Short Stories, Film Reviews, and Recipes

Category: Uncategorized

French Toast Halloween

By Christopher Bays

Wheatgerm Falls, 1990

Pelmore was quiet on October 30th, but a few residents, including Clark Rossy, were preparing for a visitor who only came once every decade. They were around when he first appeared in 1970 and terrorized the neighborhood with his spice bombs, egg launcher, and maple gun.

In 1980, the damage was more extensive, and a photo of the French toast bandit made the front page of the local newspaper. Nine-year-old Jonah Johnston, dressed as a photojournalist, had wasted nearly all his Polaroid film on blinding girls with his flash when they walked by on the sidewalk.

His fun ended when a teenage Mary Poppins chaperone belted him on the head with an umbrella and said, “I have sensitive eyes, you little butthead. And your costume sucks!” Jonah fell over and squirmed on the sidewalk and rubbed his head, but the loud pops and screaming from the trick-or-treaters down the street distracted him from the pain.

He sat up and saw smoke drifting through the yards and street. What is that, he thought as he picked up his fedora and brushed it off. It smells like cinnamon.

A cartoonish tan figure broke through the smoke at full speed but slowed to a halt when he approached Jonah. He wore a foam toast mask, a thick black belt adorned with cinnamon bombs, a tan backpack loaded with supplies, and a bulbous-shaped rifle.

Wanted: Dead or Lightly Toasted

“Who are you supposed to be? A reporter from the 1940s?” he asked.

“Something like that. A photojournalist, I guess,” said Jonah.

The bandit smiled behind his foam French toast mask and said, “Well, that’s more original than most of the costumes around here. I’ve seen too many Star Wars characters tonight; some of the parents are even wearing them. They’re the ones I target first. Anyway, try to stay more vertical tonight, kid. I have to run.”

As the tan villain ran across the street, Jonah used the last photo to capture a blurry image for the Wheatgerm Falls Gazette.

****

Clark didn’t believe the bandit was harmless, especially after Nicolas, who lived across the street, complained about inhaling cinnamon dust during the attack of 1980. Nicolas didn’t have to go to the hospital, but his asthma flared up, and he coughed up rust-colored mucous for several days.

The French toast invader never hurt the kids but stole their candy bags and ran off. They found them several blocks away, filled to the brim with maple syrup. Clark was a young father during the first attack. He was happily married and less belligerent, and his four-year-old daughter was lucky enough to avoid the bandit that night.

However, in 1980, Clark wasn’t the same. His drinking was getting harder for his wife and daughter to tolerate, and after slapping his daughter when she came home late from a Springsteen concert in Chicago, she and her mom made plans to move out.

They left on October 30th. When Clark came home late from work and found his wife’s letter, he wasn’t too surprised. His guilt encouraged him to believe it was his fault, but he knew the best way to crush it.

Bourbon was his liquor of choice and best friend when regret weighed him down, so he decided to go for the record: three-fifths of Jack in five hours. He nearly polished off the bottle before the end of the fifth hour but passed out in the rocking chair on the front porch.

When he woke up, it was dusk. He stood up too fast, fell back in the rocking chair, and closed his eyes. Why do I even need to get up? They’re gone, and I have no responsibilities. I can sit here for hours.

He rocked the chair slowly and tried to stabilize the spinning images in his head. Being alone on Halloween isn’t so bad. I don’t have to follow my wife to Beth Canero’s party or worry about keeping the pranksters, vandals, or baby Reaganites out of my yard.

My throat is dry, and my head feels like it was crushed by an anvil, but I’m alive. No wife or daughter around to annoy me or laugh at my bad jokes. But I hope they come back. I screwed up.

He tried to be courageous, rock forward, and rise to his feet, but his balance didn’t agree. He rose too fast and fell back, landing on the chair’s arm and tumbling to the hard wooden floor. As Clark attempted to pull himself up, he saw someone walking toward him in the yard. What the hell?

It was him. He had never seen him in 1970 but had heard the stories. “Hi there, partner. You okay?” asked the man in the tan suit and toast mask. He had a large, oddly shaped gun strapped around his right shoulder and something in his left hand.

“I’m just fine, weirdo,” said Clark. “Get out of my yard and go find someone else to harass.”

“I don’t harass the nice ones, sir, only the bad ones. And I’m guessing, in your present state, you had too much to drink, or maybe you can’t handle your alcohol.”

“I haven’t had a sip today. I’m just recovering from a rough night.”

“Man, that’s even worse. You can’t even stand up, and it’s getting dark. I guess your boss doesn’t mind you taking off on a Friday.”

Clark smirked and said, “I’m the boss and own my business, so I can take off whenever the hell I want, toast man.”

The French toast bandit carefully placed the round object in his left hand on the grass, pulled a slide on the gun to charge the air pump, and pointed the nozzle at Clark.

“What the hell is that?” Clark asked, raising his hands.

“It’s a maple gun. I’m embarrassed to admit that I didn’t use pure maple syrup in 1970, but you’re getting the best from the Great White North,” the bandit said before pulling the trigger.

The homemade releaser worked like a hydraulic pump and launched a single blast of maple goo, which slapped Clark in the face and coated his eyes. Stunned and shocked, he scooted back as a large blob rolled off his chin and fell on his lap.

He tried to clear his eyes but struggled since his eyelids were glued, and he could only make out the blurry figure before him, bending over to pick something up.

“This is a new design, and I hope it works. I call it the origami bomb. It doesn’t have any gunpowder in it. It’s just packed with powdered sugar and covered with thin paper. Finding the ideal paper that wasn’t too flimsy but still thin was challenging. I would use it like a magician’s flash bomb to make a quick escape, but I think this is more appropriate.”

The toast man tossed the paper ball a few feet in the air, caught it in his right hand, and hurled it, with the wind-up style and agility of a professional pitcher, into Clark’s head. It exploded into a cloud of white dust.

Backing up as the powder drifted toward him, the bandit coughed and laughed at the same time.

“I guess . . . I guess I should have thrown it from farther away, but I’d say that was a success. Have you ever been tarred and feathered before?”

Clark struggled to remove the white goo from his eyes. His anger was telling his body to kill the French toast bandit, but he could barely see. Although his head pounded and body ached, he decided to take a risk and charge him the next time he spoke.

“Well, this has been delightful, but I have to leave you, my friend. I have a few hours left to annoy your . . .”

Clark sprang forward but misjudged the distance between them and tumbled down the front steps. Rather than at the top of the stairs, the bandit was standing on the walkway near the bottom. Clark bit his tongue when his chin smashed into the stairs, and blood poured out of his mouth.

“Now you look like a true Halloween horror,” said the bandit. “See you in 10 years, buddy . . . if you live that long.”

****

In the year of our Lord nineteen hundred ninety, I, Clark Elmore Rossy, do solemnly swear to get tortuous revenge on the Halloween vandal. I will not kill him but will beat him to an inch of his life. Amen!

Clark was proud of his declaration; he used his calligraphy skills, which he honed during his recovery, to make it look more dignified. It was posted on his refrigerator next to the pictures of his daughter and son-in-law, who lived in Vancouver.

Ten years ago, he was a disaster, but after years of sobriety (from alcohol), adopting an intense exercise regimen, and discovering a new love for psychedelics, he felt like a new man. His girlfriend, who worked in the office at his construction company and was 20 years younger, had turned him on to LSD and convinced him to adopt a less fatal revenge plan.

Clark promised her he wouldn’t break out his firearms but didn’t mention the three air rifles he had recently purchased at K-Mart. He had one for each of the three windows on the bottom floor facing the front yard. He painted white dots with White Out on two rifles to indicate multiple BBs in the barrel.

He learned the “shotgun” trick from his cousin when they were kids; the only problem with the technique was that if you added too many BBs and pumped up the gun too much, you could crack the barrel or cause it to detach. Since mortally wounding the bandit was no longer allowed, he killed his plans to boobytrap his front yard with bear traps and pitfalls.

To keep the trick-or-treaters safe and prevent lawsuits, he posted signs around the yard that said, “No Trick-or-Treaters” and “Keep Out.” Clark hoped they would work but thought about how he would react to the signs as a child; he probably would’ve wandered into the yard, anyway.

So, he stashed the wasp spray and mace behind the holly bushes next to the house and the bo staff in the garage. Clark’s neighbors didn’t share his hatred for the French toast bandit; some even looked forward to his visit. Frank and Abbey, who lived across the street, had a life-sized paper machete bandit holding a welcome sign in their front yard.

Clark’s preparations were nearly complete; the last step was to drink a healthy glass of LSD orange juice.

