Category: MJ Monday

MJ Monday-Movies: Bottle Shock

I hadn’t heard of this movie until the wonderful Alan Rickman died. Not only was Rickman in the movie, but also Bill Pullman (While You Were Sleeping) and Chris Pine (Star Trek reboot). Worth checking out for the cast alone.

The topic was another go-to for me: (from the IMDB):  the story of the early days of California wine making featuring the now infamous, blind Paris wine tasting of 1976 that has come to be known as “Judgment of Paris”.

For those who are unfamiliar with this, California wines weren’t considered much before the Judgment of Paris. The film is the story of how a California wine ended up winning the tasting and launching a whole new industry.

I wish I could say I loved the movie. I wish I could say I liked the movie. I wish I could take it out of the library again and watch it alone, hoping to improve my impression of it.

The main thing, for me, was the slow pacing. Maybe it was intentional, mimicking the wine aging process and the savoring of a glass of fine wine. But while time is needed in both of those instances, telling a story on film needs to move. Otherwise, it’s watching grapes grow.

Three stars (because of the cast).

MJ Monday-Meals: My Food Foibles-Hard Boiled Eggs

As much as I loathe grocery shopping, I do find myself annoyed that the current pandemic (and my children’s insistence that I don’t go out) prevents me from cooking a wider of variety of meals and experimenting more with recipes. So this month’s edition of MJ’s Meals is more like a cautionary tale.

My husband was stopping at a local supermarket to purchase milk for his coffee, so I asked him to pick up a zucchini. He was . . . shocked. He knows nothing about picking out zucchini. Well, zucchini is a lot easier to purchase than say a tomato, which I have been picking out for him for years. You don’t need to squeeze or thump a zucchini. I gave him the basics. He did it!

I asked him if he’d gotten  himself a green pepper for his weekend omelet making. He said no, but he’d looked at mushrooms, but thought I would get mad if he brought them home. “Why?” I asked. “Because you don’t like them.”

I pointed out there are lots of things in our cupboards/refrigerator that I don’t like: green peppers, fresh tomatoes, mayonnaise, sauerkraut (which I had to remind him to purchase), even the milk I told him he needed.

The only thing I would get mad about would be if he brought home hard-boiled eggs or anything containing them. After 32 years, he should know this.

One time, long before I met my husband, I went to a family picnic at my sister’s home. There were hotdogs and hamburgers. Macaroni salad, potato salad, deviled eggs. That was it. I left. My sister knew better. Everyone in my family knew better.

I used to keep regular eggs in the house, but had to stop. Someone asked me, jokingly, “Why? Are you afraid someone will come into your house and randomly boil an egg?”

“Yes. It has happened.”

Early in our marriage, the wife of one of his friends, not an hour after I’d served a big breakfast, decided she needed a hard boiled egg, so cooked one for herself. In my kitchen. The stench of hard boiled eggs makes me ill. When I was a child, my mother would send me to the woods when she was making macaroni or potato salad or egg salad sandwiches. She always told me when I had my own kitchen I could make the rules. The wife of my husband’s friend violated my rule.

So unless I specifically need eggs, TV Stevie gets Egg Beaters.

MJ Monday: Manuscript

As I type this blog, New York State is still “paused,” although that is scheduled to begin easing in some parts of the state at any moment.

I shared my day job situation in an earlier blog post.  One of the things I deal with every day at the day job is despair. Some of the accounts I handle are scared they won’t survive the Pause.

My husband comes home every night and turns on the news to hear the latest on the Pause and global reactions to the pandemic. More despair.

I am in despair overload. I cannot face the despair of my characters as they struggle to overcome adversity in the story, even though none of it is real.

I reached out to my editor and my publisher and explained the situation to them. They, being the wonderful people they are, completely understand.

I hope that you, my readers, will understand, too.

This doesn’t mean Besieged by the Moon has been abandoned. It means I want it to be the best book it can be, and right now, my brain isn’t in a place where I can make that happen.

MJ Monday-Music: Needing Silence

Sometimes, a person needs silence. That need, in today’s society, is treated as an aberration. I love music. I have eclectic taste. But sometimes the music has to stop.

My day job is working in an office. A cube farm. Phones ring and telephone conversations are constant. The climate control system roars most of the day. And yet if there is even a nook of silence in all that, someone will call out, “Hey! Turn on the music!”

I have often said there was no music in the 80’s. I was only slightly wrong, and I can prove it. The only radio station we can get (the office location is in a low spot) plays music of the 80’s, 90’s, and forward. It is owned by a huge, national company, and the playlist is set. The same songs play every day. Every. Single. Day.  Apparently only 30 or so songs survived from the 80’s and 90’s. I rest my case.

Years ago, when I worked in retail, the store playlist would drive the employees crazy because of the repetition. This radio station playing in my current workplace does the same thing. At least to me. The only difference is the play list is mixed up. “Shallow” isn’t always followed by “Drops of Jupiter” or “Heaven is a Place on Earth.”

Heaven is really a place where a woman can hear herself think.

MJ Monday-Movies: People Will Talk

Someone on Facebook recently mentioned People Will Talk was airing on TV. I mentioned it to my husband, who recorded it. Neither one of us was familiar with the film. A few weeks later, we sat down to watch and were more than pleasantly surprised.

It stars Cary Grant, Jeanne Crain, with Hume Cronyn and Walter Slezak along with and uncredited appearance by Margaret Hamilton in one of the early scenes. It’s billed as a romance/comedy/drama. All three categories are correct.

I didn’t realize the complexity of the movie until after I watched it. The plot lines are so finely woven together the stories make complete sense. One plotline involves a doctor (Hume Cronyn) trying to discredit another doctor (Cary Grant). Another is  the romance Cary Grant carries on with an unwed mother.

You read that correctly. This movie was released in 1951, after the Hayes Code was put in place. An unpunished heroine unwed mother?  Even the family of director Joseph Mankiewicz aren’t sure how he slipped that one past the review board.

There are several laugh-out-loud moments.  The romance is delightful. There is political intrigue and honor.

Five stars.