It's comin' on Christmas...

Sparky got the tree up and decorated it. Doesn't it look nice?We went with a red and white look this year. But somehow this managed to end up on the tree:
Sock Monkey, he's everywhere he wants to be.

I managed to get out and arrange the Dr. Seuss trees:
Fahoo fores dahoo dores, bitches!

The new normal

Click on each image, then click it again to enlarge it so you can read it properly.

More movie reports

I finally saw this last night:
Yes, it was visually stunning. Yes, it was bloody and violent. Yes, it was homoerotic. And yes, it was racist. Over all, I give it a 'meh, see it if you want' rating.

This film from Uruguay is at times sweet yet maddening. You want to root for the big shy lunk of a guy, lord knows I did because I used to be like him, and sometimes you want to slap him upside the head for being such a shy doofus. This film moves to it's own rhythms and takes it time getting to where it needs to go. I enjoyed it but I can see how others might not.

Rest in peace

In the summer of 1980 I had just gotten dumped by the girl who lived across the street from us. I was taking it badly because I was still very shy around and with women back in those days and I was convinced that I'd never find another girl who would go out with me again. I decided to get my mind off the dumping by going to the movies, so I walked down to the Cameo Theatre in downtown Bristol and I saw one of the funniest movies I had ever seen. That film was Airplane! and I laughed so much and so hard during that film that I forgot all about being dumped by Debbie Jones.

The biggest reason why I laughed so much and still laugh when I see Airplane! is because of this guy,
Leslie Nielsen. His deadpan delivery and his slapstick were out of this world funny in Airplane!.

I followed his comedy career for many years. I loved him in the Naked Gun movies and the TV version of it as well. I even watched some of his painfully unfunny movies just because he was so good in them. I really liked him in the quirky little film called Men With Brooms.
For me, his last great performance was in Scary Movie 3, which I saw right after my bypass surgery. I remember laying on the couch with a chest full of pain and high in Oxycodone and laughing my ass off while he stole that film from everyone except Anna Faris.

Leslie died from complications of pneumonia on Sunday. I'll miss him but I'll always have his great comedy performances to make me laugh when I'm down. If anyone deserved to go on to better things after this life, then it's Mr. Nielsen. Farewell sir, fare well.

This year...

...please remember the circus peanuts during this holiday season.

Bound for your pleasure

The beef industry would like to double your red meat consumption after you finish gorging on all that tainted Thanksgiving turkey.And they're not playing or kidding around, so get to it. Eat red meat...or else.

A brief movie report

I highly enjoyed this geriatric revenge fantasy tale. It's very violent and at times it's repellent to watch, but it's gripping, intense, and ultimately a very good film. Michael Caine has never been better than he is in this film.

Barn of the week

Another victim of a drive by 'whip creaming'

This is what happens to the guy who eats the last piece of pumpkin pie

The one that got away

This turkey would like to remind you to stay out of the malls this year so you can buy your Christmas presents in locally owned small businesses that contribute more to your local community. Don't be a jive ass mofro, shop and buy local.

Things I'm thankful for

I'm thankful for films like this one:It's got a meandering opening but once the story kicks in, wow. It's really good. I highly recommend it.

And I'm sure some smart ass who's seen it is going to say this film is representative of the whole south, but this story could have taken place in any rural area in Michigan, Iowa, California, New Mexico, Maine, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Montana, Idaho, anywhere. And the sad thing is, while our economy deteriorates and our social safety net is shredded, more and more of you are going to be sharing your neighborhoods with the kind of low life criminal types that populate this film.

Things I'm thankful for

Tom Delay was found guilty of money laundering. I'm thankful for that.

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Creepy house of the week

This house is down the hill and about 150 yards from our old farm in Lee County, VA. Before we built the house we lived in from 1975 through 1980 we stored a bunch of our furniture and other stuff in this house. And yes, at that time it was occupied. An old spinster lived there with her nephew. Now that I think back about that house and about them, there was something a bit Dickensian about them and that old house. I imagine it was really something back in the days when it was first built.

