Vinni’s View

Get a large pot roast and a big dutch oven OR a big roasting pan. Use olive oil on whatever pan you’ve decided to use. Throw into your vessel two cans of cream of mushroom soup and one can of beef broth soup (or even better, a cup of burgundy red wine in place of the beef broth). Toss in about 5 peppercorns OR grind a good amount of pepper. I also use about a tablespoon or more of minced garlic. Cut up and dice a whole white onion along with some mushroom slices. Add some Rosemary, a couple of bay leaves, oregano, thyme and what ever spices you enjoy. I usually add a good dose of soy sauce or Worcestershire sauce, whichever is available. Cook at a low and steady temperature. For the oven, 250 degrees. For the stove top, medium low or lower. I cook mine long and slow.

If you like your gravy to have some cajones, you can always add a bullion cube or two. You can even add a dash of liquid smoke. Also, if your gravy is too watery, sift a table spoon of corn starch to thicken it.

You can add carrots, but I like my sides cooked separately. I like mashed new potatoes and something green to go with my roast. Also, I like the flaky crescent rolls from the frozen food section.

For desert? That’s always up for debate!

Scottsdale Ranch Real Estate is a very popular community in Arizona with around 5500 residents nicely landscaped in the Scottsdale Arizona tradition. The community includes not only traditional style homes but also waterfront property. With a variety of style, the homes there include condos, tennis villas, patio homes and spacious and ellaborate single family residential homes. Prices range anywhere from the low 200s to low to mid 1 million.

The Holm Group is the premier real estate company representing both buyers and sellers in Scottsdale Ranch and they have done so for the best part of the last 4 years. Their assistance will provide a less stressful buying experience and a smooth transition for those sellers on a schedule to relocate elsewhere.

Nearby Scottsdale Ranch Park fills in the void for other recreational adventures like playing baseball or basketball or maybe even volleyball and racketball. The park sits on 31 acres nested in shade trees and grass areas for a number of purposes. Also, there are schools and clubs available for children.

Leme is at the northern most end of Copacabana beach in the city of Rio De Janeiro. It’s one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. The shops are fantastic. The food and the bakeries are incredible. One of my favorites was Sylvia’s, a seafood steak restaurant. But there’s also Marius which is a “Churrascaria” or brasilian barbeque.

But one of my favorite ventures has always been exploring around Leme through it’s streets and variety of small shops along side the numerous high rise apartments everywhere. The streets are miniature cobblestones that are always breaking loose which someone like me can pick up as a token reminder of the trip.

By day, I’d go get something to eat and a coffee and then beach it until late afternoon or evening. My friends and I would sit at Senne’s on the beach. Senne had a small canvas cover like tent where he fried fish and made sandwiches. You get a free chair and an umbrella if you need one. You can sit, eat, drink, look at the ocean and watch girls.

Usually around 4ish, we’d head over to Mab’s and bullshit with all the mostly European male tourists for hours. Then it’s off to a nice nap followed by a shower and then out for a nice dinner. Usually around 10PM. Sometimes later. Chase a few girls around and then off to bed to rest for the next day all over again.

Sounds simple? It is. Leme is simply a laid back place with people the greet each other on the street and girls that are approachable.

These free standing banner stands are all over the place. I went to the grocery store where there is a Radio Shack and a cell phone store that both had these type banners outside directing attention. I personally think they are innovative and fabulous. But what got my attention was they are also colorful and fun!

Flying banners such as teardrop banners, feather banners, kite banners, sail banners, wing banners and many more appear to be the trend in contacting eye contact with potential shoppers and customers. Moreso they have become a truly affordable advertising tool alongside their uniqueness.

As you can probably tell, I have had food on my mind all day. Well, anyway. I was watching the travel channel today and watched this incredible piece on Dyer’s Burgers on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee. When I used to live in Memphis, I remember Beale Street was referred to as the square and there were several cool places to eat along with banner entertainment. back to the travel channel.

I watched this clip on travel channel and my mouth began to water. They were deep frying these burgers in grease they had recycled since something like 1935? Anyway, you’ll have to watch this YouTube clip and see for yourself. I’m off to the store to get some buns, meat and Crisco!

It’s time to grill a steak! If you want to fry yours in a skillet or broil it in an oven, that’s your business. But for me, I’m going to cook mine in the manliest way possible: with fire! And my fire won’t be just an ordinary fire. This fire will be the fire of the Gods. The fire that melts metal, burns villages and succumbs little to any of the elements. The very fire I propose, primitive man used to warm himself before any real dwelling became known to him other than a cave. And as for the meat, it will be the most precious of tender cuts, luscious with articles of fat and yet will have all the attributes of its mammal like origin including a bone! Along with my main course will be all the usual suspects like ,perhaps potato salad or a baked potato and maybe some beans, bread and salad.

