Arghh!

I need more recipes for the 4th, but I'm a mover guy and I'm on my third 60+ hour week. There's nothing like a job that makes you envy slaves. Arrgh! So how about a musical interlude while I regroup. Sorry.

We don't need no stinking army to take over the world. USA! USA!

Get This Party Started.

If you are going to party for the 4th you are going to need some chow. Fine, but you want to ice up the beer around noon then coast all the way through till the last Ooh and Ah for the big fireworks display. (Why do people Ooh/Ah at fireworks displays? ). That means you need a variety of food stuffs that are easily consumed while spacing them out over a ten hour period so the watermelon from the last post doesn't finish off Grandma. That means we want to start light. Still, we are good Americans so making things, even light things, as tasty and as fattening as possible is what we do.

Seafood, what could be healthier? Bacon, Mmm bacon, what could be tastier? Get yourself a bunch of wooden skewers then soak them in water over night. Fire up one side of your grill. Gas is easy. Only turn on 1 knob stupid. If you are using charcoal you will have to pile them to one side of the grill. Or don't bother, off course the resulting inferno from the melting bacon fat, Mmmm bacon, hitting the hot coals will suck, but you were the one that didn't listen to me. Lid closed at all times please. The grill will be acting as a smokey awesome oven, not a direct heat source.

1. Figure about a quarter pound of scallops per person ( we're just getting started remember? You pig).
2. Cut a bunch of bacon strips in half the long way.
3. Then cut each half strip so it will just wrap a scallop. You only want enough overlap so when you thread them on the skewers there won't be any bacon, Mmmm bacon, flopping around.
4. Wrap the scallops and thread them on the skewers, Duh!
5. Now add a little more flavor. Bottled teriyaki sauce would be nice, or mix equal parts honey and tabasco, or brush them with pesto, use your imagination for god's sake!
6. Place the skewers on the grill away from the direct heat. Turn them after about 10 minutes. When the bacon, Mmmm bacon, looks like it's getting crispy take them off the heat.
7. Eat with ice cold beer.

An important note. You have filled a trash barrel with ice, water, a couple cups of salt if you want things really, really cold, and beer. You can put Sam Adams in there, but really cold means all that great flavor you are paying extra for will be lost. Stick with Bud, or Miller, or even Coors. It's cheaper and by 4 o'clock you won't know the difference.

Our next musical selection is a summertime classic. Which is the point of a summer playlist after all.

My 2nd Favorite Holiday.

Oh, yeah! It's the 4th of July this weekend. Time to get the generations together and tear it up around the neighborhood. Founding fathers, boo yah! Thanksgiving rules because it isn't as nationalistic as the 4th, but the 4th is still high on my list. Food, fireworks, and family... so cousin Ned loses a finger or 2 it's still a blast.

Now to have a real blast you need something to lubricate grandma. A vodka watermelon is good place to  start. To make it right you don't need effort, you need time. Patience will be rewarded.

Look's vaguely experimental.

Warning: Look at the size of that bottle. Now look at the size of that watermelon. When you're done a slice is pretty much a shot so keep it away from the kids and don't eat it like you would regular mellon.

1. Start with vodka flavored vodka. You want the final product to be watermelon flavored.
2. Find a container that will keep the watermelon from rolling around.
3. Use the cap of the vodka bottle to trace a circle on the melon.
4. Cut out a plug.
5. Get a grapefruit spoon and scoop out some melon.
6. Jam the vodka bottle into the melon.
7. Find a home for it in the back of the fridge.
8. Give it a week to perk. You want the vodka distributed evenly throughout the melon.
9. Slice and enjoy.
10. ...rum would work too.

Now that grandma is all hoopy, look, she's dirty dancing with the pool boy,  crank the music. It's the 4th. It's the summer. You need a special soundtrack. Remember there are 4 generations at this Luau. Mix it up with the tunes. I think we'll start our party with...

We need a meal and a play list by Monday... and a way to keep Grandma from tearing up the neighborhood.

Dear Dad

Dear Dad,

You never did get to see my blog. I'm a big success now, sometimes I get 20 or 30  readers. Who knew? It shows that your faith in me was well founded. At work I am proving you can do it honestly and with humor, I'm just not proving you can do it that way profitably.  Two out of three ain't bad right? You were an honorable man that taught me to try to be an honorable man. That was a great gift. In this world we can't know the will of God. In this world we can't know how to change the past. In this world we can't know what the future brings. In this world we can't know if winning is losing, or if love will fade, or if there are things like truth, justice and karma. What we can know is ourselves. We can know if our hearts are in the right place. We can know if we are playing by our internal sense of right and wrong. We can know if the day was better for the world because we chose to get out of bed. We can know that we are honorable men. No matter what the world throws my way I will always have that to hold me up. Thank you.

