JMGarciaIII

Today's entry will be a brief recap of Thanksgiving 2021. It's very important to stress the process of getting Thanksgiving up-and-running started sometime around February. It gives you something to do as you and Lou Bega dance to Lockdown Number Five. Anyway. If you are lucky, you will have a stationer nearby which carries Crane & Co. or similar. If you are diligent you will be popping by on a semi-regular basis, and if you are assiduous, you will head directly for the clearance bin to the exclusion of all other temptations. For it is there, the clearance section, on some fine day/evening in February when you will find Thanksgiving stationery, forlorn and forgotten-ish, at +/-90% off. You should pounce. The same applies -- should you not have such accouterments at your disposal -- to tablecloths, napkins and serve/flatware (disposable is fine, provided they are attractive enough). (For these, I scour Williams-Sonoma, both my nearby stores and online , as they sometimes ...

Today is National Bourbon Day . Which is a good thing, I s'pose, as Bourbon is a close 2nd in the category of My Favorite Ardent Spirits. We all know about my favorite Bourbon cocktail -- the Whisk(e)y Sour, details upcoming thereon -- but when the thermometer starts to creep upward, chasing the spike in humidity, something minty is called for. Now, it seems that normal people who grow mint have it overrun their yard. I end up with a terracotta pot of damp dirt and beige twigs. Still, dum spiro, spero . So, in order to not make nothing but a waterfall of mojitos all summer* long, here's my choice cocktail: Joe's Julep 2 oz. Bourbon (my go-to for mixing is Maker's Mark) 1 oz. Rye (Templeton's is nice, if you're especially manly-manlike, add an extra ½ oz.) 1 dash Peychaud's Bitters 18 (!) mint leaves, any varietal, but Yerba Buena ( mentha nemorosa ) is optimal. 1 oz. superfine sugar (just put regular sugar in the food processor and zap it for as ...

Another gem from the archives

 New Orleans is one of my two favorite cities for a quickie getaway with She Who Decides. Great food -- if you're delicate of palate, you have my pity -- sensational people, great bars, and just a Glorious Vibe. Even the stuff you never think of (pizza, say) is shatteringly good.

If you look around online, you'll find shaving experts offering their suggested shaving starter kit. Aye, 'tis a good kit, too. So, in the interest of variety and all that, here's my everyday rig, although you new kids would do better to stick those guys' suggestions, since they are Professionals. Anyway, here's mine: Gillette Adjustable DE safety razor . Contrary to popular opinion, I far prefer the slim handle, with the year codes I through N. The loss of heft is more than compensated by the added maneuverability. You should also find what setting works with your choice of blades and quit futzing with it. With the blades listed below, I am at #6. Israeli Personna “Super+” (aka “no-name” or "Crystal") DE razor blades . These truly kick arse, at a ridiculous price. You can also score them on eBay. Vulfix #2234 badger shaving brush I even got it to match my scuttle. I can get my geek on just as impressively as anyone else, sue me. Proraso/Bigelow shav...

The lovely & gracious Kim introduced me, on Twitter, to the equally lovely and similarly gracious Ruth. Twitter, alas is the social media equivalent to HFCS. If you really want to know what happened to my blog, just visualize it being hacked into neat-ish 280-character chunks and fed to the Blue Bird. But I digress. Anyway. Ruth is an evangelist for good-and-good-for-you foods. Her merely saying "Quinoa tabbouleh" (granting the lovely and gracious Badger may have previously come up with such a concept even if she didn't get a chance to brand it as snappily) altered my worldview. Among the gospels of her evangelism is no-knead bread. This is what prompted Kim to introduce us, as æons ago, Kim was asking (again on Twitter) for thoughts on same, and I leapt insomniacally up and sent her my version, which involves a TINY bit of kneading (a riff on CI's, itself a riff on Leahy's original) and she loved it so much she wept profanely in joy for hours. So! N...

We are in that phase of Number One Son's last year where all the "Graduating Students" activities...stuff is going on. Banquets, presentations, etc., etc. With each, there is usually a letter sent home. This letter explains the details of that specific event. Attire, dates for sending in deposits (if any), contact persons and, where applicable, the rules and regulations governing the event. One such event is his Prom, and the letter arrived a few days ago. Given the nature of the event, the letter was (not unexpectedly) somewhat longer than usual, owing to the rules-and-regulations portion which was of an ample and generous size. In the process of getting all of the details of this event squared away, I sat down with Joey to make sure that all deadlines were met, that he was not out of compliance with any unforeseen rule. That sort of thing. It was then I ran into what he explained was "the Falcon rule." One of the things I have always noted is that EV...

One day, roughly 2 weeks out from Christmas, my wife announced that a "free" chalet in Beech Mountain, NC would be available to us for the days around New Year's, as the owners -- I'd have to draw you a flowchart of our relationship to them -- would be spending that time in Hawai'i. Make a note of that. Also, kindly note that the census numbers encompassed by the "us" abovementioned was in the "10-12" range. Further note that my beloved had announced , rather than inquired. Resigned to my fate, as befalls any wise husband whose prime marital directive is to preserve peace in the valley come what may, I nodded assent. (Resistance is futile, and comes with the added cost of having argued and still lost.) Furthermore, my main writing partner Karen lives in the general area and I owed her a massive (7 file boxes worth) load of cookbooks, etc. and I figured, quite reasonably, this would have the effect of a palliative salve on all the things ...

I'm trying to get back to blogging regularly, a process which, incidentally, you have the high privilege of witnessing. As is usual for me whenever I have to pick myself up and dust myself off – some days I feel as if I have a black belt therein – I go for the edibles and the potables. Today is no exception. This was prompted by a brief exchange I had on Twitter (you should hang out on Twitter with us, it's nice) in which I gloated, without the merest chemical trace of shame or compunction on the matter of my KILLER gazpacho. Ovah heah (by which I mean the northern hemisphere) gazpacho season is upon us yet again, and as your go-to Iberic, it is incumbent upon me to set everyone straight on the procedural gazpacho process. When you stagger into a tapas bar in, say, Sevilla, you will spy with your little eye a glass pitcher. Said pitcher it would seem to the casual and inattentive observer – not you, natch, but the casual and inattentive observer – to contain some sor...

If you are a semi-sentient reader, you will know that at the very top of the automotive desirability pyramid reside giga-dollar collectible, classic cars. With a few notable exceptions -- another post for another day, perhaps -- at that rareified air reside vintage Ferraris. You could drop, without much effort, not just millions on one, but tens of millions. Even today, that's real money. No getting out the door with one of these for under $200K. But what if you're not "there" yet? What if your sense of style is coincident with the æsthetic properties of a Ferrari d'epoca like a latter day Steve McQueen, but your budget is, um, not? Don't stress. I got this. Kindly note one of those covet-worthy classic Ferraris. In this case the 330GTS, a quintessential open-air race-bred sports machine. Italian engineering and design and craftspersonship and (it must be said) quirks and idiosyncrasies. It is beautiful, it is glorious to drive, it is rare, it is elegan...

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...