Monday Morning Video Laugh - September 26, 2011

When it rains, it pours.



Dinner last night:  Beef and garlic sauce from First Szechwan Wok.

The Sunday Memory Drawer - TV Shows I Watched When I Was a Kid

Well, this is a strange photo.  At least strange to me.

A family gathered together at the end of a long day.  Enjoying the best and the worst that television has to offer.

Yeah, this never happened in my house when I was a kid.

Okay, if my mother was watching television, she did have a cigarette going just like the lady above.  P.S., my mom was usually wearing a housedress and certainly didn't get all dolled up to go to the living room.

My dad in a suit?  And the next question I would ask is "who died?"

And, frankly, we never really watched television as a family unit.  Rarely were we all in the same room at the same time.  My father worked nights.  As soon as I hit the fourth grade, my mom went back to work.  And she worked evenings as well. 

When my grandfather died, the house---and the television---was comandeered by two people only. 

Me and Grandma.

The nightly routine was set in stone.  We'd eat dinner around 430PM.  Once the dishes were cleared, she'd head into the living room and catch up on the world with Walter Cronkite.  I'd use that time to do my homework on her kitchen table, usually while listening to WABC or WMCA on the radio.

I was always done promptly at 730PM.  Why?  That's when my prime time television grid kicked into high gear every week.  I had shows to watch and stars to behold. 

Usually, Grandma and I were in total sync on what we would enjoy together.  There were some shows that she'd turn up her nose at.  Usually dismissed with a single phrase.

"Silly."

"Too confusing."

"If I couldn't do better than that, I wouldn't try."

For those programs that were not Grandma-friendly,  I'd head upstairs to our end of the house and watch them by myself.  Whatever the case, my evening television viewing was as intricate a procedure as NASA sending an astronaut into orbit.  To this day, I can remember certain shows as if they were produced just yesterday.

Hazel:  Grandma and I watched this Shirley Booth sitcom together.  It was indeed an alien world to us since she did all the cooking and cleaning herself.  Who were these ordinary people, the Baxters, that could afford to have a live-in housekeeper?  That certainly wasn't the case in this household.  I always marveled at the fact that this was one of three shows that NBC broadcast in color.  Chevrolet was one of Hazel's sponsors and wanted the color hues to show off the new cars.  It's not like it was really necessary to see the color of Hazel's bowling shirt.

The Wonderful World of Color:  Broadcast on Sunday night, this Disney anthology was one of the only shows that I viewed with my mother.  It opened with that beautiful kaleidoscope.  "The world is a carousel of color..." 

Not in my house on our black and white set.  I'd always ask the question.  And always get the same response.

"We're not made of money."

Peyton Place:  Yes, I did watch this.  With Grandma.  I've written about this before.  The show was a big hit and probably the very first prime time soap with up to three airings a week.  Murder, teen pregnancies, and other sordid goings-on dominated the plot lines.  Most of it went completely over my head.  But, it was delicious nonetheless.  And I was watching it with adult supervision.  Heck, she was using this to teach me about life and the difference between good and bad.  I remember the episode when Betty Harrington, as played by Barbara Parkins, turned up unmarried and pregnant.  Grandma summed it up succinctly.

"Tramp."

And so she was.

The Lucy Show;  This was the first time I got to enjoy Lucille Ball in a first run production.  Heck, I was already immersed in I Love Lucy reruns, but now this was the show everybody and I was seeing for the first time.  The very first season was the best when Lucy and Vivian Vance wound up stuck in a shower or on a roof or in a coal bin.  Grandma seemed to enjoy it, but then would always seem to recoil a bit at the end of the show.

"Lucy acts too silly sometimes."

Yeah, but then she wouldn't be Lucy, would she?

The Andy Griffith Show:  One of my true favorites as a kid.  It landed at #15 in my list of Top 25 Favorite TV Shows.  Yet, it presented me with a weekly dilemma.  As I wrote previously...

Here comes an odd admission.

I used to have a crush on Ronny Howard. Oh, not in a sexual way, since I was not even in double digits of age at the time. But, I really wanted to be his friend. Well, maybe Opie Taylor's friend. So, I could live in Mayberry, hang out with the kid, and do everything you can do on a summer's day in your average American small town. With Andy, Barney, Floyd, Gomer, Goober, Helen, Thelma Lou, Aunt Bee, and Otis.

