decadent non-vegan chocolate delectables - yummm! Combine that with the good company of old friends and a good latin jazz trio and it makes for a wonderful time. Did I mention that there is also an amazing garden, complete with koi pond and overflowing flowers, a pond for swimming, croquet, bachi ball, a nature hike...yeah it's just about the best thing for one's state of mind. It totally rained half the time and we often cowered under the shelter by the fire as kids ate burnt marshmallows and got smoke in the face. Damn, I am tired now from chasing my own kids all over the place though. Those little duders will wear you out given half a chance.

Ok, back to life now.
-Ed

I watched a great film this past weekend. "Le Trou" is French for "the Hole" and it is a flick released in 1960 about a prison escape attempt. A group of four prisoners in a crowded French prison are presented with a new cellmate, a young pretty boy named Gaspard. After talking with him to find out what he is in for, the group decides to inform him of their upcoming escape attempt and incorporate Gaspard into their plan. Things follow from there and the movie is a riveting piece of work, the last film of influential French director Jacques Becker. The tension is constant, the camaraderie of the cast palpable and the lingering scenes of the inmates chip-chip-chipping their way through the floor are riveting. I found a more descriptive review of the movie here. I personally just love the setting of the cell, the way the prisoners of 1947 France – at least in the movie - are allowed way more freedom than modern-day, dog-kennel-with-tasers American prisons. The cellmates smoke, store food and personal effects in a cupboard and rap with the guards as if they were on equal par. In one scene, the cellblock chief even allows the men to exact their revenge on some thievin’ plumbers who steal their smokes. Also, the movie just aches with the human cleverness of the men adapting to living in a confined environment. The inmates have secret ways of passing messages and goods and I am sure methods of existence in jail have been similar for the last 1,000 years at least.

The best movie I’ve seen in awhile; I highly recommend

LUNCH MUNCH



The results of my low-budget, monday-after-the-paycheck-lunch. It's a good thing I work at a place where potatoes and onions are usually to be found, rolling around on the floor. Not pictured: yummy avo and tomato chunks and hot sauce ....can you say a starchy mmmmm - MMMM!!! Free lunch = best lunch.


Here's Pat's super-good looking soup: Brocolli, red flat onion, water, lemon juice and half-and-half. That man is a genius, both in the kitchen and in the s@ck.















Scottk just walked in and hipped me to the new Melvins website: http://melvins.com/
Crazy! What can't the Melvins do? They've at least kept their sense of humor intact of the past 2 decades or so.
Things are very monday for me today. I just saw Slayer Carl coming down the stairs with his coffee cup and a gash between his eyes. I asked him if he had had a nice weekend and he rasped, "oh, yes." What a man! Only a minority of my friends come to work with a black eye on a regular basis, but Carl is certainly one of them. Apparently, no one else around here is really taking life by the (Slayer) horns.

OK, over n out
Ed

Watched the movie Treasure of the Sierra Madre over the weekend. Sometimes, it takes me two days to finish a flick and this one was no exception, but it was good all the way through for me. In a nutshell, its about two down-on-their-luck - gringos Bogart and Tim Holt - that meet a grizzly old-time miner in Mexico and forge an alliance and go together to the Sierra Madre (occidental?) mountains to set up camp and mine for gold. Of course, shit goes wrong and the friends , at times, are banded together against claim-jumpers and banditos but the fellowship eventually goes foul and the main players turn on each other. I found it refreshing that Humphrey's character was a bit on the mean and villainous side. This is the movie with the famous line, spoken by Alfonso Bedoya, "Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you no stinkin' badges!" Too cool! OK, I read a blogger's review of this movie where it was stated that movie is just so-so, standard 40's fare, but I enjoyed it. I'm slowly working my way through all of Bogey's movies just for fun and this one was not a let-down. See it, gringos! Starring Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston and Tim Holt