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Crazy people.

Is men­tal ill­ness afoot in the land? If you say, “Spi­ders are crawl­ing up the wall! Can’t you see them?” And I say no I can’t but here, let’s take a pic­ture of them; if there are none in the pic­ture will you believe they’re imag­i­nary? And you say, well, OK, and I take the pic­ture and there are no spi­ders, and you say you cast a spell and made the spi­ders invis­i­ble! Does that sug­gest dis­or­dered think­ing to you?

It does to me. Which is only my way of say­ing the peo­ple who are today say­ing, “Sure, Obama’s school speech is innocu­ous now. What do you think it looked like before brave patri­ots stood up and objected, huh?” Those peo­ple? Sound insane.

But I’m keep­ing my mouth shut. I sent an e-mail to my local school board about the administration’s deci­sion on the speech. (They’re delay­ing it for later use — defen­si­ble under the cir­cum­stances — but allow­ing for parental opt-out, which… isn’t.) I hope I struck the right note of arch douch­i­ness; I described myself as dis­ap­pointed and dis­il­lu­sioned, which I think is just per­fect for notes like these, a lit­tle bit of par­al­lel redun­dancy to under­line one offense with another. There’s some­thing about writ­ing a j’accuse let­ter that makes me want to use phrases like “I think not.” You just can never de-smug them entirely.

OK, then. Summer’s mostly over, and the past week — the last week of Kate’s vaca­tion — was lovely. We went to the pool Sun­day, and I made an appro­pri­ate end-of-summer ges­ture: I went with­out sun­screen. Ask me how much I regret my sun wrin­kles. Yeah. About that much.

Mean­while, I spent a chunk of a relaxed week­end catch­ing up with a bit of neglected cul­ture. First, “In the Loop,” one of those movies so small it barely exists, but god, funny as hell. Set in the U.K., Wash­ing­ton and New York in the drum­beat before the Iraq war, it’s sort of a meaner, blacker, harder-to-understand “West Wing,” with Aaron Sorkin’s pol­i­tics sucked out and extra funny pumped in. I only caught about a third of it, cloaked as it was in thick Scot­tish burrs and Eng­lish slang, deliv­ered at a blis­ter­ing pace. I think I’d need about two more watch­ings to absorb it all.

The action begins when a some­what dim British politi­cian tells the BBC that war is “unforsee­able,” a word that puts the prime minister’s office into a tizzy and incurs the wrath of Mal­colm Tucker, the p.m.’s chief of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, so glo­ri­ously pro­fane his rants edge into poetry. (When the min­is­ter steps fur­ther into the goo by say­ing, that some­times a coun­try must “climb the moun­tain of con­flict,” Tucker accuses him of being a “Nazi Julie Andrews.” It’s the flat-A sound in “Nazi” that kills.) Soon said politi­cian is off to Wash­ing­ton and then to the U.N., trail­ing aides far smarter than he is, if only at the fine art of ass-kissing and jock­ey­ing for favor.

If you have a decent on-demand cable ser­vice, you’ll find it on one of the IFC chan­nels for about six or seven bucks. Def­i­nitely worth it.

And I got a good way into “Clos­ing Time,” Joe Queenan’s mem­oir of grow­ing up with a father so drunk and bru­tal he could only have fathered, well, Joe Queenan, the cel­e­brated mas­ter of mean. Reviews tell me this story ends with­out the cus­tom­ary weepy rec­on­cil­i­a­tion between father and son stan­dard in alco­holism mem­oirs, and that’s what intrigues me — the bleak­ness that lies at the heart of a man who can hon­estly say his father beat him so hard, so often and so unjustly that he finally thrashed every last shred of love out of his own child. The NYT critic notes:

There will be truces near the end, but when the fam­ily attends the old man at his deathbed, there is pre­cious lit­tle warmth or nos­tal­gia. Two of his daugh­ters con­sider their father “beyond redemp­tion,” and their mother refuses, for her­self and those daugh­ters, to be listed in the obit­u­ary. The son feels nei­ther love nor respect; he is there only because “hav­ing a bad father does not give any­one the right to be a bad son.” Three years later, the anniver­sary of Joe Sr.’s death passes unno­ticed. “My father was dead,” Queenan writes, “and I did not miss him.”

As grim as that sounds, it’s still a vastly enter­tain­ing read.

And now it begins. Fall. Still weeks of warm weather ahead, but for all intents and pur­poses, we must put away our white shoes and put our noses back to the grind­stone. I’m pack­ing the sun­block and think­ing of projects. How about you?

Posted on Tuesday, September 8th, 2009 at 1:34 am in Movies, Same ol' same ol'. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.


81 responses to
“Crazy people.”

  1. moe99 said on September 8th, 2009 at 2:13 am

    I’m going to do a pre-emptive strike on the word count mavens out there just wait­ing to tell us all about how Obama only talked about him­self, and offer this word count of Ronald Reagan’s speech to school­child­ren lo these 20 or so years ago:

    http://​www​.bal​loon​-juice​.com/​?​p​=​2​6​5​1​5​#​c​o​m​m​e​n​t​-​1​358666

  2. Dexter said on September 8th, 2009 at 2:16 am

    I know what you mean about watch­ing a movie sev­eral times to grasp the dia­logue. I tried watch­ing “Mir­a­cle at St. Anna”
    http://​www​.imdb​.com/​t​i​t​l​e​/​t​t​1​0​46997/
    and the cap­tions were so tiny I had to move closer to the TV to read them, so it came on again and I recorded it and am re-watching it to get all the dia­logue.

    Fall is my fave sea­son, as it is for many. I like trips to orchards, and I like to lis­ten to foot­ball on old-school AM and FM radio while bik­ing. My wife likes to take a “Sun­day Drive” dur­ing foliage sea­son. Mon­day we took a lit­tle drive to Inde­pen­dence State Park just to watch the river mean­der along, and to walk the dog.
    Rak­ing leaves is another angle on Fall altogether…I hate it. I have dis­cov­ered I hate it less if I just rake a lit­tle each day. It’s like when a man shaves—is it eas­ier to shave once a day or once a week? I shave and rake every day.
    I like Fall veg­eta­bles and pretty gourds, pump­kins, and the rus­tle of the wind in a dry corn field just before corn-picking time. There’s noth­ing like the pun­gent smell of silage being loaded into the silo on the farms, either.
    The Ann Arbor Farm­ers’ Mar­ket in the Ker­ry­town dis­trict is a great place to find rare spec­i­mens of mostly-forgotten apples, and those peo­ple who sell dried flow­ers are amaz­ing. Always grab a jug of Kapnick’s Orchard apple cider, too.

