Subjekt Zwei

SO THIS is not today's lunch. This was yesterday's lunch: chili cheese fries. Bush's stopped makign their chili, so I was compelled, after several months of chili-cheese-fry-less-ness, to once again go back and try the Armour chili as a component. Initially, I was far less than optimistic. Despite having added all 3 varieties of Cholula-- chili garlic, chili lime, and original-- two kinds of chili powder, a dash of sea salt and a double dose of gracked green peppercorn, nothing seemed likely to defeat the chili's overall consistency, which was that of something thickened with far too much corn starch, or perhaps epoxy resin. At one point in the process, I turned the burner to low for a long simmer, but apaprently the sauce didn't have the residual heat to make the simmer happen. Next I checked on it, the contents of the pan were calm as the Sargasso Sea. I bumped the heat up to a low setting, which after a few minutes resulted in a low, rolling boil, which translated into a simmer. Now, any chef wil tell you that's the wrong thing to do, but in this case, the wrong thing turned out to be the right thing. The sauce broke! which translates out into no more sticky-gumminess. Which also meant that my additives sang out like robins of the spring! Which means this was some damned fine chili cheese fries. (Screw grammar. I was happy.) I had this (these?) with a couple of Saranac Pale Ales, which has been the beer of the week. It will also be the beer of the day today, with either a Jamaican patty etc. or a double cheeseburger. Or maybe yet another tuna melt. Time will tell.

I'd just like to cut in here and assert that I am the worst Facebooker ever. The Wifey got me hooked up there three days ago-- yes, I couldn't even bring myself to make the physical effort of typing in my freakin' information, someone else had to do it for me-- and I have like 34 friends and I've made a total of three comments, one of them on my own wall. Hell, at least I'm trying.

The film of the night before last was this. The Wifey was off at derby paractice-- yes, the Wifey is a Derby Girl-- and, as often happens, I stumbled across something I thought she wouldn't watch in a million years. With the resul that, I think, we're considering putting this in the Netflix queue.

It was good. It was nothing particularly groundbreaking-- I mean, this is alot like a Stephen King joint, everything is stolen form somewhere else, except where it's hung out like's it some kind of homage or something-- but it's mighty finely acted, and done in such damned earnest that it's just goddamned adorable, and the scenery was so beautifully filmed that I feel warmly reassured, once again, that I don't have to go back to Colorado again yet. (Went there twice as a kid. Yeah, it's beatutiful, but it's also alot of trouble getting up to the beautiful. Especially not worth it if you hafta go through Denver.) And also-- and I don't think this is giving anything away-- the one guy looks sooooooooooooooo much like a very young Jack Nicolson, of course they dressed him up as some kind of genius-doppelganger McMurphy! (Our Hero from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.) And yeah, I saw the big damned plot twist coming a mile and a half away, but the thing was just such a numb pleasure to watch, by the time it came along, I had actually forgotten it. (Goodrich doesn't have a blimp!)

The one thing that bothered me came during the credits, which I watched because the cinematography is just so goddamned lovely. Can one say "nepotism?" There were an awfully small group involved here, and some of them seemed like, maybe they were, um, flogging a product. Like maybe craft cabin kits. Like you might be watching this mad scientist/genius doctor/fake kill his med school grad student sycophant/assistant (you'll have to watch the film to get all that, I'm not gonna try to lay it out here) over and over again so that he can use his blood-replacement nanobots to revive him, and the whole time be thinking to yourself, "Hey, if I had that craft cabin kit, all's I'd need is a little plot of land with a long driveway, and I'd have my very own Rocky Mountain resort!!!" Which was, actually, the creepiest part of the whole thing, really.

So do I reccomend it? Hard to say. If you make your own chili and have some left over, that's probably the safest thing, so long as you made real chili and not chili-soup. There is not a single brand of chili on the market these days I can vouch for, for any application other than as hot dog topping. I got lucky; that doesn't mean you can count on the sauce breaking. SubjectTwo? Sure. Drink heavily, wear helmets, face forward, and a canoe is not just as good.