Archive for January, 2022

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Firings watch.

Sunday, January 9th, 2022

Very very quick, as I’m using downtime: Vic Fangio out as coach of the Denver Broncos.

Posted in Firings, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Look! I made another thing!

Friday, January 7th, 2022

Honey-Sriracha Chex Mix.

I have written before that Chex Mix is one of the traditional foods of my people, dating back to the before time. My maternal grandmother would make it for the holiday season, before Chex Mix became the popular prepackaged snack product of today. This was so long ago that Chex hadn’t even started selling pre-made Chex Mix spice packages (affiliate link).

My sister made the Honey-Sriracha variant for the holidays a few years ago, and I immediately adopted it as a favorite seasonal snack. You can still find the recipe on the Chex web site. But I don’t trust the Chex people not to reorganize their site someday, so here’s an archive.is version as well.

I’ve made this enough times that I feel comfortable experimenting. Also, some people have issues with nuts. So I generally leave the peanuts out when I make this. In this batch, I substituted oyster crackers (and, as a supply chain note, it took me almost a week to find oyster crackers) and Cheez-Its for the popcorn and peanuts. I also doubled the amount of butter, Huy Fong Sriracha, and honey. Each pan is about three cups of corn and rice Chex, about a cup of oyster crackers, and about a cup each of Cheeze-Its and waffle pretzels, with four tablespoons butter, six tablespoons sriracha, and four tablespoons honey in each.

I personally prefer to use the oven rather than microwaving, but no judgment on you if you use the later. It takes about an hour to do this in the oven, stirring every 15 minutes. I’d store the finished product in gallon-sized zipper bags, in my refrigerator or freezer to avoid it going stale.

To my taste, this is spicy, but in a subtle way. The sriracha gives it sort of a slow pleasant burn. This would make a good spicy bar snack. Have a refreshing beverage at hand.

Speaking of refreshing beverages, I did whip up a batch of hot buttered rum batter, and have made hot buttered rum twice now. The first time, I think I used too large a mug: my proportions were off, and I thought it tasted too watery. The second time, I used a normal sized mug, and I can see what the fuss is about: it seemed to be nearly perfectly proportioned, not too watery or too buttery or too rummy. I could have easily sucked back another one of those.

Still haven’t tried homemade eggnog yet, and this weekend is going to be action packed. Maybe sometime next week, if it stays cold.

(And speaking of spicy bar snacks: another recipe I want to try.)

Posted in Food | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 7, 2022.

Friday, January 7th, 2022

Very quick, because I have only a tiny bit of downtime between doctor’s appointments: Sidney Poitier. THR. Variety.

More later, maybe, depending on how long this second appointment takes and how long it takes to get more than breaking news obits.

Posted in Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 6, 2022.

Thursday, January 6th, 2022

Lawrence N. Brooks. He was 112 years old, and, at the time of his death, was the oldest surviving veteran of WWII.

Assigned to the mostly Black 91st Engineer General Service Regiment stationed in Australia — an Army unit that built bridges, roads and airstrips — Private Brooks served as a caretaker to three white officers, cooking, driving and doing other chores for them.

…

Mr. Brooks said he considered himself fortunate to have been spared combat duty when later in the war troop losses forced the military to send more African American troops to the front lines. In 1941, fewer than 4,000 African Americans were serving in the military; by 1945, that number had increased to more than 1.2 million.
“I got lucky,” he said. “I was saying to myself, ‘If I’m going to be shooting at somebody, somebody’s going to be shooting at me, and he might get lucky and hit.’”

By way of Lawrence: Willie Siros, noted Austin SF fan, book collector, book dealer, and a personal friend. (Apologies if that Facebook link is wonky: for some reason, I can view it on my phone, but I can’t view it on the big computer even in incognito mode. At least, not without logging into my non-existent Facebook account.)

Peter Bogdanovich. Ordinarily I would wait until tomorrow, but it looks like they had this one in the can. (And it has already been corrected once.) THR. Variety.

Before the end of the ’70s, however, Mr. Bogdanovich had been transformed from one of the most celebrated directors in Hollywood into one of the most ostracized. His career would be marred for years to come by critical and box-office failures, personal bankruptcies, the raking of his romantic life through the press and, as it all unspooled, an orgy of film-industry schadenfreude.
“It isn’t true that Hollywood is a bitter place, divided by hatred, greed and jealousy,” the director Billy Wilder once observed. “All it takes to bring the community together is a flop by Peter Bogdanovich.”