****

Joe Wesser and Hank Clyman were first-year police officers assigned to patrol Pelmore and maintain order on Halloween. At 4:30 pm, they drove around the neighborhood a few times and parked at the south entrance. Unlike the other officers on active duty on Halloween, Joe and Hank had lucked out on what they believed would be a cushy assignment.

“Has this guy actually ever done anything illegal?” asked Hank as he grabbed a bag of potato chips from the dashboard.

“Yeah, well, I guess you can consider him guilty of vandalism and assault, but he’s never hurt anyone before. He mostly attacks adults with eggs and spice bombs,” said Joe.

“Spice bombs?

“Yep, but it’s kitchen spices like sugar and cinnamon. It’s not like he’s using tear gas or mustard gas. According to the reports, he’s assaulted at least 30 adults with French toast ingredients since 1970 and vandalized around 20 homes. He hasn’t caused major damage to the properties; most homeowners have only had to spray off their homes and plants with a water hose.”

“Why do you think he does it?” asked Joe with a mouthful of chips.

“Nobody knows, but he sure has plenty of fans now. I hear that some kids are dressing up like the bandit tonight, and their parents are making French toast dinners before going out for Halloween.”

“Weird. So, he’s like the neighborhood superhero, but he doesn’t fight crime. He annoys the adults and covers them with eggs and syrup. What about the bread and butter? I haven’t read in the reports that he ever attacked anyone with buttered toast.”

“I think using spices and eggs and maple syrup is easier. But who knows? Maybe he’ll break out a toast launcher or butter sprayer this year.”

****

Clark began to realize he had taken too much. The Jack-O-Lantern he made earlier was pulsating.

It stopped when he touched it, but its eyes grew larger, and its flesh shifted from orange to purple. Man, I only used up half a bottle, but it was tiny, like an eyedrop bottle, thought Clark.

This only happens once a decade, so I might as well celebrate. But I need to focus and get in position. It’s already dark. I know he’s coming.

He shook his head around like a wet dog to see if the pumpkin would return to normal, and it did, but when he turned around and walked over to the window in the living room, his feet felt heavier.

It’s alright, he thought. My feet are not sinking into the carpet; I just have to load up the guns before my vision gets any worse.

He picked the black film chase with BBs next to his rifle and fiddled with the gray lid. Two loud thumps on the window made him scream, jerk his hand up, and spill the copper BBs on the hardwood floor.

They sounded like church bells when they bounced, causing Clark to cover his ears and wince. He didn’t worry about collecting them since most were sinking into the floor. He moved slowly toward the kitchen and back door but hit the deck when he heard something hit the other windows.

A small group of teenagers dressed as French toast bandits hid behind the oaks in his yard. Chris Bonner and Jeff Hammond had two cartons of eggs, and the Winslow twins, Ed and Lilly, were lying on their stomachs and aiming their Automag paintball guns at the front door.

Lilly pulled her trigger twice and painted the door blue. She giggled and whispered, “Wonder if that sounded like two knocks?” Mr. Rossy can’t be that stupid, she thought, especially after we egged his house.

Clark’s heart pounded, but he felt relieved. The two knocks on the door were a positive sign. Since he couldn’t use his weapons or navigate the ever-changing landscape of his home, he needed help. He hoped it was the cops; he requested their help last week and heard they were patrolling tonight.

He crawled to the front door, avoiding the breathing ottoman and gelatinous recliner, pulled himself up, unbolted the deadlock, and opened it slowly. It was foggy outside (whether the mist was created by the drug or weather, he was unsure), and everything seemed quiet, but there were no police.

He held the door open for what seemed like an eternity. Eventually, he convinced himself the worst was over and walked out on the front porch. Lilly and Ed crawled closer until they were a few yards away and opened fire while Jeff and Chris jumped out from behind the trees and pitched eggs at Clark.

Clark doubled down and fell to his knees when the twins’ rounds pounded his testicles and torso. Most of the eggs splattered on the front door and siding, but a few landed on target and hit Clark in the head.

He screamed as they continued the attack, and the blue rounds burst on his head and shoulders, but when he began growling and pulling off his clothes, the kids took off and sprinted into the mist.

He ran in the opposite direction, wearing only his underwear and socks, toward the wooded trail behind his backyard. His feet felt lighter, and he thought he could run forever.

But his depth perception was off, and he smashed his head on the low-hanging branch of a gum tree and landed on his back. Before he blacked out, Clark swore he heard the old tree laughing at him.

As he slept, Halloween came to an end in Pelmore. The French toast copycats had retired to the twins’ living room to watch a double feature on their projection screen: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Videodrome.

The real French Toast Bandit never appeared in Pelmore on October 31st, 1990, and was never seen again. However, several devoted young men and women carried on his tradition in the following decades and coated the neighborhood with breakfast ingredients.

Harassing the Diamond King

Act One

“The Farmer’s Almanac told me my pigs’ tails would freeze in January unless I kept ’em warm, and except for the duct tape at the base, they look pretty cute with that puffy pink insulation on their tails, especially the ones that aren’t covered in crap.”

anonymous

The executive office of Nelters Inc. is only five miles from Almond Rock and somewhat hidden in the dense oak and pine forest. It’s a far cry from the company’s previous location on the 25th floor of the Horlen Elkes Tower in the city.

Nelters is a global corporation that owns mining operations, jewelry chains (including Jaylene and Kaleb’s), precious metal distribution centers, trucking companies, and recycling centers.

Unlike the view from the city, on the roof of the Almond Rock office, you could see rolling grasslands that turned tan in the winter, dense forests of eastern white pines and white oaks, and the looming Chesline Leer Mountain range.

There were no abandoned buildings with broken glass, ozone warnings, unidentified aromas, attorney billboards, bikers with androgynous hairstyles, or well-dressed prostitutes.

Almond Rock and the surrounding area, including the high-end residential properties that housed many of Nelters’ employees, was a safe place to live, for the most part. It had a low crime rate, but in the past year, the crimes that occurred were more bizarre and violent than those of other small towns in the state.

***The Last Thoughts of Frank, R.I.P.***

Frank Skolly, Nelters’ IT chief, unfortunately, came to work early on Fridays before anyone entered the parking lot. He liked to leave early to get home before his wife so he could make dinner. Friday was their “gourmet night,” and it usually took him several hours to prepare the meal, including the appetizers.

The security attendant checked the lot in the morning at 7:00 am and in the evening before he left, but he failed to recognize anything strange about the late ‘70s Mercedes with a red flame decal on the hood and a key-lime paint job.

The day before, the driver used a stolen guest pass to enter the parking garage and parked across from Frank’s usual spot. The car’s tinted windows allowed him to remain unseen, and he spent the night in his car.

When he saw Frank exit his car at 5:45 am, he started his engine, pulled slowly out of the space, and headed towards him with his foot slammed on the accelerator.

Frank turned around when he heard the engine’s roar and then ran at full speed towards the elevator and stairwell. Instead of ditching them, he held his briefcase in one hand and breakfast burrito in the other.

He looked back and tried to zig off to the right. With only a few yards to the stairway exit, the car slammed into his back and flung him into the concrete wall next to the elevator.

His briefcase flew to the left and bounced against the guardrail, but his beloved burrito (a homemade recipe) splattered against the blue emergency light, coating it with orange hot sauce, white cheddar cheese, onions, peppers, and bits of runny eggs.

The Mercedes slammed on the brakes, backed up, and raged forward as Frank, stunned and dizzy, turned around to face the light-green luxury junker.

Why were the West Germans obsessed with that color in the 1970s? Frank thought before it smashed into him, forced the hood ornament into his chest, and pinned him against the wall.

The car quickly reversed, with the engine smoking and wheels turned to the right. This ripped the hood ornament from Frank’s chest and left him crushed and bleeding in a fetal position on the concrete.

The car reversed 50 feet and stopped with the white smoke from the hood getting thicker and mixing with the morning fog. The driver held down the accelerator and brake while the engine roared.

The smoke billowed towards the roof of the parking deck and seemed to be in tune with the screeching moan of the 8-cylinder.

Frank, broken and bloody, tried moving his head towards the car and was hit by its blinding headlights. Squinting from the light, he tried shielding his eyes with his hand but couldn’t get his left hand to obey as he propped himself up a few inches with his right. I’m surprised his lights work, he thought.

His mind always seemed to wander at odd times. He’s really going to burn out that engine if he keeps it floored like that, and it will cost a pretty penny to service unless he has a solid service contract with the dealer, which is prepaid and isn’t a good deal, but hey, it’s convenient, and you don’t have to worry about some Bubba Fett murdering the repair job.

