With this sweltering
heat, food kind of takes a back seat (hey!!...)
So, a quick recap of the weekend..
Once again, we passed on the Friday evening River Concert
Series citing the weather (and forecast) and the later starting time. And we
here at the digs were very fortunate that the derecho went north of us, and
while we were okay, many, many, many folks north of here are still without
power and air conditioning, some not to be made whole until next weekend! I am beginning to modify my thoughts about
those Mayans and their calendar. What’s
up with this weather, anyway? And it’s only just into July for heaven’s sake!
Saturday I went down to Historic St. Mary’s City to “chapel
sit” for the Summer Faire event. I
considered bailing all together but the Friday evening’s storms appeared to cut
the humidity a little and it wasn’t so bad so I went down and sat for most of
the morning. Was surprised at the
visitation, but I was glad to be able to talk to people. For once, while they were all interesting, I didn’t
have any “characters”. MFO was helping
in the information booth, and at about one, we both cut out and headed for CSM LaPlata
to attend a lecture on Historic Foodways to be given by a former employee of
HSMC. The closer we got to LaPlata, the
more we said, “Hey! look at that big tree down”, or “gosh, look at all those
branches”. Being a little late we
hustled toward the campus and wheeled into the south entrance only to be
greeted by a locked fence. A short trip
north resulted in the same experience.
Hmmm, must be closed. So we went
back out to Highway 301 and headed south.
It soon became apparent that power outages were in play. All the little food chains (McDonalds, Chick-fil-a,
burger king, Chipolte… they got them all up there) were “dark”. Not only that, the traffic lights were
black. That resulted in confused drivers
trying to make a turn across traffic with the usual “not in front of me, damn
it” good Samaritans, which made it very slow going. Anyway we finally got home, figuring CSM was
in the “no power” group. Hope they will
repeat the lecture.
Elementary…. A Rant
One of the things that MFO and I like to do of a Sunday
evening is sit on the back porch (if weather permits, which it hasn’t lately)
take out the “little TV” and sit with a tinkling glass, nibbles, and watch MPT or
WETA. We enjoy some of the Masterpiece
Theaters, series such as Downton Abbey and especially Doc Martin (don’t much
care for the Miss Marple or Poirot's).
But our all time, hands down, favorite is the Sherlock Holmes episodes. We just love Jeremy Brett (which has been
mentioned before in this forum) as Sherlock and Edward Hardwicke as his foil,
Watson. I don’t care if I have seen the
episode a hundred times, watching “Holmes” lay his finger aside his nose, purse the lips, arch
his eyebrows, then flash that momentary little smile is just wonderful. Scripting is great even if the plot is
sometimes a bit pithy. Great stuff. I also think that I have mentioned before in
some other rant about this that there is an “updated” series now with some youthful
punk who uses cell phones and stuff. I
am proud to say I have never seen a complete episode of that, nor the recently
released movie. But what really got my
goat (is everybody issued a goat for this kind of thing?) was something that happened while watching the golf tourney at
Congressional yesterday afternoon on CBS.
Tearing themselves away from the idolatry of Tiger (who somehow is now
viewed as tragic figure, deserving a return to glory), there was the usual
string of commercials. All of a sudden
there was a teaser for a new CBS) series this fall, called “Elementary”, yet another
take off on Sherlock Holmes. Holmes is
portrayed by Johnny Lee Miller (who has a broad English accent, wether real or not, I don't know). Butin the
ultimate travesty and insult to Mr. Conan Doyle (who must be spinning in his grave like a
runaway engine turbine) “Watson” is (get this) portrayed by Lucy Liu (hey, you gotta have sex in
these things or they don’t sell!) and the character is Joan Watson. Good Lord! I could go on and rant on my own about this,
but maybe CBS can illustrate my point better.
Here, lifted verbatim from their own website for the show is their
own actual description:
“In a modern-day take on Sherlock Holmes,
the iconic detective is taking on New York. Just out of rehab, he's been
assigned to live with his worst nightmare-sober coach, Dr. Joan Watson.
Holmes's unsurpassed skills of deduction and Watson's medical expertise come
together to create a dream team for solving the NYPD's most impossible cases”
Rehab??? "Assigned to live?" Can anything be
more ludicrous! What idiots. And while I’m using other peoples quotes, I’ll
borrow one of my favorites from good old H. L. Mencken: “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the
intelligence of the American public”. Right on, HL.
And while we’re being crabby...
Does this weather make me (even more) irascible? You bet.
And yes, it is a struggle to
DFD
DFD
Ps: I had some positive feedback about the larger print. And I will pass along a hint from one of my
more savvy computer friends who reminded me that on a “windows” machine you can
press “Control + (or - )” to magnify your screen. Just tried it, it works, but for this edition i'll use the geriatric font..
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