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Feb. 26th, 2012 10:14 pm
Jack Lemmon, ultimate Nice Guy®
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monshu and I had several invitations for Oscar Parties tonight and, as per usual, we turned them down in favour of a quiet night at home. Neither of us really has the stomach for the bloated mishegoss the Academy Awards have become; we haven't seen any of the nominated films--we don't even know who half the young stars are any more--and fashion-snarking just isn't our bag. Instead, we popped in a past award-winner: Best Picture 1960 The Apartment, directed by Billy Wilder (Best Director) and starring Jack Lemmon (who lost out to Burt Lancaster) and Shirley Maclaine (who lost out to Elizabeth Taylor).
OH. MY. GOD. That just might be the creepiest rom-com I've ever seen. Lemmon stalks a girl at work (using his position to access and memorise her personal records), keeps her locked and isolated in his apartment over Christmas after a suicide attempt (forbidding her to contact her worried family), and then unilaterally decides he's going to "take her off the hands" of her current paramour. And he's the good guy. What he is is a Nice Guy of the first order. (Quoth the Old Man: "I never realised what a slimy character he is.") With these kinds of role models, it's no wonder so many men have difficulty distinguishing "romance" from criminal activity.
Dinner was an aggressively simple preparation of the smoked pork butt I brought back from Paulina Meat Market on Monday. In fact, it was essentially identical to traditional Irish bacon and cabbage, despite the "Eastern European" pedigree of the recipe the GWO used. The only difference I noted was the addition of some brown sugar to the boiling liquid. Apparently, there's a linked recipe that uses this for a sweet sauerkraut soup, which attracted his eye since we've still got three pounds of kraut left over from my stab at dinner.
I was dubious when I saw the head of white cabbage, since I remember absolutely loathing boiled cabbage as a child. I don't know if it's a matter of my taste buds weakening, the effect of the added sugar, or what, but I found it all very palatable. Enough to consider having it again--provided we can once again get our hands on a nice hunk of smoked meat. A cheaper cut would have too much brine, making for a saltier broth that wouldn't be much use afterwards.
monshu and I had several invitations for Oscar Parties tonight and, as per usual, we turned them down in favour of a quiet night at home. Neither of us really has the stomach for the bloated mishegoss the Academy Awards have become; we haven't seen any of the nominated films--we don't even know who half the young stars are any more--and fashion-snarking just isn't our bag. Instead, we popped in a past award-winner: Best Picture 1960 The Apartment, directed by Billy Wilder (Best Director) and starring Jack Lemmon (who lost out to Burt Lancaster) and Shirley Maclaine (who lost out to Elizabeth Taylor).OH. MY. GOD. That just might be the creepiest rom-com I've ever seen. Lemmon stalks a girl at work (using his position to access and memorise her personal records), keeps her locked and isolated in his apartment over Christmas after a suicide attempt (forbidding her to contact her worried family), and then unilaterally decides he's going to "take her off the hands" of her current paramour. And he's the good guy. What he is is a Nice Guy of the first order. (Quoth the Old Man: "I never realised what a slimy character he is.") With these kinds of role models, it's no wonder so many men have difficulty distinguishing "romance" from criminal activity.
Dinner was an aggressively simple preparation of the smoked pork butt I brought back from Paulina Meat Market on Monday. In fact, it was essentially identical to traditional Irish bacon and cabbage, despite the "Eastern European" pedigree of the recipe the GWO used. The only difference I noted was the addition of some brown sugar to the boiling liquid. Apparently, there's a linked recipe that uses this for a sweet sauerkraut soup, which attracted his eye since we've still got three pounds of kraut left over from my stab at dinner.
I was dubious when I saw the head of white cabbage, since I remember absolutely loathing boiled cabbage as a child. I don't know if it's a matter of my taste buds weakening, the effect of the added sugar, or what, but I found it all very palatable. Enough to consider having it again--provided we can once again get our hands on a nice hunk of smoked meat. A cheaper cut would have too much brine, making for a saltier broth that wouldn't be much use afterwards.