But wait a minute, that’s maybe a ’77 model or so, and there’s no way you’ll get a service contract with something that old. Why did I even consider that but, more to the point, why is this flame-trimmed freak after me? I wonder if that’s Kelly’s husband, but doesn’t he drive a Puegot?.. Maybe it’s a Citroen…

The driver released the brake and quickly adjusted the steering wheel so that his left tire was lined up with Frank’s head; the tires squealed in place, then roared forward.

The driver-side wheels missed his head but plowed over his neck and chest, and the car slammed on the brakes as the mangled front grill smashed into the wall again. With the engine clanking and smoking, the driver put the car in reverse and backed slowly over Frank’s head.

Frank’s final thoughts were related to the last image he saw before death: the spinning Hardline Ridge tire. He had thought Hardline? I deserve better than that. My God, those crummy 4th-world tires are discount quality, at best. Belkmontison, Eribbiccinni, or the one named after that Pilgrim would be perfect.

What was it called again? Smith’s Tires, or was it spelled the old-timey way, like Smythe’s Tires? I know there’s a Mayflower brand, but that’s not it; they make gluten-free fritters, not tires.

After three weeks of investigating the crime, the Almond Rock Police could not identify suspects, a motive, or much evidence, except the mess found at the crime scene.

Although they had a few calls about a green Mercedes being spotted and checked nearly every repair shop in the eastern side of the state, the cops had no leads about the murder weapon’s location.

Cecilia, Frank’s wife, was having a difficult time dealing with the details of his will. Unlike men his age, Frank took out a will as a newlywed and left everything to his wife.

He was intelligent but paranoid about death, and when he talked to his lawyer about his will, he added a few ridiculous clauses to ensure his passing was memorable.

Cecilia initially rejected his final request, but she honored Frank’s wishes and had the organist play Butt to Buttresucitation by Funkadelic at his funeral.

*** Companion Pet Performance Art ***

Marshall looked down at his phone and kept looking up while he walked towards the elevator of Nelters’ parking garage. Like many of his colleagues, he initially hesitated to stare down at his phone in the lot after what had happened.

Marshall’s wife sent him a picture of a large, spotted cat relaxing in a lawn chair next to their backyard pool. Beneath the photo, she asked, “Isn’t this Bob’s?” Man, he thought, his cats barely ever leave the property unless he’s walking beside them. He forgot that Laura had not met one of the web’s rising pet stars.

The proud cat looked like a cheetah but was smaller and leaner and had gold fur and black spots. Luckily, he wound up at Marshall’s house instead of three doors down at Clyder’s. Dr. Clyder had four Tibetan Mastiffs.

However, although the dogs were fierce and massive, they weren’t as agile as Rita. She could leap over a six-foot fence easily and sprint like a track star.

Looking at the photo closely, Marshall realized it wasn’t Rita; she always wore a black collar and was smaller than her brother. No, that’s the other one.  I think that’s Edgar; he’s quicker than the others and maybe smarter, he thought.

“Yes,” he texted, “That’s Bob’s cat. Give him a call to pick it up, or go outside and say, ‘Edgar, go home to Bob,’ but don’t yell; just say it calmly at a normal volume. He’s harmless. He won’t get angry if you yell, but he’ll get scared. He’s the sensitive one, and sometimes when he gets scared, he urinates.”

Bob’s parents, Ellen and Michael, were retired cat breeders. They owned a massive tract of land in the Appalachians, where they allowed a colony of rescued felines and their retired breeding stock to rule the land and irritate their neighbors.

The cats claimed various parts of the 80-acre area as their territory, but they were trained to avoid attacking the chickens near the farmhouse, and although some of them were fascinated by the odd creatures, the cats never crossed the line with the hedgehogs.

Bob said his dad fell in love with the spiked blobs after a trip to England, and he was one of the first people in the United States to breed them.

Before retiring, Michael and Ellen left their adult children in charge of the cattery and traveled the country with a performance group that featured feline and canine acrobatics.

One of their fan’s favorite acts involved a Russian Blue cat named Judas, who wore red boxing gloves embossed with tiny yellow hammers and sickles.

With the Russian national anthem blaring on the loudspeakers, he strutted into the miniature boxing arena with his butt proudly propped up, meowed to the crowd, and turned around to face his opponent.

Judas growled at a patriotic Pekingese wearing American flag shorts and sat down in front of him. He raised his right glove and repeatedly punched the dog in the face, switching from right to left after four punches until it rolled over and played dead. A white-haired Siamese kitten wearing a bowtie played the referee; he jumped over to the dog and pawed the mat 10 times to count him out.

Little Chubbs the Pekingese had padded headgear, much like a boxer’s sparring partner, and Judas never made contact with the gloves. The duo was trained intensively to pull off the gag, and it only took Chubbs a few hours to learn how to move his head back slightly every time Judas threw a punch near his nose.

However, some people didn’t like the inter-breed boxing match because it was so convincing. They thought the wicked cat, with a name like Judas, was beating the poor Pekingese senselessly.

After several angry letters and death threats, an animal rights group, The Pekingese Purists, showed up to protest the Sucrose Lake performance. They headed to the restrooms to get changed, and none of the attendees questioned their appearance when they rushed out of the bathroom exits in Canis familiarus regalia; the onlookers thought they were part of the show.

Before their dress rehearsal, Michael and Ellen asked their assistants to watch their animals while they stretched their legs. As they walked around the outside of the cement dome of the coliseum, a low rumble erupted behind them.

Michael turned and said, “What’s that? It’s been getting louder as we’ve been walking…is that growling?” Ellen turned around and grabbed his hand when she saw them.

A large group jogged towards them and then stopped. They stood together wearing black and white costumes and rubber Pekingese masks. The couple turned around and casually walked in the other direction, but the Purists started to follow them. Some of them started to yip and growl as they walked.

Ellen and Michael went from a brisk walk to a light jog, and the activists picked up their speed until they were running, but after closing in on them, they stopped suddenly. They made snorting noises that turned to yelps and transitioned to high-pitched howls.

The five Purists in the front started throwing paint bombs at the fleeing couple while a few on their flanks launched the bombs with giant rubber slingshots. One ballon hit Micheal in the head, soaking his gray hair with red paint and Pekingnese urine. He was lucky compared to Ellen.

She was pelted with two bombs that hit her in the back, but when she turned to confront the attackers in a rage, she was hit in the face by a large one launched from the slingshot.

Some of the staff came to their aid to hose them off while the others chased after the activists, but the cheap paint dye and dog urine made Ellen feel like her eyes were burning. Later that night, Bob rushed her to the hospital when her eyes swelled up.

After Ellen’s eyes were treated and drained, she lost her vision for six months. She and Michael decided to retire their animal act permanently and return to breeding and training.

Eyeballs, Manhood, and Killer Siamese

Like his parents, Bob and his wife Laura loved cats and were exceptional trainers. Some of their colony acted like guard dogs, but they never crossed the property line or bothered the neighbors, which is why it was odd that one was relaxing next to Marshall’s pool.

Although the local police and animal control had never received calls complaining about Bob’s cats, they were called to his house recently, along with a few ambulances.

A small, ignorant group of friends decided to rob the house after one of them heard a rumor that Bob had had rare coins, loads of cash, and gold. They were right about Bob being wealthy, but he didn’t keep gold or rare coins on his property.

Before the men got close to the two-story stone-trimmed home, they were stalked by the night patrol. One of the men dressed in black whispered, “it’s bad luck to do this on a full moon cause people are expecting crazy shit to happen, and they’re prepared. ”

Everyone kept walking and ignored the comment until the crew’s leader, Smitty, said, “I heard it was good luck, and as you know, I’m usually right. Now, shut up, and let’s go rob this dude. He won’t be back till Sunday. Besides, he doesn’t even have a security system.”

Smitty was wrong about the moon and mistaken about Bob. He was watching a movie with his wife in the bedroom and wasn’t checking the wildlife cameras on the property. He usually scrolled through them on his phone before bed, but he was having too much fun watching The Thing with Laura.

As the four men in black approached the topiary garden in the backyard, a seal-point Siamese named Cleavus, with a white hemp collar emblazoned with the word “KILLER” under his chocolate face, waited in his favorite weeping beech pruned like a giant mushroom with his tan fur hidden by the branches and leaves.

Laura had spent several years perfecting her garden and worked on similar projects as a landscape designer. Most of her shrubs and trees in the topiary zone were shaped like vegetables or fruit, but she had one giant boxwood devoted to Kurt Russell.