  3. Connie said on September 8th, 2009 at 7:11 am

    Edmund Burke would not call today’s repub­li­can party con­ser­v­a­tive? http://​www​.dai​lykos​.com/​s​t​o​r​y​o​n​l​y​/​2​0​0​9​/​9​/​6​/​7​7​7​9​5​2​/​-​C​o​n​s​e​r​v​a​t​i​v​e​s​:​-​E​n​d​a​n​g​e​r​e​d​-​s​pecies?

    This line made me chuckle: Fed­er­al­ist par­ti­sans accus­ing that “athe­ist” Thomas Jef­fer­son of a plan to burn down all of the churches in the United States. Sound famil­iar? Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

  4. Michael said on September 8th, 2009 at 7:31 am

    Nancy, My son, who attends a Euro­pean owned and oper­ated school brought home the note, that par­ents wish­ing their child not to hear the pres­i­dent need only con­tact the school and the chil­dren would be sent to the play­ground for an extended lunch/recess. Now there’s a trade off for you. It also men­tioned that the “les­son guides” dis­trib­uted ahead of the speech, would not be used.

    As for the Queenan book, I have no inter­est in read­ing, but heard some of the press tour and was struck by the same twist. No redemp­tive group hug at the end? Please give us a full report when you have fin­ished.

  5. beb said on September 8th, 2009 at 7:47 am

    You know what’s scary? It’s Obama giv­ing an educ­tion pep talk, it’s that my daugh­ter has seen “Super­size Me” in school at once a year for the last three years. She’s also seen “Tropic Thun­der” whose educ­tional value escapes me, and I for­get what other filns she’s men­tioned. What kind of an educ­tion is that? And if they’re build an educ­tional plan around movies they ought to show films like “Blaz­ing Sad­dles” and “Dr. Strangelove.” Blaz­ing Sad­dles tells you every­thing you need to know about race rela­tions in 90 min­utes, while Dr. Strangelove is about as close as any­one *not* born in the 50s will ever come to under­stand­ing the “Cold War.”

    I was shocked to dis­cover that “Mad Max” had been dubbed into Amer­i­can for its orig­i­nal release. Who knew Astru­alian was so hard to under­stand. But I can under­stand why some British cin­ema could and ought to be sub-titled for the Anglo-impaired. “In t5he Loop” sounds like George Bush all over, just set in Eng­land.

    Don’t know a thing about Joe Queenan but the idea of a movie about a bad father that doesn’t end with a rec­on­cil­i­a­tion seems like a brac­ing slap of real­ity. Some peo­ple are just irre­deemable.

  6. coozledad said on September 8th, 2009 at 8:40 am

    My wife got stung by yel­low­jack­ets Sun­day and spent a lit­tle bit of the hol­i­day rest­ing her swollen arm by search­ing the web for Democ­rats in our sec­tor. She found a God­less Lib­eral farm nearby, which is encour­ag­ing. We’ll be able to grease our AK-47s and read Che together as we await the boots-on-the-ground phase of the dorka­lypse. Unfor­tu­nately, she also found a bunch of home­school­ing Glenn Beck fetishists. It’s like a club for women who can use their labia minora for a sack to pick string beans.There are men, too, many of whom stress that they have lots of time to teabag, now they’re only employed part time.
    I won­der if part of their home­school cur­ricu­lum includes the idea that sur­plus pop­u­la­tions lead inevitably to entrenched caste sys­tems that do not favor the stu­pid, those with­out con­nec­tions, or tow headed kids with rick­ettsia and stra­bis­mus.

  7. Connie said on September 8th, 2009 at 9:56 am

    Look, it’s Sarah again, and I think he/she is threat­en­ing to shoot us all.

    Edited: It was there, I saw it, it’s gone. My com­ment tells you enough about what you missed.

  8. nancy said on September 8th, 2009 at 9:59 am

    Which is why I spammed her sorry ass. Carry on.

  9. Jeff Borden said on September 8th, 2009 at 10:32 am

    I won­der if Sarah is Dwight in drag??

    I live in Chicago, but you don’t have to travel far to run into the same kind of lunatics who con­tinue to make Glenn Beck a wealthy man. Up in Arling­ton Heights, where last year a Repub­li­can politi­cian named Mark Kirk addressed stu­dents on the need for more oil and energy explo­ration, they are not let­ting kids watch the speech live because some of the par­ents raised hell about “indoc­tri­na­tion.” Boy howdy, noth­ing says indoc­tri­na­tion like a speech on the impor­tance of work­ing hard in school deliv­ered by a man who is a sym­bol of what can hap­pen when a young per­son of mod­est means works their ass off.

    While we shout at each other about health care reform, gay rights, abor­tion, defense pol­icy and other issues, I won­der some­times if we are even aware of how much ground we are los­ing to other nations in the field of edu­ca­tion. And when you have sig­nif­i­cant por­tions of the Amer­i­can elec­torate argu­ing for inclu­sion of cre­ation­ism into the cur­ricu­lum, for exclu­sion of books rang­ing from authors as var­ied Mark Twain to Judy Blum, for excis­ing of civics lessons if they are not vet­ted by the Her­itage Foun­da­tion, how can we expect to raise stu­dents who not only have learned facts, but the abil­ity to think crit­i­cally?

  10. ROgirl said on September 8th, 2009 at 10:52 am

    Isn’t it funny how extrem­ism, no mat­ter what the cause behind it, no mat­ter what the polit­i­cal posi­tion, no mat­ter what the loca­tion, blends together in a mass of loud, angry, vio­lent, non-reality based, non-fact dri­ven activ­ity whose goal is to intim­i­date, frighten, demo­nize, shut down and destroy any­thing that opposes it?

  11. LAMary said on September 8th, 2009 at 11:04 am

    Tropic Thun­der shown in school? At what grade level, and for what rea­son?

  12. Connie said on September 8th, 2009 at 11:19 am

    When VHS first became avail­able in my library the teach­ers com­plained that they couldn’t reserve them for a spe­cific date like they had been able to do with 16 mm films. And I could never fig­ure out how any of the movies they wanted fit in any cur­ricu­lum.

    As part of a series of long range plan­ning sur­veys we sur­veyed high school teach­ers. All they wanted from the local library was daily deliv­ery of movies to their schools.

    Not as bad as what I heard a few years ago from home school­ers as part of a series of focus groups relat­ing to a new main library build­ing plan. They wanted their own spe­cial room, with their own ded­i­cated librar­ian, and spe­cial rules. My reac­tion? When you chose to give up your local pub­lic school you also chose to give up a school library and librar­ian.