Let’s go step by step to influence our effort to the sterling heights of it’s ultimate conclusion. Let us enjoy merriment and fellowship as the event ascends upwards to the majestic heavens. We shall spare no effort nor expense in our crusade for perfect bliss and certain flatulence.

Make your fire so hot your neighbor yells from over the fence “you’ve singed my wife’s eyebrows”!

Beans with dignity. Heat up a nice pot of beans with stuff you’ve added from the fridge. Things like barbeque sauce, ketchup, A1, hot mustard, jalapeños and anything else you can muster up.

Slap dat bitch potato salad with real mayonnaise, garlic, red onion, paprika, ground pepper, oregano and sea salt. Use new potatoes because the meal demands the first born of all species!

If you prefer a baked potato, don’t forget the cheese and the bacon. Your palette demands taste and girth. You need big potatoes like the ones that Irish village you conquered earlier can provide. Pile heaping samples of cheese, sour cream, green things and bacon. If you can still see any evidence of a potato underneath your bacon heap, you haven’t fried enough bacon.

Select some nice thick monster steaks that are not only big but mighty! Get a small mallet or small hand held sledge hammer. Don’t just tenderize. Brutalize! Season with spices like humans have never known. Braze your selection on the open fire allowing enough time to cook on each side but without loosing the juices within. I like mine medium rare.

Drink from the Chalice of the Gods. Drink the blood of the saints. I prefer a nice mineral water turned to red wine by Jesus himself.

The villagers and peasants are outside praising your conquests and await your next command.

Use the very brawn of both your hands and tear off a big piece of bread. Beat your right fist on the table once and yell at your women. Don’t use words because that only confuses the message. Simply yell: ahhhhhhhhhhh. This tells the female to quickly fetch butter to be melted and poured on your head!

Now eat. The day was good. You have a bounty of heads to shrunken later and you have hundreds of limbs of the offenders you conquered. Their livestock is now your livestock. Their peasants are now under your command and you are feared throughout the land.

Get some of the very juices this animal has died for on your beard and on your clothes. Look on with wild eyes and raised cup to the others that share in this feast.

Have your woman ignite the large image box so you can watch Grog and his cohorts get mutilated and dismembered by their opponents for your pleasure and amusement.

And now for a sensibly thinning yet decadent desert……

Brasil is the last music frontier

This is my earnest opinion and it is as follows. Brasil (Brazil) is the final music frontier for musicians looking for an audience when all other possibilities have been exploited. I am not talking about artists with real management and bands that have been signed and actually have a budget with money in the bank. But creative people that can’t find the mainstream or whatever and just need some gigs and excitement.

Hundreds of beach front resorts are being constructed all up and down the Atlantic in Brasil and a whole lot of developement is happening as we speak. There are things to do there and entertainment is a viable occupation. Am I wrong? Whenever I visited Rio, there were scores of street musicians all over the place! Hell! I myself personally grabbed a guitar and strummed and sang a few tunes. To my amazement I had a makeshift audience on the cobblestone sidewalk. Nothing to write home about. But energetic to say the least. And that was with gut in tow and unkempted facial hair!

Pessmistic sceptisist(s): “How would one get paid?”

How in the Sam Dalton would I know! Leave that up to the smart people that stand around and admire me (and you) for putting 3 or 4 chords together while  tapping my foot to some half way believable rythmn.

I am certain someone somewhere can pull together enough brochures or flyers or maybe a website or two and start some kind of booking agent thingy,

And then there are those of you that will say “well uh….you just wanna go there and play your guitar so you can drink beer and take advantage of all the lovely young girls and hookers…”. Guess what playa! I quit drinkin!!!!

I enjoy writing. I write from my heart and I write about personal experience. I take seriously most anything I write with very few exception. I hope you thoroughly enjoy what I have to share and I hope you appreciate what I have to offer. I trust you’ll share any opinions with me in the form of comments and I will gladly accept your criticisms of anything I put on this page and also any suggestions. Let’s enjoy this venture together and hopefully it will be not only a journey of promise but an adventure as well.

I appreciate and I am thankful for many things in my life. Good things as well as bad things. I appreciate all the things for so many years I have taken for granted. But most of all I appreciate Heather and Amy my two daughters. I can’t even begin to count the ways that I am so thankful that they are part of my life and all the great things they do for me and all the happiness they bring me. I don’t even know where to begin to describe how I feel about them.