I wouldn’t mind seeing “Paper Moon”. I saw “What’s Up, Doc?” many many years ago, and would welcome seeing it again. And we’ve watched “Last Picture Show” recently. I’d also like to read those MoMA monographs.

Though Mr. Bogdanovich repeatedly disavowed the connection, critics liked to point out affinities between Welles’s career and his own: Both men began as directorial wunderkinds. (“Citizen Kane,” released in 1941, was Welles’s first full-length feature.) Both were later expelled from the Eden of A-list directors. (In the 1970s, a down-and-out Welles lived for a time in Mr. Bogdanovich’s mansion in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles.)

…

In the late 1990s, after declaring bankruptcy again, the down-and-out Mr. Bogdanovich lived for a time in the guesthouse of the young director Quentin Tarantino.

Posted in Books, History, Movies, Obits | 1 Comment »

Tweet of the day.

Wednesday, January 5th, 2022

Explained:

Runner-up:

Posted in Art, Geek | Comments Closed

Random thoughts.

Wednesday, January 5th, 2022

I think it is time that we admit “Imagine” is a bad idea.

Not just a bad song, which it is, but we should admit it is just a bad idea in general and toss it on the dustheap of history. No more airplay, no more covers, no acknowledgment that this song even exists.

I have no strong opinion about Lennon’s other songs. But I have left instructions in my will telling my pallbearers to open carry at my funeral, and that they should use any degree of force necessary to stop “Imagine” from being played.

Today’s example of why I feel this way.

I happened to note this the other night, and I’ve seen other people point it out since then. But for the record: 2022 is the year of “Soylent Green”.

(Make Room! Make Room! (affiliate link) was set in August of 1999, for comparison’s sake.)

Posted in Books, Movies, Music | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 3, 2022.

Monday, January 3rd, 2022

Richard Leakey, paleoanthropologist.

One of his most celebrated finds came in 1984 when he helped unearth “Turkana Boy,” a 1.6-million-year-old skeleton of a young male Homo erectus. The other was a skull called “1470,” found in 1972, that extended the world’s knowledge of the Homo erectus species several million years deeper into the past.

…

His discoveries were almost as remarkable as his ability to evade death. He fractured his skull as a boy, almost died after receiving a kidney transplant from his brother Philip in 1979, lost both legs in a 1993 plane crash and was once treated for skin cancer.

Dan Reeves, former Dallas Cowboys running back and later NFL coach.

Reeves played and coached with the Dallas Cowboys during a stellar period when they won two Super Bowls, one when he was a player-coach and one when he was an offensive coordinator, working for Coach Tom Landry. After several seasons as an assistant to Landry, he was hired as the Broncos’ head coach in 1981, replacing Red Miller.
Over 12 seasons in Denver, his teams had a record of 110-73-1 and were among the best in the American Football Conference. Led by quarterback John Elway, they lost the Super Bowl in 1987, 1988 and 1990 by wide margins to the New York Giants, the Washington Redskins and the San Francisco 49ers.

…

Undrafted by any team in the N.F.L. or the American Football League, he signed in 1965 with the Cowboys, who converted him to a running back. He played eight seasons and accumulated 1,990 rushing yards, 757 of them in 1966, his best year.

Jeanine Ann Roose. She was the young “Violet” in “It’s a Wonderful Life”, and…that’s it.

She went on to attend UCLA, becoming a psychologist and later a Jungian analyst, according to TMZ, which quoted her as once having made a comparison between her life and the movie’s story line.
“It’s a Wonderful Life was the only movie that I was in and it been an amazing lifetime experience to have been in such a collectively meaningful picture. … It became clear that my desire was specifically to help others who were struggling with finding meaning in their life — not unlike Clarence in the movie who helps George see the meaning of his life,” she said.

Max Julien. He was “Goldie” in “The Mack” (opposite Richard Pryor). Other credits include “Mod Squad”, “The Bold Ones: The Protectors”, and “The Name of the Game”.

Posted in Movies, NFL, Obits, Science, Sports | Comments Closed

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