Weekends

I haven't blogged in a few days so I guess it is time to catch up. Friday night last week, we took Michelle, Gwenda, Michelle's step daughter Ella and Little Ben out to dinner at our favorite Thai place, Bangkok Thai Super Buffet at 3313 East 32nd Place (32nd and Harvard) in Midtown Tulsa.   The food is always good and our friend Ott, the head waiter, was especially attentive since Little Ben was with us and we needed a little extra help.  As usual the food was great and we had a good time. Sheila, of course, had a great time playing with Little Ben while Mommie Michelle ate.

Bangkok is a great restaurant run by especially nice people. While it is not fancy, the food is superb, the facilities are immaculately clean and the prices are reasonable.  Bangkok is frequented by a lot of people from the nearby wealthy neighborhoods who can afford to eat anyplace in town they want to and choose to eat there.

Yesterday, we cleaned house and office most of the morning and by early afternoon were ready to hit the town.

We started at El Burrito on Admiral and Pittsburg.  El Burrito is darn near my second home.  I eat there at least twice a week and sometimes more often.  It is owned by Oscar and Veronica. Oscar is a native of Guadalajara and Veronica hails from Long Beach, CA.  For many years, Oscar was the chef at the highly touted El Rio Verde.  I think his food is better now that he has his own place. Don't let the run down convenience store location or the iron bars on the windows fool you. These folks serve the best authentic Mexican food in town. The prices are reasonable, the place is clean and service is friendly. Frequently, Sheila and I may be the only gringos in the place on the weekends since it is a favorite of the large Mexican community on the northside.  But, the atmosphere is always warm and welcoming.

I started the meal with a Mexican "morning after" favorite, a Michelada, some chips and salsa and a small order of Oscar's made from scratch when ordered guacamole.  A Michelada starts as large beer mug half full of ice and tomato juice with a touch of spices or hot sauce.  You then pour your favorite beer over it all.  The rim of the the mug is coated with salt and chili powder.  While spicy, it is not really hot and I can see how it would work wonders on a queasy stomach. But, you don't need to overindulge the night before to enjoy one.  They are just plain good at any time.

Sheila and I split a torta ahogada. Torta ahogada literally means "drowned sandwich."  It consists of a huge Mexican roll split in half. The filling is the meat of your choice, refried beans, lettuce, onions, cilantro and avocado.  The top roll is then put back on and the whole thing is "drowned" in a spicy red sauce. They are huge and remarkably good.  I can eat one by myself easily but prefer to split one with Sheila since the sandwich alone is nearly a thousand calories.  For a Mexican working man, that is a good lunch that will hold him through until supper. For a sendentary gringo lawyer, a thousand calories is big chunk of the amount of food you should eat all day.

We then spent an hour at Sheila sister's house in Broken Arrow.  While the ladies caught up on family gossip, I fixed an error in the operating system of Gwenda's computer which had been ailing.

Mid-afternoon found us at the WalMart near Gwenda's house.  We only needed to buy a few grocery items but when we got there we found that summer clearance sale was going on.  This is a great time to buy knock around clothes, beach wear, etc.  It is often priced ridiculously low. Sheila bought two casual "weekend" tops, a dress/swimsuit cover up and two exercise tops for less than ten dollars.  Who says you have to be under thirty (or even under fifty) to wear a mini?

And a good time was had by all.

When I Grow Up I Want To Be A Writer .... Again

When you start getting the letters from the Social Security Administration and then from Medicare, any smart person knows that it is time to start working on your bucket list.  At our house, the bucket list pretty well stays on the front burner all of the time.

I have a deep, dark secret.  Several of them actually but I am only going to share one now.  I am a writer.  I have the right to call myself that because I am published and I have made a living of sorts at it.

Most people who call themselves writers are wannabes.  They like to talk about writing and  pass a few things around among friends or maybe even on the net.  They go to writers club meetings and speak knowledgeably about "the craft."  But, of the millions of people who write like that only a few thousand are ever actually published.  By that, I mean that their words appear in a commercial publication and they get paid for it.  Of those few who actually get published, only a few of them ever get to the point of actually making a regular paycheck from it.  I did it and it wasn't easy.

