JMGarciaIII

If you cast your mind back, you'll recall I was commissioned by the formidable Paul Brett to write a feature film. Because I am wired wrong, I jumped into it headfirst and, working hand-in-hand with the director (who unearthed the story) had a draft that impressed the EP, the producer, the director and (most importantly) me...7 months ahead of schedule. SEVEN. The only catch is that I delivered it last week. As in...JUST before the entire planet SHUT THE %$#& DOWN . Allegedly pre-production would start in a couple of months, but it gets complicated since the part of India where this would shoot has one month out of the year where it is not a) eleventy zillion degrees, b) raining sideways bullets, or c) both. Grr.

One of the things we, as a family, argue like civet cats about discuss, is travel destinations. Given the way my work schedule, uh, works means I don't have the luxury of stringing enough days together for a proper vacation...nor am I all that flexible about when I can string what days I can. This is all compounded when family announces they are going to visit ____ and would we like to come along. The problem with this is that we're not really what you'd call "joiners." Even those among the household who join on impulse regret it three picoseconds after being dragged into some bucolic endeavor. A particular nuisance are the trips which happen around Christmas.  Something gets into the brothers-in-law (severally, too, which is worse) and they announce plans to head up to Gatlinburg, or Stowe or some other benighted spot which features certain elements I abhor: 1- Altitude  2- Forests  3- Snow  4- Outdoorsness   We have established pretty clearly I am not...

Just back from my monthly schlep to L.A. Had a very good meeting with Greg The Manager, feel very fortunate to have him repping me, as the various projects I took to Content London begin to take shape. I even got to pitch one (with Ethan ) over at Hulu, where we got to go straight to Tippity Top Executive and Also The Second Most Tippity Top Executive. The 30ish minute meeting dragged well into the 90 minute mark, with them asking serious, and seriously intelligent questions. Fingers crossed.

It's 1521. You're a chieftain of some lovely Pacific island. You have the most women, the biggest hut, your pick of outrigger canoes. Life is good. Then some big ships show up. "Great. MORE Europeans." The Europeans make friends with your rival chieftain from the other side of the island. You snub everyone. The Europeans take the snub as a snub and choose to attack you. But they misjudge the tide and leap into water waist deep in full armor, and too far to use their weapons. You slaughter them all, especially the leader. That leader was Magellan. Immortalized by the Magellan Straits and also that GPS* thingy, among other things . You? You're chief Lapu-Lapu and you're immortalized by a tiki drink served in a cored-out pineapple, most famously at Walt Disney World's Polynesian Resort's Tambu Lounge. This past Labor Day** we went to this very spot. My wife had the selfsame beverage. Verily she loved it and has developed a fondness therefor and I was ...

Assiduous readers may recall an entry here , about a year and a half ago, wherein we illustrated some of the simpler ways to distinguish between the lovely and gracious Karen and me (i.e. Joe). Here are a few others. Karen: Joe: Karen: Joe: Karen: Joe: Karen: Joe: Karen: Joe: Karen: Joe: There. Now you know. (Some more.)

This is the story of how it came to pass that I will be traveling, Deo volente, to the High Country. My views on The Great Outdoors are a very poorly kept secret. But Woman wanted to get away and Woman loves the Mountains and the Prairies (whereas I reserve my love primarily for the Oceans, White with Foam) and a friend offered their cabin in the Blowing Rock area. She said yes, immediately, and then told me that I was to say yes. Then she started circulating the news of this cabin's availability to our family circle, suggesting A Family Vacation would be a delight, and how we didn't see these people but once a year (somewhat inconveniently forgetting there just might be a really good reason therefor) and wouldn't it be lovely? A cynical person would think this was a classic, textbook definition of a passive-aggressive gambit. Not I, obviously, but a cynical person. But! She didn't know I had an ace up my sleeve. The lovely and gracious Karen Hall lives, like,...

On April 25th, at +/-6am, after fighting Alzheimer's AND Parkinson's...my dad died. From a stroke. (A rather in-character thing.) It has been, among many other things, surreal. Given the fact he suffered from both Alzheimer's and Parkinson's his death was something frontmost in our minds, but we expected more of that long, slow decline. (Dementia-wise, we was 80% gone, so we still had some time to go in that department.) Earlier in my life, my dad and I didn't have an eye-to-eye relationship. Not something worthy of a book or film, but we had not-infrequent moments of friction. We had different personalities, and not always compatible ones. He had reached some rather lofty pinnacles on the strength of a forceful personality and it drove him crazy I didn't respond to that personality the way he expected me to. My sister was the one of us he "got" the best. He simply didn't know what to make of me half the time. I think it frustrated h...

Dear Internet, As a foodie, I'm faced with a certain dilemma. One the one hand I could stand to eat hunks of cow on a regular basis, yet my vanity isn't down with that and my sense of mortality seconds the motion. The solution is to "stretch" the beef component, so my tastebuds get to groove on all the beefy deliciousosity without needing to wrap myself outside a steak the size of a hubcap. So, here is one of my fave ways of doing just that. Beef Negamaki. Start with a fairly small portion of none-too-precious (any member of the "round" family) beef. Tenderness is not an issue, but deeply beefy flavor is . Wrap the beef in plastic. (Cheapskate that I am, I use the same wrap whence it came.) Whack it with a meat mallet. You want it as thin and flattened as possible without tearing. Once flattened, put trimmed scallion/green onion/spring onion/these things segments along the length. Roll up tight. You should be able to wrap twice around, otherwise u...

Being all Papist and stuff, we observe a fast on Ash Wednesday. Iberic tradition holds the fast to keep until after sunset (or, as it's called in Spain, "lunchtime") and even then, no meat or poultry need apply. So, I made one of TFBIM's faves, Black (i.e. Squid Ink) Spaghetti and Shrimp with Puttanesca Sauce. First you need garlic (I used 4 big cloves, you non-Mediterraneans'll probably wanna halve that), sliced as finely as your patience your allow. Several of you have emailed me asking what "as finely as your patience your allow" means. It means this: Take a small yellow onion, and chop it to the limits of your patience, also. Assemble the rest of the ingredients. Anchovy paste (I like Amore, and in this case I prefer the paste over the whole fillets, because these dissolve far better in a sauce), capers, squid in spaghetti, red pepper flakes. [Not pictured: Shrimp, & dried herbs (oregano, thyme & marjoram)] Oh, and also olives (I prefer...