Well, horridays part one over....

So, two horridays gone by... Made a roast to get through them. One of my good ones I hadn't done in a long while....

You braise a piece of beef on all sides. Fill the bottom of a big casserole with thick slices of onion and two crushed garlic cloves. Set the roast on the onions. Add lots of carrot pieces and quartered potatoes sall around it. Add two small bay leaves, 12 peppercorns, 12 whole allspice, 2 cloves, and two to three tablespoons of grated garlic. Add 1/4 l white rum or red wine. Rum is better. Cover and place in a slow oven, about 180 degrees C for two hours, then about 50 minutes at 150 degrees C. The carrots should be soft with a bit of bite to them by then, and the roast nice and tender. Let the roast rest for about 10 minutes to relax, slice, and sprinkle the meat with freshly chopped dill and serve with the carrots and potatoes. Salt to taste. It is an excellent recipe, and very old.

Otherwise, the tee-vee runs old films through all the horridays. So I cherry-picked a few to watch. Yesterday it was all three Airport fims en suite. Airport 75, the one with Karen Black was fun to watch after thirty some odd years. Looking back, it was very subtly camp. Was working in the cinema when it came out, and we had so much fun with it. Karen Black had what one calls a 'Silberblick' here, slightly cross-eyed, and the cinematographer must have really hated her. She plays a chief stewardess, you see, and a small plane collides and destroys a part of the cockpit, the co-pilot gets sucked out into oblivion, the navigator is dead, and the pilot totally injured so badly, he can't see. So Karen Black has to fly the plane. And in the tensest scenes where she is supposed to be terrified, she goes fully cross-eyed. One of the high points for terrible acting is when she is on a transponder, and screams 'There's no one left to fly the PLANE!' You can't see it on the tee-vee, thank goodness, but on the big screen, her eyes crossed TWICE.

It is a kitsch-orgy, Helen Reddy plays a nun who tends to Linda Blair, who is waiting for a kidney transplant, and sings the sappiest song ever written. Gloria Swanson plays herself, and gets to do the most hilarious 30's style acting and bombs the one-liner, 'The mountains.... they are so close!' (They are flying around in the mountains surrounding Salt Lake City, you see...) Charlton Heston rescues the plane after descending like a Deus ex machina from a helicopter, and lands them all safely. Sid Ceasar plays a wanna-be star. Myrna Loy does boilermakers all through it but remains oddly sober. They spared absolutely nothing to get everyone who was everyone on the B list in Hollywood, and it is a wonderful disaster, although entertaining.

Oh well, it brought back some very funny memories, and Peter was fully pisssed off with me for laughing about it, because he had never seen it, and got right INTO the story. How the hell can you LAUGH, he kept asking, and when something good was coming up, I'd say, 'Ok, here it comes,' and some terribly delivered line would come out. And all through it, he was on the edge of his wheelchair, with, 'What's gonna happen next?' Practically nail-biting. 'They all land safely, so just SIT BACK and relax, won't you?'

The second film was 'Victor/Victoria'. the Blake Edwards version. It was a joy to see again after a long time, and timeless. The original was filmed in 1933 in black and white, by the German UFA studios, and starred a remarkable Renate Müller, and was a very odd film.... There were blocks of narration-----and they were all in rhyme. But it was funny, and charming, and not so in your face because that wouldn't have been possible then, although everything was very clear.... I was sceptical, when the Edwards version came out, and then astounded. He turned a diamond in the rough into one of the best in the world. And bless Robert Preston, wherever he is...

Today I am having fun with Gremlins I and II. Two is definitely better. And I just LOOOVE Spike. And they destroy the Trump Tower. So camp, you can't get a 'horror' film any better. Although the scene in the first part in the movie theater where the Gremölins are grooving out on 'Snow White' in a movie theater is so perverse, I cackle.

Tja, when can we get back to normal, here? And tomorrow Sunday.... sigh.... At least I got food, and made chili...