They Came Out In Droves!

It was a fond farewell and the attendees no doubt closed the place at 2 a.m.  We weren't among them.

Suzy's Bar and Grill is our local pub and we have faithfully popped in to re-hydrate over the years and numerous changes of personnel.  I remember the real Suzy's, followed by a father from New Jersey who bought it for his daughters to run (and you thought a car for high school graduation was excessive) and then Sal Longo who fought unsuccessfully with the City of Hermosa Beach to a have a full liquor license back in 2016.

Suzy's gave up the battle and that's when Sal decided to sell.  The new owners are Adnen and Lenore Marouani who also own Barsha Wines and Spirits.  They said they want to fluff the place up a little, change the bar menu to reflect a "Mediterranean  diet" which only means one thing to me:  little bowls of hummus with pita chips on every table - a twist on chips and salsa.  I'm against!  Even after I checked to see exactly of what it consists.  Foods from Greece, Italy and Spain with lashings of olive oil.

The feature that kept Suzy's going for a long time is live music every night which has given tremendous breaks to aspiring local musicians.  The new owners have stated publicly and often that the music stays.

We wanted to pay our respects and we arrived at 5:30 p.m. to a packed house.  Every possible seat inside had a butt on it.  The crowd surged out onto the patio.  Our friend "D" found us at the patio doorway and the three of us huddled half in and half out of the door.  Richie and "D" were deep in Dodgerville and paid no attention to me.

One of the guys on the patio had secured a table and two chairs, one occupied by a friendly lady and he asked me if I'd like to sit down?  I was grateful and did.  "Amy" engaged me in conversation about her ancestral tree.  She was part Finnish, Danish and I think I heard "a dash of French."  The noise was continuous and L O U D.

The gent who gave up his seat was hailed by a tall, tanned, blue-eyed man, and they fell into conversation.  During their chat they turned to the ladies (me and Amy) and the newcomer remarked that back in the day, he dated a 16 year old and he was 22!  Interested, I asked, "So how long were you in prison?" and two the  guys erupted into truly great roars of laughter.  You could easily hear them over the crowd.  

Blue eyes was so delighted that he began praising my beauty (non-existent) and indicated he wanted to run away with me as I was a rare specimen of beauty and brains.  He was lit up like the Christmas display at Rockefeller Center, of course.  But affable.

Always leave''em laughing so  I made my adieus and escaped to the car.  Richie and "D" promised to just "finish our drinks."  We went home; "D" had spotted three of his friends and was happily engaged with them.  God knows what time they did leave.

Suzy's is to re-open at the end of August.  I think we'll trundle past three days after it does, based on the farewell.

Breakfasts of Champions? You Be the Judge

I don't know where I was in cyberspace (a not infrequent situation) when I ran across an article about what Melania Trump eats for breakfast.  Got a pencil?  A "Green Smoothie" consists of:
Spinach
Celery
Carrots
Blueberries
Apples
Olive oil
Dill
Flax seeds
Omega 3
Vitamin D

I'd think it would take most of the morning to compose this (I can't call it a dish.)  Vegetable prep would be extensive unless you kept bags of the various ingredients in the refrigerator ready to whip the hell out of them.   I believe the White House provides the help to do it.

So then I got to wondering about the other First Wives and set off exploring.

Hillary Clinton - scrambled eggs.  The version pictured looked like they'd been scrambled in pure butter and quite a bit of it to see them.

Michelle Obama - scrambled egg, turkey sausage and fresh grapefruit; it wasn't said whether it was whole pieces or juice.

Laura Bush's famous love of privacy extended to what the hell she might eat for her breakfasts in or out of the WH. Even with extensive Googling nothing came up.