My weekly desire to be a part of this world resulted in a fairly regular battle with the Warden of Bedtime, namely my mother. You see, for a while, "The Andy Griffith Show" aired on Monday nights at 930PM. The problem was that, in those formative Wonder years, my bedtime on school nights was 830PM. After much negotiation, my mother added an amendment to the Parental Constitution and extended my bedtime on Monday night to 10PM. Sweet. Of course, there was the fine print disclaimer that often now follows most TV ads for pharmaceuticals. I could stay up to watch Andy provided I had gotten to bed at the regular time on Sunday night.

It didn't take me long to figure out that I had been snookered on this one. Because, indeed, we were always visiting some relative on Sunday and usually never got home until 9PM or later. The biggest fly in the household ointment was if we had traveled to visit my aunt and uncle in Deer Park, Long Island. Over an hour away. This is not the way you learn to love your relatives. If we had gone out to Suffolk County, I would be relentless in my behavior. Starting around 5PM, I would start the patented whine.

"Can we go soon?"

"Can we go home now?"

"I'm tired."

It became a race to get home so I could hit the hay by 830PM. After a while, my bedtime on Monday was permanently unrestricted. Perhaps they were tired of hearing me bitch, moan, and groan at some family gathering. And I didn't really lose that much sleep since I always managed to catch up on the ZZZZs in class the next day. It also helped that CBS eventually bumped Andy up to 9PM.

The Beverly Hillbillies:  Another delight that Grandma and I watched together.  Grandma got a big kick out of Granny's "rheumatiz medicine."  She likened it to her favorite elixir for what ailed her---blackberry brandy.

"Oooh, my stomach's feeling queasy.  I need a little blackberry brandy."

For years afterward, I would think that all liquor had medicinal purposes.

Green Acres:  I didn't really appreciate the brilliant absurdity of this Paul Henning masterpiece until I was an adult.  Back then, Grandma and I just soaked in the stupidity of the crazy residents of, as Eva Gabor would say, "Hootersville."    At the conclusion of the show every week, we would almost apologize to ourselves for watching another episode.  Let's face it, one of the characters was a pig named Arnold Ziffel.

Petticoat Junction:  And the Hooterville trilogy is complete.  This was one show that reminds me of a strange quirk my grandmother had with regard to her TV favorites.  Sometimes, she would talk to the screen as if the cast was actually in the room with her.  When the lazy Edgar Buchanan character would shirk his responsibilities and try to take a nap, Grandma would scold him.

"Oh, come on, Uncle Joe, do some work for a change."

Huh?

Bonanza:  A Sunday night ritual in millions of American homes and definitely ours as well.  I would watch downstairs with Grandma and, ironically, this western always signaled a tinge of sadness for me.  The weekend was over.  Aw, crap, there's school tomorrow and probably a spelling quiz.  For years, every time I would see Lorne Greene or Dan Blocker in something, I would immediately worry if I had done all my homework correctly. 

Bonanza, of course, was broadcast in color.  Another problem in my house, as referenced above.  But, as I've written previously....

Arguably, "Bonanza" did more to sell new color television sets than any appliance store salesperson could hope to do. When this show, with its lush filming of the Lake Tahoe area, was the only program broadcast in color, folks clamored to buy one so they too could be enveloped by the splendor of the scenery.

You can count my parents in that group. You cannot count my grandmother among those sales.

Actually, my parents took their own sweet time moving out of the black and white TV world. There was one token color television in our family. My aunt had one and we all descended on her living room if ever there was a "must see in color" program. The only problem with her set, which might have been one of the first off the assembly line, is that the colors were never coordinated properly. Grass was blue. Tree trunks were red. Faces were green.

Once my parents were content that the technology had all the bugs worked out, they were buyers. And so, on one March Saturday afternoon, this super clunky Zenith console got delivered to our home. And then, for the rest of the weekend, we watched everything and anything just to see what it looked like in color. And, unlike my aunt's set, people actually had flesh tones that didn't make them look like third degree burn victims. We absorbed it all. But the focus of that weekend was Sunday night at 9PM on NBC. When we finally could watch an episode of "Bonanza" on our very own color TV.

