Journal

Ever since Trump University was shuttered by some do-gooder judge who thought the whole thing was just a scam to enrich the President, I’ve been looking for a new course of study. Real estate wasn’t really my thing anyway, although I had a great slogan to use had I earned my credentials: “Selling Montana, 40 acres at a time.”

There is no end to the list of educational programs available online. And now, of course, is the ideal time to enroll with borrowed funds you won’t have to pay back if a Democrat wins the White House in November. For the sake of full disclosure, if Trump is re-elected, Betsy DeVos will personally hunt your ass down to collect every penny because that’s just the way she is. Not even her closest friends like her.

It seems that very few people anymore are interested in getting an education with the express purpose of learning stuff for the sake of learning stuff. Everything now is career oriented, which leaves many of us on the outside looking in because nobody is interested in hiring people with wrinkles and gray hair. Except for the Census Bureau. They’ll hire anybody who can demonstrate the ability to hold a clipboard.

I’ve explored many of the opportunities in the world of online education. There are many courses that include the word “repair” in the title: Auto, Computer, Small Appliance, Furniture, et cetera. I am mechanically disinclined and therefore excluded from rebuilding so much as a toaster. Besides, who repairs stuff anymore? Something breaks, throw it out and buy a new one. Planned obsolescence is the American way.

Some of the online universities offer degree programs in subjects that involve bodily fluids. Personally, I want all of my medical caregivers to have hands-on learning. If a medic were to admit to being a graduate of the College of Online Nursing and Flight Training, I’m going to request a replacement. Same holds true for a pilot.

Recently, I found a degree program I can wrap my brain around. Offered online by Fred’s Off-Shore Graduate School of Applied Political Management, the school, which even has an online fantasy college football team, offers a Ph.D. program in “Strategic Public Relations, Asocial Behavior, Polemics, and Other Things Pertinent (or not) to the Body Politic.”

Graduates from the program are practically guaranteed employment in even-numbered years as highly paid political consultants. These are prestigious positions of political power and whimsical alliteration in which volunteer campaign workers call you “Doctor.” The job is to carry an expensive briefcase and consult candidates and contributors in political double-speak.

Here are some of the courses Fred offers in this doctoral degree program.

Dress for Success This video-based course demonstrates how graduates working on Republican campaigns dress in expensive tailored suits and wear power ties, while those working for Democrats look like they slept in their off-the-rack polyester suits from Sears.

Political Statistics Professor Darrel Huff, a journalist who wrote How to Lie with Statistics in 1954, teaches how polls can be manipulated to mean whatever you want them to mean without regard to actual numbers. It teaches that “correlation does not imply causation,” while reminding students that “random sampling” is a myth. The class is subtitled “Keeping the Candidate in the Dark, Yet Satisfied.”

Blind Faith: Religion and Politics The Most Wealthy and Charismatic Reverend Joel Osteen, of the non-denominational-yet-oddly-evangelical Lakewood Church in Houston, teaches the fine art of lying while posing convincingly as a Christian. Morality—or lack thereof—provides the subtext to this stimulating study of contradictions of fact and promise. Students learn that no candidate can present as an Atheist or even an Agnostic, because non-believers and doubting-Thomases are more of a threat to the American dream than any terrorist cell. A video of candidates shown with and without Bibles offers both contrast and telltale evidence of just how gullible Americans can be. Required reading: The Prince by Machiavelli, who is best known for his observation that “politics have no relation to morals.”

Stars and Stripes Doctoral candidates learn how to consult with their candidates about how to behave if an American flag is waved anywhere near them. A Revolutionary Era analog filmstrip of Betsy Ross sewing the first flag is available for viewing. It features a cameo appearance of George Washington. There is also a video featuring a spirited debate about lapel pins. Suggested reading: U.S.A. by John Dos Passos.

Dirty Tricks Donald Segretti, the Watergate warrior credited with coining the word “ratfucking,” teaches this 400-level course on how to mess with your opponents in the most harmful ways. Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman is the required text. Exercises in third-rate burglaries, wiretapping, and forgery of personal letters and campaign literature are conducted, as are the various methods of applying toilet paper to the houses of perceived political enemies. Says Segretti: “Nickel-and-dime stuff. Stuff. Stuff with a little wit attached to it.” And to think they awarded that idiot a law degree.

