Greetings, my fellow port swillers!

Today was Robbo’s work-from-home day and what a delightful one (to me) it turned out to be: cool and rainy and more like early October than late August.  My thermometer dropped down into the high 60’s late in the morning and hasn’t budged since.  Ol’ Robbo set up his work station out on the porch and even after a couple cups of kawfee was chilled enough to go get a sweatshirt.

I’ll take this kind of weather any day.

And since I know all you friends of the decanter are just itching to ask the question, no, I didn’t have a deviled ham sammich for lunch today, it being Friday and all.  Instead, I had a simple little toasted cheese snack that I like to make:  Take English muffin halves and place on a baking sheet.  Put a pat of butter on each and top off with liberal sprinkle of grated Parmesan cheese.  Broil on high until muffins are toasted to taste, the butter having melted and helped to distribute the cheese more evenly.  Mrs. Robbo objects to this snack because she hates the smell of the cheese toasting, but I rather like it.  Fortunately, she was away at St. Marie of the Blessed Educational Method getting her classroom ready for the start of school, so I was able to feast in peace.

And now…..the weekend!

UPDATE:  As Ol’ Robbo’s beloved Nationals had a day game this afternoon (in which they thumped the Cubbies in fine style), I went back to my movie horde this evening for a little entertainment.

As I had mentioned somewhere or other recently, Eldest had recommended I give “The Brothers Grimm” a try because she knows I’m a fan of (some**) Terry Gilliam movies.  I had tossed it in my Netflix queue and jumped it to the front in the hope that we could watch it together before she went back to school.  Well, that didn’t work out.  And perhaps it was just as well.  I got through about 20 minutes of the thing before I gave up in disgust.  I can’t really articulate why I found no sympathy for it, it simply didn’t click for me.

Instead, I found that TCM is doing a Fred and Ginger marathon today, so I watched “Top Hat“, a movie I haven’t seen in donkeys’ years.  Good Lawd Almighty, was that man light on his feet!  (And a strident perfectionist.  Somewhere or other, I recall reading that he once said to Ginger Rogers in their early days, “Don’t be nervous.  But don’t screw up.”)  Anyhoo, it was pleasant to watch again, even if it is pure mid-30’s over-the-top spectacle.

So an evening’s entertainment salvaged.

 

** “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” is one of my very favorite films.  I first saw it in a theatre with a young lady who was far more interested in me than in what was on the screen. (Shut up! It happened sometimes back in the day!)   I still feel rather a cad in that I was so captivated by the movie that I, er, declined her alternate entertainment suggestions.  “Time Bandits” is another favorite because it’s both goofy and weird.  “Brazil” I appreciate rather than enjoy, and I only watch it when in the darkest throes of cynicism.  (Why the hell would a hard leftie like Gilliam make such a dystopian flick and not understand that what he believes in leads exactly and invariably to that?)  Also, I will here again recommend “Lost In La Mancha” which is a “behind the scenes” extra which turned into a documentary on Gilliam’s failed attempt to do a Don Quixote movie.  A fascinating piece on the travails of film-making.

The rest of his stuff you can keep.