PicoBlog

Ten years ago, I wrote a blog post on the use of nudity in Jesus films. In that post, I looked at a few films in which Jesus appears naked at three key times in his life—his birth (The Nativity Story, 2006), his crucifixion (The Last Temptation of Christ, 1988), and his resurrection (The Passion of the Christ, 2004)—and I laid out the historical, traditional, and artistic reasons for depicting Jesus that way.

Cloverfield shouldn’t really hold up 12 years later. It’s a found-footage movie, during which one underdeveloped and annoying character carries a camera for the entire runtime as the audience’s own personal cameraman, that builds up to the moment when we finally get to see the monster it’s been teasing for a full hour in all of its glory. Above all else, with its handheld camera and shaky shooting style, it’s a gimmick.

"Entertainingly weird!"*** ClownWorld Shakespeare welcomes friends, Romans, countrymen (yes, that includes countrywomen too. You moderns are so sensitive!) to join me for some funny fiction, sonnets and more. (***according to one very astute Subscriber.) Hmm, I'd prefer notncG1vNJzZmibnKTEr8POq6Odq5iWuKa%2Fz56Yq51eqMKjv9OamqRmk6S6cA%3D%3D

Austin has had some remarkable clubowners, and still does, but there’s never been one like Paul Sessums, a biker who grew up in Austin, married an artist and raised their children in a raging nightclub in the heart of Sixth Street. When Sessums would stand on the sidewalk and rail about this and that, leaning on a parking meter as his pulpit, all was right in his world as long as the guitars were ringing through the doors of the Black Cat.

It never occurred to me in 1985 when I recorded the Michael Kelly Blanchard song (the title of this week’s Strings Substack) that, at the ripe old age of 86, I would in fact be driving “coast to coast” this January with two of my grandsons on an adventure that, in retrospect, I realize was always a personal bucket-list wish. Although Peter Yarrow, Mary Travers and I covered a lot of performing mileage in the almost 50 years of our Peter, Paul and Mary career, there is a major difference between the view out of an airplane window and the one immediately in front of you with both hands on the steering wheel of a car .

I’ve been interested in aircraft since I was a child. Been a member of local AeroClub where we built and competed in free flight, F1A gliders. That’s unpowered and uncontrolled models that once in the air are controlled by how you set it up beforehand, no radio control here. Later, when radio-controlled devices became more accessible we transitioned to RC planes and sub 100Mhz radios, unlike today’s 2.5Ghz ones. Members of that club created the first recon drone in 1993 which was used in the Croatian War of Independence.

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line an 8x8 pan with parchment paper. To make the crust: combine the crushed graham crackers and melted butter until fully combined. Press into the prepared pan, while going up the edges a little. Bake for 10 minutes. Remove and set aside while you make the filling. In a medium saucepan, add in the 1/2 cup granulated sugar and cornstarch; whisk together until combined. Add in the coconut milk and half and half whisk until smooth and combined.

When I was a teenager, I worked at a juice shop in SoHo frequented by mildly famous people and a variety of local cranks and eccentrics who got special deals from the owner, a nice guy and a ruthless businessman in the specific way aging hippie entrepreneurs were at the time. In retrospect it seems clear that he was subsidizing the starving-artist set partly out of kindness but also out of self-interest, the idea being that their esoteric orders would impress on a starlet, a guy who used to be in Jawbreaker, or John Lennon’s failson that this was the place to be to get healthy juice.

Coda alla vaccinara is quite ubiquitous in Roman trattorias, especially in the Testaccio neighbourhood - a former slaughterhouse district. A quintessential Roman dish, yet definitely not as famous outside of Italy as treats like carbonara, this stew is made with a beef cow’s tail and braised with vegetables such as carrots, celery, onion, and cooked in a rich tomato sauce and wine for a long time. The oxtail meat cut belongs to what would often be called a ‘quinto quarto’, a fifth quarter of an animal, referring to offal, parts which historically were mostly consumed by less wealthy communities.