You can also find President's breakfasts; more First Ladies, the menus for State dinners at the White House and who was being honored and a great deal more regarding food - recipes such as George Washington's Corn Pancakes, so-and-so's muffins and on and on.  Will close now as getting hungry and a nice pair of scrambled eggs cooked in butter sounds appealing.  Butter being one of my favorites.  Another dish for winter system starters … scrambled eggs with creamed chipped beef poured lavishly over it .. beats the shit out of oatmeal.   I recommend it.

But as for what Laura Bush ate for breakfast or not, you're on your own.

The 2,000 Year Old Man Isn't a Newborn AnyMore

Mel Brooks, writer, producer is 93 years old today.

 He seems to be in fine fettle despite having been a widower since 2005.  He and Anne Bancroft were married in 1964 when she was 33.  She died age 73 of uterine cancer which she kept a secret until the obituary notices.  She was said to be intensely private and, indeed, who would want to upstage Mel Brooks!?

Especially since his brilliant career began when he was 9 years old!  His uncle, a cab driver, traded some free rides in return to a popular at the time production at a Broadway theatre.  Apparently or possibly at his bar mitzvah, he told his parents he was going into show business and promptly got a summer job at a Jewish resort in the Catskills as a "tummler" a comedian who specializes in bizarre actions to amuse a largely Jewish audience.

He worked the swimming pool and one of the examples of crazy humor was:  he would put a big, oversized overcoat on over his swim suit, pick up a pair of pails filled with rocks and stroll out to the end of the diving board.  There, he would declaim "Business is  terrible - I can't go on!" and jump.

2,000 Year Old Man should be good for amusing us for years to come - at 93, he's just about to learn to walk.  Jumping into pools will have to wait a while.

And The Crowd Disperses

My sister and bro-in-law flew back to the North of Chicago home last Monday;  Richie's brother and my sister-in-law fly back to Long Island this Saturday.

Here's why I need to look into a short diet.  Meals taken out …

With my sister and bro-in-law:

Wednesday - drinks at the Crow's Nest, atop Old Tony's RB Pier
followed by dinner at Kincaid's, RB Pier

Thurs. - lunch at the Cheesecake Factory for the South Bay Writers Workshop.com annual Summer Solstice celebration.  After that we took them over to our local pub (Suzy's on Aviation and Prospect)  for a gentle libation
Then dinner at Bluewater Grill and we all had lobster bisque (best in the South Bay) before wearily waddling back to the car and hotel and home.

.Richie's brother and sister-in-law had flown in the previous Saturday and, following a well-established family tradition, their daughter picked them up at LAX and met us at Tin Roof Bistro, long a favorite.

Friday we went to them out in Studio City for dinner at another favorite - Maria's Italian Kitchen.
We were eight at table as the sons joined us.  Maria's has the best Spaghetti Carbonara this writer has encountered.

The Family (Both) Dinner
All of the above met for dinner at Las Brisas, 1969 Artesia RB which was a great success.  My side had only met the Other Side once and that was at our wedding 36 years ago on 7/2/2019.

Yesterday we took them (Richie's brother and sis-in-law) to Kincaid's for lunch.  I was delighted to see that bacon-wrapped prawns are on the lunch menu, too, and practically yelled out my order them as the waiter approached the table.

See what I mean about a small diet?

Of Anorexia and And The South Bay Salad Dressing

I ran across a novel way of addressing the genre "Four girls meet in college/girls' school"...chick lit.

Put your heroines in an anorexia treatment live-in rehab facility.  Just as if they were all various drug addicts.  And continue with Life in Rehab (and, in this case, a lot more about anorexia, bulimia, side bar for cutting and similar than I ever wanted to learn) and carry on.

Of note, chefs hate vegetarians or vegans.  They're a real pain inna ass with "No eggs, cheese, dairy, butter" and more.  More, much more. Thank you Anthony Bourdin.