    Crabby today. My $22,000 park­ing lot repair that turned into an $80,000 plus park­ing lot replace­ment fin­ishes today. And the new con­crete must sit undrive upon for 10 days of cur­ing. I am quite sure this is the point at which com­plaint calls will begin.

  13. coozledad said on September 8th, 2009 at 11:19 am

    Charles Bous­tany (R-Hotbed of Edu­ca­tion) is going to issue a “rebut­tal” to Obama’s school speech. I guess he’ll advo­cate being born to some wealthy prick who can wedge you into an intern­ship with some racist in the Sen­ate, who’ll get you a job berat­ing peo­ple with tal­ent while you steadily drink your­self to death.
    I went to school with an intern for ol’ Jesse Helms. His dad was a sort of cir­cuit preacher who rou­tinely showed up at our junior high school and gave a ser­mon includ­ing some semi­lit­er­ate dog­gerel from which I can only recall one verse.
    “Oh Lord! For­give me when I whine.
    I have two legs. The world is mine!”
    We soon set about decon­struct­ing this as
    “Oh god, for­give me when I bitch
    My dad blows Helms. He’s fuck­ing rich!”
    or
    “I seen a boy with­out a neck
    But Helms’ll write his dad a check!”
    I expect Bous­tany will do some­thing sim­i­lar.

  14. Jolene said on September 8th, 2009 at 11:53 am

    Actu­ally, cooz, it’s the health care speech tomor­row evening for which Bous­tany is going to deliver the rebut­tal. It’s inter­est­ing that they’ve cho­sen some­one even less well-known than their last rebut­tal speaker, Bobby Jin­dal.

  15. Sue said on September 8th, 2009 at 11:59 am

    My hus­band was camp­ing this week­end, so I checked out the first two sea­sons of Upstairs, Down­stairs and watched it in between can­ning toma­toes. When my hus­band got back last night, instead of going to watch foot­ball on the other tv like a good boy, he insisted on this “togeth­er­ness” thing and sat down to watch with me. Since he came in dur­ing a con­ver­sa­tion between Thomas the Welsh­man and Rose the Cock­ney, he didn’t last five min­utes. He couldn’t under­stand a word.
    I love fall, I just hate what comes after. Fall col­ors bring big tourism bucks to Wis­con­sin and the weather peo­ple also fore­cast fall color peaks dur­ing the sea­son.
    And Con­nie? I’m with you on home­school­ers, although I know I’m not being fair. Lis­ten­ing to a grim-faced mother work­ing Jesus into a math les­son finally did it for me. This was after sev­eral years of watch­ing var­i­ous other grim-faced moth­ers using their older female chil­dren as care­tak­ers for the newest baby and sev­eral tod­dlers, while they bitched to me about the library not hav­ing enough “appro­pri­ate” resources. To me it’s noth­ing less than a closed soci­ety which these kids, espe­cially the females, will not be able to escape with­out a lot of rela­tion­ship dam­age. Or maybe I’m not being fair because I saw the most extreme, and in my opin­ion, most unhappy exam­ples. Not a sin­gle mother I ran across ever seemed happy.

  16. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 8th, 2009 at 12:03 pm

    Find Rafe Esquith’s book “Teach Like Your Hair Is On Fire” for a list of great movies to use in a 5th grade class­room; as i recall, “Tropic Thun­der” wasn’t on his list, but the book came out a few years back. Maybe it’ll make the updated pb.

    Watch “The Hobart Shake­speare­ans” on dvd to learn more about him, and have some han­kies handy, but in a good way. (He runs his class­room with two rules: Be nice, work hard. It’s all about prob­lem solv­ing.)

  17. Peter said on September 8th, 2009 at 12:28 pm

    Jeff B, don’t worry too much about how we fare com­pared to stu­dents of other coun­tries – NYT, among oth­ers, had an arti­cle some time back about the Ger­man school sys­tem being far crap­pier than what it appeared.

    That’s not to say you shouldn’t be wor­ried about what we’re crank­ing out – you just shouldn’t be wor­ried about how we com­pare to for­eign brands. On the other hand, pro­duc­ing shal­low think­ing adults is what leads to xeno­pho­bia, which leads to sim­plis­tic think­ing, which leads to Sarah Palin, which leads to armed con­flict on flimsy evi­dence, which prob­a­bly means we should be VERY afraid.

  18. jcburns

    jcburns said on September 8th, 2009 at 12:35 pm

    Great to watch kids react so pos­i­tively to the Obama speech. His words made me want to go stand up for the kids who are bul­lied in my class. But..uh..then I remem­bered I was in my fifties. In half an hour, will tune in to the Apple real­ity dis­tor­tion field and drink some fine iPod kool-aid.

  19. coozledad said on September 8th, 2009 at 12:37 pm

    Thanks, Jolene. One day I’ll learn to read past the lede.
    I was just infat­u­ated with the idea of a Repub­li­can response to the school speech. Sigh.

  20. LAMary said on September 8th, 2009 at 12:52 pm

    I think schools should show Baz Luhrman’s film of Romeo and Juliet. Some do already. I love that movie.

  21. jeff borden said on September 8th, 2009 at 1:05 pm

    Peter,

    Well said and spot on. It’s the strain of anti-intellectualism embraced by so many these days that gives me great pause, not that the Euro­pean Union will eclipse us in the class­room.

    Also, I was think­ing more of the Asian nations, to be hon­est, which used to send us their bright­est stu­dents, who would then stay and build careers in the U.S. With the stan­dards of liv­ing ris­ing quickly in China and India, they can now return to their home­lands, depriv­ing the U.S. of their tal­ents in math­e­mat­ics, engi­neer­ing and the sci­ences.

    The Sen­ate released a report a few years ago argu­ing that Amer­ica would face a severe short­age of engi­neers within a quarter-century if our own stu­dents didn’t start embrac­ing the aca­d­e­mics needed to become one. I’m not one to talk. Math and sci­ence classes nearly con­signed me to the aca­d­e­mic scrap heap so vast was my inep­ti­tude in those are­nas.

  22. Dorothy said on September 8th, 2009 at 1:28 pm

    I love that ver­sion of R&J too, Mary.

    We got to see “Julie & Julia” yes­ter­day and enjoyed it very much. Another one I can rec­om­mend was the rental “Frozen River” with Melissa Leo. But I wish I had passed up “Gran Torino” in favor of “Sun­shine Clean­ing.” Torino was a big dis­ap­point­ment.

  23. Jean S said on September 8th, 2009 at 1:36 pm

    Dex­ter, I read “shave and rake” as “shake and rave.” I dunno, maybe you can work all four into your daily rou­tine.