It started when I went back to college in my early forties.  The military had given me a very good technical education in electronics and I had been recruited by a computer company soon after discharge.  They trained me again and again.  I didn't need a college education.  The stuff they were teaching us at the computer companies was a generation ahead of the colleges.  But one day, the PC appeared and all of we blue-suited, white-shirted, Oldsmobile-driving big iron salesmen were obsolete, almost overnight.

I was forty, unemployed and unemployable.  I didn't even have a degree.  I began taking general education classes.  My humanities teacher encouraged me to write more.  She thought I had the knack.  After a while, I minored in Journalism (now called "communications") and began seriously learning the craft.  I paid my dues writing for a student newspaper, an underground newspaper and eventually even for  the local dailies every once in a while.  (There were two back then.) I usually got around a nickle a word.  Soon, I was self-syndicating a weekly column to a handful of tiny, small town papers in Eastern Oklahoma.  But, I was also working hard on the national market.  Eventually, I was nationally published a few times.  However, I often didn't make enough money to pay for my office supplies and postage.

I learned that articles with pictures sold better so I picked up a couple of fairly good cameras and lenses and enough basic darkroom equipment to process slides, the preferred submission media for magazines at the time.  I took college classes in photography.  The equipment is now totally obsolete as are most of the skills.  The only thing that still serves me well is the critical knowledge of light and physics gained by thinking through the mechanics of old style photography (before Photoshop) and of course the ability to compose a useable shot.

I began looking for a job writing.  I found one at a daily newspaper in a middle sized Oklahoma town.  For about a year, I pretty well wrote the front page every day but Saturday.  My beat was police, fire, crime and courts.  I also covered politics as required.  In a small town, that is your front page. Pretty soon, my work was being "picked up" by the other newspapers in the area and I was even making the wire services every once in a blue moon.  For this, I was earning the grand sum of five dollars and change per hour.

I was also receiving a threat of physical violence about once a week and a serious threat from people who could carry it out every few weeks or months.  I wasn't popular with the folks in that town that my editor looked to for approval.  That unhappy marriage ended when I had had enough.  I could see that the handwriting was on the wall for print newspapers anyway.  The smart folks in the newsrooms weren't even reading the papers anymore even though we had them all.  We were all reading the news straight from the wire as it was being reported.  It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that soon, that same content would be wired into homes one way or another.  Even I couldn't see phones and tablets as news media back then but the stench of death was all over print news. I quit, finished college with a degree in Criminal Justice and went to law school.

However, I never lost the writing bug, I just didn't have time for it professionally anymore.  But, I've always had a blog or three going at any one give time and I have been known to ghost write occasionally for somebody who deserves some help. Today, a new item goes back on the bucket list.  From a financial standpoint, I will probably have to practice law until I die or can't make it the courthouse anymore.  But, I am going to spend more time writing and traveling, my two passions aside from Sheila.   Actually, I hope to spend time writing about traveling and then traveling to write.  My best work about travel may no longer go to this blog first.  I may try to sell it to finance more travel.  I will still blog about Sheila and I's little family adventures and our outings with our friends.  But hopefully, you may have to read about the big trips and adventures someplace else.

So, there it is.  I guess I am back in the writing game.

Some People!

Consignment shopping and friend swapping children's clothes is actually kind of fashionable these days.  Yesterday was Sheila and Michelle's big garage sale day.  Every so often, a group of mommies organizes a giant garage sale/flea market of children's clothes, toys, equipment, etc. at the fairgrounds.  It's called "Just Between Friends."  Apparently, the huge parking lot was full of "friends."  Many of the items sold are high quality and were expensive retail.  They're not cheap at at "Just Between Friends" but they are more reasonably priced.

Access is very carefully controlled.  The ladies who organized and worked at the sale get first pick.  As I

understand it, they got to shop all morning.  Then at 1:00 PM, folks who had items on consignment were allowed to shop for two hours.  At 3:00 PM, folks with passes from consignees and who had bought a pass could enter.  Paid passes are then accepted for the rest of the weekend.  From Monday on, admission is free.

Sheila and Michelle took new, cheap laundry baskets with a jump rope tied to one end so that they wouldn't have to try to carry everything they bought in their arms.  They just drug the laundry baskets behind them by the rope and added their purchases as they went.  They spent about $250.00 between them and little Ben Bob is now very well clothed for the winter and the next season of growth. 

