It turns out I had other plans for my solitary weekend. Plans beyond the exciting reconfiguration of the cords behind the TV.
The freezer needed to be thinned.
As I noted a while ago, we had a power outage that lasted ten hours, and consequently I trust nothing in the downstairs fridge, I don’t trust the ice. The meat? POISON. There were some pizzas in the freezer that were proud to contain Uncured Pepperoni, presumably because I want my pepperoni to sound as it suffers from a persistent disease. I assume that some sort of meat rot set in, and so out they go. To be frank I am not all that troubled by disposing frozen chicken whose SELL BY date was a year ago. After a full revolution around the sun it’s possible that the mysterious vagaries of time have leached the fowl of some ineffably quality. The meat was in the fridge longer than the chicken lived. That’s probably a sign it ought to go.
I found a few frozen containers of indescribable substances. Stuff my wife made and put away - or put up, as the parlance has it. Since she was gone I threw it away, because I am almost 99.9% sure that we will not find ourselves hungry, unable to agree on a good supper, and someone will say “there’s ratatouille in the freezer from 2015. Let’s get on that.” There was a container of some sort of whipped substance - potatoes? Mousse? Pudding? No clue. Out.
As for the evening pizza, the hallmark of Friday: I decided at the last moment to go to the store for a house-brand pie. For some reason I had a craving. I’d been a fan of their private-label pizzas for a while, but then they changed the recipe - something no one would confirm, and made me feel like a madman insisting that we didn’t always use the metric system, we had cups and pints and quarts!
Pints? Quarts? Never heard of them. It’s been liters all my life, brother.
No, you must believe me! We had teaspoons! Tablespoons! And the private-label pizza wasn’t excessively cheesy!
I don’t know that a pizza can be too cheesy, brother. Maybe you better lie down.
No, no, don’t you see? They changed the recipe! Why won’t anyone believe me?
(dragged away to the padded cell)
But for some reason I had a hankering (which is one word that hasn’t been used for a suspenseful movie yet. THE HANKERING). They didn’t have a pepperoni and sausage; they only had SUPREME, which is pepperoni, sausage, black olives, and onions. Well that’s SUPREME by your definition, but I think it’s SUBORDINATE, at least to a pizza that doesn't have something whose abbreviation is B.O. So I bought another frozen pizza from a local brand I like.
“Find everything?” said the clerk, as always.
“No,” I said, throwing a spanner in the works and requiring everyone to pretend to care. Even the bag boy looked up. “You don’t have any Kowalski’s pizzas except for Supreme.”
“Did you ask?”
No, I didn’t. This is a smooth-running operation with obvious attention to detail. If you have something, it’s on display. The fact that you packed all four slots with SUPREME - the Cheese, the Pepperoni, the Pepperoni & Sausage, and of course the Supreme - with the same item tells me two things. You miscalculated what people want. This may take six months to percolate and result in a recalibration of your production, but for now, no, I don’t think there’s any Pepperoni and Sausage to be hand.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Let me ask.” She waved over a huge manager-type guy who was unaware that the house-brand pizza situation was exclusively SUPREME, and said he’d check in the back. Mind you, I’d already bought something else. And to be honest, I had adjusted my own expectations; now the pizza I bought was the one I wanted, but I was obliged to follow him to the back, and stand by the Shelf of Many Onions while he looked for a pizza that was not Supreme.
A stockboy came over to replenish the onions, and asked if he could help me.
“I’m fine,” I said, as if my Friday usually included hanging around Onions and Nuts, doing nothing.
Eventually the huge manager emerged from the swinging doors. “We’re out,” he said, with the air of someone telling me something I had not grasped already. “But we’re getting a Frozen Load on Tuesday.”
A Frozen Load! Jargon. I love learning these things. I thanked him and he said he was sorry.
Went home, made the pizza. I didn’t like it.
But I ate almost half. The rest was sitting on the counter. Scout could not resist, and he ate it. Then he came upstairs and put his paw on my leg and sighed and laid down and was still for an hour. When I went downstairs to let him out, I discovered he had eaten the pizza I did not like. I took the cardboard disk and held it out without saying anything. He was on the other side of the door, on the steps; he saw me holding the disk, and looked away with great guilt. His ears drooped and he trotted down the steps and went to the absolute opposite point of the back yard.
An hour later, he knew he shouldn't have done that.
Pizza Friday was hard on everyone around here. That’s just how it goes some times.
UPDATE: one of the frozen Wife Bricks in the freezer was ALFREDO PASTA. For God’s sake Italy has had three governments since she put that up. Out! Out it goes.
Now we move from my Father's 45s to mine. Most are lost, but I saved a few.
I saved them because, well, Elvis! Our Elvis. Wikipedia:
Live at Hollywood High (officially released as Live at Hollywood High/The Costello Show Vol. 2) is a recording by Elvis Costello and the Attractions from a 1978 concert at Hollywood High School in Los Angeles, California. Three songs from the concert were originally included as a bonus 7" vinyl EP that sold with initial pressings of the Armed Forces album in 1979.
And I got one. Ah, that Farfisa Beat. No wait, that was Squeeze.
Well, everyone had the Farfisa Beat, if they knew what was good for them. And us.
I did a bad job on this one before. I was just too dismissive, and didn't give it the strange respect it should get. Since I'm redoing the entire B & W World section for some reason, I thought it deserves another look. Not A colossal man. THE Colossal Man.
It's one of those words that seems peculiar after you've said it three times.
The story is well-known: Col. Glenn Manning makes the mistake of running across a nuclear test zone to save a downed pilot. Alas:
Of course, super-powers result, but not right away. He's taken to Mattshotte Memorial Hospital:
And the doctors play a wicked prank by putting him in a small room with tiny furniture! You know, to less the shock of waking up all bald.
No, I said I was going to be respectful. Channel your inner 13 year old; this is pretty cool. Especially since you know he's going to get bigger, and destroy things!
But first, let's go to Las Vegas, where sin reigns and atomic bombs are detonated. It's the old strip - unrecognizable now, for the most part.
It wouldn't be a sci-fi summer B-movie without a Television Broadcast that looks nothing like a Television Broadcast, but seems to show us a banker who is pretending he's on the air:
Announcer and host on early television in Los Angeles, California. Keith Hetherington appeared on station W6XYZ, its successor, KTLA, and on KTTV. In what is claimed to be the first remote live TV coverage of a breaking news event, Hetherington reported from the scene of the explosion of electroplating plant on Pico Boulevard on 27 February 1947.
He was also a writer of TV dramas. In this movie, he has a good larf about sightings of a giant. Boy, what a gag!
Meanwhile, Col. Colossal is having a nice chat in the woods with his girlfriend - the last moment they have before he goes mad.
Not a bad effect, but it works better when he's surronded by real objects.
Well, as noted, he loses his marbles, and heads to Las Vegas, where he terrifies people with his translucent albinism. He meets some friends:
It's interesting as documentary footage - here's a hotel where everyone's sleeping off a hangover:
ME NEED Q-TIP
THAT MIGHT DO
THIS APPEAR ON ME HEAD AFTER EATING IMPERIAL MARGARINE
THE SHOE IS AMUSING
That's a great piece of architecture - no supports needed in the modern age:
YOU TALKIN' TO ME BECAUSE I DON'T SEE ANYONE ELSE HERE
YOU TALKIN' TO ME
He wrecks a few signs, which is the extent of his reign of terror, and then they make him fall off Boulder Dam.
