Category: MJ Monday

MJ Monday-Movies: The Women

My husband thought I would like The Women, a 1939 movie directed by George Cukor, who was known as a woman’s director. The film is based on a play by Clare Luce Booth and adapted for the silver screen by Anita Loos and Jane Murfin.  There are 130 speaking parts–none of them male. The cast is stellar: Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Rosalind Russell, Paulette Goddard, Joan Fontaine, and so on.

While the movie has only women in it, the story is all about men. That’s all the women talk about. All they think about. Their worlds revolve around the men in their lives. The movie is supposed to be a comedy, a satire of wealthy Manhattan-based women and their marriages. Maybe it was for its time.

Today, I thought it was sad. Pathetic. It also made me angry that the men could be forgiven everything, but if the women had done the same things, they would be ostracized. Again, for the time frame of the movie, this was acceptable.

On the positive side, if my husband hadn’t told me there were no men in the film, I might not have noticed. The actresses conversed directly to the camera as if it were the person to whom they were speaking. The dialogue was scripted in such a way that the viewer understood the male responses as if one had heard them.

Although I didn’t love the movie, watching it wasn’t a waste of time.

MJ Monday-Meal: My New Sandwich

Here’s my new favorite sandwich.

It’s made with turkey (good deli turkey, not the slimy, fat free stuff that you buy in plastic tubs), pesto (my supermarket sells small jars of premade basil pesto), roasted red peppers, and provolone on a sandwich thin (I prefer sandwich thins to bread because they’re not so . . . bready).

Spread pesto sauce (stirred well to incorporate the olive oil) thinly onto each side of the sandwich thin, as if it were mayo or mustard (I’m not a fan of either condiment).

Add a slice of turkey (doubled over) to each side of the then, then top with strips of roasted red pepper.

Add a slice of provolone. Personally, I prefer smoked provolone, but my husband doesn’t, and he buys the cheese at a local warehouse store, so that’s what I use.

Slap the two sides together and voila, a sandwich.

MJ Monday-Movies: Guardians of the Galaxy

Guardians of the Galaxy and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2:  This is a must see double header. I saw the first one in a movie theater and loved it. When Vol 2 came out on DVD, we all trooped to my nephew’s home theater for a double header, as my sister hadn’t yet seen the first one. It was an amazing experience.

Flash forward several months. My critique partners and I were enroute to a retreat in the woods when we learned at least one of our group hadn’t seen either movie. Out came the cell phones as we searched every Barnes & Noble, Target, Wal-Mart, Red Box etc. between where we were on the highway and our final destination looking for copies of both movies. As luck would have it, the Wal-Mart very near our destination had both. I purchased them and had another double-header night with my besties. I laughed as hard as  I had the first time seeing the films.

Action films sometimes bore me because they depend too much on special effects and bang-bang-shoot-em-up instead of plot. Guardians brushed against that threshold for me. But just when I would start to squirm and yawn, the boring stuff ended.

Solid plot, solid acting, solid humor, solid action.

MJ Monday-Meals: Pasta Salad Redo.

In an attempt to de-carb our meals, I experimented with my standard pasta salad recipe, substituting Quinoa for pasta.

The first thing I did was cook two envelops of Quinoa and let them cool overnight.

I dumped them into a large bowl and started adding my standard pasta salad ingredients:

  • black olives
  • artichoke hearts
  • peas
  • carrots
  • red onion
  • roasted red pepper
  • chopped yellow bell pepper

and for something a little different: sliced radishes.

Then I made my standard dressing, doctored up with additional garlic powder, dried basil, and dried parsley.

All the flavors and most of the textures of pasta salad without its heaviness. A keeper.

MJ Monday-Manuscript: Update

As I type this blog, the first draft of the next (so very delayed) book is complete. A preliminary round of revisions have been noted. I plan to delve into revisions after finishing this blog.

I used my three-week July vacation to push to the end. The problem, you see, is my writing process. And it’s not a problem, really, it’s simply the process.

Some people refer to what I do as the Headlight Method: write as far as you can see in the headlights, then wait for the headlights to reveal more.  And that’s how it goes . . . sort of. What I need to know is apparently already in my head. But my brain won’t release it to me until it’s good and ready, which is frustrating as all get out. So all the while I was making myself crazy trying to figure out how/why on a certain aspect near the end of the story, my brain was sitting back, smirking. Then, as I was typing a scene, my fingers revealed the whole thing. Without ever letting my consciousness know.

It’s enough to make a sane woman crazy.