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Mother knows best
Life advice from the trenches
Picture courtesy of Tanqueray London Dry
I just deposited my one and only shining light of a daughter at college this week, and it’s got me thinking – about many things, but mostly about the passage of wisdom from one generation to the next and the ceaseless march of time (and the boot prints it’s left on my face). It’s also got me trying to properly balance a cocktail of psycho-pharmaceuticals with a raging hormonal imbalance while swimming in a veritable river of dirty martinis, but that’s a tale for another day.
It seems like only yesterday I was a student myself, though it was actually so long ago you could measure the time in geologic eras, or at the very least dog years. As is invariably the case with the long dead past, it now seems like a much simpler time: the scourge of AIDS had yet to destroy promiscuity (though herpes had taken a lot of the spontaneity out of it); you didn’t need an advanced degree in molecular mixology to make a gin and tonic; an ounce of weed could be financed with a simple ATM withdrawal (I am told) rather than requiring a leveraged trust fund payout or a significant shift in the futures market; and Eddie Murphy was actually funny.
‘Amember?
These days, however, our best and brightest enter the hallowed halls of higher education only to contend with the complexities of speech codes, the ins and outs of political correctness, exacting recycling rules and a steady stream of “chem-free mixers.” I don’t know whether the last is a soft drink or a no fun allowed social event, though really what difference does it make? In any case, I think it’s safe to assume that navigating the transition to adulthood is a bit more challenging than it once was, what with one thing and another.
Anyhoo, the Little Slattern has flown the coop, fledged the nest, made like a banana and split, and she is now off at school making memories, thundering toward being a grown up and acquiring vast oceans of very expensive, almost entirely useless knowledge. (Tell me, can you recall the difference between the en soi and the pour soi, calculate anything with a logarithm, or explain a single concept related to Economics beyond the law of supply and demand? Neither can I.)
Unfortunately, I now realize that I failed to pass along to her most of the practical knowledge and critical life lessons I have accumulated these past NUMBER REDACTED PER THE AUTHOR years. You know the kinds of things I’m talking about: family recipes, pearls of wisdom, stories of youthful hijinks, tips on fashion, reminders about the importance of good grooming and having a skilled trial attorney on retainer. It wasn’t for lack of trying on my part; rather, it was largely because as soon as I started to tell my daughter a story or relate an edifying anecdote she promptly left the room. And since she prefers not to read my blog for reasons that are abundantly clear to anyone who hangs around for a post or two, I’ll just have to share my motherly advice with you. Here goes:
via clothes on film
Your underwear should be concealed by your clothing.
What’s that? Obviously, you say? Oh, I beg to differ. Ever since the Material Girl first flashed her big black bra, life on the streets of our cities and towns has been a nonstop lingerie peep show. These days, you’re more likely to see a whale tail on the checkout line at H&M than on the Discovery Channel, and brightly colored brassieres under white t-shirts have ceased to be mortifying fashion faux pas and become instead “fashion statements.”
I thought I’d seen it all until I took a walk through the Public Gardens in Boston recently and encountered this innovative take on “daywear.”
“Oops! I’ve got to stop dressing in the dark!”
Now how in the name of all that’s holy this poor gal concluded that this was any way to leave the house I cannot say. Perhaps her mother forgot to tell her that a bra is not a blouse, or maybe she’s blind and accidentally put on her boyfriend’s jock strap instead of a tank top while dressing that morning. I don’t know, it could be she somehow got her outfit on sideways. It doesn’t really matter how this fashion equivalent of a crime against humanity found it’s way to the public view. What matters is that it never happens again. Ever.
So ladies, please take my advice and leave something – anything really – to the imagination. Give your friends and neighbors something to wonder about. Maintain an air mystery as to what’s happening under your dress, because unless you’re Giselle Bundchen, the reality is often a tad disappointing.
Apparently the little kitty sphincter acts like a suction cup. Who knew?
Just because you can, it doesn’t follow that you should.
This has so many applications, it’s hard to know which to choose. OK, let’s just say, hypothetically, that you have excellent balance and posture and that your house cat likes to ride on your head and will calmly do so, even when taken out on busy city streets. Does this mean you should drag said cat outside on a cold winter day and parade around — oh I don’t know — lower Manhattan, for example, with it perched on your head? I think you know the answer. I think we all do.
Your teeth are not tools.
Do not use them to open bottles. Except in emergencies.
“Your father and I did not spend thousands of dollars on orthodontia, extractions and headgear to straighten out that congenital underbite just so that you could chip every tooth in your head with some drunken shenanigans.”
That was not an emergency.
