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Duck a'laOrange, Eggs Tragedy, and sick all f***ing week!
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Blog
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Friday, last week. Started the day poorly, and it only got worse, by the time I let off work I knew I was in trouble. Thought I could sleep it off, no, it was hunkered in.
All week, fever, chills, exhaustion, cough, runny nose, phlegm, yellow, green, white, sleeping 16, 18 hours a day....
Wake up, dizzy, exhausted, by the time I finish my first cup of coffee. Then back to bed.
All week. I'd bought a treat at the Co-Op, sausages, Duck ala'Orange, I Iove duck, what could go wrong?
Whatever could, did, these met no expectations.
For the rest of the week, nothing but soup and lots of juice and tea. I call in sick to work for a day. It's been 40 years since I've called in sick, anywhere, and this isn't the worst I've been, but damn, I just can't do it.
Those shifts I show up for, still exhausted, way too tired.
Yesterday, morning, I go for breakfast. I have to eat, at least once this week. At the old hotel, their breakfast restaurant, the Hotel that promises to deliver a much better experience than in fact it ever does. Eggs Benny. And they arrive, only, they're like some 8th grader on his way to shop class got lost in a home-economics class and turned this in as his day-end project. are these eggs? really? push them around with your fork...maybe, scrambled? boiled? from a paste? powder? and where's the hollandaise sauce? round-cut hams peeled right from the plastic, crunchy-plastic english muffin (rinse and reuse?), hashbrowns overcooked and salted, more an inedible garnish than a side. I rarely enjoyed breakfast before, this fuckery confirms why.
I say nothing, push it around my plate, annoyed that this fuckery is allowed to pass for cooking, then home, nap, work.
***
Today, off to get some groceries. A few. Then back home, then out to eat a big lunch. And I eat it, then a long nap, and then up - now up, and I'm suspecting, given my appetite, that I may be on the mend, but no overdoing it now, watch a movie, relax, and we'll see on the morrow...
Once Upon A Time In America - Sergio Leone
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Film
- Hits: 145
Not, oddly enough, my favorite. The Depictions of New York - 1910-20(??), again in the '30's, then in the 60's, all practical effects, all remarkable. The casting - Robert DeNiro, James Woods, Joe Pesci, etc - excellent, the costumes, period pieces, sets, all very worth while, the sentiment of characters with a torch carried for decades, meeting again and again to no good effect, well, sentimental to the extreme, but at almost 4 bloody hours long!!!!
One exception - the Modern Erotic Chinese art, passed over in the Chinese Theatre/Opium House scene near the beginning with Robert DeNiro -, well, I could have paused there, there was some inspiration. But that was background to a vanishing scene, like the opium dreams themselves...
Otherwise, no.
Hollywood: Mecca of the Movies - Blaise Cendrars
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 249
In 1935 Cendrars was sent to Hollywood to write a series of dispatches for the Paris-Soire.
He was there a total of two weeks, and this was the sum of his observations. Pithy, witty, accurate, the same-old-same-old portrait of Hollywood we've always known (and some grown to love).
Not his best, merely tabloid styled journalism aimed at the masses, although the illustrations by Jean Guérin rather reminded me of Toti from Edmonton (and my own youth). Amusing, a good read given how under the weather I was.
Confessions of Dan Yack - Blaise Cendrars
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Books
- Hits: 254
Interesting, a follow up of Dan Yack following his Antarctic adventures, continuing in his adventures during the first world war, and an ill fated affair with a lesbian...
Cendrars, always good for his descriptions, change of view, but not "canon".
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