He saw them come closer and trembled with excitement; Cleavus was always up for a challenge and seemed happy that visitors had wandered into his territory.

He clinched the branch beneath him tightly and swayed slightly back and forth until he centered his balance and remained motionless. He licked his lips, and as they approached, his ears bent back, and the hair on his back stood up.

Cleavus watched until the second-to-last man passed by and sprang from his hidden perch. He landed on Smitty’s face, shredded his ears with his front paws, and kicked back into his eyes with his back claws.

Smitty yelled, which sounded like a loud whimper, as he covered his eyes with his gloves. The others turned and were stunned at seeing a cat launching off their friend’s face.

Cleavus twisted in midair like a circus cat and landed in the face of Smitty’s best friend, Reese, who was known as the lady’s man of the bunch (even though he smelled like potpourri and graham crackers), and instead of repeating his prior attack, the cat slashed the masked Romeo’s eyes with his front nails and kicked his back claws into his mouth.

The two remaining burglars turned to run away but were met by the blue-point Siamese brothers, with their backs arched and tails fluffed up.

Josephus and Andy Kapp, who looked like miniature blue panthers, walked towards them slowly, making growling sounds like sputtering small motorcycle engines. The guttural noise from the felines’ mouths was constant and increasingly becoming louder.

The men froze, and the cats changed their motor sounds to hisses. Andy Kapp made the move first, but Josephus was a split second behind; they reared back with their tails thumping on the ground and jumped into the unlucky men’s genitals.

They bit down hard (and deep) and shook their heads around as they had been trained. Andy Kapp took a few punches to his head and neck before he swiped the man’s scrotum with his left claw and dropped to the ground.

But Josephus’ victim tried to pry him loose instead of hitting him, which only worsened his pain and made the cat dig in harder. He finally released his grip on the cat as his chances of procreation sank lower, and Josephus sprang off his chew toy, hit the ground, and dashed toward Cleavus and Josephus.

Cleavus groaned at the pair, signaling them to stand guard, and ran to the cherry-stained gazebo next to Kurt Russell’s impressive green mullet. He crept over to the southwestern corner and hit the silent alarm under the bench with his right paw.

“Man! Right when the head starts crawling away,” said Bob as he paused the film. He looked at his clothes lying across the room on the dresser and didn’t want to move, especially after his eyes drifted to the curves of Laura’s right leg wrapped around his left.

I’m so lucky I married a woman with calves like that...so symmetrical…like elongated grapefruit…mine are like wilted eggplants…pathetic! Bob thought. “Well, I guess we need to put some clothes on for the five-O; I don’t want them to think we’re nudists, ” he said.

When the police arrived, the cats were sitting twenty feet in front of the screaming men, with Cleavus perched in front and Andy Kapp and Josephus behind him, forming a triangle. A low-toned wail greeted the officers from the trio while they turned their heads toward their victims.

“The hell? “said officer Steve Neen of the Almond Rock police department. The cats shined in the moonlight, and their calm motionless bodies, with the full moon beaming above and the gruesome scene below, seemed to pull Steve into a brief trance. It didn’t seem real or possible.

Josephus turned his head towards Andy Kapp and licked him behind his left ear, where he had been punched. “That’s something else,” said Steve, as he pulled out his phone and snapped a picture; Cleavus raised his head and released a “waaahhh” in acknowledgment. “See ’em looking at us like that, Sarge?”

Steve moved closer to the group and bent down. “They’re…they’re purring, sir. Do you hear that?” He reached down and petted Cleavus on the head, and he purred louder.

“Don’t ya think they look proud of it?” asked Steve to Sergeant Alfred Gillington.

Alfred studied the gruesome-looking group, clutching their faces and crotches, and sighed. “Well, Steve, I don’t think a cat, even a dang Siamese, is capable of showing pride, but I …”

He was cut off when Smitty yelled, “officers, officers!” and stumbled and fell when he tried to stand. ” Wait,” he said, pulling off his gloves and moving his hands over the large knobs that were his eyes.

He started to scream when he realized his swollen, slashed eyelids and eyes seemed to grow larger by the second. Later, at the hospital, one nurse would whisper the nickname “fish eyes” to another before his face was bandaged up.

“Well,” Alfred paused for a second to let the man scream louder again. “I’ve never seen a feline blind or neuter a man before either, so…yeah, they look proud.” He turned when the floodlights kicked on above the walking path around the topiary garden.

Bob and Laura appeared on the northern side and walked up to the police. Bob, with a big smile, said, “Good evening! Looks like those guys have had a rough night.”

He looked at the squirming burglars and started to giggle. “What a pile of pathetic jackasses. They had no idea what was creeping around in the night.”

“You know, it may be a good idea to mention to the EMS folks that their wounds will probably get infected. It’s not guaranteed, but who knows what was on their claws!

“Those cats live part-time in the house, but most of the night, they’re stalking around the property by the gardens. Josephus killed a mole the other day and batted it around before biting its neck, so his nails could still have loads of bacteria and possibly faint traces of fecal matter, and you know what that means?”

Alfred stared at him blankly and shook his head back and forth. “It means that something is gonna get plucked out or chopped off if these buttheads don’t get the proper medical attention and follow the recovery instructions.”

Training the Untrainable Beasts

Animal rights activists in the state applauded the blinding and ball-biting attacks, but the authorities and his friends were unaware that Bob could train wildcats.

When he was five, his father introduced him to Mortimer, a pet mountain lion. His parents had a few scars from training him, but he became a loyal family pet and constant security guard. If someone entered the property when the family was indoors, and the cat didn’t recognize them, he screamed and sent them fleeing.

He lived for 21 years, and later as a teenager, Bob raised and trained a bobcat named Melba Toast without his parent’s help. Mortimer (or Melba Toast) wasn’t allowed in the house but followed Bob around from a close distance whenever he played outside.

Unlike most cougars, he stayed active during the day when Bob was around and slept at night when the family went to bed, but he was always alert.

He intervened when a seven-year-old neighbor picked on five-year-old Bob before he walked into the house for supper. Donny, the bully, called him kitty boy and shoved Bob into the prickly shrubs near the front door.

Though the tan cat didn’t hurt the child, he scared the stool out of him when he leaped from the bushes, screamed, and showed off his fangs.

Mortimer’s high-picked wail was enough to scare an adult but would not, in most circumstances, lead to an evacuation. Donny sloshed away crying and never bothered Bob again.

No Menudo in the Parking Garage, Please

Marshall’s wife replied, “I thought you were kidding, but it worked. He made a weird whine and walked away.”

As he was saying goodbye, he saw Jarvos running up to him with a wide grin on his face. “What do you think this is all about; what has the ‘ol silver beansprout all riled up, and what the heck were you listening to when you drove by?” he asked.

“Menudo, of course. And I don’t know what this is about. Maybe someone left another thong tied to the side mirror of his Bentley,” said Marshall.

“Or…another fake profile set up in his name.” Their boss had a lot of friends but also had his critics.

As they entered the elevator, Marshall grinned and said, “I was hoping it was a meeting about getting a new coffee machine.” He hit the 5th-floor button, backed against the wall, and stared at the ceiling.

“Why is a machine that only makes one cup at a time sitting in our break room, asked Jarvos, “and why do some of those flavors taste like cough syrup?”

Online Parodies

Kent Prollen stood with his armed crossed and watched his department heads file into the conference room. Karen Murphy, Kent Oleander, Marshall Dullar, and Jarvos Snoyner had each worked for the company for over six years, but Marshall had been there the longest.

Although Nelters’ interior was post-modern in most of the building, the conference room had green wallpaper and cherrywood paneling. It made new visitors feel like they were entering a smoking lounge at a gentlemen’s club in the Prohibition era. Prollen’s predecessor had lived in another time—in his mind—and his influence had not yet been erased.

He wasn’t imposing, but Prollen could be intimidating when necessary. At 5’11 ¾”, with bright white hair, long stringy arms, and a lanky body, he looked more like a game show host than a CEO. However, his reputation for quickly resolving conflicts kept his staff from relishing surprise meetings.

He had a sense of humor but rarely smiled when someone told a joke or tried to be intentionally humorous at a meeting. Today, Prollen didn’t look particularly angry, but something else was hidden in his face. Was it . . . concern?

“Good morning, everyone. Well, it’s not a good morning for Darden; he’s worried someone is trying to discredit him and somehow damage the company with online attacks.

“A satirist is targeting Jaylene’s sappy diamond commercials. Darden calls them terrorists, but as you will see, the videos are only parodies of Jaylene’s commercials.”