    I am cook­ing up some Walla-Walla onion marme­lade tonight, plus freez­ing some green beans. This being Ory­gun, we had us some rain over the week­end, and I need to check the poor old toma­toes. And they were doing so well, too…

  24. jeff borden said on September 8th, 2009 at 1:47 pm

    Dorothy,

    “Frozen River” is one of those movies I wanted to scream about, to push peo­ple into the­aters to see it. I’ve rarely seen a film so accu­rately depict the des­per­a­tion of those on the bot­tom rung of the eco­nomic lad­der hold­ing on for dear life. Not only was Melissa Leo rel­e­va­tory, but the young Native Amer­i­can woman was superb. No sweet tea and frosted cook­ies end­ing, either, but a harsh and real­is­tic take. It’s an excel­lent film in every way.

    I’m plug­ging “The Hurt Locker,” which we saw over the week­end. It is more sus­pense tale than war movie, though there are scenes of ter­ri­ble vio­lence. The writ­ing, the direc­tion and the act­ing are spot on. The Oscar talk about young actor Jeremy Ren­ner, who plays the guy who gets a buzz from the prox­im­ity to dan­ger, is not mis­placed. He’s con­vinc­ing as hell.

  25. nancy said on September 8th, 2009 at 1:50 pm

    Gran Torino was a huge dis­ap­point­ment for me, too. But if you watched to the end, Dorothy, you saw our famous lake­front. If I hadn’t been vaca­tion­ing in Clint Eastwood’s home­town that week, maybe I’d have rid­den by on my bicy­cle.

  26. Rana said on September 8th, 2009 at 1:55 pm

    how can we expect to raise stu­dents who not only have learned facts, but the abil­ity to think crit­i­cally?

    You assume that the peo­ple in charge want a cit­i­zenry of crit­i­cal thinkers…

    (Yeah, I’m feel­ing cyn­i­cal today.)

  27. Julie Robinson said on September 8th, 2009 at 1:56 pm

    Did any­one else dis­like the Luhrman R&J when it first came out? I was too attached to the Zef­fer­elli ver­sion, which I must have seen at the impres­sion­able 11 or 12. View­ing them again years later it is Luhrman who holds up for me. Although Zef­fer­elli broke new ground cast­ing leads who were close to the age they should have been. Before that all the R&J’s were in their 40s or older!

    On our way up to Chicago on Sun­day we heard a show our local pub­lic sta­tion doesn’t carry, by NPR-ex Bob Edwards. It was the third of three on edu­ca­tion and he inter­viewed the Hobart Shake­spearean teacher. I came home to put the DVD on the Net­flix list only to see it’s already on there. He also spoke with the author of a book about Mul­ti­ple Intel­li­gences, who our daugh­ter had told us about from her edu­ca­tion classes. We’ve recently iden­ti­fied our son as a kinetic learner, which wasn’t too sur­pris­ing since he was the clas­sic hyper kid when younger. So that book goes on the library queue. It was a great show–topical yet avoid­ing all the crap about pres­i­den­tial social­is­tic indoc­tri­na­tion in our schools. I’m in a news black­out today because I’m so sick of it, and I agree with Jeff B that it’s a huge dis­trac­tion from where our ener­gies should be focused.

    What is onion mar­malade? I’ve never heard of it. We have us some rain here in Indi­ana too.

  28. Jean S said on September 8th, 2009 at 2:16 pm

    mar­malade. dan­git, I knew I mis­spelled it.

    onion mar­malade is TheBest­Stuff Ever on sand­wiches. If the won­der­ful wide world of nnc​.com yells loudly enough, I’ll post the recipe.

  29. Jeff Borden said on September 8th, 2009 at 2:19 pm

    ATTN: MOE

    You asked about the New Zealand wines we tasted the other day. The stand­out was Stafford Lodge sav­i­gnon blanc, which hit us in the wheel­house. Highly rec­om­mended for seafood by the wine stew­ard who was run­ning the show. The price is a cou­ple of bucks higher than Kim Craw­ford, which at Binny’s Bev­er­age Depot usu­ally goes for about $15 per bot­tle.

    I think about any­thing com­ing from the Marl­bor­ough region is prob­a­bly worth try­ing. Kim Craw­ford gets a lot of men­tions these days, but the Stafford Lodge is evi­dence there are many other qual­ity winer­ies in the area.

  30. Julie Robinson said on September 8th, 2009 at 2:19 pm

    *loud roar*

  31. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 8th, 2009 at 2:21 pm

    Yelling! I’ve had an onion/hungarian pep­per mar­malade that made my eyes water in two ways.

    I think i said this here before, but if you liked Luhrman’s “Romeo+Juliet,” you have to see Ian McKellen’s “Richard III.” Truly stun­ning.

  32. LAMary said on September 8th, 2009 at 2:22 pm

    I have a learn­ing ques­tion. Last night my older son asked me if I knew how to play Spades. I told him that I’ve played it but I’ve for­got­ten how. The thing is, I for­get how to play card games almost as soon as I fin­ish play­ing them. Teach me how to play, I’ll learn very fast and do well. Next day I’m unable to explain how to play that game. I remem­ber parts, but not the whole thing. Any­one else have that sort of issue with some spe­cific learn­ing thing? I feel like I’m miss­ing some part of my brain.

  33. Jeff Borden said on September 8th, 2009 at 2:22 pm

    I couldn’t deny a cer­tain fas­ci­na­tion with Luhrman’s “Romeo and Juliet,” par­tic­u­larly how the film did not mod­ern­ize the lan­guage, only the sur­round­ings. Thus, when the Bard’s words called for some­one to raise their “sword,” we saw an auto­matic pis­tol with the brand name “Sword” on the bar­rel. Not great art, but maybe it drove a few more young­sters toward Shake­speare.

    Plus, I’m a huge Shirley Man­son mark, so the song by Garbage (“Num­ber One Crush?”) iced it for me.

  34. Dorothy said on September 8th, 2009 at 2:26 pm

    **ROARING LOUDER THAN JULIE** My hus­band made pep­per jelly this year and I brought it to the office two weeks ago to share. I didn’t think I’d like it, but I tried it on top of cream cheese on crack­ers, and it was fab!

    I did watch Gran Torino to the end, Nancy. My daugh­ter, how­ever, turned it off after 30 min­utes when they rented it a cou­ple of weeks ago. My son sent me a link for a pre­view of a wild new movie com­ing out in Novem­ber. Has any­one else seen the pre­view for “The Men Who Stare at Goats”? George Clooney is in it, along with Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey and Ewan McGre­gor. It looks hilar­i­ous.

