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Wikipedia defines a paprosdokians as ” a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe or reinterpret the first part. It is frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect, sometimes producing an anticlimax. For this reason, it is extremely popular among comedians and satirists.^[1]

Some paraprosdokians not only change the meaning of an early phrase, but they also play on the double meaning of a particular word, creating a form of syllepsis. “  Gail sent me an email of these clever phrases and I want to share some of them with you in this Thursday’s Top Ten.

1. Where there’s a will, I want to be in it.
2. If I agreed with you, then we’d both be wrong.
3. The last thing in the world I’d want to do is hurt you.  But it’s still on my list.
4. Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.  Intelligence is knowing not to put in the fruit bowl.
5. I thought I wanted a career.  Turns out I only wanted a paycheck.
6. I didn’t say it was your fault.  I said I was blaming you.
7. You don’t need a parachute to sky dive.  You only need a parachute to sky dive twice.
8. I used to be indecisive.  Now, I’m not so sure.
9. They begin the evening news with “Good Evening” and then proceed to tell you why it isn’t.
10. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism, but steal from many and it’s called research.

Red Tail Airplane

Can you imagine yourself sitting in the cockpit of a P-47, a refurbished hand-me-down plane?  Better yet, imagine you’re piloting this plane as it soars, dips, twists and dodges strafing bullets.  Well if you can’t imagine it, then head to your local movie theater and watch RED TAILS.  In the first 10 minutes of the film, you WILL feel like you’ve been flying, swooping down to attack a German munitions train.

The special effects  are worthy of a blog post of their own, however, this writer doesn’t have the technical knowledge or background to speak intelligently on the subject.  All I can tell you is that they are phenomenal and the movie credits  list no less than 100 digital artists.

It took George Lucas, that Hollywood icon, twenty years to produce this film about a story begging to be told.  And it was about time!  Thank you George!

HOWEVER….

The dialogue is lame and wooden BUT the battle scenes are spectacular, thanks to those 100+ digital artists.  The main story line is between two pilots, the squadron leader and the reckless hotshot.  Much like Maverick and Ice Man in Top Gun. The script is highly predictable with way too obvious foreshadowing.

There are a lot of good actors in this film, however unfortunately their characters are as complex as cardboard game pieces stating the obvious. Their lives are never fleshed out and we never learn any of their back stories.  Even the make up of the squadron is formulaic: There is the alcohol abuser son trying desperately to please Daddy, , a testosterone – charged ladies man and daredevil,  a devoutly religious good boy, and the eager fresh meat new recruit.  Almost as typical as a reality TV show cast.

For those of you too young to “get” the title of this blog,…There was a very popular song in the 1950′s entitled, Red Sails in the Sunset  and the 332nd fighter group aka the Red Tails always took off at sunrise.

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Oh yeah!!!!!

The New York Giants are going to the Super Bowl where they will meet up with the Boston Patriots.  A great day for the East Coast!  The Empire State was bathed in blue lights tonight!  Yes,  they had to go into overtime but win they did with a 31 yard field goal by Lawrence Tynes.

Oakland Athletics

MONEYBALL

Well, I’ll tell ya – you can’t!  Especially if you are watching this year’s under-rated film, Moneyball.  On the other hand, given Brad Pitt‘s star quality, it’s hard to say the movie was under-rated, but I do think it hasn’t generated any “buzz” the way say, The Iron Lady, The Descendents and Incredibly Close and Extremely Loud has.  However, let’s clarify that even further; Those three films and most especially the Tom Hanks movie which must be advertised on TV at least 15 times a day have gotten a lot of press, a lot of billboard space and a lot of attention by reviewers.   My God, you would think Incredibly Close and Extremely Loud was the epic sequel to Ben Hur or Forrest Gump!

But back to Moneyball; I had the delightful opportunity to view this movie in my own home, sitting cosily on my couch, drinking hot chocolate while it snowed outside on a Saturday afternoon.  It was surprisingly wonderful and engaging. You don’t even have to be a sports fan to love it!  Brad Pitt gives Billy Beane the look of a former athlete still very much in shape, and his performance is superb.

First of all who doesn’t love baseball?  After all it is our national pastime or pass time.  The storyline isn’t exactly new since we’ve all seen the the evolution of a rag tag team reaching ultimate victory – ie  Miracle- True story of the 1980 US Olympic Hockey team or A League of Their Own.   However, the treatment of this story line takes the viewer to the ball park and back, into the locker room and best of all into the psyche of  the General Manager of the Oakland Athletics.