This is.
Thank heaven for screw top bottles. And toga parties.
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Photos of Cat Head and Bra Girl are both property of WS Winslow.
Listening in Downeast
Geezers say the darnedest things!
I overheard the following conversation in the checkout line at the Ellsworth, Maine Home Depot this morning:
Alarmed dog courtesy Responsible Pet Ownership blog.
Mike: “Jesus Christ, Harold, how you been doin’?”
Harold: “Well hello there, Mike. Didn’t see you creep up on me. You know, I can’t complain. What’ve you been up to?”
Mike: “Oh not much really, just fuckin’ the dog, you know.”
Now I’m sure that the expression “fucking the dog” (meaning doing nothing for those of you who didn’t grow up in a trailer park or a women’s prison) is not new, and neither is it peculiar to Maine, but I can tell you that this is the only place on Earth I have ever heard it uttered. God only knows where it came from, and I for one would rather not dwell on the possibilities.
I have, in fact, also heard various layabout good-for-nothing dimwits referred to as “FTD specialists.” Again, only north of the New Hampshire border. As a rule, FTD specialists are universally acknowledged to be as dim as they are slothful. As in,
My husband’s a real FTD specialist. He don’t do a goddamned thing, and he’s number than a pounded thumb to boot. He don’t know nothin’. Shit, he don’t even suspect nothin’.
I may never go back to New York.
Making ice cream in the summer kitchen
Yes, you can burn yourself while doing so.
The summer kitchen.
I am officially on vacation, having traded the filthy sidewalks, unrelenting heat and constant clamor of New York for the sunny days and deep dark, so-cool-you-need-a-blanket nights of Downeast Maine, at least for the next three weeks. The local cannibals are all busy extorting the tourists, and but for the persistent grinding of the neighbor’s Husqvarna (wood management is a full time job up here), it’s peaceful by the bay in high summer.
Lest you think we’re some kind of fish-faced enemies of the people, let me explain how we came to be cottage-owning summer people here in my own home state. If you recall, the Oughts generally (and 2000 to 2007 specifically) were a good time for homeowners in this country. As a result of the vagaries of the New York real estate market and no small amount of luck, Mr. Slattern and I were able to float on the bubble to a ramshackle summer cottage in need of some TLC. In hindsight, we’d have been smarter to tear it down and start over, but that’s a story better suited for scaring the adults around the campfire.
Even after extensive renovations, our place is no palace. There’s no foundation, and by mid August the well water begins to smell like it was pumped through a chicken barn. As soon as we drain the pipes and lock up in the fall, red squirrels set up housekeeping in the attic and mice take over the lower levels. The washer and dryer are as temperamental as my elderly relatives, there’s no insulation, and the kitchen is rudimentary at best. You won’t find a dishwasher, Kitchen Aid mixer or food processor, the stove is completely unreliable — one day underpowered, the next day incinerating entire meals when set at an innocent 325 degrees, and no matter where I stow the fruits and vegetables, the fruit flies find them.
Of course it’s a damned sight better than when we bought it.
I love a project!
Thanks to the indefatigable efforts of my family, and my mother’s total renovating genius (she could do a whole house over in a week with $200, a ladder and ten yards of fabric), the sad, dark, dirty mess has been transformed to a cheery, productive space suitable for guests, so long as they’re not terribly germ-phobic.
This is, in fact, the one place I actually enjoy cooking. Partly, I suppose, it’s because we usually have a houseful of company, which creates a party atmosphere, especially at sundown, and cooking while cocktail hour is in full swing is far more fun than the usual Tuesday night, get-it-done-so-I-can-prepare-for-tomorrow’s-early-meeting approach to dinner. I also like that there’s no schedule. Dinner happens when it happens, and no one seems particularly worried about having adequate time to digest following the evening meal. We just stay up until the stomach does its thing and we feel like sleeping, or the wine runs out, whichever comes first. There’s also abundant local produce and seafood to choose from this time of year, so we just eat whatever’s at the farm stand or the fish market at the moment.
But more than anything else it’s this place that makes me want to dust off the oven mitts. The first summer we were here, my favorite aunt — Arlene, my grandmother’s older sister actually — came for a visit. It was cold, but we all sat outside and chatted, and Aunt Arlene told me about visiting her grandmother on this same point as a child in the 1920s. It was here that Grammie Sprague settled later in life after leaving the farm, she said, and right over there across the bridge where she was buried. The children loved it here and would poke around on the beach all day, searching for starfish, picking mussels and digging clams. Back then, Aunt Arlene recalled, the children weren’t allowed outside at night because there were Klan meetings in the area, and they were Catholic. I guess since there were no black folks to persecute, the local racists made do with Papists. That’s Yankee ingenuity for you.