    Edit­ing to respond to Mary’s ques­tion about cards. I think I’m a lit­tle like that, too. I have to be re-introduced to card games from time to time. Our fam­ily loves to play Canasta. But I zeal­ously guard the old instruc­tion book my mom has had for year, because I always have to look at the instruc­tions before we start a game! I haven’t played Spades in years but I’m sure I’d have to re-learn it.

  35. Julie Robinson said on September 8th, 2009 at 2:48 pm

    Oh yeah, Ian McK­ellen rocks, whereas Clint East­wood only knows how to chan­nel Dirty Harry.

    Card games are also hope­less for me. Does it go along with spa­tial intel­li­gence? My DH can find his way around any­place after just a day or two, even if it is years later. I need the map and direc­tions almost every time.

    Pep­per jelly? *roars like a lion*

  36. Sue said on September 8th, 2009 at 2:54 pm

    While we’re roar­ing for recipes, any­one have a recipe for pep­per­oncini? I only found one recipe in Recipezaar and it doesn’t look right. We even grew the right pep­pers and now we can’t find a recipe.

  37. paddyo' said on September 8th, 2009 at 3:08 pm

    LA Mary, I, too, have that unfath­omable inabil­ity to retain card-game direc­tions. Soli­taire and basic poker are about the only ones to stick — not that I play either very often (OK, a lit­tle Spi­der Soli­taire on the com­puter at home some­times to de-buzz after a buzzy day). Hearts, gin, rummy, gin rummy, crib­bage, bridge, etc. Is it sim­ply that we don’t PLAY card games much any­more?

  38. Deborah said on September 8th, 2009 at 3:15 pm

    Michael G,

    Writ­ing this from the Sacra­mento Air­port. Nice town! We took your advice and parked on 16th, walked up J St. to 28th. We ended up eat­ing Fri­day night at Tappa the World. Excel­lent food. In the morn­ing we went back to J St. and sat in Pete’s Cof­fee shop work­ing with our com­put­ers until we had to leave for Calaveres County (famous for jump­ing frog scams), to a town called Angel’s Camp. It was a fun week­end. The big trees were amaz­ing.

    Won’t be back in Chicago till mid­night.

  39. Jenflex said on September 8th, 2009 at 3:28 pm

    Julie: Yes on the Zef­firelli take of R&J…if for no other rea­son than I got to see a naked male fanny in ninth-grade Eng­lish. I haven’t watched it again…there’s no way it could live up to the way I remem­ber it.

  40. coozledad said on September 8th, 2009 at 3:49 pm

    Sue: For pep­per­oncini I’d use a table salt or cal­cium chlo­ride brine. Vine­gar solu­tions over­power the taste of the pep­pers.
    I can’t remem­ber card games either. And the more baroque they get, the less likely I am to even get the point of suf­fer­ing through them. Has any­body here ever tried to play bouree, or whist? Seems like bouree is played with two stan­dard decks of cards. I think you have to be drink­ing port and smok­ing cig­ars to actu­ally play.

  41. nancy said on September 8th, 2009 at 3:54 pm

    Whist — bid whist, any­way — is huge here among African Amer­i­cans. They have whist clubs, whist tour­na­ments, the whole bit. No one can really say why, other than it was a south­ern thing taken around the coun­try by Pull­man porters. You see lit­tle store­fronts all over Detroit that, if you look closely are bid whist social clubs. They gen­er­ally play two nights a week, and on Fri­day, they go all night.

    http://​www​.nation​al​bid​whist​.com/​h​i​s​t​o​ry.htm

  42. LAMary said on September 8th, 2009 at 3:55 pm

    I play soli­taire on the com­puter, some­times black­jack, but any­thing else, no. I don’t think it’s about spa­tial skills since I’m good on those. The in house Brit says it’s like my lack of skill at alge­bra. I don’t see alge­bra as relat­ing to any­thing con­crete so I can learn it, use to pass a test, and for­get it. Geom­e­try I’m fine.

  43. Rana said on September 8th, 2009 at 3:57 pm

    LA Mary, I have that prob­lem with card games as well. About the only ones that I can reli­ably remem­ber the rules for are Old Maid and Soli­taire. All the oth­ers I need refresh­ers on, even if I’ve played them before.

    I’m like this with stan­dard­ized tests too – I am really, really good at learn­ing the mate­r­ial, acing the test, and then dump­ing all the infor­ma­tion out of my head shortly after­ward. Unless it gets rein­forced reg­u­larly, my brain’s pretty good at trash­ing what it con­sid­ers use­less infor­ma­tion.

    Unfor­tu­nately, things like jin­gles are appar­ently the Most Impor­tant Stuff Ever, because my brain clings to those with a vengeance.

    ETA

    I’m bet­ter at retain­ing con­crete infor­ma­tion than abstracts as well. For abstract stuff to stick, I have to tie it to some­thing phys­i­cal – a song, a pic­ture, writ­ten over and over by hand, that sort of thing. This is why, math- and science-wise, I did fairly well until I reached advanced col­lege cal­cu­lus and encoun­tered the con­cept of “k-dimensional space” in col­lege physics. My brain just didn’t know what to do with that, and I had trou­ble com­ing up with some sort of visual/tactile hook to hang it on. Maybe I should have com­posed a ditty?

  44. Kirk said on September 8th, 2009 at 3:58 pm

    The only times I have played euchre, I’ve already had about six beers, so I never remem­ber how to play. Only once do I remem­ber being con­fi­dent that I knew what was I doing play­ing that game. That’s why we play 31, the card game for drunks invented by drunks.

  45. nancy said on September 8th, 2009 at 4:00 pm

    Spades are like hearts in reverse — the object is to take tricks with spade trump cards, not get rid of them. I could prob­a­bly get back into it with a quick refresher course; in high school one year my posse played it so often we finally decided to put it to rest once and for all with a marathon final tour­na­ment. Haven’t played since “Spades to Insan­ity,” but it wasn’t dif­fi­cult.

  46. moe99 said on September 8th, 2009 at 4:04 pm

    Thanks, JeffB!

  47. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on September 8th, 2009 at 4:07 pm

    Mille Bornes, any­one?

  48. Dorothy said on September 8th, 2009 at 4:08 pm

    I want to learn how to play bridge, euchre and one more whose name escapes me at the minute. Damn I hate get­ting old!! My younger sis­ter plays it – she and girl­friends get together to do this – some­one help me out with the name of this frig­gin’ game….

    BUNCO!!!! (I love the Google so much it’s pathetic)

  49. Jolene said on September 8th, 2009 at 4:15 pm

    Whist was pop­u­lar in the small ND town where I grew up. My par­ents and their friends had card par­ties in their homes, and com­mu­nity orga­ni­za­tions (the PTA, the Amer­i­can Legion and such) had card par­ties as fundrais­ers. No one does that there any­more. Killed by TV and all the other forces that have sub­ur­ban­ized rural Amer­ica.