"The Girls at 17 Swann Street" by Yara Zgheib   370 pages   $27.99

If you are contemplating adopting anorexia, here are some of the side effects that ought to shut down that little whim quite quickly.  Because of the loss of any meaningful nutrients, the body's chemistry is thrown off, leaving you wide open to a failing heart, constantly being cold and wearing an overcoat to the beach, your entire body will sprout very fine hair in an effort to retains some heat; your skin breaks down behind being so dry that a dirty look can make a bruise … Read the book by all means - a loved one may someday have this problem which is a listed psychiatric disease.  Just read, don't do.

I Thought So!

Pier Salad Dressing is not called that but is served at Old Tony's and Kincaids as the house dressing, only the other items in the salads differ.

Basic dressing

1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup sour cream
Lashings of white pepper

Old Tony's -  iceberg lettuce, tossed with grated, hard-boiled egg, little baby shrimp   I loved that salad!  When Tony's Fish Market sold to another, my biggest fear was that sister restaurant Old Tony's would abandon it.  Happily not.

Kincaid's Broadway Pea Salad - butter lettuce used as cups for:

 a bag of frozen baby peas - defrosted and dried.  Add sliced water chestnuts,  bacon crumblets and toss.

Interestingly enough, frozen baby peas are actually good as somehow they retain a spring-like freshness.

Bon appetite!

At A Loss For Words

Hard to believe by anyone who knows me, but I am.  I go back and forth in my mind about this book's context, meaning out in the greater world highlighted by "Th brutality!  The ignorance!  The peasants!"

A friend extolled it to me, saying that it was the best book he'd ever read.

In it's time (1965) it was praised and/or attacked nearly evenly.  The writer was similarly praised and attacked.

"The Painted Bird," by Jerzy Kosinski  234 pages   $7.05 (!)

The incidents in this volume sounded positively medieval.  The peasants (apparently the rich, educated had other things to do)  in their superstitions, fables and morals.  As brutal as animals during their respective mating seasons.

The narrator is a 6 year old boy whose parents sent him to strangers in a small Slav village, to avoid the gathering drum sounds of WW2 in 1939.  Misadventures propel him forward from one to another.

Over and over, as I made it to page 110, I marveled at the brutality of their lives - horse and cart - carrying around a tin container of moss and a banked fire to use as a weapon and as a necessary item of survival, ready to be used as a portable oven/stove.  Woe betide the person who let his die.  

The writing is matter-of-fact; such as:  descriptions of eyes rolling on the dirt floor after being forcefully enucleated from the owner who was ogling the peasant's wife.  The boy speculates on their future possible uses - supplement his own eyes by putting them (somehow) on the back of his head.  Such is Kosinski's  realistic portrait of a boy that age.

And what appalled me after nearly every page was the thought, "OMG this actually happened!  No one could make these up."

 I wanted to see the boy in adulthood, living happily in America but from a quick cheat at a page at The End, I know this isn't going to happen.    Back to the library with my best wishes for a less horrifying experience for another.

"Riddle Me, Riddle Me, Ree"

Heads up, fellow writers!

Who is the author that didn't venture into writing fiction until she was 50 years old?
She described herself in the Wellesley graduating class of 19 umpty-ump, as the "Youngest, Smartest and Shortest" in the class.

Her English professor liked her work, but she couldn't spell (! - pretty much a requisite in this field) so she gave Krantz a B telling her, "I hope this makes you think about your writing!"  She said in a later interview, "It did alright - I didn't write again for 31 years!"

Determined to show her husband, a film and TV producer who insisted that she was "a natural-born storyteller"- that she couldn't write fiction, dammit, she wrote her first book "Scruples" which became a best seller.  Today she's sold 80 million copies of her books in 50 languages.    

She was besties with a great number of famous people in show biz.  In fact Barbara Walters, a fellow high school friend introduced her to her future husband at a 4th of July barbecue.  A year later, they married (1954) and by all accounts were insanely in love for 43 years, prior to his death from pneumonia, age 83.  She was then a widow for next 12 years, prior to her own demise at her Bel Air, CA, home age 91, on Sunday, June 23, 2019

Wish Godspeed to Judith Krantz