Month: February 2003

I finished the longhand draft of The Welcomer the other day; now all I face is a day or two of typing. Then I plan to do one last round of edits to tidy up the prose — one final polish, as it were — and then, this sucker is going in the mail to…someone.

(I’d like to see a contest for aspiring writers, the Grand Prize of which would be a lifetime supply of paper, ink cartridges, and new printers when the old ones die. I can’t believe the sheer amounts of paper I use, and I’m neither published nor even especially prolific. Ye gods.)

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The vampire slayer has apparently been slain.

I never got into Buffy, although on the occasions that I watched it I always found it very well done and enjoyable; there was simply always something on opposite the show that I already watched faithfully, and then the show got to a point where I simply didn’t want to invest the time I’d need to catch up with a mythology that is, by all reports, pretty complex. But I know the show will be missed, and maybe I’ll investigate it in the inevitable syndicated re-runs someday.

And judging from what I hear from friends of mine and other bloggers who love Buffy, I gather the show is going out pretty strong — maybe not at its height, but at least it’s not getting all “stretched out” and bloated the way The X-Files did. (And in that particular case, I’m one who hung in there liking the show until the last season, whereas many other fans got sick of TXF during the sixth or seventh seasons.)

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If you’re fond of baked pasta dishes and want a new one to try out, make yourself some Pastitsio. This is the Greek forerunner of lasagna, and as a special bonus, I’ll tell you how to make it. The recipe looks complicated, and it takes a while to put together, but it’s really fairly easy.

The Noodles

Cook 1.5 cups of elbow macaroni, and drain. Toss with a mixture of 1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese, 1/3 cup milk, and 1 beaten egg. Set aside until ready for assembly of the dish.

The Meat Mixture

Beat one egg; set aside. In a heavy stovetop pan (Dutch oven or something similar), 1 lb ground meat (I usually use beef or pork, but I have used bulk pork sausage before — if you use a seasoned meat, go easy on the salt later in the recipt), 1 onion and a couple tablespoons chopped garlic (to taste, really) until the meat is browned. Add 1 small can tomato sauce, 1/4 cup red wine (whatever’s on hand — I’ve made this dish using red wine from Cabernet to Port), salt & pepper (1 tsp each), 1 tbs parsley flakes, 1 tbs oregano, and 1 tbs ground cinnamon. (Generally I put in a bit more oregano and cinnamon; these are to taste.) Stir, bring to boil, and then simmer for ten minutes or so, until the meat mixture is quite thick. At that time, remove from heat and slowly stir 1 beaten egg into the meat mixture. This will thicken it even more.

White Sauce for the Top

Beat two eggs, set aside. In a saucepan, melt 3 tbs butter or margarine; add 3 tbs flour to make a roux. Then add 1 1/2 cups of milk, all at once, and ground pepper to taste. (I use quite a bit.) Stir constantly, breaking up any lumps in the roux, over fairly high heat. You want this to come just about to a boil, because a roux thickens best at a boil. When the mixture is pretty thick, temper the eggs by spooning 1/4 cup or so of the sauce into them; then slowly pour the eggs into the pan with the rest of the sauce, stirring along the way. This will thicken it even more. Then stir in 1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese.

Final Assembly

Lightly grease, butter, or spray with cooking spray a 1.5 qt casserole dish. Assemble the layers as follows: 1/2 of the macaroni mixture, then all of the meat mixture, then the remaining macaroni mixture, and finally top with the white sauce. Sprinkle the sauce with more ground cinnamon to taste (I absolutely blanket the thing, because we adore cinnamon) and then bake in a 375 degree oven until the top is nicely browned. Remove from oven and let stand for several minutes before cutting and serving.

This makes six servings. It is not a light meal, but it is fattening in a glorious way. With garlic bread and a nice salad, this makes one of the finest meals I know.

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(Blogger rant of the day: Geez, now the thing’s eating posts. As Thomas Covenant might say, Hellfire and Damnation!)

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When in doubt, post something about my referral-logs, I guess….

:: Someone happened on Byzantium’s Shores via a Google search under “DestinyUSA progress”.

Short answer: there ain’t any.

DestinyUSA is the big-ass shopping mall/water park/Erie Canal recreation/hotel resort/indoor golf course thing that’s been on the drawing board in Syracuse for years, and despite a “groundbreaking” ceremony last fall (in which a lot of dirt was brought in and spread about a section of the Carousel Center parking lot so Governor Pataki and assorted luminaries could stick a spade in it) there appears to be nothing going on outside of the normal behind-the-scenes discussion and wrangling about zoning and tax incentives and environmental studies and the like. When we moved here in September, they were talking about having DestinyUSA open and running (at least partly) in 2004; now they’ve pushed that back to 2006.