Heather throughout her life had always been giving and respectful of everyone and always helped her family. Heather was instrumental in helping me raise Amy when she was little and all throughout Amy’s life growing up and going to school. But also to this very day. Heather sacrificed part of her childhood to change diapers, cook food and babysat Amy while I worked or ran off with my girlfriends. I’ll never forget the summer when I was working and Heather was out of junior high when she stayed home with her friend Lana and watched and took care of Amy. When I finally found a day sitter for Amy that summer, I remembered when Heather had cried to me as to why I hadn’t done that sooner and the summer was almost over.

When Amy was little, Heather always put Amy first before herself. As Amy grew older, Heather included Amy in her social life and did things with her that ordinarily older sisters wouldn’t do. Heather also looked out for Amy in all things like when kids would make fun of the way she looked or say bad things about her.

All in all Heather was a good older sister and a better than good role model. If Amy learned anything about being a girl, Heather was the strongest influence and had the wherewithal to guide Amy directly.

Heather has always been a good ally to her friends and people she has come to meet. Or at least that’s my perception anyways. But what has surprised me with great delight is she single handedly bridged some of the gaps on her mother’s side of her family simply by giving them love and attention and recognizing them and appreciating the good people that they truly are. She recognized China.

Recognizing China was something Nixon did as president. In spite of his corruptness and abundant misgivings, Nixon actually opened a new world and created a dialogue between two cultures unwilling and afraid of each other. His membership in politics precluded him form being all the virtue he could be. However, that small effort by and large afforded our society many different perspectives.

The perspective of Cecil, Mary Lynn and company have modestly changed by Heather’s kind and governing hand over the most recent years.

But overall, Heather has maintained being a good scholar for which if her grandfather were alive he would be overwhelmed with pride. As close as Heather was with her grandfather, I have wondered what it would be like now if he were around to see her graduate college and to have seen her do the amazing things I have seen. But also wonder about all the things they might talk about. I can picture them bantering away at some subject no one but they understand.

I remember when Amy was probably about 7 years old or so. I had a 10 day free membership at 24 Hour Fitness on Westheimer. This place had a nursery for people like me that needed a place to dump their kids while working out. I remember the nursery was all glass so parents could eyeball their kids during their workout. I remember watching Amy spending time with a little boy in a wheelchair instead of playing with the other kids. She made funny faces and did things to make the little boy laugh. I remember watching Amy help the daycare attendant take care of a little baby rather than sit and color like the other brats.

Amy is like the statue of liberty beckoning the “less thans” in life promoting “come here where I am. You are acceptable to me. If no one else will, I’ll be your friend”.

I also, remember Amy giving reassurances to team members on the soccer field whenever they were crying because they got hurt in the game or at practice. All this, with one coach in particular showing favoritism to the more athletic girls instead of Amy and in spite of her efforts. Amy had that one coach who loved Amy for who she was and still asks about her whenever he sees me.

Another moment in time included Amy practicing a Christmas song from school on her saxophone with my guitar and drum machine playing accompaniment. Or the time Amy gave grandpa his cane when he couldn’t reach it when she was barely old enough to walk. “Here ya go grampo”.

Amy used to hug her teachers in grade school. That’s the type of person she was destined to become. Thoughtful, loving and caring. Just like her older sister. But that’s just like Amy because that’s who she is. I have always known Amy to be ever vigilant of others’ feelings.

Neither Amy nor Heather had any semblance of a real mother although each was born by one and neither mother left the fold for worthier causes. Heather and Amy may well tell you it turned out better that way. The fact remains family members like their aunt Chris had to step in and give guidance from a woman’s perspective. Did Amy and Heather deserve better? A real mom? Yes. Absolutely.

As a result, neither Amy or Heather behaved badly as children and teenagers, didn’t run off and get pregnant and quit school, didn’t steal cars for drugs, didn’t run around calling ugly kids names, didn’t hang around kids with guns and onward. They turned out better than OK. Heather finished everything she ever started including but not limited to school and Amy is heading in the same path. Amy too has been very meticulous with the books. She has a grand array of interests and ambitions. Culinary school, psychology and film to name a few. Its always interesting to listen to Amy talk about film makers.

Heather is somewhat of an authoritarian. But she has always had to be. Early on she had to marshal strengths and optimism against odds that compelled her at an early age. Once when I was broke and out of a job, Heather stepped up to pay our phone bill that had been past due for some time. How many times would she have had to apologize for me and my behavior and my irresponsibility?

Amy is somewhat of a pragmatist. If its square why should we bother with a round hole? Let’s just leave it on the floor next to our dirty clothes and all the other unresolved stuff we’ll get to later. But what can we expect form a girl whose mother left her in a store room at a bar she worked at to go run off and take care of some bullshit. But what we can expect is Amy will in her own time get to all of it. The practical side is Amy approaches most everything head on and leaving no stone unturned.