"Bonanza" was one of the few TV shows that got two floor viewing in my house. My grandmother was watching downstairs and we were tuned in upstairs. I would act as Kissinger. One week, I would watch it with my grandmother and then the next week with my parents. It was a tradition I held to for many years. But, with the purchase of that huge Zenith, I would be multi-conflicted. Black and white vs. color. A major dilemma.

My mother, in a rare display of multi-generational family unity, had a solution. Grandma could come up and watch "Bonanza" in color with us. So, on that first "colorful" Sunday, my grandmother mounted the three flights of stairs to our living room. She sat down and wasn't there more than five minutes into the program.

"This doesn't look right."

She gave a cursory wave at the dastardly television set and went back downstairs. And never returned on a Sunday at 9PM ever again. To the day she died, she was one of the few stalwarts in America who would not cave in to that crazy fad of color TVs.

So, I spent many a Sunday watching "Bonanza" in black and white. Nevertheless, it didn't diminish my love of this classic western. As I got older, the tradition held, but I came to appreciate that the better episodes were written and directed by co-star Michael Landon, who clearly was a gifted creative force. As soon as Dan "Hoss" Blocker died, the show pretty much lost its cohesiveness. But, given that, it still had an amazing run with close to 500 episodes.

Most folks remember the theme song to this day with the Cartwrights riding up across the meadow to a conveniently placed Eastman color camera. But, oddly enough, I much preferred the different opening and theme that they used for several of the final seasons. Most people don't remember this, but I do.



 I'm not sure which version of the opening my grandmother liked better. She probably didn't care.

As long as it was in black and white.

Fair Exchange:  Never heard of it?  I am not surprised.  It wasn't on long and probably has not been seen since.  It was a CBS Friday night sitcom about a family in New York and another family in London.  They swapped teenage daughters.  Judy Carne, soon to be of "sock it to me" Laugh-In fame was one of the kids.  Sounds ridiculous, right?

For some bizarre reason, this little kid loved it.  I was undoubtedly the only one in America.  From my faint memory, this thing hit the bottom of the Nielsen ratings.

Even then, I was in tune with the TV business.  I heard that Fair Exchange had been cancelled and it would air its final episode the following week.  I was devastated.  My parakeet had died all over again. 

Bad became even worse on that final Friday of Fair Exchange.  We got hit with a major snow storm and my mother made the dreaded announcement around 730PM. 

"Come help me shovel the driveway so it's clear when your father comes home from work."

Er.........

Now, my presence was really not needed for snow removal.  I essentially would stand there and move little mounds of the white stuff while Mom did the heavy lifting.  So why can't I stay inside and watch my show?

Yeah, that argument worked. 

I stood outside in the cold and flaky air.  I watched my mother shovel snow as slowly as anybody has ever done it.  Jeez, can't you move that thing any faster?  I've got to see the last episode of Fair Exchange.

I never did.  The sadness that had enveloped me was devastating.  I felt as if I had not been there to watch a dear friend move away.  Heck, I wasn't home the day the parakeet flew out the kitchen window forever.  I was sickened.

I vowed that day to never get too attached to a television program ever again. 

You see how well that worked.

Dinner last night:  Chicken fingers at Go Burger.

Classic Movie Trailer of the Month - September 2011

Every year, I couldn't wait to hear what would be the official Walt Disney movie for Christmas.


Dinner last night:  Macaroni and cheese.

Humor From the Other Side of the Aisle

If Vaughn Meader could poke fun at the First Family, so can anybody...

Dinner last night:  The wonderful pre-game buffet at the Dodger Stadium for the final home game of the 2011 season.

Please Do Not Touch

Here's a Len rule of thumb which I recently ignored.

If a movie is advertised all summer long on Diamondvision at Dodger Stadium, I should skip it.

The over-hyped film this baseball summer was "Contagion."  I went to see it.  And, unlike a lot of the characters in the movie, I lived to talk about it.  Barely.

Literally and figuratively, "Contagion" is one that you should avoid like the plague.

Yeah, that's the first play on words in this review.  Bet your boots there will be more.

As Steven Soderbergh's movie started to unspool and you already knew this was all about a deadly germ attacking the masses, I suddenly became aware of sounds around me.  A cough two rows back.  A hack on the other side of the theater.  Someone who keeps sniffing behind me.   You suddenly realize how vulnerable we all are.  One of the characters makes a reference that a person touches their face countless times in a single hour.  I immediately feel an itch start up on my right cheek.  Oh, my God, this film is going to scare the Goobers out of me.

