Jorse Luis Borges's Google Doodle

If you, like almost everyone who uses the internet, use Google, you probably already saw today's google doodle. You probably also hovered your mouse over it to see who or what is important today. Maybe you even clicked on the picture and were taken to a list of other blogs about Jorge Luis Borges, and skimmed one.

Therefore, I won't bore you with "interesting" on dits about him.

Instead, I'd like to draw your attention to something he did before it was cool - making stuff up. And pretending he wasn't. I read in one of those wikipedia-fueled blog posts about LJB, as I'm going to call him from now on, about how he wrote literary reviews about books that were never written. Like he made up the fact that they existed, then urged people to go out and read them.

Ingenius. Talk about always having source material. I feel positively inspired. Perhaps I'll write a review of a movie that Bred Renfo never made in 2000 but should have. Or the book I didn't stay up late reading last night. Or the blog my husband will never write.

Or imagine if Oprah or John Stewart did it. Hundreds of people would storm into their local bookstore or flood Amazon's homepage searching for the book. They saw the author sit next to the host and talk about their book, saw the cover. Where is it? It's like the literary version of wagging the dog or discounting global warming.

What. The. Flock.

Nope, not a typo. I found out about this AMAZING idea called "Flocking" - an intentionally hilarious word that can be used as a noun, adjective, adverb, verb, etc., and is used to describe a flock of plastic flamingoes descending on a yard. Like so:



I did this for my parents to say thank you for helping the hubby & I move to our new apartment. I was gone for a long weekend, and they really helped pack up everything (except the silverware. Grrrrrr).

They loved it. I loved it. It's a random and magical event in the suburbs, and it was cheap like Trader Joe's wine. If you're int he Mercer County area, check out What the Flock.

More pictures to come tomorrow.

R+J at the Teatro SEA in the L.E.S.

I'm not a city girl, so when I go into the City (NYC) it's a big, scary deal. Luckily I had some help this past Sunday. My high schoolf riend Katie met me at New York Penn Station and ushered me through the hot and crowded subway system until we reached the Lower East Side.

We had brunch at Macondo where I had seasame seeds on my chicken enchiladas in mole sauce for the first time. I think I'm going to try that one at home. We also had overpriced (for me) sangria, which was tastey. The portion was atrociously small, however, and not one block over I helped myself to some honey lavendar gelato from a cold, severe/austere looking gelato place. I didn't like the atmosphere of this shop, but the gelato was rather yummy.

But food alone isn't enough to bring me into the City. My friend Kyra Corradin is performing in a play for NYC Fringe Fest - Romeo + Juliet: Choose Your Own Ending. They performed it first in the Capitol Fringe Fest in 2010, and won best Comedy and Best Overall. So they were invited up here to the NYC Fringe Fest. And the production did not disappoint.

The male lead, James Waters, was a charming and convincing Romeo. Kyra herself was quirky and a delight to watch as Juliet ("I'm marrying a stranger!"), and Katie Jeffries was a convincingly shrewish blend of Beatrice and Catherine as Rosaline. In fact, the entire crew was fun to watch on stage. It was apparent from the beginning that here was a bunch of young actors who enjoyed being with each other, and they enjoyed being with each other in this play.

The interludes while the set changed was filled with orchestra, and dare I say it perhaps cello, renditions of familiar songs, including I Believe In a Thing Called Love by The Darkness. The theater itself was small and cosy, the seats benches padded in red velvet, and the colors primary and coordinating. Visually and auraly, this was a rich and upbeat play.

The choosing comes in three times during the play. Romeo takes the audience aside while his fellowp layers remain motionless behind him. He asks the audience to make decisions for him. The first, for example, is whether or not he should remain true to Rosaline or pursue the beautiful woman he saw from afar and doesn't know the name of (Juliet, we assume).

Should the audience select Rosaline, she disappearsc ompletely from the show and Jeffries portrays the Friar for the duration of the play as it follows along more closely with the original. Our audience decided to let Romeo stay true to Rosaline, and from there it branched out with the guidence of co-writers Ann and Shawn Fraistat in a way that Shakespeare himself would have found believable. Except for the modern cursing, which I'ms ure he would have taken in stride.

So there is cursing and a number of sexual innuendos, but that as the way it was written in the first place, and in an era of short attention spans and customizable cars, this just seems like the natural modernization of Shakespeare's own style.

They have one more show before the Fringe Fest ends, next Sunday, August 28th. Go ahead and google it; you won't be disappointed.

Lamb & Chianti Over Spaghetti

Saturday night I made a delicious tomato sauce. I've been on big wine kick recently - luckily my husband likes wine because I don't. What I do like is wine shopping. And Trader Joes, with their bargain-basement low wine prices allows me to purchase the way I like - by the label on the bottle. But I was growing bored of allowing everyone else to enjoy th fruits of my labor, so I decided I wanted to start cooking with the wine.

The hubby is a big fan of chianti - the old fashioned dry red of mafia dons and cannibals. It sounded perfect for the dish. I picked out this 2008 Grifone Chianti Reserva and after 15 min of breathing Andy decided he liked it much better than his first impression.

Ingredients:
olive oil
2 small onions
5 garlic cloves
1 pound of ground lamb
salt & pepper
2 tomatos
1 cup of chianti
1 14oz can of tomato sauce
1 7oz can of tomato paste
Italian seasoning

In a big pot I sauteed the minced onion until clear and just beginning to brown, then threw in the garlic for a few minutes more. I added the lamb and a bunch of salt & pepper, and browned the meat. Then went in the diced tomatoes until they were getting soft, which is when I added the tomato sauce, tomato paste, and the chianti. I tossed in a bunch of "Italian Seasoning," which I'm pretty sure just had oregano, rosemary and basil. I let it simmer for 40 minutes and then I served it over perfectly al dente spaghetti.

It was decadent and delicious and not in the least bit boring.

A Dinner Tale

We moved into our new apartment last Monday on August 1st, and I still can't find the silverware. Besides being useful, I really like the settings - it's the nice weighty kind a distant grandparent-in-law gives as a wedding present. We love our silverware.

Last night I was so frustrated by the mountain of dishes continuing to pile up in the sink I refused to make dinner or even look at the fresh produce we got from our farm crop-share this week. I was hungry and cranky and I wanted Chinese.

In order to sooth the beast inside my stomach threatening to jump out and gnaw off my husband's arm, we ordered typical Chinese stuff (dumplings, fried wontons, lo mein and the most amazing shrimp shanghai rolls ever) through their website. After some time (where I got upset at it for being slow), I fell back in a blurry, hungry haze to wait. It was only after they had already left to deliver it that I realized I had forgotten to ask them to bring chopsticks.