    I played when I was grow­ing up, but am not sure I could do it now. I enjoy games a lot, but the ones I like most are the ones that allow lots of room for chat and, ide­ally, humor. Like most peo­ple here, I’m bet­ter w/ words than num­bers, so I like Scrab­ble, Bog­gle, and other such things.

    Mille Bornes is a good game. Have played it and liked it, but would have to be rein­tro­duced to it now. Scat­ter­gories is a fun party game, as it gives rise to ridicu­lous answers that make peo­ple laugh, but also per­mits real com­pe­ti­tion so there’s a rea­son to care.

  50. Danny said on September 8th, 2009 at 4:22 pm

    We had a drink­ing game we played in col­lege. We’d watch Bob Newhart and every time some char­ac­ter uttered the name “Bob,” every­one drank. Nuanced, eh?

  51. Danny said on September 8th, 2009 at 4:26 pm

    Mary, I keep think­ing the descrip­tor for the Brit should change from “in-house” to “in-bed.”

  52. coozledad said on September 8th, 2009 at 4:30 pm

    We picked up a mah-jong set at a junk store. My wife says it’s basi­cally rummy, but the bet­ting is an intrin­sic fea­ture of the game. I liked it because of the tiles and the abacus-like chips. But again, it’s one of those games where the other play­ers are con­stantly hav­ing to ask me to spit the pieces back out.

  53. Sue said on September 8th, 2009 at 4:30 pm

    I don’t know if it’s local of all of Wis­con­sin, but sheepshead tour­na­ments are big around here. The basic require­ments seem to be an ad in the paper and a VFW hall. I have no idea how it’s played. Sounds kind of bar­baric. Another thing adver­tised a lot around here is some­thing called a “smoker”. Again, afraid to ask what it is, and I’ve been here almost 30 years. I imag­ine card games are involved. A VFW hall seems to be a require­ment for this, too.

  54. Danny said on September 8th, 2009 at 4:35 pm

    Sue, after you cure the pepperoncini’s in the brine or vine­gar, dump the solu­tion and put in olive oil and maybe some other herbs or spices. The Santa Bar­bara Olive Com­pany used to have these, but last I checked, they no longer car­ried them. The olive oil just smooths out the taste mar­velously. It still has bite, but just the right amount.

  55. Jolene said on September 8th, 2009 at 4:38 pm

    Sue, smok­ers can also be held in Knights of Colum­bus halls.

    Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about what a smoker is: An infor­mal social gath­er­ing, exclud­ing women, either pro­fes­sional or infor­mal in which tobacco prod­ucts may be freely used (archaic since late 20th cen­tury)

  56. Connie said on September 8th, 2009 at 4:45 pm

    Kirk in my fam­ily 31 has always been the game for a big group that includes all ages from kids to grand­mas.

    The first thing I learned at Michi­gan State was how to play euchre.

    The Zef­fer­elli R and J is a great mem­ory for me. First hour 8th grade phys ed so often involved plan­ning girl movie out­ings. I also remem­ber us going to 2001 A Space Odyssey. Not too far into it Lin­nea said this is too wierd and put on her sun­glasses. Then she decided that wasn’t enough and put kleenex under the lenses. She watched the rest that way. I’m not sure is watched is quite the right way to put it.

  57. Sue said on September 8th, 2009 at 4:52 pm

    Holy Smokes! That KofC smoker needs to be infil­trated because I want to meet Juan Mul­doon & Kyle Cham­ber­lin, For­mer Notre Dame Lep­rechauns, or maybe it’s only Kyle who is the lep­rechaun and Juan Mul­doon is a guest speaker just because of his awe­some name. I am really sorry I missed it.

  58. Colleen said on September 8th, 2009 at 4:53 pm

    I spent a lot of study time in col­lege on Euchre. Now we’ve have some friends we try to get together with for din­ner and cards once a month.

    My aunt and uncle intro­duced us to Hand and Foot. Uses five decks of cards, but is pretty fun.

    Add me to the list of those who have to have card games re-explained….

  59. Jen said on September 8th, 2009 at 4:54 pm

    Euchre is hugely pop­u­lar here in Indi­ana, but I never learned how to play it until recently because I came from a non-card play­ing fam­ily. The only card game we play is 31.

    How­ever, I mar­ried into a fam­ily that LOVES to play cards at every gath­er­ing, so I’ve been learn­ing. My father-in-law taught me crib­bage, which is insanely pop­u­lar up in Min­nesota, where he’s from. He’s also taught me a ton of other games, but he has to explain the rules every time. I think I’m finally get­ting the hang of Euchre.

    I tend to suck at pretty much any game, except for trivia games (like Triv­ial Pur­suit and Scene-It) and Scrab­ble. I am not a bril­liant strate­gist, that’s for sure.

  60. Kirk said on September 8th, 2009 at 5:27 pm

    Yes, 31 is more fun if about 10 peo­ple are play­ing. As the game pro­gresses, the losers can start another table.

    In the group I usu­ally play with, cou­ples aren’t allowed to sit next to each other.

  61. LAMary said on September 8th, 2009 at 5:41 pm

    Rana, I’m the same on stan­dard­ized tests. I study, do really well, for­get every­thing imme­di­ately. Scrab­ble and Triv­ial Pur­suit I play for blood.

  62. Dexter said on September 8th, 2009 at 5:52 pm

    Smok­ers. Pilot Joe may have attended a few of those Notre Dame Smok­ers held in Garrett…smoked sausage and kraut, beer and craps, and two or three ND play­ers always showed up…been a long time, but one player later was a tight end for the NY Giants and one player was Jay Case, who was a pal of the smoker orga­nizer, Duke D. of Gar­rett. High stakes craps table equals bad feel­ings. Whoa…what a night that was.

  63. coozledad said on September 8th, 2009 at 6:17 pm

    Dex­ter, Michael G: I used to work with a cou­ple of guys who served with the Rangers in Viet­nam. They told me the Aus­tralians would always osten­ta­tiously put their auto­matic pis­tols on the table before a game of cards, and fre­quently dis­played human ears on their web belts. Another guy told me the real badasses were the South Kore­ans, but I don’t recall hear­ing any­thing about them play­ing cards. I never knew whether they were just jerk­ing my chain.
    And while I’m at it, in the mid nineties there was some video reis­sue of an early 60′s Frank Sina­tra show that was very care­fully shot, almost a pre­cur­sor to Scorsese’s Last Waltz. I was watch­ing it on a bank of tele­vi­sions in a hard­ware store. It rocked. Does any­one hap­pen to know when that was made, or if you can access it on the web?