I like the idea of the project, although I remain skeptical of the ability of a metropolitan area the size of Syracuse to support something of this magnitude and have decided that I’ll believe it when I see huge cranes, backhoes, earthmovers, and two thousand guys in blue jeans and orange shirts and Carhartt clothing milling about actually building the thing.

:: Someone else was looking for something involving VH1 and “the greatest one-hit wonder of all time”; I assume they’re looking for info on a specific VH1 show. However, my personal favorite one-hit wonder of all time is Dexy’s Midnight Runners, who achieved pseudo-immortality with their anthem “Come On Eileen”.

:: It must be “Read a poem and comment on it” time in classrooms across the nation, because the “Annabel Lee” hits are starting to pick up again.

:: And I’m still getting hits from my mentioning of the Don Cheadle NFL ads, which stopped running a month ago!

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Heavens-to-Betsy, I actually like American Idol. This damned show has me hooked. Somebody throw me a life-preserver!! (I’m rooting for that Reuben guy.)

And I’m still loving 24, although I do hope they quit dropping Kim Bauer into more and more ludicrous situations. It’s time for her storyline to end. Really.

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I’ve got the new tourism slogan for Syracuse: Come to Syracuse! We’ve got one of everything!

Buffalo isn’t a particularly big city, but it was big enough to have more than one Barnes&Noble, more than one really nice mall, more than one Outback Steakhouse, more than one independent bookstore, et cetera. I got spoiled a bit by that aspect of the town, and I suspect in a bigger city it’s a luxury really taken for granted. If I wanted to shop for CDs, I had a number of choices of where to go for good selection.

Syracuse, on the other hand, is only about half Buffalo’s size, and thus the choices really don’t exist. There is one Borders and one Barnes&Noble, and that’s it. Not to complain, because that’s the way it is (as Stephen King might say, “Tough titty said the kitty”); but moving from a large city to a significantly smaller city can reveal ways in which we’re spoiled that we had never considered.

(Here’s a strange thing, though: Syracuse has at least four Thai restaurants and three Japanese steakhouses that I’ve noticed, and yet in my travels around town I have yet to see any significant Oriental population. In fact, there are more Oriental eateries here than there are Applebee’s outlets.)

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The Top Ten Comic-Book Movies? Well, not quite. But close.

First of all, none of the Batman movies are better than the original Superman, which is one of my favorite movies (despite the descent into deus ex machina at the end). I also think Superman is better than Spiderman, which is really good but nearly derails at the climax. Both those films share the same strengths: wonderful opening halves that establish their characters’ “mythologies”; I think that Superman has the stronger second half.

If I’m going to include a Batman film on this Top Ten list, and I would, it wouldn’t be Batman Returns because as good as that film is — a great improvement over the original Batman, which is one of the most overrated films I’ve ever seen — I give the edge to Batman Forever, in which Jim Carrey and Tommy Lee Jones provide over-the-top villainy that balances Val Kilmer’s understated Batman/Bruce Wayne wonderfully. (Full disclosure: I don’t hate Batman and Robin as much as everybody else, but it’s still not very good.) I do give Batman Returns credit for the best line in a Batman movie, for when the Christopher Walken character says to Catwoman, “Can I get you anything? A ball of string?”

The X-Men could have been the finest of all comic-book films to date, except it’s too short and skimps on the character development to detrimental effect. With another half-hour of character time, this could have been a very fine film. As it is, it feels like a Cliff’s Notes introduction to the X-Men; it’s as if the producers said, “We know we’re making sequels, so let’s just get the introductory film out of the way ASAP.” But the casting is probably the best of any comic-book film.

I loved Dick Tracy, and yes, I love Flash Gordon — one of the most cheerfully goofy films ever made. I just can’t watch that movie and not have a good time, what with Max Von Sydow’s scenery-chewing (“I like to play with things a while before annihilation”), Timothy Dalton’s quiet irony (“I knew you were up to something, Aura, but I confess I hadn’t thought of necrophilia”), and the film’s sheer exuberance, complete with soundtrack by Queen and special effects that are unlike just about every other gonzo-scifi flick out there. Flash Gordon actually looks like its comic-book origin material. (And how can anyone not grin when a big-ass army of guys with wings confronts an art-deco, phallic-shaped spaceship? I mean, what’s not to like in a movie with stuff like that?)

Popeye is just a horrid, horrid film. To me, it is the cinematic equivalent of fingernails-on-a-chalkboard. As for the other films on the list, I haven’t seen them.

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(Daily Blogger Complaint Department: Was this thing bought by Google, or by Mrs. Butterworth’s? ARRGGHHHH!!!)

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(Complaint about Blogger: when Google buys Disneyland, do you suppose the dolls in “It’s a Small World” will turn feral or something?)

(Update: OK, I guess the thing’s working after all. Harumph.)

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