Substitute Bloggers .......Start Your Engines

Dear Substitute Bloggers
                    I am now on vacation. Thank you for agreeing to jump into the breech for me. We are hoping to hear from many perspectives this coming week. We have a downtown gal, a farflung foreign correspondent, a west coast inventor and bon vivant, I believe we may have a Saratogian. It could be anything. I am certain the quality of this week's postings can only be an improvement and I very much look forward to reading them on my return.
      Send me your mailing addresses and I will see that you get your socks.
                        Best wishes
                                          Smoothstar

Hollywood's Best Kept Bar-Be-Cue Secrets

    I was hanging out recently with some of my A-list movie star friends. Meryl was pitching some ideas to me while forking marinated baby back ribs on to the old "Little Smokey". She had this idea about this fancy lady with lots of dough, living in the Berkshires, who befreinds this broke down old carpenter that's doing a job for her and she takes him to the opera and gets him a decent haircut and one of those nice Hugo Boss suits. She teaches him nice manners, like in My Fair Lady, and gets him to quit telling these crude and pointless stories, peppered with multi-syllabic swear words.
   I asked what sort of marinade she liked. She gave me the recipe.

2 Tblsp olive oil                                     Saute' the onion, add the minced garlic, but don't fry the piss out
1 vidalia onion, chopped very fine          of it( her words , not mine),deglaze the pan with the beer. Add
3 cloves minced garlic                            ketchup, whatsthishere sauce and rest of the beer.Bring to a boil.
big squirt of ketchup                               Soak your ribs for twenty minutes or so and keep basting with
hefty shot of worchetshire sauce             your secret sauce. Slow cook 'em, don't incinerate 'em.
can of beer                                            (her words)

The Captain and the Crew

   " For the captain it's a swell boat. For the crew it's a hell boat." That was an inscription scrawled in the pilot house of a head boat down in the Gulf.  We were fishing for reds and the water was dead flat and the sun blasted down. Most of the customers were drunk or hungover and surly. The fishing was slow. The crew tried to remain positive but I thought they might gut a few of these rednecks and heave 'em overboard.
    If I have learned anything over the years, it is to lower my expectations. Certain activities such as fishing and gambling, attending the theater, reallly just about everything, cooking, gardening, golf, the list is endless, are fraught with danger and promise mixed results, if not out right disaster. If you make it through dinner without being poisoned, aren't you really a winner?
    So as you are hacking your way through a dismal round of golf, be of good cheer brothers and sisters, it's golf , it's not plumbing.

What To Do With All That Money

     The day has finally arrived. You have hit the jackpot! You knew it would happen sooner or later.You have gotten into a jackpot before; that's different. Now, let's say, you are stinking, filthy rich. Good job. Now what?
   Today, lets have a quick look at wealth management. If you have signed with an NHL team, buy an Italian suit and get a good haircut. There's all the nuts and bolts of big money, like stock portfolios and tax shelters and off shore accounts. That's sorta like work.
    If you have sold your novels to Hollywood, buy a Ferrari and a mansion in Beverly Hills. If your blog gets turned into a long running TV show, I'll be buying a couple of my neighbor's houses and a buldozer, just for a little breathing room.
     Once the dust settles, and you get used to your new found riches, making your monster movie might be in order.    

Just The Facts M'am.

   Our friends, Stephanie and Katie (not their real names) are our sources for amazing facts. With completely straight faces,"out of nowhere, appropos of nothing" as the song goes, they blurt out these most amazing facts. You're at a dinner party making small talk. "Caraway seeds are good for your prostate."
   "Really, Stepahanie?  I didn't know that."
    Or how about this one. "Rats can smell cancer." I didn't catch the part where we were talking about rats, caraway seeds, prostates or cancer.
    " Giant pumpkins can gain fifty pounds over night. They can explode."
    Often when you have the time to look into these amazing statements they turn out to be true. You can use the Internet to find out a lot of stuff.  Make sure you are using trusted sources, like this blog here, when checking your facts. Most, but not all , of what you read on the Internet is true.

Taking Up A Collection

   What's it going to be? Comic books, stamps, coins, guns, fire engines, boulders? Most everybody, sooner or later, starts to be a collector of some thing. It brings order they say. It starts out with one of something, I guess.
     The first record album I ever bought was Disreli Gears by Cream. I bought it at Alexanders in Manhattan. My brother bought Jimi Hendrix Smash Hits the same day. We had 45s, and my brother already had Beatles records and I listened to my dad's Clancy Brothers and Kingston Trio. These were the first real rock. I have strayed from the rock over the years. I have thousands of records. Jazz ,blues, country, on and on. All genres.  I'm not hardcore. I don't know what Chet Baker had for lunch the day he recorded My Funny Valentine.
     When you start to have records you haven't listened to or guns you haven't fired, you have become a collector. I have to try out that riot gun I bought a few years back. I think I'll use it on a Seals and Croft album.

How to dig a hole with a back hoe and the three best hotels in Monte Carlo.

   We have a lot to cover this morning. There are some controls in the cab that make the machine move forward and reverse and other controls that move the arm and other controls that make the bucket do that scooping , digging sort of motion. Although I've never been in the cab of a back hoe, I prefer the track mounted type because the cab swings around and you can dig around three hundred and sixty five degrees.  You could dig a circular trench with you in the machine in the middle. Then you go get your crane and pluck the hoe off the plateau in the middle. Then you call the cement company and fill the bottom of the trench with concrete. Once that hardens you can start building a tower. I know a guy that can make concrete blocks, so that you can lay up curved walls.
  Tommorrow: How to lay concrete block.
   The three best hotels in MC (as we call it ). The Red Roof . The Holiday, and my fave, The Ritz, baby.