We should
sit like a cat
and wait for the door
to open.
—”Braided Creek: A Conversation in Poetry,” by Ted Kooser and Jim Harrison
Cat, sitting
The fab four
Today being 4/4, it seemed a propitious morning to whip up my world-famous Four Pepper Hash.
Also, I was sick unto death of oatmeal.
Anyway, this dish is a breeze, loosely based on a 1993 Betty Crocker (!) recipe from the early days of marriage and underpaid freelancing.
You start with a couple cups of coarsely chopped spuds (I favor the reds; go figure). Microwave those commie taters for five minutes to speed the process along.
While the taters are nuking, coarsely chop about a cup of whatever peppers you have on hand. For this one I used red, yellow, and orange bells, plus a jalapeño.
Likewise take the knife to a couple scallions (or a quarter cup of whatever onion is nearby); a couple tablespoons of parsley and/or cilantro; a clove or two of garlic; and mebbe a bit of already-cooked meat (I had a chunk of andouille sausage left over from a jambalaya I made a couple days back).
For spices I’ve gone as basic as salt and pepper, especially if I’m not adding meat or if there are sissies at the table. A bit of thyme is nice too.
Depending upon what protein I’m using I’ve been known to add a generous pinch of Mexican oregano and some smoked Spanish paprika or red chile powder, or p’raps a dash of Penzey’s Cajun spice.
When you’ve got everything ready to go, heat two tablespoons of butter (or the alternative fat of your choice) in a skillet over medium heat and dump the lot in. Fry, stirring occasionally, for eight minutes or so until the spuds are nicely browned and the vegetables tender.
Fill your plates, grate a little sharp Cheddar and/or Parmigiano-Reggiano on top, and th’ow an egg over medium onto the sumbitch. Warmed flour tortillas on the side. That’s it.
Sack up
“Today we shall play ‘Bag,” and ‘Crinkle Tube,’ and ‘Chase Me Chase Me.’ Then it will be time for lunch and an extended snooze, during which you are free to do whatever it is that you do when you are not serving me.”
Non-Race-Related Blah Blah Blah®
Well, it seems sports podcasters have finally caught up with what Charles Pelkey and I were doing all those years at Live Update Guy.
With everyone staying home and the athletic world as a whole looking a lot like the middle 75km of a flat Tour stage, they’ve resorted to (wait for it) Non-Race-Related Blah Blah Blah®, a LUG specialty. As Caroline Crampton writes at Nieman Lab:
“As well as covering how players and support staff are handling the situation, [The Anfield Wrap] is dipping into comedy, history and broader fan culture. Iain Macintosh, chief executive of Muddy Knees Media — best known for The Totally Football Show and other associated podcasts — spoke of similar plans. His team just has “an inexhaustible supply of new feature ideas,” he said. “We’re not trying to replicate what we did before, because we can’t, but rather see it as a chance to go through all those things that we’ve talked about doing that, you know, real life has got in the way. Now we can get them out there and give them some air.” That includes a forthcoming “Pundit World Cup” as well as film reviews, documentaries, and quizzes.”
Maybe it’s time to revive LUG as a podcast. With no irksome bicycle racing and TV images of same to cramp our creative style, we could really focus on just making the whole thing up.
Doing time
In his loosely autobiographical novel “Homeboy,” ex-con Seth Morgan had a character offer some advice for a new fish worried about doing time.
“The time does itself,” schooled Smoothbore. “You jist got to live with it.”
A few pages closer to the penitentiary, the narrator elaborated:
Jailin’ was an art form and lifestyle both. The style was walkin’ slow, drinkin’ plenty of water, and doin’ your own time; the art was lightin’ cigarets from wall sockets, playin’ the dozens, cuttin’ up dream jackpots, and slowin’ your metabolism to a crawl, sleepin’ twenty hours a day. Forget the streets you won’t see for years. Lettin’ your heart beat the bricks with your body behind bars was hard time. Acceptin’ the jailhouse as the only reality was easy time. Jailin’.
Staying at home, social distancing — these aren’t jailin’, but they’re not exactly freedom, either. Sure, the cell is a little bigger, the guards a little less visible, and the food better. Still, you’d rather be out on the street.
But listen to Smoothbore. Let the time do itself. Live with it.
With any luck at all, you have a short stretch and an agreeable cellmate. You know — someone who doesn’t mind doing the laundry while you stretch out on your bunk and listen to the latest thrilling episode of Radio Free Dogpatch!
P L A Y R A D I O F R E E D O G P A T C H
• Technical notes: The bargain-basement broadcasting continues. I used the Audio-Technica ATR2100-USB mic,recording directly to the MacBook Pro using Rogue Amoeba’s nifty little app Piezo. Editing was as usual, in GarageBand. Once again the background music is by Your Humble Narrator, assembled from bits and pieces in the Mac and iOS versions of GarageBand. Other sonic adornments come from the iMovie and GarageBand sound libraries.
Mad Blog Media 