Wednesday Reader February 22 | Cat Eye Glass Lady

WEDNESDAY READER | FEBRUARY 22

Hello Friends!

I love this black and white picture of a beautiful waitress in a diner.  For sure everyone knew her name.  And even better – she knew everbody’s name.  And ask about your people.  And the genuine smile and laughter!  So very “welcome” !

Hello Daymaker from way back in the day.

My favorite diner of all time was in Billings, Montana, and its name was the Kit Kat in the Heights.  Saturday mornings – homemade big-as-your-hand cinnamon rolls or caramel rolls were available.  Had to get there early because – imagine this – they sold out fast!  And when these beauties were gone – gone until the next Saturday.

Other than Saturday mornings – my favorite diner food was/is a Patty melt sandwich.

Yep!  Grilled burger patty on toasted rye bread + melted cheese (not sure – thinking it’s American) + grilled onions.

Cannot even re-create it at home.  Trust me I’ve tried to.  Just not the same!

You?  What’s your favorite diner food favorite?

Here is the new Wednesday Reader.  Enjoy!

Thanks for being here.  Grateful.  Always!

POP Quiz

POP QUIZ

  1.   ZOOT SUITS ARE MOST CLOSELY ASSOCIATED WITH WHAT DECADE?
    a)  1860s
    b)  1900s
    c)  1940s
    d)  1970s
  2. WHO’S THE MAIN CHARACTER IN JOHN le CARRE’S  “TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY”?
    a)  James Bond
    b)  Harry Palmer
    c)  George Smiley
    d)  Napoleon Solo
  3.   WHEN AND WHERE WAS THE SPORT OF SNOWBOARDING FIRST CONTESTED AS AN OLYMPIC EVENT?
    a)  Lake Placid 1980
    b)  Albertville 1992
    c)  Nagano 1980
    d)  Salt Lake City 2002
  4.   WHICH OF THESE IS NOT A TREE NUT?
    a)  Brazil nut
    b)  Peanut
    c)  Pecan
    d)  Pistachio
  5.   WHICH SONG WAS A DUET HIT FOR STEVIE NICKS AND TOM PETTY IN 1981?
    a)  “Gold Dust Woman”
    b)  “Landslide”
    c)  “Rhiannon”
    d)  “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around”
  6.   WHICH OF THESE THINGS DO GEORGE WASHINGTON AND JAMES MONROE HAVE IN COMMON?
    a)  Never lived in the White House
    b)  No middle name
    c)  Practiced medicine
    d)  Wives named Martha
Wednesday Reader February 22

QUICK QUESTION

WHAT DO YOU WISH SOMEBODY WOULD HURRY UP AND INVENT?

Wednesday Reader February 22

POP QUIZ ANSWERS

  1.   Zoot suits were popular with young men in the 1940s.
  2.   George Smiley is the main character in John le Carre’s “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.”
  3.   Snowboarding made its Olympic debut at the 1998 winter games in Nagano, Japan.
  4.   Peanuts are not tree nuts; they’re legumes.
  5.   “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” was a duet hit for Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty in 1981.
  6.   Neither George Washington nor James Monroe had a middle name.

~ Leslie Elman
COPYRIGHT 2023 LESLIE ELMAN
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

PEOPLE WHO ARE WELL LIKED:

  • ASK FOR NOTHING
  • LAUGH AT THEMSELVES
  • LISTEN WITH INTEREST
  • RARELY COMPLAIN
  • INSPIRE OTHERS
  • TEACH
  • GIVE

THINGS MONEY CAN’T BUY:

  • Manners
  • Morals
  • Respect
  • Character
  • Common Sense
  • Trust
  • Patience
  • Class
  • Dignity
  • Integrity
  • Love

WELL..
ANOTHER DAY PASSED AND I DIDN’T USE ALGEBRA ONCE

((  Starve the Landfills.  Recycle.  ))

RIDDLE ME THIS

WHAT HAS TO BE BROKEN BEFORE YOU CAN USE IT?

Wednesday Reader February 22

TEX-MEX TACO SOUP

This Taco soup is a favorite diner go-to good + super easy to make. 

Added bonus – this recipe makes a lot.  So … have some now and freeze some for a couple laters.  OR gift to friends/neighbors/family and get the “Wow! this is sooo cool!”