The crazy train rolls on

Sharron Angle, who lost to Harry "Mealymouth" Reid in the US Senate race in Nevada had this to say about why she got more rural rather than urban votes:

"I find the people in the rural counties more educated on the issues and seem to be more tied into their communities," she said. "The urban areas seem to have more of a disconnect from the issues that affect their communities."

Translation: Only rural people are smart enough to vote for me so we should only count their ballots. And if we had done that, then I would have won.

She was honestly surprised that she lost by such a big margin after her polls showed her being so far ahead just a few weeks before election day. The problem with her polling is she was only polling rural households and people with land line phones. The people who didn't vote for her were too busy working to answer poll questions and they can't afford land line phones.

The woman is truly delusional. I hope she runs for the Senate again in 2012!

Yes

If you watch and listen closely to and film or TV show at some point to move the story forward one or more characters will agree to do something another character wants. Once they agree the story really takes off. Cases in point:

• Frodo and his gang of pals agree to go to Mordor to destroy the ring.
• Don Corleone agrees to let his youngest son Michael kill the corrupt police chief so that the family can prosper.
• Nicholas Nickleby agrees to take the horrendous job offered to him by Wackford Squeers.

If those characters had not agreed to let those things happen the stories would have been stopped dead in their tracks.

'Yes' is a very powerful word. It enables the story to be told.

The same is true of jokes and comedy.

Denial kills all jokes all the time every where, whether in real life, or online, or on blogs, or on Facebook. Nothing ruins a joke faster than someone saying 'No.' Disagreement is fine and natural, we're not all going to agree on everything all the time. What's not fine however is someone leaving a comment either here or on Facebook that denies the premise of a joke post or wall posting. If you leave a comment like that on a humorous post or a joking wall post on Facebook, I'm going to delete it.

For most of us the first word that gets beat into us when we are children is 'No!' So it's hard to escape that, believe me I know. The first thing you learn in improv comedy is to say 'Yes' to everything. After you learn to say 'Yes,' the nest thing you learn is to add to the joke/premise/scene. Agreeing and adding is the key to comedy writing and comedy enjoyment. When you deny the premise and the joke, then you've stopped the humor, so stop it. Many are guilty of doing it but I've noticed a prevalence of upper Midwesterners doing it on a regular basis, I'm not sure what the problem is, maybe all that cold and snow makes them disagreeable or something, but seriously people, get over it.

If you must comment on humorous posts, and please feel free to do so at any time, I love all the comments I get, don't make a comment that denies the joke or the premise of the post. Same goes for those of you who follow me on Facebook. Disagree and or whatever on political and pop culture posts but please stop denial on humorous ones. And if you can't tell the difference between the humorous posts and the others, then perhaps you're time would be better spent doing other things than reading blogs and following me on Facebook.

Mark your calendars

My Thanksgiving special will air on the Spuzz Channel at 10:30 PM on Thanksgiving night. This year's show is going to be the bestest one ever!

My co hostSigourney Weaver and I will sing many duets, engage in cheesy comedic banter, make out a bit, and do Tarot card readings for Phylis Schlafly and Christine O'Donnell.

Then we'll track down the ever elusive Julianne Moore
and shave her muff so that we can weave a shirt out of her pubic hair. And we'll give that pubic hair shirt to Sofia Coppola.
Next I'll welcome on Eva Birthistle
and she and I will grease each other up in a mixture of turkey fat, pumpkin pie filling, and Vitalis and we'll tag team wrestle an international contingent of actresses that include Catherine Deneuve
Diane Kruger and Alex Kingston.

And finally Mena Suvrai will drop in to help us kick off the official war on Christmas.

This year, with the help of the liberal media, the labor unions, George Soros, and Barbra Bush's miscarried fetus in a jar, we're going to kick Jesus's ass in the war on Christmas!So don't forget to mark your calendars for this year's show, it's going to be super monkey-tastic!

A very special barn of the week

This barn is the barn on the farm in Lee County, Virginia where I lived from 1974 to 1980. We put up a lot of hay, cured a lot of tobacco, smoked a lot of marijuana and cigarettes, and drank a lot of cheap beer and Boone's Farm wine in and around that old barn in back in those days.