  64. MichaelG said on September 8th, 2009 at 6:33 pm

    Excel­lent, Deb­o­rah! Glad you had a good time in Sac­town. I love tapas. I could nib­ble all night.

    Cooze – I saw peo­ple of all sorts car­ry­ing ears. They dry up real fast. It wasn’t my thing. I got your Aus­tralian sto­ries and your Korean sto­ries includ­ing eat­ing Korean mess hall kim chee. Maybe one of these times I’ll post some­thing.

  65. Jolene said on September 8th, 2009 at 6:54 pm

    Today’s news you can use from the WaPo—

    8 Ques­tions About Health-Care Reform

    Here’s How Some Amer­i­cans Might Fare Under Reform

    Full cov­er­age of health­care reform

    And on a (some­what) lighter note—

    Hank Stuever and Tom Shales on this fall’s new TV shows

    Stuever’s review of The Last Truck, a doc­u­men­tary re the clos­ing of a GM plant in Lorain, Ohio. Sounds good, if not exactly cheer­ful. On HBO tonight.

  66. jeff borden said on September 8th, 2009 at 6:59 pm

    Coo­zledad,

    I worked with an ex-Ranger who had served with the Mon­tan­gards in the moun­tains and they were allegedly big on col­lect­ing ears. The guy I knew kept three bot­tles of formalde­hyde on his man­tle, which he claimed con­tained ears. The for­mula was so murky it was nearly impos­si­ble to tell exactly “what” was in there, but this guy was enough of a lunatic that I pretty much believed him. He drove a bur­gundy 1967 Camaro with a caved in roof, which he dam­aged in a fit of pique when said Camaro would not start. We never really fig­ured out what he thought would be accom­plished by jump­ing up and down on the roof a few times except to screw up a fine auto­mo­bile, but it was gen­er­ally con­sid­ered pru­dent to just accept his sto­ries with a nod and a smile and not ask any ques­tions.

  67. LAMary said on September 8th, 2009 at 7:21 pm

    It’s inter­est­ing that the we’re talk­ing about Viet vets with ear col­lec­tions today. My high school had no prob­lem with hav­ing a returned vet address the whole stu­dent body. He told grue­some sto­ries about Viet Nam, showed us his ear col­lec­tion and some other sou­venirs, and made incred­i­bly racist remarks about Asians. Know­ing my fine lit­tle home town, I bet they are among the dis­tricts who com­plained about Obama address­ing stu­dents.

  68. brian stouder said on September 8th, 2009 at 7:46 pm

    I asked our 8th grader, and he told me that one kid brought a note from mom, and had to leave the room when the Pres­i­dent of the United States addressed them.

    But the puz­zling thing was that our 5th grader’s teacher never showed it, at all.

    Aside from that, back in the day we used to play euchre, and spades – and isn’t there a bid­ding com­po­nent in spades? Can’t recall; but we also some­times played penny-ante poker, which taught me two things: games take on a decidely more exotic fla­vor when there’s money at stake; and, when actual paper money goes into the pot (a rare thing), it ain’t fun any­more.

    Nowa­days, the fel­lows and I gather twice a month and play board games – mostly so-called “Euro games” that tend to have col­or­ful pieces, beau­ti­ful boards, off-beat themes, lots of humor, and enough rules that a good “rules lawyer” (ie – not me!) can find a clever way to sail away with the win. Most of them fac­tor out luck, so that play­ers who are sharp will win, and peo­ple who are there to social­ize – won’t!

    I almost never win(!) – but I always have lots of fun…and inter­est­ingly, the next day I always have a very clear idea what I SHOULD have done, when I think back upon the night before. The thing is, when you’re in the mid­dle of a game of, say, Galaxy Trucker

    http://​www​.boardgamegeek​.com/​b​o​a​r​d​g​a​m​e​/31481

    or Set­tlers of Cataan, or (a per­sonal fave) Tigris and Euphrates

    http://​www​.boardgamegeek​.com/​b​o​a​r​d​g​ame/42

    you aren’t think­ing about work or wing-nut idiots or the funny sound the car started making…one’s mind is con­sumed with play­ing the game.

    (but I do love Hearts and Free­cell on the com­puter)

  69. moe99 said on September 8th, 2009 at 7:55 pm

    I saw part of the President’s address today at the body shop where the Sub­aru is get­ting fixed. Since it was in the sub­urbs (which are fairly con­ser­v­a­tive) I made sure to tell every­one what a great speech it was. Only prob­lem was the other cus­tomer there was African Amer­i­can and he seemed to already agree with me.

    Could not believe it was on Fox News. I thought they weren’t going to cover it.

  70. MarkH said on September 8th, 2009 at 8:01 pm

    Cooz –

    I sus­pect the Sina­tra pro­gram you saw was this one:

    http://​www​.imdb​.com/​t​i​t​l​e​/​t​t​0​4​04054/

    It is avail­able on dvd, just him, a big band and two dif­fer­ent con­duc­tors, Rid­dle and Jenk­ins.

    How­ever, there are at least three tv spe­cials that could be the one you’re ask­ing about, filmed between ’60 and ’65. They’re listed on his imdb entry.

    My Viet Nam vet bud­dies do very lit­tle talk­ing about their expe­ri­ences, but, when dis­cussing how tough/brutal the South Kore­ans were, they do agree on one thing: they took no pris­on­ers.

  71. Dexter said on September 8th, 2009 at 8:11 pm

    LAM: I was the media spokesman for our Viet­nam Vet­er­ans Against the War con­tin­gent in Fort Wayne. I was invited to speak at South Side High School to a his­tory class. This was set up after another mem­ber of our group called the prin­ci­pal of the school, who set it up with the his­tory teacher. It was a very cool deal. I just told the stu­dents what I thought of the racist, impe­ri­al­ist war of geno­cide against the peo­ple of Viet­nam. Of course, I was too heavy-handed with those kids, who obvi­ously had never heard this angle of the war being pre­sented to their vir­gin ears. I pulled no punches, and I answered some girl’s ques­tion of “but we’re pro­tect­ing our coun­try from com­mu­nism, aren’t we?” with a bom­bast of what I am sure sounded like National Lib­er­a­tion Front pro­pa­ganda, or what­ever.
    Yeah, the scene was cool, but I was too hot-headed to be taken seri­ously, I quickly real­ized, and of course we were black­balled from ever speak­ing to kids again.
    I saw guys wear­ing strings of dried ears, but when I first saw them, I thought they were fake; I couldn’t allow myself to believe that awful truth.
    Christ, that whole expe­ri­ence was weird enough on a daily basis as it was.