It was pure coincidence that we landed on this spot — none of my family has lived here since my great great grandmother’s time, and I had no idea even that she had — and yet I feel connected to this place in a way I don’t feel part of any other. And so I bake blueberry rhubarb pies in my summer kitchen, churn homemade ice cream in the hope the freezer will stay cold enough for it to set, and bake beans in the old crock I dug out of my mother’s kitchen.
Coconut: Toasted up and ready for freezing.
Happy as I am here, I frequently screw things up, as when I served seafood chowder so overcooked the lobster was like gum rubber and the potatoes had all but disintegrated. Then there was the time I forgot to add the liquid to a pot roast I was cooking in the crock pot — it came out like bacon cooked with a flame thrower.
It still takes me a while to adjust to a slower pace. This morning I decided to add toasted coconut to the Nutella-flavored frozen yogurt I was was making and as I rushed to assemble it, grabbed the pan handle immediately after removing the toasty, brown coconut from the oven. I burned the hell out of my left hand, but happily there was a big bag of frozen blueberries in the freezer to hold onto until the pain subsided. The frogurt turned out to be delicious. Aunt Arlene would have loved it. She had a real sweet tooth.
Coconut Nutella frozen yogurt
(adapted from The Cottage Revolution’s recipe)
Spread half a bag of sweetened shredded coconut in a baking dish and toast in 350 degree oven until golden brown. Remove from oven and let cool completely.
Using an electric mixer, blend:
- 1 cup Greek Gods honey yogurt (full fat)
- 1 cup unsweetened coconut milk
- 1/2 cup Nutella (at room temp)
Add to ice cream maker and churn until frozen and thick.
Spread the coconut in the bottom of a plastic container with a lid.
Pour the churned frozen yogurt mixture over the coconut, cover and freeze.
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All images are the property of WS Winslow. Please use only with attribution.
The gods must be chubby
Diet disaster: The Greek Gods torpedo my weight loss goals
The inside scoop via sassyagapi.blogspot.com
Have you tried this stuff? If not, I’d suggest you avoid Greek Gods honey flavor yogurt — and all of them really — at all costs, unless of course you’re trying to put on a few pounds, in which case this is just the ticket. For those of you looking to take off some weight or maintain your enviably svelte form, be warned: Greek Gods honey yogurt is like heroin combined with a big jolt of endorphins, sugar, cream and fat. In short, heaven in a bowl. Rich, creamy and flavorful without being overly sweet, it’s as addictive as crack, and eating it is (I imagine) as pleasurable as a hot stone massage administered by that guy who played Thor. And no, I have no idea what his name is, and I don’t care that I’m mixing mythologies. Thunderbolts, chariots, hell hammers, Greek, Roman, Norse — it’s all the same to me.
Happy ending, Madam?
Back to the yogurt. This stuff gives new meaning to the term “happy ending.” One spoonful and you, too, will be hooked — and sooner than later could find yourself next to me in the industrial lingerie department at Lord & Taylor frantically searching for lace panties that don’t creep and of necessity, full-body, super-torque Spanxx that provide at least fifty pounds of compression per square inch.
Gentlemen, you are not exempt from this scourge. Once you start mainlining this stuff, you might as well just give up on that goal of six pack abs or the dream of one day pulling your golf slacks up and over that front end beer keg you’re pushing around. It’ll never happen.
“Who needs to swallow?”
Via GQ and Greg Kadel
And folks, don’t even think about writing in to tell me how tasty and satisfying fat-free, carcinogen-sweetened yogurt really REALLY is. If that were the case, we’d all look like the offspring of the-actor-who-plays-Thor and Padma Lakshmi, who everyone know chews her food, but never swallows it.
So even though I know that sharing this information will probably land me on the Weight Watchers most wanted list and will most certainly smash the bikini dreams of countless numbers of my fellow struggling dieters, I’m feeling like the pleasure and taste benefits outweigh (if you’ll pardon the cheap pun) the costs.
Here are some ways to enjoy your Greek Gods yogurt. May God and Jennifer Hudson forgive me.
Recipes:
Berry and almond breakfast parfait
Garnish for vegetable frittata
Parsley yogurt sauce for vegetarian couscous
Kitchen Slattern 
The Bridge to Hell
Sep 2
Posted by WSW
What’s the worst pop song ever?