Did you know that...

...creepy dolls
grow up to one day become
creepy mannequins.

If it wasn't true I wouldn't be allowed to say it on the internets.

Free the Expo '67

It hit me as I picked up this book off the free table at a local bookseller that I have never been to a world's fair. I hope to change that before I die.

A Cooking with Dr. Monkey Two-fer

Today's episode: Vegetarian pasties and Brussels Sprouts a la Monkey.

I saw Rachel Allen, the fairest lass on all of Irish TV, make some pasties the other night and I decided that I should make some as well since they looked so good and easy to make. They're a cross between pasties and samosas. She made hers with ground beef and Indian spices and the first batch I made were the same except I used ground turkey. This time I wanted to make a vegetarian version, so here's what I did:
I mixed 1/2 tsp each of turmeric and cayenne pepper with a dash of cumin into two cups of all purpose flour. Then I sifted it all together.
Next I cut up six tbl spoons of butter and I put it in with 3/4 cup of water and I brought it to a boil. After it came to a boil I took it off the heat and let it cool for a moment. I whisked an egg into the flour and spice mixture and then I added the buttery water and I mixed my dough together.Then I patted it out onto a floured cookie sheet and I refrigerated it for about a half an hour to cool it down.
As my pastry dough cooled I cut up 2 dozen small Cremini mushrooms and one medium sized white onion. Then I sauteed them. I also chopped up one third of a red pepper and sauteed it in with the other veggies. And then I added about 1/2 cup of finely chopped up cauliflower and about 3/4 cup of leftover mashed potatoes that I had in the fridge. (Next time I'll use diced up red skinned or Yukon Gold potatoes.) Once all the filling had cooked and and was mixed together nicely, I put it in a small bowl and put it in the freezer to cool a bit.

While the filling cooled I proceeded to roll out my by now cooled pastry. I rolled it out on a floured surface. I rolled it out to about the thickness of a compact disc. I then cut my pasties out of the dough, I made them four inches in diameter. I got 16 pasties out of my pastry dough.
After I got my pasties cut I took my filling out of the freezer and I mixed in 1/2 cup of Parmigiano-Reggiano.
After I put some parchment paper down on my cookie sheets I laid out my cut pastry and I filled them with the filling.
This is the trickiest step, deciding how much filling to put in. You want to put in enough so it's filling but not too much that you can't get it closed when you fold the pastry back onto itself. With this mixture I should have made sure that all of them were folded and closed properly, but alas I did not and some of the pasties leaked a bit, but it was okay.
After I got them filled and folded I put them in the oven which I had pre heated to 425. And I baked them for 20 minutes.

As the pasties baked I washed and sliced in half one dozen big Brussels Sprouts.

Then I melted one tbl spoon of butter in a small saute pan and I added about a teaspoon of pure sesame oil, a pinch of sea salt, and two small roughly chopped cloves of garlic.
I then put the Brussels Sprouts in the small saute pan, put a lid on it, and cooked them on medium heat. After they had been infused with the butter/sesame oil mixture I put just a bit of water in the pan and I cooked them with the lid off. The water cooked off and they sauteed nicely, some got a little brown with was what I was going for.

When my timer went off I took my pasties out of the oven and they looked like this:
I made a little bit of gravy out of Not Chick'n bullion, cracked black pepper, and paprika.

I served up the pasties with a ladle of gravy over them and the Brussels Sprouts on the side. And I'm pleased to say that the pasties weren't just good, they were hella good. So were the sprouts.

This type of pastry dough is simple to make and it's easy to work with, which means I'll be adding pasties to my arsenal of regular things I cook. Make yours with any type of ground or shredded meat and veggies you like. They're a great way to use up things like leftover turkey, pot roast, chicken, what have you. The sky is the limit, use your imagination when you make yours. And of course you can leave out or add any spices and herbs you like in your dough and filling mixture, and you can make yours bigger than I did if you like. If you make some, let me know what you put in yours and how they turned out.