Well, I’d best paint the new door on the shed. The old new door had fallen off, for reasons, and the contractor had come back and replaced it gratis. I scraped a big paint chip off the shed, took it to the hardware store, and their magic devices interrogated the pigment and spat out a code for the new batch of paint.
Alas:
Huh. Hmm. I found another can of paint I’d used for shed and house trim, but it as congealed - when I opened up the can and saw this strange clear glistening translucent lump surrounded by fluid, I thought it might leap into my face and put a tube down my throat. But the lid had good evidence of the old hue, so I took that to the hardware store, showed them the picture of the last batch they mixed, and persuaded them to spot me a quart gratis.
Easy job. Took twice as long to clean everything up and clean the brushes, which I’ll probably never use again.
Went out to dinner Saturday night at a local joint. The women had the fish. The men had the sausage. Really, it split like that, right down the middle of the table. I might have had the fish, except the pasta dish had those magic words: spicy sausage. It’s like a guarantee of satisfaction. You see “halibut,” you know it’s going to be mild, perhaps a vehicle for fennel. It might be on a bed of something. But spicy sausage, hello! But what is this . . .
Casarecce.
I thought: it’s pasta. Some shape I might not have encountered before. Indeed: it means “homemade,” which of course was the case for all pasta, once.
The waiter said that it was all served over a layer of ricotta, and I thought: a Foundation of Ricotta. I should rearrange my will to create the Ricotta Foundation. It gives grants to people who can come up with actual novel pasta dishes at this late stage in the game. Or even invent a new form of pasta! Surely that’s possible. Grok, how may kinds of pasta are there? Ah: over 350. What’s new?
There's a lot of buzz around innovative and heritage-inspired ones. Trader Joe's is rolling out Organic Spaghetti Triangoletti, a triangular-shaped pasta, hitting shelves around January or February.
C’mon, Triangoletti? But it’s a real word, inasmuch as you can make a new word by applying a real suffix (-etti, a diminutive) to a preexisting word. But still.
Sfoglini, a New York-based brand, introduced bigoli and a new take on bucatini, with bigoli being a thicker, Northern Italian long pasta.
Oh now come on, BIGoli? It’s bigly good! But no, that comes from a pasta-making tool, the Bigolaro.
There's also a resurgence of small shapes like star-shaped pastina for soups
Oh, that brings me back: Campbells’ Chicken and Stars soup. Do they still make it? They do. I wonder what compelled them to add star-shaped pasta nodules. Is there a history page? No, there’s Campbell’s site:
You spoke. We listened. By popular demand, Campbell's® Condensed Chicken & Stars Soup has gone back to the original star-shaped pasta you know and love! When it comes to the comforts of a classic, only a familiar recipe will do.
Wait what? Did they change the stars? A google AI query leads me eventually to a 2017 Amazon review, because it knows everything:
I am so mad that they changed the star noodles. The new star noodles do not have a good flavor. I used to look forward to eating this soup when I am sick and now I don’t. It doesn’t have the same consistency or flavor as the old star noodle soup. Very upset
If it wasn’t for my decision to trundle down this rabbit hole I would never have encountered this idea: “I used to look forward to eating this soup when I am sick and now I don’t.”
Anyway. It was delicious. I also ordered bruschetta but I was unaware it was a novel take on bruschetta. This means it was nothing like what you think of when you think of bruschetta. It was all green.
The halibut side of the table was all family talk, and the spicy sausage side of the table was all Britain’s Online Safety Act and EU economic performance, until we reformed to talk about travel and family and mutual interests. A great night.
On the way out I saw something in the corner of the restaurant that yanked me back:
 |
I hadn’t thought of that poster for a long time, and instantly remembered the name: David Lance Goines. I had that poster. It made an impression when it was released, a throwback, a clean style with Nouveau influences in the typography. You could tell a lot about someone if they had that poster. | |
 |
Or so those of us with the poster liked to think. | |
We continue with a small amount of manufactured enthusiasm to explore the trademarks of 1925, because no one else is. NO ONE!
 |
Yes, we saw them last week too. But this product is different. What is it? Flux. Fourth def: "a substance mixed with a solid to lower its melting point, used especially in soldering and brazing metals or to promote vitrification in glass or ceramics." So now you know. |
|
This sounds promising!
Hold on a minute HOLD ON
Horribly degraded copy of an interesting sci-fi movie. The space station bridge isn't just a room with a desk.
They spent a few bucks on panels and lights and switches, although I'm sure this is probably some piece of industrial equipment they repurposed:
The completely believable space station:
The space station is overrun by a fungus from the moon. Probably looked scarier in the original.
It makes people act oddly. They get the Space Raptures. This is bad. The situation is documented by the newspapers, which keep a cool head about it all:
What’s interesting to me is that this was 1965, and feels older. It’s just a few years from Star Trek.
But then there’s this guy. Your proto-Kirk.
His father was the most popular and successful comedian of his time.
 |
||
A year after this movie he suffered a stroke, and never acted again. Wikipedia:
As a father, Harold Lloyd had his share of quirks. He was extremely benevolent toward his youngest child, Harold, Jr., who he supported through more than a decade of false starts (and outright failures) in show business. Far more seriously, Harold Jr. was a submissive homosexual who would come home battered after a rough date--- his father demonstrated an unusual degree of acceptance toward homosexuality throughout his entire life. His sisters, however, were treated in far more Victorian terms. Harold Jr. was effectively lost soul after his father died and, like his mother (who died in 1969), was an alcoholic and seemingly unable to adjust to his sexuality. Sadly, he died at 40, shortly after the death of his famous father.
Anyway, it's an interesting movie, for its time.
It's the Diner!
That will do for today. Matches and a free Substack await; it'll be up around eleven. Thank you for your patronage, as always.
