Hello, Neighbor!

I've recently been watching a 9-part interview on youtube featuring the one and only Fred Rogers. It's been a delight to see and hear the old gent again, rambling away in his quiet, unassuming fashion.

The interview is conducted by The Archive of American Television and each episode is about 30 minutes long so this is almost 5 hours of Fred. If you're interested you can find Part One here.

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So the weekend rolls around and I'm all in a PBS-y mood, so I talk Beloved Girlfriend into renting and watching a copy of "Julie & Julia" with me. It's a bio-pic of sorts about the first lady of PBS, Julia Child, though it weaves throughout the tale of a modern-day Brooklynite who attempts to cook, and subsequently blog about, all 500-plus recipes in Mrs. Child's opus book, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking".

In one year.

As it turns out, that's a LOT of butter.

The film is light-hearted and most entertaining. Meryl Streep does a fabulous job of capturing Julia's charming personae, though I'd have preferred more about Julia and a bit less about the blogger (Who, in real life, is a bt unsavory). I would have especially liked more about how Mrs. Child found her way before the TV cameras.

If you choose to rent or buy a copy of this movie, be sure to eat first as the cooking and dining scenes are rampant wth succulent delights. You will, without doubt, have a new and profound respect for butter.

One last note: Julia Child's husband, Paul, was played to charming effect by Stanley Tucci. On the following night we watched "The Lovely Bones" which also featured Mr. Tucci as the serial killer of children. The guy has an interesting agent.

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About the Cartoon: I'm an artist, not a mathematician, but I'll bet you anything that if the average American car got one measly miles-per-gallon more than it currently does we probably wouldn't need off-shore oil wells.

It's long past time we quit poisoning the oceans and a good time to start reallocating any monies previously used for oil rigs to build wind farms and passive solar arrays.

Make no mistake, British Petroleum is completely at fault for the current disaster in the Gulf because they took the cheap approach to safety, but as long as we the people keep sucking on that greasy black oil teat instead of finding new energy solutions all future Deepwater Horizons, and there will most assuredly be others, will be our reponsibility, too.

=lefty=