Er, not so much.  Ten minutes into "Contagion" and you realize this is just another gust of inflated air blowing from Hollywood.  And maybe the guy sniffing behind me is detecting the odor from the screen. 

In reality, "Contagion" is a disaster movie pretending to be a MSNBC documentary, which is a funny concept in itself.  There are loads of big-name, socially-conscious actors cavorting and then writhing on the screen, but, at the same time, Soderbergh tries to get the audience to believe they are doing "Masterpiece Theater" without Alistair Cooke.  That mix never works.

Irwin Allen is a movie director who really knew how to make this genre work with C-list laden, but delicious concoctions like "The Towering Inferno" and "The Poseidon Adventure."  Lots of back numbers from SAG reading, not acting dialogue that could have come from a sketch on "The Carol Burnett Show."  The result was always fun to watch because you knew the filmmakers got the same joke they were letting you in on.

At the end of his career, Allen went one calamity too far and put together a movie that was all about some deadly bees called "The Swarm."  The cast of this mess read like the New Year's Eve invite list for a party at Ruta Lee's house.  Check it out.

Michael Caine, Katharine Ross, Richard Widmark, Richard Chamberlain, Olivia DeHavilland, Ben Johnson, Lee Grant, Jose Ferrer, Patty Duke, Henry Fonda, Cameron Mitchell, Slim Pickens, Bradford Dillman, Fred MacMurray.

A Hollywood Who's Who that wound up in a celluloid What's That.  When I saw "The Swarm," I remember thinking that Irwin Allen had lost touch with his own invention as there was nothing even remotely campy about this film.  It may have been the worst movie I ever saw.

Why bring it up again now?  Because I would like to revisit it again, side-by-side with "Contagion" and see which one was worse.  Was it "The Swarm" for failing to deliver a funny movie?  Or "Contagion" for failing to deliver anything at all?

So, this deadly germ is mutating all over the place and people are dropping like bobbysoxers at a Frank Sinatra concert in 1946.  We meet all sorts of uninteresting characters who are played by the latest slate of Hollywood do-gooders led by Matt Damon and Kate Winslet.  Havoc is being wrought all over the world and, as we learn at the end of the movie, it's all because an infected bat was eating a banana and dropped it in a pig sty where it was eaten also by a pig who wound up being slaughtered to be spare ribs in a Chinese restaurant shepherded by a chef who doesn't wash his hands and then greets his patrons.

Got that?  Who lives?  Who dies?  Who cares? 

Kate Winslet hangs around long enough to discover that Nyquil isn't going to be the cure for what ails her.  Jude Law is some environmental kook who writes a blog and I was ashamed to be included in that same sub-category.  Lawrence Fishburne, a graduate from the "look-at-me-I'm-acting" academy, hams his way through another one and now everything he plays comes off like Thurgood Marshall with a peptic ulcer.  There are others in the cast, too numerous to mention, and all of them should be in serious litigation with their agents before long.

Now recast this with the likes of Charlie Sheen, Snooki, anybody Kardashian, and Nancy Pelosi and then you have my attention.  But, in Soderbergh's efforts to be overly important, the only victim is his audience.  Whereas a film like "Jaws" singlehandedly got people to stay out of the ocean water, all "Contagion" manages to do is a slight uptick in sales for Purell Hand Sanitizer.  Meanwhile, we are coached to avoid any future contact with the following: bats, bananas, pulled pork, and Gwyneth Paltrow, in that order.

"Contagion" is yet another perfect example of how Hollywood has completely forgotten how to have fun with its own craft.  A misguided swill that gets off the floor for ten seconds only to collapse on the floor with a resounding thud. Hopefully, it didn't disrupt the sleep of the neighbors downstairs.  It certainly didn't keep me up.

So, does anybody know if "The Swarm" is out on DVD?

Dinner last night:  Turkey burger and potato salad.

This Date in History - September 21

Happy birthday, J.R. Ewing.  Thanks for clipping your eyebrows for the occasion.

19BC:  ROMAN POET VIRGIL DIES. 

He was born in 70BC and it really sucks when you have to use reverse math to figure how old he was.

