One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other

SO THIS PICTURE was originally meant to represent my ingenious attempt to drain the last of a jar of Mount Olive dill relish in the absence of an actual sieve. I used the fine end of our lousy dollar-store cheese grater (that we got, in fact, I don't know where, I don't know when, probably as part of a set of something). But I have decided, in retrospect, that is looks like I was making my own relish, or customizing the Mount Olive stuff by applying a finer grain. So, fine; whatever you want to think. I am draining, making, or grating relish. It would please me if you decided I am doing whatever you think is the more impressive, nigh-on impossible, task.



You may have noticed the can of sliced black olives. Those I did modify, giving them a light chop before adding them to the tuna salad. The result, I regret to concede, is something that anyone else would probably call Mediterranean Tuna Salad, and so I suppose I have little choice but to call it that myself. But I will not relent. I have decided I am going to call this a Ground Elmo Sandwich.

(Of course it isn't red. You hafta skin and bleed the little son-of-a-bitch first.)

Up to this week, I had never had a Harp Lager. I have been aware of it for years-- same company that owns Guinness, after all, and I'm a HUGE fan of Guiness-- and I have heard people claim that the only way to make a Black and Tan is with this stuff. But to me, it's just beer. Not bad, not very good, just beer. Next.


The film of the day is The Taking Of Pelham One Two Three. As I said to the Wifey: the original, not that Travolta bullshit.* This is cheifly a matter of it being what is on right now, although I am enjoying it. At least, I am enjoying it waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more than I did the first (and last) time I saw it. But I have a couple or three other stories I want to tell before I get to that. The first two are Steven Knight stories.

Steve Knight was a college mate of mine, a white-skinned, red-headed lilly-white from Piedmont North Carolina. College was a bit of a shock for him in a number of ways, not least of which, I think, was the sheer size of the population. I don't think there were more than two thousand living in the town he came from.

Steve was an architecture major who didn't buy all the crazy architecture theory he was being fed, and a mild-mannered Southern boy in the midst of a gang of rampant hedonists. As such, he was usually the brightest of us pennies come the morn. Often one of us would end up waking up on the floor, and occasionally find ourselves grasping two disparate things-- a shoe and a spatula, for instance. At a moment like this, Steve would softly start singing "One of these things is not like the others . . ." The rest of us started doing it, but it was always funnist when Steve did it.

The other story comes up because it's about Steve. At the time, "That's what SHE said!" was a most popular one-off gag, and we were all using it at every occasion. One morning after a raging party at Steve's suite, someone had to get to someone's car in order to get something incredibly important, and four or five of us tagged along, largely in the hopes that, after the very important item had been procurred, there might be some coffee to be had. At one point, one of us suggested we mgith gain some time and lose some territory by cutting through a parking lot. The others doubted it, and looked to me for confirmation. I said yeah, sure, that'll work, even though I didn't actually have any idea whether it would or not. A couple of hedgerows later, we emerged into the parking lot where the vaunted car had been parked, and someone said "Hey, that didn't take long at all!"

And Steve said "THAT's what she . . . said . . . "

These stories come to mind as I reminisce about the RDH (Resident's Dining Hall) at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and especially of the Omlette Lady. She was a large, pleasant, young-ish black lady, a solid thrid or fourth generation West Sider who had worked at the cafeteria at my high school and remembered me fondly, for whatever reason, and would therefore make the the most outrageous omlettes, one of which I had almost every morning before classes, egg behemoths filled with absolutely anything I asked for. One day at lunch, when she happened to be behind the grill, I had her make me a chicken salad sandwich, to which I had her add cheese, which I then had her grill. I thought I had invented something. (The Omlette Lady, whose actual name I did in fact know, acted like it was the greatest thing anyone ever thought of, but she acted that way about just about anything she made for her kids, as she called us.) I took the thing to a table and ate it, thinking to myself "Now, this is just wrong." (Or, actually, thinking this must be the kind of thing that the rest of the world would consider wrong. I loved it.)

Later that year, on a trip to New York, my Dad and I wandered into a deli on Fifth Ave, one of those places that's now famous because it's one of the last of its kind, where I ordered and was served a chicken salad sandwich, grilled, with cheese. At which point I reasoned, well, if they grill it here, then you can grill it anywhere.

(Its' Up To You, New York, Nooo-ooooo YOOOOOOOOOORK!)

The first time I saw this movie, it was sold to me as a great plot-twist flick, so I watched it with a fair amount of anticipation, not to say impatience, and when the big plot twist came in, I felt a little gypped. Then, after they made that stoopid remake, I decided I ought to give this another shot. I am not judging it as harshly as I did the first time. Like all heist movies, it's not as smart as it wants to think it is (and, I swear to God, whoever wrote this learned all about the New York subway system by reading a book), and it causes some of its characters to do some fairly far-fetched stuff-- not going into details, that'd take all day-- but by and large, it was a fair enough choice for the afternoon's entertainment. It clearly has to be better than that piece of crap those Scientologists made. I haven't seen it, but just judging by the trailers, it sucks.

And, the Wifey has informed me, it's in our Netflix queue.

So do I recommend it? Absolutely. Just like anything you can boil down and smear on a shaved rat's ass will produce cancer, anything you can put on rye bread and grill with butter will produce lunch. And it's good to watch an old New York movie now and then. And hey, it's got Matthau. You gotta bet on that.

*There is one way the modern version might redeem itself: if the music for the closing credits were "Rollercoaster (Of Love)." Nah. Too much to ask for.