I doubt you would be surprised that nothing much about the world has changed in the last two years. We are ruled by monkeys throwing shit at each other, yet somehow we stumble forward. Even in the darkest moments you always knew that the world is teeming with other honorable souls. Don't assume humane exceptionalism but know that humans can be exceptional. Weed the truth out of the nonsense, that was always you.

Mom misses you terribly. 50 years, a life time, together doesn't leave anyone ready to be apart. She soldiers on though, is it possible for there to be a wacky stoic? I know, I'll shut-up.  I do envy her her religious heart though. She knows in her bones you two will be together again. It is what makes faith so seductive. Who wouldn't give themselves over to eternal life? Well besides me; sitting around on a cloud playing the harp has to get really old really fast, and becoming one with the universe is probably not even as good as becoming one with the cute waitress at the diner. Heaven can wait.

I'm lucky in a different way, you gave me the tools to concentrate on the next 30 years and no matter what I do, eternity, in one form or another, will still be waiting when I'm done. I love surprises.

That's it. Happy Father's day. If I seem a little maudlin how could I not? My one measure of greatness is if the world is a better place because you got out of bed. Vin isn't coming down to breakfast anymore so I know the world won't be as great as it could be. Thanks for everything.

Make sure you give the old boy a call today, or take a long moment to remember him fondly. Forget about recipes, just grill up a few hamburgers, Dads love hamburgers. Sorry about the Eddie Fisher. He was one of Dad's favorites. Maybe because the song is about the Dad that my father never experienced, or maybe it helped him remember painful things in a better light, or maybe it helped him try and be a different kind of Dad for me and my brothers. What we carry with us isn't always true, but it is what we know as truth.

Thank you Sir, I'll have another!

Wow! So there I was, fat, dumb, and happy. Just hanging out chillin. Then Mom had to go and give birth to me. Darn you Mom, darn you to heck! Bummer. And the genes she gave me... what was she thinking? " Better than suck" is not a great title for a resume or a biography, it doesn't play with the ladies, and it makes a lousy epitaph. On top of all that the one thing that I am moderately good at is taking one for the team... not a big deal right? Until you realize that you are part of team earth so you are taking hits for 7 billion teammates. Ouch! Makes me want to be an angry Teabagger. Angry white guys may never be trendy again  ( I think they were cool during the 50's and 60's but by the seventies they had all traded their rebel cred for a beamer and a job at an investment bank) but they do get to have power, pillage resources, and generally rampage through the culture like a biblical plague. Not ideal, but it looks like a good gig from where most folks have to sit...

"What do you mean Black people can vote?"

... and most folks have to sit in a place not quite as nice as where the angry white guys sit.

"The US state department thinks I make too much money."

 Still, the angry white guys do have a point. The economy is in the hopper. The good jobs aren't coming back. They have to share with women and minorities now. Wages are stagnant since the 70's. Our wars don't have quality bad guys anymore. The Taliban? Who exactly in Iraq after we won? Did we win? WTF? All of our institutions are crumbling. Catholic church, papists or pimps? Discuss.  I have to say I can feel my self getting angry. How the hell can the world expect me to...

"Well, maybe there's a good reason why we're we're not cool"

... and that is where the rubber meets the road. How angry do you get to be when you used to dress  dress like that? I think it is time to dial things back a little, take stock, and then consider the idea that all the rage clogging up the atmosphere is just a wee bit self indulgent.

Wiener's weiner

So I guess I was wrong, apparently it is a good idea to tweet your junk to the ladies. No wonder I go to so many events alone. Of coarse I'm not a Congressman, or a football star, so maybe a photo of my johnson wouldn't be as much of a draw as I think... and of course there is the added expense of the zoom lens I would have to buy.

"I wish I was a Football star"

"I wish I was a Congressman"

"It looks better in pictures when Pam Anderson is attached to it"

So we just got ourselves a full week of yucks about Wiener's wiener. That's cool, because by the next news cycle the psycho killer Mom in Florida will be on trial and we can switch over to smug moralistic musings about Mom's gone bad. The right wing will have plenty of time to puff up and bloviate about how "Killings to good for that bitch". Meanwhile liberals will quietly lay low because they secretly agree with the conservatives, or they will sprain something trying to distort the trial into a failure of our social services, justice system, schools... blah, blah, blah.