1435:  AN AGREEMENT BETWEEN CHARLES VII OF FRANCE AND PHILIP THE GOOD ENDS THE PARTNERSHIP BETWEEN THE ENGLISH AND BURGUNDY IN THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR.

The English had a partnership with burgundy?  I thought they drank nothing but tea.

1745:  A HANOVERIAN ARMY UNDER THE COMMAND OF SIR JOHN COPE IS DEFEATED IN TEN MINUTES BY THE JACOBITE FORMS OF PRINCE CHARLES EDWARD STUART.

Doesn't say much about Cope's leadership if he gets his ass kicked in ten minutes.

1780:  BENEDICT ARNOLD GIVES THE BRITISH THE PLANS TO WEST POINT.

Must have been harder to commit treason in the days before Wikileaks.

1792:  THE NATIONAL CONVENTION DECLARES FRANCE A REPUBLIC AND ABOLISHES THE MONARCHY.

Or should that be...repubic?

1827:  JOSEPH SMITH IS REPORTEDLY VISITED BY THE ANGEL MORONI, WHO GAVE HIM A RECORD OF GOLD PLATES, ONE-THIRD OF WHICH SMITH HAS TRANSLATED INTO "THE BOOK OF MORMON."

Possible newspaper headline:  Moron Visited By Moroni.

1866:  WRITER H.G. WELLS IS BORN.

He wrote the "Time Machine" so he could also be born in 1896, 1926, and 1956.

1897:  THE "YES, VIRGINIA, THERE IS A SANTA CLAUS" EDITORIAL IS PUBLISHED IN THE NEW YORK SUN.

In the middle of September.  Virginia might have forgotten this three months later.

1912:  ANIMATOR CHUCK JONES IS BORN.

Can somebody tell me why September 21 is not a national holiday?

1931:  ACTOR LARRY HAGMAN IS BORN.

Mary Martin was his mom and she got to fly around on Broadway.  Well, so did he before he stopped drinking.

1934:  A LARGE TYPHOON HITS JAPAN, KILLING 3,036 PEOPLE.

So that's what pissed them off...

1937:  J.R.R. TOLKIEN'S "THE HOBBIT" IS PUBLISHED.

Never read the book, never saw the movie.

1938:  THE GREAT HURRICANE OF 1938 MAKES LANDFILL ON LONG ISLAND IN NEW YORK, KILLING 500-700 PEOPLE.

But that didn't necessarily piss them off as much.  Because, after all, Pearl Harbor was not attacked by Massapequa.

1944:  ACTRESS/AUTHOR FANNIE FLAGG IS BORN.

When she dies, will she be at half mast?

1950:  ACTOR BILL MURRAY IS BORN.

Who ya gonna call?

1953:  LT NO KUM-SOK, A NORTH KOREAN PILOT, DEFECTS TO SOUTH KOREA AND IS ASSOCIATED WITH OPERATION MOOLAH.

Mentioned only because of his name.  And perhaps his association to a legendary lady wrestler.

1964:  MALTA BECOMES INDEPENDENT FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM.

Because people from Malta are a force to be reckoned with?

1971:  BAHRAIN, BHUTAN, AND QATAR JOIN THE UNITED NATIONS.

Countries that are only important because they show up in crossword puzzles all the time.

1972:  PHILIPPINE PRESIDENT FERDINAND MARCOS SIGNS PROCLAMATION NO. 1081 PLACING THE ENTIRE COUNTRY UNDER MARTIAL LAW.

You think he was ticked off this day?  You should have been there the time he got his wife's credit statement from Payless Shoes.

1974:  ACTOR WALTER BRENNAN DIES.

No foolin', he was the Real McCoy.

1974:  AUTHOR JACQUELINE SUSANN DIES.

Once was more than enough.

1976:  SEYCHELLES JOINS THE UNITED NATIONS.

She sells seychelles by the seashore.  I guess they'll let anybody in.

1981:  BELIZE IS GRANTED FULL INDEPENDENCE FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM.

Well, it worked out okay for Malta.

1981:  SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR IS UNANIMOUSLY APPROVED BY THE U.S. SENATE AS THE FIRST FEMALE SUPREME COURT JUDGE.

Like I said.  See above comment about Seychelles joining the U.N..

1989:  HURRICANE HUGO MAKES LANDFALL IN SOUTH CAROLINA.