“The prankster’s online handle is thehonestbutttruth… whatever that means.” Prollen looked around the room and saw Jarvos snickering about the profile name. “Yes, it’s a hilarious name, but some of his footage initially seems to toy with plagiarism.”

“The filming style, soundtrack, and even the models look like the ones in the Jaylene ads. But, our lawyers claim that the filmmaker has not violated copyright laws.”

Prollen pushed a button on his remote and turned to look at the wall-sized video screen “Here, you’ll see the company’s logo.

butttruth Productions  
Free your blinds, and your rickets will follow

“Darden is online spreading a theory that this drawing has hidden code embedded in the graphics. I disagree and think it’s the only low-quality aspect of their operation.

“It looks like someone used a spirograph program and fooled around for five minutes, but that silly fool is convinced it contains viruses intended to cripple Jaylene.”

“The man isn’t a complete idiot, but lately, he’s been a little erratic. I think someone is dosing his pork rinds.”  

Up Next: Harassing the Diamond King: Love and Death on the Run and Dirty Digits.

Cooking and Cinema’s Short Story Series: Knee-Deep In Golden Toads

Coming to your phone, computer, tablet, and refrigerator on Friday, March 17th

I haven’t posted reviews or recipes on Cooking and Cinema in a while, but I’ve been busy writing short stories when I’m not editing and writing for work. Although some tales are unrelated to cuisine or films, I’ve included links to new recipes I’ve developed in the last three years in each story.

All of my work contains humor (at least, what I consider humor), but I wouldn’t categorize it as comedic since it also has violence, horror, tragedy, love, hopelessness, pathos, Rogaine, prize-winning mullets, and mealworms.

The short story series, Knee-Deep in Golden Toads, includes twelve stories broken down into several posts. Part one of the first story, Harassing the Diamond King, is coming soon. I hope you enjoy it, Christopher.

Baked Blackened Chicken and Potatoes

One-Pot Meal Without an Instant Pot

The idea for this blackened chicken one-pot meal came from the 1997 edition of the Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, and Ethan Becker.

You can still find it on eBay, but I don’t think the 1997 version is online. The original recipe includes a small section describing how French villagers used to prepare this dish.

Before going to church, the townspeople would bring their potato and chicken casseroles to the baker to cook. The baker reserved space in the bread ovens for the town’s meals every Sunday.

After church, they picked up the casseroles, grabbed a few baguettes, walked next door for 2 cases of Châteauneuf du Pape, and headed home to enjoy lunch, laughter, and intoxication with their loving family.

The original vinaigrette was bland, and it made the potatoes a little greasy. The basil vinaigrette in my recipe does not include salt and pepper, but the teaspoon of blackening seasoning makes up for it. You can experiment with different oil and seasoning mixtures or rely only on olive oil with salt and pepper.

Ingredients

4lbs chicken breasts pounded flat

1 Yellow Bell Pepper

2 Sweet Banana Peppers

½ cup sliced sweet white onion

6-8 Oregon Gold Potatoes

½ cup fresh basil

4 Tbsp+ 1 tsp blackening seasoning

1 Lime Juiced

1 tsp Dijon mustard

⅔ cup + 1Tbsp Olive oil

Blackening Seasoning (Medium Heat)

1Tbsp ground black pepper

1 Tbsp oregano

½ Tbsp onion Powder

½ Tbsp garlic powder

1 Tbsp paprika

2 tsp salt

2 tsp ground mustard

1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes

¼ tsp Cayenne

  • This makes ½ cup of blackening seasoning, but you’ll only need around I Tbsp for each chicken breast.

Instructions

  • Coat a large (10.5×14) casserole dish with baking spray. Slice the potatoes, bell peppers, and white onions as thin as possible. Arrange the potato slices evenly and cover with bell peppers and onions.
  • Blend the basil, lime juice, Dijon mustard, and 1 tsp blackening seasoning in a food processor for 30 seconds. Add the olive oil slowly until the mixture emulsifies.
  • Coat the chicken with the blackening seasoning and heat 1 Tbsp olive oil in a cast-iron skillet. Sear the breasts for two minutes on each side. Drizzle half of the basil mixture over the spuds and peppers.
  • Place the breasts on top of the vegetables and distribute the banana peppers around evenly. Pour the basil vinaigrette over the chicken.
  • Bake in a preheated oven at 375°F for 70-80 minutes.
  • Set aside on a cooling rack and wait five minutes before eating

The potatoes can overlap each other but try to cut them the same size to cook evenly. You can use Russets, red potatoes, or gold potatoes, but gold potatoes and red potatoes hold their shape, and Russets tend to break apart.

I like the flavor of potatoes with the skin on, but you’re welcome to rip their skin off. This is a meal I try to make quickly, and sometimes laziness gets in the way of my tater prepping duties.

You can use practically any vegetable: tomatoes, zucchini, cauliflower, carrots, or rutabaga (maybe not). The last time I made it I used the red potatoes I grew, but this time, only the banana peppers and basil are homegrown.

Pouring the vinaigrette over the vegetables before adding the chicken ensures even baking and tastier peppers, onions, and potatoes.

Cover the chicken thoroughly with the vinaigrette. A glass pourer helps you estimate how much you use for each breast. I put some banana peppers on top of the chicken and added more dressing, but the peppers get a little crispy on the edges. I like slightly charred peppers (I still cut off the burned spots), but you can spread the pepper rings around and leave them off the chicken.

Several years ago, I interviewed with my left hand for the part of “thing” for the Addams Family movie, but the casting director said I was the worst hand model she had ever seen.

“Too much hair near the wrist, and the hand veins are too prominent and puffy,” she said. “Come back and see me when you‘ve shaved those wrists and flattened those veins. Ok, sweetie?”

That was a disappointment, but my hand had starring roles in a Liquid Plumber commercial, an online Glock handgun ad, a magazine ad for an air freshener that causes impotence, and an online video for a health and wellness supplement that has disturbing and uncomfortable side effects.

Choosing Between Art House and Horror

I know several people who refuse to watch horror films. Some say the movies are too violent, moronic, or poorly made. There’s a great deal of truth to that criticism since many horror movies are incredibly dumb and difficult to watch unless you’re comatose.

However, the lines between horror, art-house, and thriller genres have been blurred since the late 20th century. Even the staunchest opponents of scary movies have probably viewed an award-winning film like The Silence of the Lambs.

How did Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins persuade people to watch a story about a serial killer who appreciates rare moths, tucks his manhood between his legs, and rips the skin off his victims so he can sew together a nifty skin suit to show off to other degenerates?

How does a mainstream movie get away with including a scene where a prisoner throws his semen in the face of an FBI agent in training?

The answer to both questions is talent. The Silence of the Lambs is a sick, disturbing movie, but it’s well done. No, Meggs’ DNA slinging sequence could not have been accepted by the MPAA unless it was produced with the utmost precision.

The actors rehearsed the scene for several weeks before the eighteen-hour shooting began. They worked with a biology professor, dermatologist, and adult film star to get a feel for the scene.

Method acting took on a disturbing new meaning to the troubled cast, and Jodie Foster spent a fortune on therapy after the shooting wrapped.

Wow, His eyes are pretty like mine. They sure keep this prison glass clean. Do they just use Windex–It’s got to be something stronger.

The nonsense I just wrote was only to prove a point that many scenes require days of preparation and hard work to accomplish for a few minutes or seconds of edited footage. Many horror movies (and movies in general) skip the preparation, and it’s often evident in the results.

Slasher films or monster movies are what most non-horror lovers associate with horror. They seem linear and uncreative on the surface.

Drunken teenagers who repeatedly ignore common sense and allow themselves to be massacred in inventive ways is a stereotypical plot that reached its peak in the 1980s.

Unlike many critics, I like slasher movies like Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street. They may not be considered cinematic masterpieces, but they sometimes scared and entertained me as a kid. Now, those films make me laugh, but they’re still entertaining.

Slasher films made a killing at the box office in the 80s, but most critics hated them and believed they were exploitative garbage. The late film critic, Gene Siskel, despised Friday the 13th (1980) and went to great lengths to show his displeasure.

He contacted Paramount and lectured them about their immoral filmmaking, and he wrote a letter to Betsy Palmer, the actress who played Jason’s mother (the real killer), to express his disappointment that she lowered herself to accept a role in such a horrible movie.

His efforts were in vain, and the fans won out. Until 2018, the Friday the 13t h series was the most successful horror franchise in history. The first film made over 59 million dollars in 1980, and it spawned sequels, a remake, tv-series and video games.