  72. nancy said on September 8th, 2009 at 8:14 pm

    Dorothy, you’re prob­a­bly think­ing of bunco. I’ve never played, but I’m told it’s one of those hen-party things.

    My friends and I dis­pense with the cards and just open the wine. Cut to the chase.

  73. Dexter said on September 8th, 2009 at 8:28 pm

    Alright…I gotta get this off my chest. Over­all, the ROK (Korean Army/Marines in Viet­nam) get high marks for sol­dier­ing in the Viet­nam war, but when I was there, they were appar­ently tired and they were pretty much hated by the grunts who served in the region I was in. They only wanted to go out on heli­copters. They went on stand -down for long peri­ods between mis­sions, dri­ving US com­man­ders who needed help crazy with anger. This can be left for mil­i­tary ana­lysts to expand the search if they so desire. I was only there a year, and that was the year the Kore­ans (ROK) were slack­ing hor­ri­bly. The “head Gen­eral” when I was there at MACV in Nha Trang was Major Gen­eral Charles P. Brown, and this is a quote from him:
    “The ROK’s spent rel­a­tively long peri­ods plan­ning reg­i­men­tal and divi­sion sized oper­a­tions, but the dura­tion of the exe­cu­tion phase is short.

    The plan­ning which leads to requests for heli­copter assets to sup­port air­mo­bile oper­a­tions is poor. This assess­ment is based on the fact that the mag­ni­tude of their requests for heli­copters gen­er­ally is absurdly high. With­out dis­turb­ing their tac­ti­cal plan one iota, their avi­a­tion requests can always be scaled down, fre­quently almost by a fac­tor of one-half . . . .”

  74. coozledad said on September 8th, 2009 at 8:43 pm

    Thanks, Mark. I hope these will ulti­mately migrate to Youtube.

  75. coozledad said on September 8th, 2009 at 8:48 pm

    Damn, Dex­ter. That’s the way his­tory ought to be writ­ten. That’s ele­gant.

  76. Connie said on September 8th, 2009 at 9:32 pm

    I’d never heard of Bunco before mov­ing to Min­nesota, and def­i­nitely got the impres­sion it was a hen party thing. Our card drawer includes a paper cup full of pen­nies that will serve any size group for 31. Except no mat­ter who wins the pen­nies go back in the jar.

    Our cur­rent favorite is a game called Apples to Apples, pur­chased in a box with two dif­fer­ent sets of cards and no board. Has to do with which of the noun cards in your hand are the best match for the adjec­tive card laid by the dealer. The dealer gets to decide who wins the round. It really is another fun game for any mix of ages. I have learned that almost any group that plays reg­u­larly has added some of their own rules. One of ours is: Sean Con­nery always wins.

  77. beb said on September 8th, 2009 at 9:55 pm

    LAMary @11: It was sopho­more year in high school, class was eco­nom­ics, a sub was teach­ing that day and the sub­ject, sup­pos­edly was con­sumerism. I’m not sure how the movie fits in.

  78. Kirk said on September 8th, 2009 at 10:17 pm

    Pen­nies? We play 31 with dol­lar bills.

  79. Joe Kobiela said on September 8th, 2009 at 11:47 pm

    Dex­ter,
    Yep went to quite a few of those N.D. smok­ers, I won a Carling’s black label jacket at one of them. I still have it. Use to buy Car­lings in Kinder­hook Mich for $4.00 bucks a case, back in 74-75-76, par­tied hard in Steuben county. I found out you never bought Beer you only rented it.
    Pilot Joe

  80. coozledad said on September 9th, 2009 at 1:31 am

    http://​rur​ri​ta​ble​.word​press​.com/​2​0​0​9​/​0​1​/​3​1​/​g​enius/
    Sorry, it just bears repeat­ing.

  81. Jean S said on September 9th, 2009 at 2:21 am

    Dex­ter: We are not wor­thy.

    And for all you rip-roarin’ recipe requesters, here it is:

    Sweet Onion Mar­malade

    Use Walla-Wallas, Vidalias, Maui Sweets or the equiv­a­lent (aka the Texas ver­sion, the name of which I am not remem­ber­ing).

    This makes about 7 half pints. Use a water bath to can. Ten min­utes at sea level; 15 min­utes for 1,000 to 6,000 ft; 20 min­utes above 6,000 ft. And if you don’t can? Just slam those jars into the refrig­er­a­tor.
    __
    About 2 1/2 lbs onions, enough to mea­sure 7 cups when chopped. (The orig­i­nal recipe calls for ele­gant strips that are about 1/4 inches thick by 1 1/2 inches long. Very nice, but no one will sob if you just chop ‘em up.)

    1 1/2 c apple juice
    3/4 c red wine vine­gar
    1 T finely minced fresh gar­lic
    1 tsp. salt
    1/2 tsp. ground white pep­per
    1/2 tsp. yel­low mus­tard seeds
    1/4 tsp. crushed red pep­per flakes (oh, go crazy if you need to)
    4 c gran­u­lated white sugar
    1/2 c firmly packed light brown sugar
    1 1.75-oz Sure Jell for Lower Sugar Recipes (light fruit pectin)
    1 tsp. but­ter or oil (this helps min­i­mize foam­ing)

    Place the pre­pared onions in a 6- to 8-qt heavy-bottomed pot. Add the apple juice, red wine vine­gar, gar­lic, salt, white pep­per, mus­tard seeds and red pep­per flakes. Mix thor­oughly.

    Mea­sure the white sugar into a bowl, then remove 1/4 cup and set aside in a smaller bowl. Add the brown sugar to the larger amount of white sugar and set it aside.

    Add the pectin to the smaller amount of white sugar, then stir this into the onion mix­ture. Add the but­ter or oil. Place the pot with the onion mix­ture over high heat; bring it to a full rolling boil, stir­ring con­stantly. Imme­di­ately stir in the remain­ing brown/white sug­ars.

    Bring it back to a full rolling boil and then boil for exactly 5 min­utes, stir­ring con­stantly. Remove from heat and skim off foam, if any.

    Can as per usual (or store in refrig­er­a­tor).

    To give credit where it is most cer­tainly due: This orig­i­nally ran in The Ore­gon­ian, in a col­umn by Jan Roberts-Dominguez. She noted: “Deli­cious over cream cheese or brie as an hors d’oeuvre, and as a condi­ment for pork or grilled chicken. Whisk a lit­tle into sour cream to use as a dip.”

    I would say, “Add it to your aver­age turkey sand­wich and be pre­pared to bow and thank the Walla-Walla Gods.”

    Cheers, gang.

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