Did Heather ask to be put to the test of making things right and being the authorative proctor in household and family circumstances? Did anyone at least ask Amy to go through life confessing inadequacy to those that define adequacy outside of a true and perceptive reality?

Everyone deserves better. However, everyone deserves dignity. My daughters earned their own.

I don’t think anyone will get a parade in their honor for not cleaning their room or folding clothes. Certainly no one will nominate you for the best cranky and bossy person of the year award. But the authoritarian will probably keep us all solvent and alive. The one with the sloppy room will put a smile on the faces of all the “less than” peoples around and everywhere and spread the good fortune of being humanitarian.

What the future brings is no longer hope. Because we aren’t in despair. The future brings the new opportunity! The challenge to pick up the dirty laundry off the floor and clean the dirty room. And to teach others the benefits of your experiences that you were lucky enough to learn early on by the wise grandfather, the froogle grandmother, the single father who drank too much, the funny yet understanding uncle, the aunt who likes to shop with you anytime, the dead beat mom and the soccer ball up side the head.

If anyone asks me, I’d tell them I am grateful to have such great kids and at least I was there to watch. And to the both of them and to anyone reading this, I hope you recognize China…

When I first heard about the sudden and not so dramatic death of actor Heath Ledger, I too like so many others jumped to conclusions. But my only conclusion was he ODed on something. With celebrities all too often that happens. And it especially happens to great performers and artists such as the young Mr. Ledger. My most immediate memory of Heath was his role in the Movie “Ten Things I Hate About You” starring along side Julia Stiles, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and David Krumholtz. Heath played a reluctant James Dean type who wondered into happenstance involving a beautiful blond prize, Julia Stiles. Later Heath would venture into bigger and more prestigious roles in movies like The Patriot and soon to be out, “The Dark Night” another Batman sequel.

Yes I remember “Broke Back Mountain” now that you mention it! Yes I saw the movie and I liked what he did for his character. The movie as a whole was very entertaining and original. But it had to be mentioned didn’t it? Why not? It was a movie about gay male love. And the innuendos must fly like all the political mud being thrown around on and off camera and all over the net and the airwaves. We must remember Broke fucking Back Mountain because maybe Heath denied God or Christ or something (by kissing a boy) and the only true repentance is death by sleeping pills. Until the first part of this week, I forgot about Broke Back.

If you want to mention that movie, you may want to mention its authenticity and the fact that Heath and co star Jake Gyllenhaal did a bang up job of being authentic! I must admit I wasn’t captivated by this flick. But I wasn’t equally inspired by Titanic either. In fact, as a joke, I mailed a copy of Broke Back to an extremely homo phobic friend in New Jersey as a joke. My best friend of several thirty years was out of the country when it arrived and his neighbors must have raided his mail because he never received it? Oops….. I wonder what his neighbors are saying about him now. A prank that yielded even better than expected results.

I forgot about Broke Back. Not that it should be forgotten. But why couldn’t Heath be remembered for his upcoming role as the legendary Joker in a Batman sequel? Batman is going to have one bitter angry teen on his hands this time around. Well, actually Heath is just this side of thirty. But he was certainly teenage and a very handsome heartthrob masculine type in the movie with Julia Stiles. Wait! Now I’m doing it too! Do I prefer a heterosexual role over a gay one? Aren’t I equally hypocritical?

You know what? It doesn’t matter what movie and it what context of a role he had played or would have played. Heath had a very keen and unpretentious real talent about him didn’t he? He was the kind of guy men of all ages wished they had been like at his age. You know the kind? The no nonsense approach, yet human, pretty faced yet manly, sword and spear talisman that guards kingdoms and only kisses chicks on the first date to help their self esteem because he’s a nice guy.

In Godfather IV, he could have played Anthony Corleone’s adopted cousin. In Legally Blond III, he could have played the politician’s accident prone son that Reese Witherspoon’s character would have to defend and of course succeed in doing so. I’m being silly.

OK. Maybe we should remember Heath for his part in Broke Back primarily over his other works save for the new Batman thriller! But in what context? And all for the purpose of labeling homosexuals as belonging to some sort of liberal montage or whatever? Can’t you hear Fox News blundering it now? “Heath Ledger. Best known for playing the homosexual lover in Broke Back…..died of a drug overdose……shear grief……sinful lifestyle….liberals are wailing…..dead career because of homo…..”. You get the picture.

I say we honor him! After all, he probably got to see Julia Stiles’ up close and personal…… There I go again.

None of it matters. He was a noble knight and a good man. A superb actor and a practitioner of the arts whose skill and attributes shall be remembered as a talent to be reckoned with and a soul redeemed. My heart goes out to his family who I am sure miss him even more so. I am sorry for your loss and ours.