After I dropped Sheila off, I saw a garage sale in our neighborhood.   As I drove past, I saw four chairs that matched my sister-in-law Gwenda's dining room set.  Over the years, hers had broken and become wobbly and she is down to one good dining room chair.  I pulled in to look and had to knock on the door to get somebody to come out.  The chairs were marked at $55.00 apiece.  That was really high.  I had seen an identical set at a used furniture store owned by a fundamentalist Muslim up on Admiral.  His were priced much lower to start with and those folks will ALWAYS bargain.  They expect it. 

Phone calls were exchanged and pictures texted.  Gwenda wanted the chairs. So, I came back and handed the woman two $100.00 bills and said we would pick them up today. She looked at me and said she had to have full price!  She wanted the other $20.00 !  She then trotted out the most ancient of all used car salesman's stories that someone else was interested and that she could get the money from them.

I bit my tongue and did not tell her that I could buy the same chairs for thirty five bucks up on Admiral and the only reason I hadn't was because I refuse to do business with anybody who had anything to do with putting a  Mosque five doors down from my house.

Here's a basic lesson in Business 101.  If both sides aren't happy with the deal, the unhappy side will never do business with you again.  That's OK at a garage sale, I suppose.  But if you doing the same thing in your career and personal life ..... it may be a rocky and lonely road. 

Bright Little Monday Evening

Michelle called yesterday and asked if we could babysit for a couple of hours last night.  Sheila immediately cancelled her regular, set in stone, Monday night Zumba session and made it happen.

We had a quick dinner at Viet Huong on 21st just west of Memorial.  Viet Huong is probably Tulsa's best Vietnamese restaurant in Tulsa.  Be advised, they take no cards or checks.  It is a cash only business.  But, the food is unbelievably and reliably good.  We had our favorite Bun Gao Nau, a bowl filled with cold rice noodles and salad garnished with the meat of your choice and two fresh egg rolls.  It is a wonderful light meal.

As we were eating, I was taken aback by a young priest who walked in.  He is the spitting image of my old friend the Rev. Dennis Queen in his younger days.  I shamelessly eavesdropped for a while and noticed that even his mannerisms and voice were even much like my friends.  Given the stylish European flair of his clothing, unless I miss my guess, he has recently spent time abroad. I later learned that he is Fr. Kerry Wakulich, the new Catholic chaplain at the University of Tulsa.

After dinner, we had the pleasure of feeding our grandson, little Ben Bob, his dinner and playing with him for a while.  I played guitar on a smart phone app which kept him interested for a little while between bites of food and then played some good uke jazz for him from YouTube.  When dinner was over, Sheila and Ben  declared a play time.  From the looks on their faces, it is hard to tell who was having the better time.

It was a nice little evening.

Obselidia - A Strange But Touching Little Movie

Like it's name, Obselidia is a strange and at times preachy little movie. The Al Gore style environmental message is heavy handed and trite at times. However, the cinematography is great in an old school way, the characters are engaging and the road trip coming of age plot is well executed.

Most of the movie is set in Death Valley, California. It helps, I suppose, that I love the desert. But, putting that aside, the California desert is a perfect stage for deep introspection and subtle reawakening, the stark emptiness of the surroundings focusing the spotlight of consciousness on the human actors swallowed up by it. Some of my own best moments of introspection were in the desert, pushing a diesel rig through the solitude of the soft desert night.

The female lead, Gaynor Howe, steals the show. She is bright, fun loving and adventuresome. A perfect foil

for the introverted, pessimistic, scholarly geek she accompanies to the desert.

If you put aside the obligatory radical left message that is necessary for inclusion in art films these days, you are left with a strong, sweet and mostly truthful message. Life is temporary. (True) The world as we know it  is ending and there is nothing we can do about it. (True) But, we are given days and hours and there are things, people and relationships to be enjoyed while we are here.(True) Consequently, we have nobody to blame but ourselves if we let the futility of earth's future spoil the joy of the present. (Absolutely true) 

Obselidia won the Excellence In Cinematography award and the Alfred P. Sloan prize for feature films dealing with technology at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. It is available on DVD from Netflix and for streaming online on Hulu Plus.

