Shattered-- Shadoobee!

SO THIS thing is still not behaving the way I want it to, but that's alright, I suppose. After all, I have been talking about having a chili cheese omlette for, well, frankly I don't even know how long, so there must have been some reason I was resisting, back in the back of my head. Turns out this cannot be turned, which is to say the attempted flip was utterly whimsical, a flight of fancy that resulted in little more than a sullied spatula. At that point, at any rate, the eggs were cooked enough, although not as tight and fluffy as my usual omlette-- my usual omlette is a thing of absolute alchemy, and although I am sure that sounds like bragging, it isn't. As any alchemist will tell you, turning straw to gold is more luck that it is ever either art or science. And this probably shouldn't turn out like any other omlette. The chili cheese omlette should be a beast as much of myth as reality, sighted often enough so that tales of its existence are creditable, and rarely enough that some mystery remains; the chili cheese omlette may exist, or it may exist only in memory and legend, or it may not ever have been at all, the product of nostalgia and longing.The Sierra Nevada was great with the eggs, but the Endless River, a very new craft brew made in Kinston, of all places-- I have no idea what I mean by that-- is a kolsh style lager, and it goes with the chili, like, well, just wow. Like Briscoe and Green, elder son.

This, well, I think I have written about this before, but it would have been some years go. This became the movie of the day because I caught it right at the top, literally moments before it started. And I love it. It's just adorable, especially the segments with Jon Stewart and the ones with Amy Ray and Emily Saunders.* And the competition segment gets me every single time. In fact, I reflected while watching it, I had a far better time watching the competition segment of this-- for probably the third or fourth time-- than I had watching this years's F1 race from Valencia. Sebastian Vettel took off from the pole and maintained a 20 second lead over the pack, with Roman Grosjean in second, his best performance so far in his FIRST SEASON in F1, but then Vettel's car failed in the 34th lap, just after being released from a full course caution, and Grosjean's engine failed some time after that, leaving Fernando Alonso's Ferrari to finish first. Which, good for him, and good for a Spaniard to win in spain for once, but dammit. Yeah, that sums it up. Just dammit.

This is SO not the film of the day. I am still watching it, I mean right now, but Jesus. It's painful. Earlier on, they broke what I call the Cassavettes Rule, which is that a chacter gets treated in a particular way by the world which is both cruel and unrealistic. It comes from the scene in A Woman Under The Influence, which I largely quite enjoy, when Geena Rowlands' character faces the impossible task of getting strangers on a crowded street to tell her what time it is while she slowly unravels. I mean, its' great acting, and kind of a riveting scene, and painful in the way only Cassavettes films are, but, dammit, somebody would have told her what time it was. They just woulda. I mean, at no point in history, not iven in 1977, could someone stand on a street corner, even in New York, asking for the time and not have someone, SOMEONE eventually tell them. (Although in New York, the likely response would have been along the lines of "It's ten fucking o'clock in the morning, whatya STOOPID?" Or "LOOK UP AT THE CLOCK, MORON!" This thing broke that rule by having the main character ask for a taxi in the Shanghai airport and not have a half dozen people respond in English simultaneously. (Although he did get a taxi, in the very next scene.) This thing lives and dies on quirk, and motly dies. At several junctions it flatly contradicts itself, and at some point, you have to ask yourself: how fdumb do I think people, especially Americans, are? ("Fdumb" is a typo, but I'm keeping it.) I mean, after awhile this is just xenophobic and mysanthropic and, frankly, un-American! I love my country, and I know that some dumbasses do live here, buit, oh, for crying out loud! Like we elected Bush again!

*Of The Daily Show and Indigo Girls, respectively. And the title to this is from a Rolling Stones song, which you either didn't need explained or don't get anyway, but as I reflected on the failed flip, I found myself singing "What a mess-- this egg's in tatters! I mean shattered! Scattered all over Manhattan! Shadoobee.