It launched the career of the untalented goofball Kevin Bacon and solidified Sean Cunningham as a horror director. I think it’s exploitative (which I didn’t mind too much when I was ten years old) and not as well acted or produced as Silence of the Lambs.

However, if you compare the plots of the two films, Friday seems tamer and less demented. If you take away the graphic violence, nudity, and bad acting (what the critics complained about), the movie has a lot of charm and a great soundtrack.

It makes you want to go to a summer camp, armed with a flame thrower and wood chipper, to relax by the lake. Why didn’t they ever try killing Jason (in the sequels) with a wood chipper? That should have worked.

I like some of the lousy slasher films, and I enjoy a few of the Oscar-winning thrillers, but trying to categorize horror films into several different groups seems pointless.

It’s more marketable to call a prestige film a thriller than a horror movie, and I understand why, but it still bothers me.

Is Blue Velvet Art House Horror?

In 1986, my parents went to see Blue Velvet.

Since they didn’t want me to be alone in the house unsupervised (I enjoyed pyrotechnics and fire in general as a child—no one was ever hurt or burned. I swear.), they took me along but wisely prohibited me from seeing the movie.

They bought me a ticket for The Golden Child and told me to have fun. As an eleven-year-old who had never viewed a movie without my friends or family sitting next to me, I wasn’t thrilled to sit next to odd-smelling strangers.

The theater filled up fast, and I wound up enjoying the movie with an exceptionally rowdy biker gang. They had matching leather jackets and mullets. Yes, the women’s mullets resembled the men’s.

They were joking around and making a lot of noise during the previews, but when Eddie Murphy’s comic masterwork came on the screen, they were silent—until the first joke cracked them up.

I respected that, and soon I wasn’t scared that they would torment me for not wearing a leather jacket.

At that point in my life, I was probably wearing a Member’s Only jacket. The bikers looked tough, but deep down in their souls, they were more like the Grease bikers than the Hells Angels-type bikers.

I had a good time, but I wondered what kind of depravity I was missing in Blue Velvet. As it turns out, I was missing a goldmine of depravity.

Even though his films have humorous moments and inventive cinematography, David Lynch is not for most tastes.

Compared to mainstream horror films, Blue Velvet is scarier, bloodier, and more demented. It was marketed as a shocking thriller, but you never hear the term “horror film” associated with the movie.

For a high-brow audience, I guess you can’t associate it with Freddy Krueger, Jason Vorhees, Michael Myers, or Mia Farrow.

It’s a strange film that’s difficult to handle in some scenes. I liked it, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone with anxiety problems.

It’s entertainment that induces anxiety rather than curbs it, and while that isn’t good for all people (or most people), it’s interesting that some movies can alter your breathing, heart rate, and comfort level.

I don’t think Blue Velvet would’ve turned me into a raving lunatic as a child, but I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have slept for a month or listened to Roy Orbison for the rest of my life.

Watching a lip-sticked Dennis Hopper terrorize poor Kyle Maclachlan while he quotes In Dreams is not good publicity for Roy Orbison, but strangely enough, it did revive sales of the song and his greatest hits.

The opening lines are pretty creepy for a hit song.

In Dreams

By Roy (weirdo) Orbison

A candy-colored clown they call the Sandman

Tiptoes to my room every night

Just to sprinkle stardust and to whisper

Go to sleep; everything is alright

Everything is going to be alright

Besides the horror of seeing Dennis Hopper huffing gas and speaking like a baby while he sodomizes Isabella Rossellini, you have Kyle MacLachlan doing the chicken dance, a severed ear, a love of Heineken beer in 1986, a graphic close-up headshot in slow-motion, a corpse with his brain hanging out that remains standing, and a horse-faced prostitute dancing in a pink mini skirt.

Now, that’s horror. So, if you hate horror movies, you can avoid the ones that aren’t marketed as something else, but you might accidentally stumble into one. Have you ever seen Howard the Duck?

Cooking and Gardening for American Slackers

Part One: Growing Tomatoes From Slices

Amish Paste, Green Zebra, Matt’s Sweet Cherry, Japanese Black Trifele, and Purple Cherokee

Summer is on the way, and you may be dreading the stories you’ll hear from your friends or relatives about their incredible heirloom tomato patch.

You may have an uncle Cletus that cooks the tomatoes down for a spicy Picante sauce or a mother who walks to her garden with her salt and pepper shakers so she can munch on fresh Black Krim tomatoes while she watches Duran Duran videos from her phone.

Your niece Moon Tulip Child, who lives out west in a friendly commune (not the manipulative one that makes you bathe in the outhouse), grows her Big Rainbow and Costaluto Genovese tomatoes for the organic tomato juice that she adds to her stew and breakfast cereal.

Your neighbor, Stewart, places a wireless speaker in his tomato garden and plays sad songs to enhance the growing process. From Ave Maria to Tracy Chapman, he plays a variety of songs, but they all have one thing in common. They’re all full of sadness.

Stew claims that depression, anxiety, guilt, fearfulness, and hopelessness are vibes that the plants absorb and use to grow stronger. “What makes us sad…just makes them more powerful.”

He sometimes fights back the heavy tears when he prunes his prize Brandywines while listening to Glenn Danzig.

He sends you and the neighbors a text when he throws his annual Heirloom Tomato, Artisanal Cider, and Bathtub Gin party. And you ignore it because Stewart is a nutjob, and you don’t want anything to do with him.

Yes, the freak can grow an heirloom tomato, but his theory about melancholy sound waves is too much for you to handle.

You remove him from all of your online accounts and sit back and ponder how to cultivate tomatoes without receiving advice from your strange family, neglected (psychotic) neighbor, or pompous friends.

Online seed companies are selling out of their heirloom vegetables quickly these days, but you can avoid inflated seed prices or underhanded seed dealers (not every seed company is reputable or has viable seeds). I call the sleazy, fraudulent dealers the bad seeders. “I bought pumpkin seeds, but it grew into Hemlock!”

Purchase an Overpriced Tomato

Even at a farmer’s market, heirloom tomatoes aren’t cheap. You can expect to pay one to three dollars more per pound for an heirloom variety. It’s true that they taste much better than grocery-store slicers, and their price can be justified by how difficult they are to sell in a large commercial market.

Heirloom tomato plants aren’t as prolific as some of the hybrid varieties, and depending on the type, some heirlooms are more susceptible to fungus and disease. They also ripen quicker than commercial varieties and are therefore harder to transport and sell.

When I planted fifty heirlooms in my backyard, I spent a lot of time keeping the pests from destroying the fruit, but I’m glad I grew so many because some of the plants produced only ten to fifteen tomatoes.

Summers in Eastern North Carolina are humid and hot, and the temperature doesn’t drop by too many degrees at night, but depending on the climate in your area, you may have a better yield with your heirlooms.

If you want to grow up to thirty heirloom tomatoes, all you need is one expensive tomato and a pot filled with potting soil. Find an heirloom that you like at a market or high-end grocery store and cut it into three or four slices.

The slices should be about ¼ inch thick, but you can set aside the stem side and bottom of the tomato. Those sections don’t contain many seeds.

Fill a two- or three-gallon container ¾ full with potting soil and place the tomatoes about an inch apart on the dirt. With three tomatoes, you can form a triangle on the soil. With four, you’ll create a square.

Cover the tomatoes with soil, add water, and place outside after the last frost in your area. Keep the soil moist with frequent watering, and you’ll start to see several shoots appear after ten to twelve days.

You can thin some of the plants out if you only want to grow a few, or you can carefully remove the plants and place them in small transplant pots until they get large enough to plant in your yard or a larger pot.

I’ve read about other ways to plant seeds from a purchased tomato, but some techniques are incredibly complicated and time-consuming.

One method requires drying the seeds for several days before you put them in a seed starter greenhouse. If you procrastinate and have lazy moments like me, that seems like too much work.

I appreciate complex techniques that achieve superior results, but waiting for seeds to dry is an extra step that you don’t need.

Slice up a tomato, and grab your friends for a game of organic horseshoes and toss the slices in the soil. Cover the tomatoes and play something sad and horrifying like How Deep Is Your Love by the Bee Gees.

Here are some heirlooms that I’ve grown and recommend:

  • Black Krim
  • Purple Cherokee
  • Green Zebra
  • Japanese Black Trifele
  • Yellow Brandywine
  • Amish Paste

The Midnight Sky Review ⁕⁕½

2049 Doesn’t Have Beard Defrosters

George Clooney’s 2020 film, The Midnight Sky, is an ambitious end-of-the-world tale. The story alternates between Clooney’s struggle with Arctic isolation and a group of astronauts trying to make it back to a worthless Earth.

