Making A Hash Of Things

SO THE WIFE sent word back from New York last Sunday that she had obtained a corned beef with Swiss on rye from the Stage deli, and this inspired me to get some of the locally sourced, grain fed corned beef offered by the Healthy Home Market, which is what used to be The Home Economist, which we now call the Happy Lucky Family Food Store, or, in the Wifey's distillation, the HLFFS. That same day, I elected to go to the local for a bacon cheese burger, and the following day I had my Dad buy me lunch after a little cooperative work on my car-- we both own 1995 Miatas, so the repair of an interior panel was an interesting and instructive venture for him to join in on. So when I got around to lunch today, I elected to chop up the corned beef with some cooked potato and raw onion, fry that up into a hash, and load all that into an omlette. Oy-yo!

This is the in progress shot. Wow. What more could there be to say besides "This is the in-progress shot?"

Except maybe to call this the inception shot, which it really isn't, and I would only write such a thing as a segue into saying I had meant to come back to this blog earlier, but if I had I would have meant to write about the movie Inception, which was the movie of the night something like a month and a half ago, but really, what the hell is there to say about Inception? Even to spoil it wouldn't be to spoil it; if they weren't just making shit up as they built setworks and engineered CGI bits, we never would have known the difference. This is not to say it didn't make any sense. It made plenty of sense. It just didn't make any difference whether it made sense or not.

This was the movie of yesterday. (Hey! Cute, huh! It's like a double-meaning thing that's not dirty!) In that Tony Bourdain referenced it in his most recent installment of No Reservations, exploring Boston, and I got to thinking about whether I had given the thing a fair viewing. I mainly had to wonder if I had seen the whole thing, as mainly I remember seeing bits and pieces of the thing here and there, and I could not remember having seen the whole thing end to end.

So yesterday morning I used the TWC start-over feature and watched it with my morning coffee, which, frankly, is every bit as good a way to do it as any. With the result that this is one gloriously, romantically, un-glorious and un-romantic film. It clings close to the conditions of the time and location, and just perceptibly improves upon them, just enough to make the ordinary worth watching. The bank robbers are smart and methodical, and wear masks that disguise their features just enough. The hero is an anti-hero who heroically struggles against all odds. The gun runner drives a Detriot muscle car that doesn't break down every other day, starts right up in cold weather, and never needs gas. Which is to say: I could nit-pick this thing to death, but, in the final analysis, it's better just to appreciate a gritty little fantasy about mob life outside Boston.

This was the film of the night last night. Why? Why. Good question. I think because the Wifey had decided it was a part of sci-fi filmography she wanted to experience. Again, a film you really can't spoil. The major percentage of the experience is just looking at giant sets, experiencing manufactured space, hearing twisted (not to say thwarted) ethics arguments, and appreciating just how important Joan Baez thought she was before the cocaine generation took over and kicked her out of the boat.

So do I recommend it? Kinda. The hash made for a dandy omlette filling, but, frankly, hash is like Chinese or Mexican: you can make it at home, but you're better off going out. Two or three of the best hashes I've ever had were at beat-down joints in Manhattan (one was at the Carnegie Deli Sunday brunch), and, well, there's a reason, beyond illiteration, that the phrase hash house persists. The Friends Of Eddie Coyle must be watched in it's entirety-- and, by the way, the conclusion I reached is that yeah, I have seen the whole thing before, either in chunks or from end to end, and I think you can just as easily watch it in chunks as see it straight through. Not that it's not sequential, but if you're smart enough, you'll be able to pick out which chunks belong where after awhile. (Not that you'd see it that way on purpose.)

And to hell with Silent Running. And the little drones, too!