Billy Beane is a conflicted and somewhat lonely man, recovering from a failed marriage and a losing season.  He lives, works, eats and sometimes sleeps baseball – except when he is with his daughter who he apparently dotes on. Casey is charmingly played by Kerris Dorsey,  a sweet pre-teen who lives with her mom and stepdad and regularly visits her father.

Billy is driven to succeed which in his mind translates into winning the last game.  He truly believes it doesn’t matter how many games you win because  if you don’t win the last one (World Series) then your achievements as well as yourself are just erased.*  The problem he faces is that his player salary is so low, he feels he can’t compete with the deep pocket of teams like the New York Yankess who regularly raid his best players, luring them with astronomical salaries.  What is General Manager supposed to do?  So for him in one respect it was all about winning, yet on the other hand, he aspired to change the game in a way that would level the economic playing field (no pun intended) between the so-called rich teams and poor teams, the Oakland A’s being of the latter.  He is quoted as saying to his genius Assistant General Manager, (Joshua Hill) that he believed in their new and highly technical process of forming a winning team, not for the  money or the ring, but because he wanted to change the game.  Out with the old (literally) men/scouts and their ideas of what makes a great ballplayer and in with the new analytical technology. Adapt or die.

By season’s  end the team is winning and Beane is called to Boston, where he is offered the position of GM for the Boston Red Sox by the owner of the team who extolls the genius of his new selection process and who clearly states it is the wave of the future!  Hence, Billy has in fact changed the game.  So why is he so disenchanted?  I’m not positive but he was consistent in his quest to win the big one here in his home town.  There are many camera shots of Billy as a young Little League player wearing the green tee shirt of the Oakland A’s.  He failed dismally as the baseball great, so many scouts thought he was to be so perhaps he had something to prove to himself and Oakland.   And then factor in the daughter who does not want him to leave California and move far away from her.  It’s hard to leave home and in the end he doesn’t.  

The acting was terrific in this movie;  Phillip Seymour Hoffman as the bullet-headed, big gut manager was convincing. The character actors who played the various scouts and coaches sitting around the table were remarkably true to life and hardly seemed like actors, they were so natural. 

One last word about Pitt.  Sometimes when a star is a star and on screen, all you can really see is the star.  Very few transcend their celebrity and embody a character so well that you stop  seeing the actor and see only the character.  Meryl Streep is an excellent example and Brad Pitt as Billy Beane is another.

* Props to the Director who worked with the technical department – at the end of the movie, the players slowly disappear or rather are erased.

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Who ever said dessert isn’t healthy?  “Eat your fruits and veggies” – how many times have you heard that?  Here’s a great winter dessert that tasty, low-fat, sweet and tart and easy to make.

Filling

1/3 cup sugar

2Tbs flour

1 tsp. lemon peel

3/4 tsp lemon juice

3 large apples, peeled, cored and sliced.

1 cup cranberries, coarsely chopped

Topping

2/3 cup rolled oats

1/3 cup brown sugar packed

1/4 cup whole-wheat flour

2 tsp cinnamon

2 T trans-fat-free margarine, melted

To prepare filling, combine sugar, flour and lemon peel in a medium bowl; mix well.  Add lemon juice, apples and cranberries; stir to mix.  Spoon into a large baking dish.

To prepare topping, combine oats, brown sugar, flour and cinnamon in small bowl.  Stir in the melted margarine.

Sprinkle topping over filling.  Bake in a 375 degree F oven for 40 to 50 minutes or until filling is bubbly and top is brown.

Heart-healthy recipe from United Health Care

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First the newspapers...

"Can you hear me now"?

Warning Senator Gillibrand

"Hey Chuck..."

PIPA No Way

STOP

Say NOPA to PIPA and SOPA

All photos courtesy of Murray Head

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Image by SpecialKRB via Flickr

Well that’s a mouthful!  But wait…Duane Reade, New York’s very own born-in-Lower Manhattan, all grown-up-now and all over the City  chain of stores REALLY is a prime example of retail natural selection, evolution and adaptation.

It started out as a three store health  and beauty chain in 1960   and look where they are today. 

Others came and went, they stayed and grew – natural selection. As retail outlets failed and left a consumer void, Duane Reade came along and filled each gap – evolution.  Duane Reade started out as a drug store and has morphed into a consumer’s mecca, carrying everything from greeting cards to gum, cosmetics to candy, cleaning products to cat food,   milk to mops, school supplies to sushi and some even serve alcohol – adaptation.  They are all things to all people. a market place where you can get what you want and what you need when you want it and when you need it.