I wasn’t a fan of Clooney’s previous directorial efforts, like Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, but after he starred in Oh Brother Where Art Thou, I began to respect his acting ability.

Of course, his magnificent portrayal of an older guy that helped the young women of the Facts of Life (right before it went off the air in the late 80s) is worth mentioning. Also, his genius in Return of the Killer Tomatoes is something to behold and regrettably forget.

With the exception of the Mad Max films, The Midnight sky has more humor than most dystopian films, but it suffers from an overload of melodrama. Yes, the world ending would be a depressing experience, but the movie sometimes becomes fixated on grief.

The Sadness…It’s Growing, but Hey, Turn Up That Neil Diamond

Augustine Lofthouse is a lonely dude. He lives by himself in an arctic outpost and spends his days drinking scotch, checking the status of radiation building up around the globe, hooking himself up to a blood transfusion machine, and trying to contact the last group of astronauts on the planet.

When he rushes into the kitchen to put out a fire, he discovers a young girl. After unsuccessfully trying to contact someone to come back for the girl, he reluctantly takes care of the child and eventually warms up to her.

In a series of flashbacks, we learn more about Augustine’s past and how he winds up in a frozen landscape. The flashbacks are positioned well in the film, but every time Clooney examines his memories, he gets sad and remorseful.

His acting and his co-stars’ performances are impressive, but the overabundance of gloom in the story can become numbing until someone, like his young co-star Caoilinn Springall, lightens the mood. However, one mood-lightening moment that I didn’t enjoy (I was actually cringing and searching for ear protection) was when the astronauts go on a spacewalk to make repairs.

One of the jokers inside the ship, played by Demián Bichir, decides to play Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” while his colleagues make life-saving repairs to the ship’s exterior. They all sing along, except for the youngest crew member who mentions that she doesn’t know the tune, and everyone does their complex repairs while they’re grinning and bobbing along to Neil’s groaning.

I don’t hate Neil Diamond. I think he’s a cornball, but I liked him in The Last Waltz. As far as his acting is concerned, I’d rather watch a series of instructional films produced in the 1950s. By using “Sweet Caroline,” Clooney escapes to another movie.

His film is no longer a serious end of the world story; it’s a short, goofy musical in space. This may have been his intention all along. He puts something stupid in the middle of the movie so that it’s not such a downer. I get it, but I didn’t enjoy it.

While the scene was playing out, I thought about a plot device that’s been overused by great directors and dime-store operators for several years. Out-of-place musical numbers (in a non-musical movie) usually preempt a horrific event.

Clooney doesn’t disappoint, and a tragedy occurs. I won’t mention what happens, but I was pleased with the special effects used to create zero gravity blood. It’s one of the most horrifying and visually creative scenes in the picture.

Frozen Eyebrows Vs. Space Brooders

Great. Now that the entire world is dead, I can finally grow out my beard. This is America’s beard. No, it’s the world’s beard now. Only damn beard left on the planet. And no more trimming my ear hair either. Gonna let it grow out till it reaches my feet. Maybe I’ll get in Guinness. Shucks, they’re all dead too.

The film shifts back and forth between Augustine’s plight and the desperate astronauts. I liked the interactions between Augustine and his silent companion much more than the brooding space people.

The special effects are high-dollar, and most of the time, I thought they looked fairly good. Clooney’s role in Gravity must have had a profound impact on him. Some of the action scenes in space look incredibly similar to those in his previous film, but I think Gravity’s effects are more polished and realistic.

Some of the space scenes, especially when they have a wide shot of the space station rotating, appear computer-generated. Using digital effects is OK when you forget that you’re looking at something artificial. For the most part, The Midnight Sky’s effects are commendable, but every once in a while, you can see weakness in the visuals.

Although I picked on it, The Midnight Sky is an entertaining film, albeit a gloomy one. It has some predictable moments, but it excels in creating an atmosphere that feels desolate and without hope. That’s fitting when radiation has killed everyone on the planet except a sick bearded guy, a silent little girl, and a group of singing space rangers.

After the Thanksgiving Feast, Try Enchiladas

Instead of settling for turkey sandwiches or one of those gut-busting casseroles you’ve seen on a lousy cooking show where they cram turkey, gravy, cranberry relish, green bean casserole, yams, stuffing, and mashed potatoes into a large baking dish, top with bacon, country ham, gouda cheese, balsamic reduction, and Metamucil, you can make enchiladas.

I’m against wasting leftovers and feel guilty when I have to throw away food, but if I’d rather feed my trashcan than consume something repulsive created by Chef Cletus.

One enjoyable alternative to throwing away leftovers is to toss the food (or place it in bowls) into your backyard. You’ll attract the local wildlife that will appreciate a late Thanksgiving feast.

Make sure that the food is in a direct line of sight from your windows. Wait for the bunny, fox, deer, or wharf rat to munch on your bait and take a shot with a high-powered rifle or crossbow.

After a little gutting, skinning, and slicing, you’ll have another delicious meal that you can use to fatten your in-laws before they head back to Key West. The circle of life or maybe the food chain is incredible when you take an active role. Now, back to reality and enchiladas.

This recipe is based on one that my Dad uses to make enchiladas the day after Thanksgiving. I don’t remember the name of the fifty-year-old book it comes from, but I call it the brown 1970s Mexican Cookbook with gold lettering and multiple stains.

I’ve tried several homemade and restaurant enchiladas, but this one is my favorite.

Before trying the recipe, here are a few suggestions:

  • After cooking the sauce, don’t add the sour cream until you’ve taken the pot off the heat. The sour cream will curdle if the sauce is too hot.
  • When you fry the corn tortillas, set the burner between medium and medium-high. You don’t want to fry them too long, or they’ll get rigid and difficult to fold.
  • If you have extra corn tortillas, you can cut them into sixths and fry them for 2 minutes for homemade corn chips. Add salt when they’re still hot.
  • You can use chicken, turkey, or scrambled eggs (the original recipe calls for 7 large eggs scrambled), but I’ve only made them with chicken and turkey.
  • Avoid wearing lederhosen or parachute pants when you’re making enchiladas. An unexpected grease fire can be painful if your britches aren’t fireproof.
  • Seize the day, save the whales, smell the roses (they may be dead after last night’s freeze), maximize your potential, take out the garbage, clean the gutters, spot weld that hole in Grandpa Manson’s operating table, and give fleece a chance.

Turkey Enchiladas

12 Corn tortillas

2 cups shredded turkey

1 cup finely diced white onion

2 ½ cups shredded Oaxaca cheese

1 ¾ cups vegetable or peanut oil

Tomato Sauce

2 large cans whole tomatoes (or 10 to 12 fresh tomatoes)

4 cloves fresh garlic

4-8 Jalapeno rings (or 2 fresh jalapenos)

After cooking sauce, stir in ½ tsp salt and ½ cup sour cream.

Instructions

  • Set your oven to broil and cook the tomatoes, peppers, and garlic on a greased cookie sheet for 12-15 minutes. You can also put them on a lined pan on an outdoor grill set to medium-high.
  • Allow the vegetables to cool for five minutes and blend (in a blender- not a food processor) for 2 minutes. Add the diced onions to an oiled skillet and sauté for five minutes. Set aside to cool.
  • Heat oil in a cast-iron skillet and cook tortillas, one at a time, for 10 seconds on each side. Place the tortillas on a plate lined with paper towels to absorb the excess grease.
  • Heat a tbsp of vegetable in a deep skillet, on medium-high, and heat the tomato puree, frequently stirring, until it begins to thicken. Remove from the heat and stir in salt and sour cream.
  • Set up a cutting board on the counter near the stove. Spray a deep casserole dish with cooking spray and set it aside. With a pair of tongs, dip the cooked tortillas into the tomato sauce and place them on the cutting board.
  • Add 2 tbsp turkey, 2 tbsp cheese, and a tsp of cooked onions to the tortilla and roll into a tube. Place the rolls seam-side down in the cooking dish. You should have 2 rows of tortillas with six in each row.
  • Pour the tomato sauce on the rolls. Top with the remaining 1 cup of cheese.
  • Bake the enchiladas for 30 minutes at 350°F.
  • Serve them while they’re piping hot!

Tips for Growing Fresh Basil: Frequent Decapitations

Enjoy the sun while you can. Soon, you’ll be pulverized into pesto or simmering in marinara sauce.