So last night Mr. Slattern and I were having a rollicking game of Scrabble while working our way through a bottle or two of something or other. Since I was knocking the slop out of him (for a change), we decided to lighten the mood (his anyway) by adding a bit of music to the evening’s festivities. Not wanting to interrupt the flow of things, we just picked a random satellite channel and got on with the
smackdowncontest.Courtesy fleetowner.com
The name of the station was, I believe, “The Bridge.” I tell you this out of the goodness of my heart and to save you a world of hurt. Should someone you love, or you yourself, ever stumble upon this house of musical horror, turn around and return to the preceding station, or any other you can find, even if it’s the one with the all-Grateful Dead format, because let me tell you that spending the next few minutes with Jerry’s kids will be infinitely less painful than being subjected to the playlist of The Bridge, whose format is described on its website as follows:
Cross The Bridge to the softer side of rock. Stress-free music from Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Van Morrison and Elton John. Nothing too hard, just great mellow rock.
Here’s how I’d describe it: A trip to hell featuring extended layovers in a string of audio re-education camps with entertainment provided by a mopey, poetry-writing high-school girl circa 1975. Listening to this station is about as pleasant as spending the second full day of your summer diet hungover and trying on woolen underwear at the Barney’s warehouse sale — with Barry Manilow singing Copacabana on an endless loop on the sound system.
Anyways, being rather absorbed in the game, we weren’t really paying close attention to the music, so when we heard the opening lurch of The Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald we chuckled because Gordon Lightfoot in general, and this song in particular, have both become running jokes in our house. Listening to this stinker always makes me feel a bit queas-Y, like I’m barreling along with the God forsaken crew when the gales of November come ear-LY. Just thinking about this song makes me seasick. And always I ask myself the same question, Does anyone know where the love of God goes when this song turns the minutes to hou-ERS?
I find this performance particularly irritating because Gord sings it in Canadian instead of the regular English he used on the record. Maybe his jaw’s tired from all that emoting, or it could be he’s just too lazy to open up his mouth. Hard to know. Harder still to care.
“Ah know you’re in there, Vicki Lawrence!”
Via Huffington Post.
Too lazy to get up and reset the radio, we were both hoping this song would be the musical equivalent of a long overdue belch that clears the line and makes way for a cleaner, purer flow of sound. How wrong we were; what followed was one or another of Billy Joel’s nasty mid-career hits, all of which are putrid, but none more so than Piano Man. This was not the selection chosen by The Bridge; however, we changed the station immediately anyway, sensing a trend that could only lead to something far worse, along the lines of Billy Don’t Be a Hero or Brandy You’re a Fine Girl. Just the mention of one of those songs will create an immediate, soul destroying earworm that can last days, or even weeks. Many good people have cracked under less pressure than that. You remember what happened to Britney, who, I have it on good authority, was heard listening to The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia over and over right before she took a golf umbrella to that car.
The game ended and as we repaired to the living room for a nightcap, a lively debate about the worst pop song ever committed to vinyl soon began: Piano Man or The Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald? Mr. Slattern, who is actually musical and therefore entitled to an opinion, takes the position that Billy Joel is the worse offender. He feels the faux Irishness, pretensions to crappy poetry (“a real estate novelist”) and limerick-y midline rhymes (“They sit at the BAR and put bread in my JAR”) make this song the worst one ever written. Further, he maintains, the instrumentation is insane and makes the cheesy lyrics and overwrought delivery indescribably worse, with a harmonica and an accordion locked in a fight to the death in the arrangement. Then of course there’s the wholly undeserved, smug, self-aggrandizing message (“Man, what are YOU doing here?”).
Listen, if you can bear it.
Now there are those who would not agree with Mr. Slattern that Piano Man is the worst song ever written. They might point to other notable entries in the oeuvre of the pride of Long Island, and they might be right. Look:
Courtesy Fighting the Youth
In truth, I can’t find much to argue with here, but I still have to give the edge to old Gordon Lightfoot in the worst song sweepstakes. Of course, now I’m in the lowest level of music hell. Not only am I hungover and sleep deprived after staying up all night watching bad music videos on YouTube, but I’ve now got the lyrics to Piano Man running through my brain to the tune of The Wreck of the Edmond Fitz-GERALD. Both are in waltz time, you see. And really, what is a pop song doing in three-quarter time anyway? It doesn’t make sense.
Any opinions out there this fine Labor Day weekend? Which song do you think is worse? Got any write-in candidates? I’m all agog.
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Posted in Commentary, Music, The Slattern Speaks
24 Comments
Tags: Barry Manilow, Billy Joel, Gordon Lightfoot, Humor, Piano Man, Satellite Radio, Scrabble, Worst pop songs