Paula Deen is down with butterIt stands to reason that more than a few people are all a’gloat over the now-confirmed news that Paula Deen has Type Two diabetes, because significantly more than a few people are outright assholes. Deen won’t say ‘fuck the haters’ – not out loud, for sure – so you may consider that I, a fellow Type Two diabetic, just said it for her.

(This news does put the launch of her son Bobby’s show, Not My Mama’s Meals, in a bit of context that was missing before. Hey, it’s a business, ya’ll.)

As for butter, which I consider my close personal friend: To borrow a riff from Mitt Romney, margarine is the biggest fraud since Bigfoot. I expect Paula to continue folding the real deal into her recipes – with some moderation, to be sure – because a life of deprivation is hardly worth the trouble.

You may recall that last April, M and I had the old decaying support pillars of our century-old home replaced with steel columns. Here are the retired wooden pillars:

The newly-retired wooden pillars

M instructed me to make sure that the contractors who installed the new columns left the old pillars with us. She had something arty in mind; I had no idea what, exactly, but have learned to rely on her judgment in such matters. So the old columns sat in the basement for a while, and were relocated to the back yard after that.

Months passed (envision pages of a calendar flying, just like in the movies), and we moved on to other house renovation projects. The new kitchen took shape, and M eyed the walls of that room. She described what she wanted to do: mount the pillars on a wall or two (or three) as accent pieces. To that end, M used a sander to remove the paint from the pillars, and then used the table saw to first cut away the old decayed ends, and then to cut the pillars into sections. She experimented with stains on a couple of the sections, but ultimately decided that the natural distress of the wood looked much better.

And then, with some minimal assistance from her husband, M mounted the post sections on the kitchen walls. Like this:

Kitchen with pillars turned into accent wall pieces

Closer view here:

Shorter beams on one kitchen wall

And here:

Longer beams mounted on this kitchen wall

My wife never fails to amaze me.

Unnamed beach on Oahu

This post constitutes a warning – not to any particular person or institution, but to the world at large.

Give me a hard time, mess with me in any way, and I’ll pull up stakes and move to a spot within driving distance of this unnamed beach on Oahu.

Think I’m kidding? Try me.

Odd vintage Budweiser ad

November 28, 2011

Rather odd Budweiser ad

“For many people Black Friday shopping is now as much a part of the holiday tradition as the turkey,” the Target spokeswoman said. “Black Friday has an exciting, euphoric feeling.” Uh-huh.

Poster image of Ralph Fiennes as Lord VoldemortAs a DISH Network subscriber, I’ve been treated lately to repeated trailers for the pay per view presentation of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part the Second and Final, At Long Freakin’ Last, Can You Believe It? No need for PPV for me, as I’ve seen the flick twice in theatres and will doubtless purchase it on disc at the opportune moment. The trailers do bring certain enjoyable scenes back to mind, however, chief among those being two moments centering on Lord Voldemort. It’s an axiom that clashes between good and evil require memorable villains, and the portrayal of Voldemort by Ralph Fiennes certainly qualifies. Indeed – and though I am certainly no film critic – I’d go so far as to say that two He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named moments are so drop-dead awesome that they fairly demand a Best Supporting Actor award for Fiennes:

1: A priceless reaction of barely suppressed rage when Neville Longbottom dares to ask to say a few words as Voldemort revels in apparent victory. Fiennes’ villain pauses for just a moment – one grimacing, teeth-gnashing moment. You can practically read the thoughts flashing across his countenance: How…how DARE this little cretin intrude on my moment of supreme triumph! I should kill him for this! I…I WANT to kill him…but it would be bad form, wouldn’t it? Delightful.

2: The response when it appears that Harry Potter has not answered the summons to his doom at Voldemort’s hand in the Forbidden Forest. Voldemort despises Potter for simply existing, of course, and has never seemed to truly acknowledge the link between the two of them (as Potter does), and yet takes it on faith that this foolish, noble boy will answer the call to sacrifice himself. Fiennes waits; he turns, then looks back to stare into the woods; he murmurs, as though speaking to himself rather than to the sycophants who surround him:

I thought he would come.

Voldemort sounds, in this moment, not just confused but genuinely disappointed in Harry. It’s an oddly human moment, and it’s brilliant.

