Tv Food and Photo – January 1, 2012

New Year’s Resolution: More Oatmeal in 2012.

Lots and lots more!

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Your Sunday Sinatra: “It Was a Very Good Year” (VIDEO)

“And now I think of my life as vintage wine… From fine old kegs… From the brim to the dregs… It poured sweet and clear… It was a very good year”

Arguably the most famous Frank Sinatra song of them all, the 1965 recording of “It Was a Very Good Year” was filmed by CBS Television and used for a Walter Cronkite news special celebrating Sinatra’s 50th birthday, broadcast on November 16th of that year. The footage is included below.

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Am I Fat? – Christmas Edition

Now Z will be able to count ounces more effectively in 2012!

Am I Fat? – December 2011 #2

As December 25th approaches, the war for real estate under the tree escalates!

Your Sunday Sinatra: “Come Fly With Me” – Frank Sinatra and Billy May

“If you can use some exotic booze… there’s a bar in far Bombay.
Come fly with me, let’s fly, let’s fly away.”

Show of hands, please.

Who’s not looking forward to their upcoming annual December encounter with the airport?

Sure, it’s gonna be great to see the faces of distant loved ones and family members again. But is it really worth the humiliation of standing in line for thirty minutes for the esteemed pleasure of showing off your current sock choice to complete strangers?  Do you miss Grandma so much you’re willing to say nothing to the guy next to you in the track suit, chowing down on McDonalds straight out of the grease-stained sack as he screams into his phone at the divorce attorney who seems incapable of preventing “that vindictive bitch from taking it all!”

MG is much better at handling airport happenings than I am.  He actually chit-chats with the people he finds sitting next to him at the gate.  HE ACTUALLY PURPOSELY ENGAGES IN CONVERSATION WITH THESE PEOPLE!  Apparently, he enjoys finding things out about them. Meanwhile, I’m sitting on the other side of him, slumped down, repeatedly muttering under my breath “Stop… talking to them” while debating whether or not to extend my leg and purposely trip the unattended child who’s running in circles with a drool-soaked Red Vine hanging out of its mouth.

I always walk into the airport with the best of intentions.  But I always walk out with an upset stomach, a snarling lip, and for some reason the latest issue of Macworld, a magazine that holds absolutely no interest for me whatsoever.

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Am I Fat? – December 2011

No f^#@ing comment!

Season of the Cookie: Chocolate Raspberry Oatmeal Cookies

These rich, decadent cookies filled with chocolate chips, oatmeal and hints of raspberry are sure to be the first to disappear at that Christmas party you don’t really want to attend, except for the fact that it’s a way to score some kissy points with your boss and you’ll get to show off that new cashmere sweater.  If you see me there, come say hello.  I’ll be the one furthest away from the bar.

Ninety-five days ago, I stopped drinking booze.  For those of you like me, who share the unfortunate deformity of a hand shaped exactly like the perfect martini holder, that translates into 2,280 achy, grumpy hours without alcohol.  I just figured that math out myself and it terrifies me almost to the point of spontaneous flop sweat.  I haven’t done anything consistently for 2,280 hours except perhaps blink, denigrate commercial pitch people and hum the theme to TV’s Dallas in my head.

I boxed up my entire bar library, descended four floors to my building’s management office and gave it all to my landlady, Bonnie: Gin, Rum, Kahlua, Fernet, Saki, Homemade Blueberry Vodka, Vermouth, Galliano, Creme de Mur, Irish Cream, Goldschläger, cocktail shakers, olive spears and tiki time toothpicks. After picking her downhome Southern jaw up off the ground, Bonnie managed to alert me to the following: ”Shoot, I’m gonna be humping with my carpet come tomorrow morning!”

My nightly cocktails have been replaced with a combination of club soda and Torani flavored syrup.  I had been drinking it for close to a week before MG informed me that there was an actual name for it:  The Italian soda.  I often serve them up in martini glasses, as a de-fanged nod to my riskier past, much in the same way those Revolutionary war re-enactors fire blanks at each other and go to the bathroom in Andy Gump toilet rentals instead of buckets and pig troughs.

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Peach and Basil Pizza

This morning on my way to getting coffee, I passed a giant display for Marlboro’s “Dream Big” contest.  I immediately thought to myself, “They’ve discovered a way for me to achieve my biggest dreams WHILE nursing an unhealthy addiction?  F**K yeah!  Where’s the saw for my right arm?”

I would have pursued it further, but the Marlboro website requires you to sign up for entry. And ever since I’ve given up cigarettes, I find I don’t really have the energy to finish things I start.  But that didn’t stop me from looking back over my life and recalling the larger-than-life dreams I once held as a young person… back when anything was still possible, we learned all we needed about safety from a police parrot, and AYDS was just a diet candy!

Come on… let’s hold hands and take a walk down Memory Lane.  A rich, creamy, juicy peach and basil pizza awaits us, along with all kinds of “Gary Green’s dreams” that evaporated amidst more unpleasantness than NBC’s ill-conceived Emeril Lagasse sitcom.

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