Me: "Freedom" is the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action. "License" is a freedom that is used with or allows irresponsibility, or disregard for rules of personal conduct. Too many people confuse the two.
--------------------------
Dinner Friday evening was at a highly-rated barbecue restaurant (Giffy's) in Clifton Park, near Albany. I love barbecue. I love a sweet and tangy sauce. I love ribs, chicken, pulled pork. So I got the sampler platter with all three.
I was disappointed. Either there's something wrong with my mouth, or there was no flavor in either the meat or the sauce. The sauce could have been water.
I do recommend their cornbread, though. Funny that the website doesn't tout it. It's light and fluffy, moist, sweet, and buttery. If you try it, don't put butter on it. It's best eaten like cake.
Half of the dinner came home with me, so I'll have another chance to taste.
Yesterday was the dog walk, dinner, and movie with a 40s-plus singles' outdoors interest group in Newburgh. We were eleven women and four men at dinner. Doesn't bother me, because I'm more interested in conversation than flirting (although if something were to develop it would be interesting), but it just strikes me as odd that more men wouldn't be interested in the usual odds in most of the Meetup interest groups.
We went to a Longhorn restaurant near Newburgh, where I highly recommend the service and the roasted vegetable salad. Again, half the fillet and potato have come home with me. I'm set for lunches for the next three days.
The movie was "Against the Current", at a tiny arts theater on the Newburgh waterfront. It had been filmed on the Hudson River, mostly on the stretch between Newburgh and West Point, and the creator was there to answer questions after the viewing. The story was about a young man whose pregnant wife had been killed in an accident. He had contemplated suicide and had been talked out of it by his best friend, who extracted a promise that he'd give it five years, then decide. The five-year anniversary is coming up, and the young man decides he wants to swim the length of the Hudson River, from Troy to the Verrazano Bridge, to mark the anniversary, THEN commit suicide. The movie is that swim, with the friend and a young woman accompanying in a small boat. Mary Tyler Moore has a cameo as the girl's mother, whom they visit on the trip. Her character is beautifully defined by the way she asks "And what do your people do?" as if all families are dynasties, with hereditary professions.
Of course this audience, in contrast with the various film festival audiences, recognized the locales featured in the film, and we knew it wasn't where it was "supposed" to be. The sequence of river views was out of order, for example, and although the girl's mother was supposed to live in Rhinebeck, we were fully aware the drive to the house showed actually the Millbrook area. Worse, Millbrook is nowhere near the river. (MTM, in real life, lives near Millbrook.)
In the Q&A period, most people asked questions about where the story came from (his head), why the weather was so unrelentingly gloomy when it was supposed to be August (they filmed in eight days, and it just happened to be rainy and gloomy that whole week), and so on.
There were a few people in the audience who were determined to demonstrate how deep they were, who commented on how interesting it was that blah blah portended blah blah (that need to demonstrate understanding beyond the norm - shades of the dreaded Mensan audience!), and the creator just shrugged and said, "No meaning. That just sorta happened", and that didn't stop them, they kept right on trying to find hidden meaning. They amused me as much as wine snobs do. As The Man says, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Today, maybe some laundry. Maybe moving things to the basement. Maybe some sewing. Maybe not. It's 39 degrees outside, at 1:15 PM. Disgusting. I just want to crawl back into bed.
.
No comments:
Post a Comment