Destroying thousands of homes and amounting to about sixteen dollars worth of damage.

1998:  ATHLETE FLORENCE GRIFFITH JOYNER DIES.

The race is over.

2007:  ACTRESS ALICE GHOSTLEY DIES.

Many people thought she was Paul Lynde's sister.  She wasn't.

2007:  TELEVISION PREACHER REX HUMBARD DIES.

Many people thought he was an idiot.  He was.

Dinner last night:  Vegetable risotto.

Saul and Heshe Talk the 2011 Emmys

On the morning after the Emmy Awards, our two favorite Hollywood vets, Saul and Heshe chew the fat...as long as it's not on the pastrami.

"Oy."

"Oy is right.  Why do we watch this chazzerei every year?"

"Because we're schmucks who used to get invited.  But that was back when Carl Betz was still alive."

"If I'm napping at 7PM, it's officially called bedtime.  So, if they want me to watch the Emmys, make them earlier."

"12 Noon at Nate N'Al's.  I'm there."

"It's supposed to be about excellence in television.  So, how come it's always the worst show of the season."

"Did you see all the fancy schmancy dresses?  Red is the new black."

"I don't Barack Obama was the new black."

"Meanwhile, nobody ever filled out an evening gown like Sheree North.  Va-va-va-voom.  God bless."

"Kate Winslet was wearing red."

"Nice girl, but pick an accent please and stick with it.  Is she English?  Is she Irish?  Is she Polish?  Who can tell?"

"She won for Mildred Pierce.  Which, by the way, she's still no Joan Crawford.  Now there's somebody who knew how to slap somebody."

"I had a welt on my cheek for two months.  Hello."

"Who was that tall drink of water who was the host?"

"Jane Lynch.  That one from the glee club show.  All the kids are watching."

"She's a lesbian."

"I didn't know she was related to Danny Thomas."

"Knock, knock.  You got cole slaw in your ears?  She likes the ladies."

"So did Bob Hope.  Why do you think he took Joey Heatherton to Vietnam every Christmas?"

"Did you see any of these shows that won?"

"I tried Mad Men, but all that smoking.  Hoo boy.  Not even with a filter tip on their Pall Malls."

"They'll be really mad ten years later when the black spots start showing up on their lungs."

"So much for the shtupping of the private secretaries.  And they weren't all hellcats like that Ann Sothern."

"They gave out the Best Comedy Actress award like it was a beauty pageant.  Meanwhile, I didn't see any Mary Ann Mobleys in the bunch.''

"Mary Ann Mobley, nothing.  I would have taken a turn with Lee Meriwether."

"She wasn't there either.  But I didn't see her name when they listed all the dead people, so, knock wood, maybe she'll turn up in Art's Deli some night."

"Lots of alter kockers croaked this year.  I'm still kicking.  Thank you very much.  And, every once in a while, an erection.  God bless."

"With the pill or without."

"I got an old Photoplay magazine with Debra Paget on the cover.  That does the trick."

"What about that Julianna Marguiles?"

"Her, I would poke.  Except what she was wearing?  Solar panels?"

"That Katie Holmes was there.  I guess the dumbbell husband was out on Hollywood Boulevard handing out leaflets for Scientology."

"Schmuck."

"Schmuck."

"She was in that Kennedy show playing Jackie with the pillbox.  But, whoo, hoo, she can't act."

"She was so bad in that program JFK shot himself at the end."

"So Charlie Sheen showed up and wished his former show well."

"That's because his career is now worth two and a half dollars." 

"He should have been like his father.  A lunatic but a quiet one."

"Schmuck."

"Schmuck."

"And stop already with thanking everybody in the acceptance speeches.  Me?
I mention the wife and my proctologist...and not in that order."

"You got so many friends in the business now?  Guess what?  They dry up fast.   Where is Morey Amsterdam when you need him?"

"Dead."

"I didn't hear his name on the Emmys."

"He went buns up years ago.  Catch up.  The Hollywood Reporter is now available on the World Wide Web."

"I don't read it.  Too depressing.  All these young noodniks running the business into the ground."

"They should see what we saw.  They should know what we know." 

"They should fuck who we fucked."

"Shelley Winters."

"Me, too.  God bless."

Dinner last night:  Spaghetti and meatballs.