Dinner at Napoli's With the Salas

We had dinner last night at Napoli's at 61st and Memorial.  We have a new favorite Italian restaurant.

We arrived a few minutes early.  The young lady serving as hostess was warm, friendly, outgoing and completely knowledgeable about the menu.  She was happy to discuss it and even introduced us to the chef, her brother, while we waited.

The Napoli's organization is neither a franchise nor a chain.  Instead, it is loosely knit organization of relatives who all use the same name for their operations in various locations.  Our exotic and charming young hostess explained that they are first generation Albanian/Sicilians.  Her father is the ower/manager of this location, her brother is the chef and she is the maitre' de when she is not away studying International Business at OSU.

I take my Italian food seriously since I love it so much and (by doctor's warning) am not allowed to have it very often.  This dinner was the real deal. My chicken piccata was served over a bed of perfectly cooked al dente spaghetti. The sauce was buttery and tart garnished with a roasted lemon and capers.

Mike had one of the combo specials that consists of chicken, ham, Italian sausage and  olives cooked in a creamy red sauce.  It looked and smelled wonderful.  Sheila had the Chicken Scarpariello.  Their version of this Italian classic is chicken cooked in a creamy white sauce with mushrooms and peppers served over (I believe at least) spaghettini.  They use pure whipping cream as the base for all of their white sauces. It was sinfully good with just the right amount of pepper heat.  Jodi had the lasagna which she pronounced to be excellent.

This place is another neighborhood gem that Tulsans could easily overlook in favor of more expensive and more often reviewed establishments.  The food is authentic and as Sheila put it "sinfully good."  The staff are outgoing and exceptionally friendly.  The atmosphere is what you would expect from a place in a shopping mall but that kind of lends to the overall experience.  There is no pretense here.  Just really good, authentic, Italian food offered by friendly, caring people who know what they are doing. 

Napoli's has one more thing going for it for us.  It is just a few blocks away from Mike and Jodi's home.  We lingered so long over our empty plates that they had to ask us to leave to make room for a large party that had arrived.  But, they did it graciously and we had waited too long anyway.  So, we paid our check and adjourned to Mike and Jodi's where we spent a while looking at their vacation photos and then finished the evening in the pool.  The only thing missing was our Rat Pack friends the Harmons.

On Watching a German Film, "The Nasty Girl"

I recently subscribed to Hulu Plus, an inexpensive streaming video service that features a lot of foreign "art" films.  It is a collection of some of the best movies ever made from around the world.  If you dislike subtitles forget it.  If you're not "artsy" a lot of them might be a waste of time.  Despite a pretty good education and a fairly liberal outlook towards such things, I still don't particularly enjoy Fellini or Bergman.  But, in the middle of the "high art" and soft core pore porn (sometimes indistinguishable) there are some wonderful, thought provoking movies.  This movie is one of them.

The Nasty Girl (1990) aka Das schreckliche Mädche, is a film about a very bright Catholic schoolgirl in Bavaria who decides to take a look a what life was like in her town during Hitler's rule. The deeper she gets into it, the more sinister her friends and neighbors become.  I won't spoil the plot by telling you more.  Just take my word for it, this movie is worth watching subtitles and all.  Stay with it.  The lessons learned about the true depravity of human nature are profound. 

I would warn you that there is one completely gratuitous full frontal nude scene near the end of the movie that serves no purpose to the plot whatsoever other than earn the movie a full "R" rating in American theaters and avoid the kiss of death "G" rating here.  I see it as a German joke on us, sticking  a scene that makes no sense at all in an odd place in the film showing something that most Germans have often seen at the pool or beach but nevertheless sends the American movie raters on red alert.

There is a lot of deft, dark, dry German humor in the movie.  You just have to hang on to enjoy it.  This movie would be so dark that it might be intolerable without it.  And that would be a good way to describe the movie, doggedly hanging on to decency and truth and Christian values in the middle of a culture just like ours where decency and kindness are a thin veneer at best and crowd is always just a few political steps away from the jackboots and concentration camps.  

The full movie is available free on YouTube.  I have embedded it below.  Enjoy.