Chop Off Their Heads, and the Herbs Will Grow! from Morris Peplo (amateur gardener, jai alai enthusiast, hang glider pilot, and landscape artist focusing on exotic fungi)

Basil Chopping

Basil is an excellent herb to grow in the summertime, but if your plants are growing straight up without forming a broad base, you should consider decapitating them. Pruning is a kinder term, but this is a cooking and cinema site that reviews horror films, and I thought head-chopping was more characteristic of the site’s contents.

It’s best to lop off the heads when the plant is only a few months old, but you can prune basil at any time. If you live in the south, your basil may continue to produce leaves until October. In North Carolina, we usually get the first freeze around Halloween, and the herb won’t survive too many nights that dip below 43°F.

Some gardeners are hesitant to prune plants like herbs or vegetables and would rather have nature run its course. There’s nothing wrong with that method if you like small harvests, but several edible plants like peppers and herbs will produce more if you crop off the lanky stems.

A 6 foot Fuji Apple Tree reduced to a sad-looking nub.

Tree Stunting

On the subject of plant mutilation, I recommend decapitating fruit trees that may be too large for your yard. Some apple varieties can grow 17-20 ft. high and around 6 ft. wide. That’s fine if you have plenty of space in your yard and enjoy picking fruit with a ladder.

For backyards and community gardens, you don’t need to simulate an orchard layout to grow healthy fruit trees. I have Fuji and honey crisp apple trees in my backyard that were cropped before being planted.

My backyard is pretty small, but I have stunted apple trees, a fig tree and paw-paw tree on espalier lines, and seven blueberry bushes. The apple trees look more like shrubs or miniature trees that a Hobbit would be proud to own.

Both of the trees were over six feet tall and 18 months old. I could barely cram them in my Honda Civic for the ride home, and I remember the tip of the Fuji poking into my AC vent on my dashboard.

Yes, I realize that a wise man would chop the trees before shoving them in a compact car, but I like driving with branches scraping the back of my head. I really feel closer to nature.

It was like the trees and I had become one being. No, that’s rubbish. I’m lazy, and I appreciate challenges and suffering. I hope no one left the site when I started sounding like a weirdo, but the longhair music playing in the background was affecting my judgment…

I replaced the love tunes with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. It fits for this post since some of Zappa’s work focuses on food. His early masterpiece, “Call Any Vegetable,” is an excellent selection when you’re shucking corn with your loved ones, peeling spuds, extracting pine nuts, or thrashing wheat.

If you’re making homemade snow cones with the family, “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow” is a good choice (and a valuable lesson for young children), and when you’re butchering a pig, cow, chicken, or squirrel, I think “Uncle Meat” is an ideal background song.

Fig espalier with cordon style

Back to Dismembering Fruit Trees

If you buy a fruit tree that’s under two years old, you’ll need to remove ¾ of the trunk. It seems extreme, but the pathetic, nubby, stick in the ground will eventually develop into a miniature tree. Your cropped tree should be about eighteen inches tall.

When you plant the runt, you should also trim the roots. If the root ball is bound in burlap, cut it off. The burlap can hinder the root’s growth. You want the roots to grow freely, but by trimming the roots, you can limit the space that the roots will occupy when the tree is more mature.

You might have to wait for two weeks or more before you see any growth on your Charlie Brown Christmas stick. My trees began to form branches after sixteen days, and it is agonizing to wonder before the tree grows if you made a bad decision.

If you’re patient, the sticks will turn into healthy trees. Fruit trees are not instant gratification plants. My apple trees have another year before they’ll produce fruit, and my paw-paw (a fruit tree native to North Carolina) will not produce for eight or nine more years.

However, my blueberry bushes produced edible berries after two years, and if you want a shrub that grows and flowers quickly, blueberry bushes may be for you. I had a massive harvest from my blueberries this summer.

My family and friends were happy to get baked goods, and I managed to feed a family of comical mockingbirds also.

Film Review: Midsommar ⁕⁕½

I’m allergic to these flowers!

The sad, young woman pictured above, who appears to have left her Claritin D back in America, is Dani (played by Florence Pugh), and she travels to travels to Sweden with her boyfriend and his three friends in Ari Aster’s Midsommar.

Midsommar is a strange combination of beautiful cinematography, witty dialogue, gory violence, maypole dancing, ghastly beverages, white uniforms, full-frontal nudity, psychedelic mushrooms, and anthropology majors.

It’s not a great film, but it’s entertaining and not lacking a sense of humor. Most of the fun comes from Mark (played by Will Poulter). His goofy comments often lighten the mood of the picture.

He helps his friends temporarily forget they’re surrounded by craft tables populated by cultists and dances performed by screaming women.

Frozen Trees and Loss

The film opens with a stagnant shot of a massive tapestry depicting skulls, the Sun, angels, and people. It looks child-like at first glance, but it appears dark and evil under closer inspection.

The tapestry opens, and you see a frozen, foggy landscape of barren trees and frosty lakes. A woman slowly chanting in the soundtrack accompanies the winter landscape. The scene is cold and serene until a jarring telephone ring changes the mood and focuses on Dani.

Dani can’t get in touch with her disturbed sister, and she fears the worst. Well, the worst happens.

Her sister is found with a long tube connected from her mouth to the exhaust pipe of a running car in her parents’ garage.

Another tube connected to the other running car in the garage leads to the parents’ bedroom. All three are killed from carbon monoxide poisoning.

Like the superior Hereditary, Aster’s main character faces an enormous tragedy and barely has time to grieve before being thrown into a nightmare.

Before the characters reach an isolated village in Sweden, the camera takes the perspective of the van they’re traveling in and rotates until it’s upside-down.

The inverted camera angle continues while the scene depicts an attractive, green forest that surrounds the winding road. The shot is well-done, but I’m not sure if it’s trying to infer that the characters’ worlds are about to turn upside-down. Maybe, the director is only attempting to be experimental or stylish.

Lars, Please Pass the Grey Poupon

The village, nestled in an impressive mountain range with rolling green hills and small wooden buildings and houses, is an idyllic location. It’s perfect for fair-haired weirdos who get their kicks from spinning around a maypole.

When the group enters the commune, they’re greeted by white-frocked, grinning blondes and youngsters playing flutes. Dani smiles and feels uplifted by the colorful scene unfolding in front of her.

It looks like a mountain paradise, but it’s the type of heaven you would see in an old Star Trek episode. The land is pretty and populated by dancing, grinning, Swedish hippies, but it has a disturbing side.

The village holds a festival every ninety years that involves feasting, dancing, bloody rituals, propagation, homemade beverages that bear a likeness to pond water, and lots of flowers. Dani and a group of anthropology students, led by the Swedish native Pelle (played by Vilhelm Blomgren), arrive on the opening day of the festival.

Smile on Your Brother

The villagers seem friendly and full of life. They’re gracious to the new guests, and they treat them like they are part of the family. Everything appears normal in the small commune until two of the guests, appalled by the violent outcome of an honored ritual, demand to leave the settlement immediately.

Midsommar’s pacing is slow and deliberate in the beginning, but it picks up speed after the first ritual. The horror and intensity ramp up in the second half of the film, and it’s not easy to watch.

The movie becomes a living nightmare, and you need a sound and patient mind to make it to the end. A healthy stomach may also be helpful because the gore is gut-wrenching. Saying the movie is graphic would be putting it lightly. It’s foul.

The secret of the festival’s purpose isn’t challenging to figure out. The director tries to keep the film’s intent hidden until the end, but several clues alert the viewer to the awaiting horror. The story isn’t predictable, but it desperately tries to be clever.

Except for Dani and Pelle, I didn’t relate to or sympathize with the students. Mark, Christian, and Josh are so unlikable that you don’t care what happens to them.

The film has excellent acting, but Pugh’s portrayal of Dani stands out. Her character is tormented with loss and guilt before she even enters the freak fest.

Pugh displays a range of emotions, and the physical and psychological turmoil in the film could not have been easy on the young actor. I felt exhausted watching some of her scenes. If she had to go through multiple takes, I feel sorry for her.

I respect the director for making another intelligent horror film. Ari Aster and Jordan Peele are changing the genre by moving away from slasher films and haunted houses. Midsommar is not as good as Aster’s Hereditary, but it is unique. Its images stick in your head, and that’s not always a pleasant feeling.

Honestly, the drinks they serve to the guests scared me more than the gory violence. One concoction is made by adding a dirty root to an orange liquid. The drinks are always yellow or orange, and I doubt that there are too many orange groves in a Swedish mountain range.

© 2024 Cooking and Cinema

Theme by Anders NorenUp ↑