This is the recipe we made at Hippie Cowboy.  Customers were devoted to their love for it.  Enjoy!

IN A GIANT STOCK POT:

  • 2 pounds ground beef
  • 3 TBSP dried onion
  • 1 TBSP freeze dried garlic (I’m a big fan of the Lighthouse brand)

OVER MEDIUM-HIGH HEAT BROWN GROUND BEEF WITH ONION AND GARLIC UNTIL COOKED THOROUGHLY.  GAUGE THE “GREASE” LEVEL AFTER COOKING AND DRAIN IF NECESSARY.

PUT BACK ON BURNER AT MEDIUM-HIGH HEAT AND ADD + STIR IN TO COMBINE WELL:

  • 2 TBSP Salt
  • 2 TBSP Pepper
  • 2 TBSP Oregano
  • 1 TBSP Cumin
  • 2 TBSP Dark chili powder
  • 1 TBSP Smoked paprika
  • 3/4 cup Taco seasoning
  • 8 cups Water
  • 1 x #10 can Crushed tomatoes
  • 1 x #10 can Pinto beans
  • 4 x 14.5 oz cans corn

BRING TO A BOIL, STIRRING CONSTANTLY.  TURN DOWN HEAT TO MEDIUM AND LET FLAVORS MEET AND GREET ONE ANOTHER TO BECOME ONE FANTASTIC SOUP.  ABOUT 45 MINUTES – LONGER IF YOU FEEL LIKE IT.

Serve with Cornbread or Tortilla/Corn Chips.

If you’re going to freeze or gift soup, let cool and package to size of choice ((I use zipper freezer/storage bags – inexpensive and does the trick just fine and dandy.))

RIDDLE ANSWER

AN EGG

Wednesday Reader February 22

WATCHING ‘80 For Brady’ the Super Bowl of Schlock

Superhero movies tend to conclude with a stinger, an extra bit of film that teases a forthcoming plot development.  Thanos has laid waste to the globe,  for example, and only Carol Danvers can help.  These morsels keep us coming back for more … sels …

Thanos — I mean Tom Brady — is at it again.  SPOILER.  SPOILER.  SPOILER.  At the end of the 98-minute product-placement vehicle “80 For Brady,” the star quarterback reclines on a sandy beach with the movie’s protagonists, a group of women in their 70s and 80s.  They discuss retirement, and the audience braces for what will surely be a groaner.

“It would be a shame to retire if you feel like you still got it,” Brady says, knowing glint in his knowing eye.

AHHHHHIWYO*^(DOFHU(U*B(@RGH.  How long will the zeitgeist tolerate this winky-wink routine?  For how many eons will this warlord keep us in his leathery grips?

I hoovered Butter Flavored Topping along with a smattering of Women of a Certain Age populating a Monday matinee.  The demographic was no coincidence.  Paramount has set discount daytime pricing for this movie, making a ticket less than $10.   The strategy appeared to pay off as “80 for Brady” kept pace with the rival release “Knock at the Cabin.”

A real group of fans called the “Over 80 for Brady” club inspired the film.  Here, they are played by absolute queen legends Lily Tomlin, Jane Fonda, Sally Field and Rita Moreno, all looking fantastic, by the way.  One can only assume these screen icons needed to repave their pool decks and the paychecks were fat.

While helping Tomlin’s character through chemotherapy, the friends become unwitting New England Patriots fans as the TV gets stuck on a game.  They embark on a mission to get to the 2017 Super Bowl, which non-sports fans will remember “as the one with Lady Gaga,” and hijinks ensue.  Each woman gets her own subplot to plumb, but Tomlin in particular is guided spiritually by a floating, wise Tom Brady seraph.  Which, same.

Ok, fine, crusty heart, blah, blah, blah.  The plot is largely sweet and innocent, even a refreshing portrayal of the complexity of older female friendships.  I will recap the move blow-for-blow in my newsletter Monday, so subscribe to learn which octogenarian eats too many funny gummies and hallucinates a bunch of Guy Fieris.  I wish that was hyperbole!