So that will dominate the news until Palin does a Playboy photo-shoot, or Obama wrestles a gator on the DC mall. Maybe there will be more tornados. That's always a good visual... weeping families shifting through rubble looking for the remains of their loved ones. Television news, there's no plot, but you have to watch anyway.

Mean-while the real stories end up buried in the newspapers that nobody reads any more. Like the interview congressional majority leader Eric Cantor gave that suggested the government shouldn't help the tornado victims until the money for the help was chopped from other programs. After all, if someone in a family has an accident you can't expect other members of the family to chip in money they don't have. Right? Government help, uncle Fred help, it's exactly the same thing, right?

"I don't need to tweet my junk because this is the picture of a dick."

 How about this. The Columbia Journalism Review ran a story that the Nation actually pulled from publication. The story was about how contractors for Hanes and Levis got the US State Department to prevent the Haitian government form raising the minimum wage for garment workers to over $3 a day. Since even in a dung hole like Haiti it costs $12.50 a day to not die this was a major set back for free market capitalism. $3? That's socialism. "They can take our $3, but they can never take our Freedom!"

How do you get a good vote when your capital looks like this?

 There is no real disputing the story because the Wiki leaks documents are pretty clear. Of coarse wiki leaks is a bad thing right? The people on Fox news, hell! all of the news, told me so. Why you never know what would happen if people found out that their government was working hand in hand with big corporations to crush poor people. So when you turn on your talk radio, or click on Fox, or kick back with the networks, or just ignore everything completely remember there's a reason you future doesn't seem as rosy as it once did, there's a reason why you paid billions of dollars to bankers,there's a reason your kids will never... Look! Lindsey Lohan!

"Nice tweet!"

Got to Walmart. Cover your junk with cheap under-drawers, then add a pair of cheap Levis.  Be glad that tornadoes whomped on other people. Then make sure you're on the right side the class wars. What could possibly go wrong?

What do you Think?

It was a tough week at work. We're barreling in on the busy season and I'm pretty sure that I don't know what I'm doing. This is extra, super, slap me in the face, frustrating because I am working more than 10 hours a day, I haven't had time for lunch or naughtymaids.com in weeks, yet I still can't get ahead of the curve. Anyway tomorrow I'll treat myself to a few cold adult beverages in downtown Haverhill. I'll try to kick back a little unless Pailes is running amuck( for those not in the know think tasmanian devil on crack cocaine). Maybe I'll even consider some of the big questions that haunt our waking hours.

Haverhill, you don't need to drink to live here, but it doesn't hurt.

Seriously, if you hear "Rolling in the Deep" one more time aren't you going to punch the person next to you in the face? Which brings up the question is it a bigger sin to ruin a good song by playing it 5,000 times a week, or to play a song like "Afternoon Delight" once. If "Rock" is dead who gets the cool beer can coffee table from the living-room. If I like some rap songs but find most of rap repetitive and moronic does that make me a geezer? Would it change your answer if I said I feel the same way about country? Did they invent weed so you can listen to jazz, or did they invent jazz so you'd have a reason to smoke weed? Did Warner brothers ruin classical music by using the greats to score Bugs Bunny cartoons? What's opera Doc?

OK I'll bite, why isn't Sarah Palin's 15 minutes up yet? Why do she and McCain like hanging out with bikers? Do bikers even vote? What does it say about the Republicans that they think America is represented by biker gangs? Mitt Romney announced his run for the presidency today. Does anyone really think the Republican base will vote for a heathen... cough, I mean a Mormon?  Congressman Anthony Wiener is getting flack for allegedly texting a picture of his wiener to some woman. I don't think it's true because talk radio wasn't screeching about it today, but more importantly why would any man think a woman would want to see a photo of his naughty bits? Even if the woman is already sleeping with you wouldn't a penis photo be a bad idea? I don't know. I'm no woman expert as the people that know me can attest.

Still, I know a little. Like woman consider cake a delivery system for frosting. Mmmm frosting! Now I'm a bit partial to ganache, but we already made ganache. So how about some butter cream? Mmmm buttercream!

Eww! come on! Jelly in the cake? Really.