Yes, yes, I know that there are those would prefer that Best Supporting Actor be awarded to Alan Rickman for his admirable portrayal of Severus Snape, and I am loath to oppose them. Still, I think I’ll hold out for Fiennes, who certainly deserves it. Let’s end with a quote from Fiennes himself, as he describes his take on Voldemort:

He’s all about acquiring power and controlling and manipulating a lot of people. It can be thrilling and quite freeing to play, because all the rules disappear. In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, director Mike Newell encouraged a switchblade explosion of venom and rage. When somebody is contained and has the ability to explode, that makes people nervous.

When I was young, there was this character in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang called the Child Catcher. I remember being terrified by this figure. I think children should be really scared of Lord Voldemort.

Sometimes kids would come to the set, and I could see them looking at me anxiously. I once walked past the young child of a script supervisor, and he burst into tears. I felt very good about myself.

Well played, sir.

On Cooking, 3rd edition, by Labensky and HauseWas recently wandering with M through our favorite antique/resale store, Treasure Aisles, when I ran across this volume. My heart leapt in response, for On Cooking: Techniques from Expert Chefs came to me as if in answer to a deficit in my culinary approach: I don’t know enough about how to cook. It’s one thing to robotically follow recipes, which I do on a regular basis; it’s another thing altogether to understand the principles of cooking, the how and why of the process (as opposed to the what).

So, yeah, we’re giving this textbook a try. It is a pre-owned copy of the third edition (the title is currently at the fifth edition), which is fine by me. I’ll let you know how my culinary studies go.

My kingdom for a spud wrench

November 11, 2011

Behold: the mighty spud!

End-on view of radiator spud

The spud is the part of a cast iron radiator which connects one side of the radiator to the valve (where hot water or steam enters) and the other side to a union joint (where water/steam exits). A deceptively unassuming piece of hardware, the might of the spud lies in its ability to resist efforts to remove it when it has been connected to the radiator for ten thousand years, as many before me have learned. And as I know now!

For every piece of hardware, there is a tool for working with it, or so we are taught. The recommended tool for removal of a spud is called a spud wrench:

Actual spud wrench

The shape of the spud wrench is designed to fit against the two metal ‘buds’ inside of the spud. You then clamp a sturdy pipe wrench to the spud wrench and torque it mightily to loosen and unscrew the spud. Well, that’s what I’ve heard. But what if a spud wrench is as rare as hen’s teeth in your area? I searched high and low at various hardware stores, big and small, for this tool, only to be met with blank stares or the wrong kind of spud wrench altogether (intended for sink and toilet work) or the news that ‘we just sold out.’ Oy.

This is no impediment to the creative and embittered homeowner, though. Time to make shift with the tools on hand. Insert the handle of a smallish pipe wrench (twelve inches, say) into the spud:

Using a pipe wrench handle as a makeshift spud wrench

Attach a larger pipe wrench to the smaller one:

Applying torque to the ersatz spud wrench

Now wrench it! But with steady applied force; no jerky violence, please.

This is how I removed the balky spud from one radiator, and I was terribly pleased with myself. That is, I was pleased until I tried to repeat the procedure on the two spuds on a second radiator. This failed, for the buds inside these two spuds were so corroded that they simply snapped off, causing the handle of the twelve-inch wrench to spin impotently in place. Anger…rising…

So what does one do in this spot? One relies on previous unfortunate experience. Earlier, I had goofily turned the nut of one spud in the wrong direction while trying to disconnect the spud from a radiator valve; I cranked the nut away from the radiator and towards the valve. What happened is that I broke the nut, basically; I would up wrenching it off the spud altogether and onto the valve. That was an accident – but I realized that I could perhaps use the same procedure to either remove the nuts from the spuds on this last radiator – in which case I could apply a pipe wrench directly to the outside of the spud – or the spud itself might finally loosen as I cranked the nut and valve away from the radiator. So I took an old, unattached valve, spun the nut onto it, and then held it in place as I deliberately spun the nut in the wrong direction (towards the valve and away from the spud).

And goddamn if that didn’t work. On both spuds. I was able to spin them off (with some elbow grease).

Cranking the nut away onto a valve to free the spud

The first success might have been mere happenstance, or shithouse luck, as they say. The second success raised this approach to the level of recommended procedure, and I am happy to share it with you.

For a look at the way normal people remove valves and spuds from cast iron radiators, I recommend this terribly helpful post by Josh at Bungalow Twenty-Three.