Brady produced the movie, as most of us would be tempted to develop a masterwork about our adoring fans.  Brady worship touches everything the light hits, giving the movie the energy of a prerecorded skit sponsored by Doritos airing during halftime at the Super Bowl.  Big Queen Elizabeth skydiving at the Olympics vibes, you know?  It casts Brand Brady and the NFL as wholesome commercial properties and posits that a band of plucky elders influenced the outcome of the greatest football comeback, not Grumpy Bill Belichick.

Where does the movie leave Brady’s final sports resting place at Tampa Bay?  As an afterthought, a blip, a forgotten ex-girlfriend.  Like, “Tampa?  Oh, she’s really cool, too, I guess.”  What about Tequila Tom?  His boat parade glory days?!?

Though the Buccaneers are shoehorned in awkwardly toward the end, the pirate pals remain a footnote to a football career that blossomed and lived its best life in Boston.  “80 for Brady” is a reminder that Tampa Bay probably never meant that much to Brady in the grand scheme.  It was a stinger, a tool to keep people coming back for more.  And now, it returns to sand.

~ Stephanie Hayes is a columnist at the Tampa Bay Times in Florida
Follow her at @stephhhayes on Twitter or @stephrhayes on Instagram
COPYRIGHT 2023 CREATORS.COM
** originally published on February 11, 2023 **

Fascinating Stuff

FASCINATING STUFF

  • The Commercial Pattern Archive at the University of Rhode Island might be the world’s largest collection of paper sewing patterns.  Started with the personal collection of theatrical costumer Betty Williams, the archive now includes nearly 64,000 patterns in an electronic database, with an estimated 53,000 taken from delicate tissue paper patterns that were never intended to outlive the life of current fashion.  The oldest is an 1847 pattern from the French fashion magazine “Petit Courrier des Dames.”  Among the more unusual is a men’s zoot pattern from Vogue magazine.
  • When whales rise smoothly to poke their heads straight up out of the water, it’s called a spyhop.  Most likely, they do this “hop” up to take a look at what’s happening on the water’s surface.  At the other end of the whale behavior spectrum, there’s lobtailing.  That’s when a whale raises its tail and slapping it sharply on the water’s surface.  Why whales lobtail isn’t clear, but it certainly makes a big splash.
  • In 1885, Wilson Alwyn Bentley of Jericoh, Vermont, rigged a microscope to a camera, enabling him to take the first “photomicrographs” of individual snowflakes — or snow crystals, as he called them.  Working for years in an unheated studio, he photographed some 5,000 snow crystals and then documented and categorized their unique shapes and patterns.
  • Official state bird, tree, song … these we expect.  Official state nut?  Well, yes.  Some states do have one.  Passion for prailines and pie led to the pecan becoming the official state nut of Alabama and Arkansas.  Pecans are the “official state health nut” of Texas as well.  For Missouri, the official state nut is the eastern black walnut.  For Oregon, it’s the hazelnut, since Oregon grows about 98% of all the hazelnuts produced in the United States.
  • Tambourines originated in the ancient Middle East and were played mainly by women, especially during religious ceremonies.  In Ottoman Turkey, the tambourine’s perfect circle shape became associated with the sun.  In medieval Europe, angels playing tambourines were depicted in paintings.  Yet even an object so flawless can be improved.  In the 1970s, percussionist Richard Taninbaum devised a headless, crescent-shaped tambourine with an ergonomic grip to prevent muscle fatigue.  His design for the Rhythm Tech tambourine is now in the collection of New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
  • Two American presidents are depicted in Emanuel Leutze’s 1851 painting “Washington Crossing the Delaware.”  One is George Washington, of course.  The other is James Monroe, officer holding the flag.  Leutz was exercising artistic license in this wounded at the Battle of Trenton, but it’s unlikely he was part of the group that crossed the Delaware River in 1776.

~ Leslie Elman, author of “Weird But True: 200 Astounding, Outrageous and Totally Off the Wall Facts.”
Contact her at triviabitsleslie@gmail.com
COPYRIGHT 2023 LESLIE ELMAN
DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

Day Maker Readable Art
6 replies
  2. Laurie says:

    Such a fun read! So many nuggets. Seems like if we switched the goal in life to being well-liked instead of being “weal-thiest” it’d be easier for humans to nurture the qualities that money can’t buy; the final one mentioned being the sole ask of us by our Maker: love.

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