When Duane Reade located on the corner of my street, a whole new world opened up for me!  OMG!  Here was the answer.  YES!

 Need to buy a birthday card on my way to the office? Duane Reade is right downstairs.  Husband coughing a lot, run down and get some cough medicine-Duane Reade!  Oops, no more cat food-Duane Reade!  Cleaning lady coming and I’m out of floor wax and furniture polish-Duane Reade! Milk for breakfast tomorrow morning-Duane Reade! Open 24 hours!  Granddaughter visiting,  gummy bears and cookies-Duane Reade!

And I could go on and on and on…but really, surely you get the picture!!  Duane Reade is there for me (and you) for just about everything and anything I need at all hours.  And there’s more…

The stores look amazing with their new jazzed-up color scheme, I  love the lavender and they’re always clean and well-lit.  I can’t tell you how many times I come home late after a long hard and sometimes bad day at work and before I go into my apartment building, I stop in the store, sometimes just to walk around.  Looking at the nail polish colors makes me feel good and while I’m there, maybe I should buy some soy chips.

I’m lucky in that I have my own personal Duane Reade right downstairs in my building which means the most convenient ATM in the City is at my fingertips.   Thank you Duane Reade.

And lucky for the rest of you, Duane Reade has about 257 stores in the New York Metropolitan area so you should never be too far from finding what you need when you need it! 

Stay tuned readers, there’s more DR forthcoming…that is as soon as they designate me as one of their ten VIP bloggers!  After all, I tell it the way I see it, share my City with all of my readers and probably would be the ONLY blogger whose name consists of products sold in Duane Reade!!!   #DReade

A Bunch of Bananas

1. Take your bananas apart when you bring them home.  If you leave them all connected they ripen faster.
2. Wrap your opened chunks in aluminum foil.  It will stay much fresher, longer and will not mold.
3. Peppers with 3 bumps on the bottom are sweeter and better for eating; peppers with 4 bumps are firmer and better for cooking.
4. To really make scrambled eggs or an omelet rich, add a couple of spoonfuls of sour cream, cream cheese or heavy cream, and then beat them up.
5. For a cool brownie treat, bake brownies according to directions, then melt some Andes mints in a double boiler and pour over warm brownies.  Let set for a wonderful minty frosting.
6. Add garlic immediately to a recipe if you want a light garlic flavor and at the end if you want a stronger flavor.
7. Heat leftover pizza in a non-stick skillet on top of the stove on med-low.  This keeps the crust crisp, no more soggy microwave pizza
8. Next time you buy frosting in a can, put in a bowl and beat it with an electric mixer.  It will practically double the amount of frosting, so you can frost more cupcakes  and eat less sugar.
9. To warm biscuits or muffins that have been refrigerated, put them in the microwave with a cup of water.  This will keep them moist and they will reheat faster.
10. Chop up some Snickers bars  and sprinkle over some pared, cored apple slices and bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.   Serve alone or with some vanilla ice cream

Tomorrow morning I’m taking the crock pot and gonna cook up a storm.  I need to make a couple of meals and freeze some of them.  If I don’t, I find myself coming home late and too tired to cook and that leads to ordering in or eating junk.  Either way it’s no good, one costs too much money and the other ends up being empty calories.  So tomorrow morning I’ll make the Chicken Cacciatore and give my husband a real meal and freeze the rest.

3 lbs cut up chicken (split chicken breasts and thighs)

Flour for searing

2 TBS olive oil

2 cloves of garlic, minced

8 oz of baby bella  mushrooms sliced

2 cups diced green peppers and onions

1 cup dry red wine

2 tsp. Italian seasoning

1 pkg (24 oz) of seasoned tomato sauce.

Salt and pepper to taste

Dust chicken with searing flour

Heat oil on MEDIUM in large braising pan; add chicken.  Brown lightly on all sides, 8-10 minutes.  Transfer chicken to slow cooker.  Discard all but 1 TBS oil.

Add garlic, mushrooms, peppers and onions to pan.  Cook, stirring occasionally, 3-4 minutes, until vegetables soften slightly.  Add wine; cook 1-2 minutes.  Add Italian seasoning and tomato sauce; stir.  Bring to simmer and remove from heat.

Add sauce mixture carefully to slow cooker.  Cover;  cook 3-4 hours on HIGH or 6-7 hours on LOW.  Season to taste with salt and pepper.  I’m going to add some red pepper flakes too.  Serve over pasta or rice.

And omg, this house is going to smell DEE-LICIOUS tomorrow!

Recipe from Wegman’s Menu Magazine Fall 2009

Chicken Hunter Style