Scare Tactics Nothing is more effective than painting a political opponent as somebody who would usher in sharia law, thereby setting the stage for Islamic jihad (not to be confused with Israeli jihad that has mostly to do with different ways to prepare couscous). Since 55 percent of Americans are opposed to the teaching of Arabic numerals in public schools, the odds are that most Americans believe sharia law has underwear policies borrowed from the Mormons, and that Shahadah sang “At the Hop” at Woodstock. Nothing could be further from the truth, as there’s not a single mention of underwear, Mormons or Woodstock in the Koran. Suggested reading: Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth.

Cover-ups Learn how to insist that your candidate be free from scandal and convey that message to the press—despite any pictures with Jeffrey Epstein. Students will participate in a virtual cleaning a closet of skeletons.

Humor in Politics Join the on-going argument that there is nothing funny about politics. Students will learn how to steer candidates to acceptable standards of topical humor and learn how an expressed appreciation of Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor and/or George Carlin is not wise, unless running as a Third Party candidate in which case it never mattered anyway. It is appropriate to have “once admired” the work of Bill Cosby. It is advised that a candidate for political office express undying admiration for Will Rogers. Students are encouraged to read Senator Mo Udall’s memoir, Too Funny to be President.

Classes are filling up. Submit some kind of resume along with a $75 processing fee to this website.

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska

Ratatouille

1# eggplant, peeled and cubed
salt
2 ½# tomatoes, pealed
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 tsp. black pepper
1/4 c. fresh basil (loosely packed, chopped)
3/4 c. flat-leaf parsley (loosely packed, chopped)
1 1/2 # white onions, thinly sliced
3 bell peppers (red or yellow, cored, seeded, and chopped)
2# zucchini (cut lengthwise and then into 1/2-inch slices)
2# pounds yellow squash (cut lengthwise and then into 1/2-inch slices)
1/3 c. dry white wine
1-2 Tbs. olive oil

Place cubed eggplant on paper towels and sprinkle generally with salt. Allow the eggplant to sit for 20 minutes.
In a large saucepan, gently cook the tomatoes, garlic, black pepper, basil, and parsley, uncovered, over medium heat. Do not boil.
In a large skillet, sauté the onions and bell peppers in a small amount of olive oil over medium-high heat for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables are lightly browned. Remove from the heat and transfer the browned vegetables to the tomato mixture.
Pat the eggplant dry with a fresh paper towel and add it, along with the zucchini to the tomato mixture.
Cover the pot and cook the stew over low-medium heat for 45 minutes, until the vegetables are tender. Add the white wine and 3/4 tsp. salt and cook for an additional 5 minutes.

Ben Bradlee answered his own telephone.

I know this because I called him once and he answered. I was doing a story that made some reference to newspaper circulation and I remembered once having heard some pithy comment from him on the subject. So sometime in the late 1970s I called Bradlee, the Executive Editor of The Washington Post (1968-1991), to get confirmation.

The story he had told was about a newspaper’s business model. He observed that the typical big city daily was owned by wealthy conservatives and manned by underpaid liberals whose final product was “put in the hands of a 12-year-old boy with a bicycle” for distribution. Neither a good arm nor good aim were prerequisites.

Bradlee could think of no other business that followed such a pattern.

At the time, Ben Bradlee was something of a hero to me. Born to privilege, the Boston Brahmin was Harvard educated, Anglican in faith, and yet had mustered the brawn of the ink-stained newspaperman to oversee and guide the publication of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s stories documenting the Watergate scandal which would be Richard M. Nixon’s undoing.

I entered the newspaper business with a degree in journalism—something my first boss didn’t respect as much as he did the more typical entry to the business as a copyboy. But I was full of Woodward-and-Bernstein enthusiasm and it must have showed, at least enough to get an entry level position as a consumer affairs reporter with the Valley News & Green Sheet. (In the spirit of Woodward and Bernstein, I looked for a burglary in every story of consumer fraud I covered—to no avail.) The paper, which served Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley, was a controlled circulation, i.e. free, paper that once had been sued for littering by people who didn’t care to find the paper on their driveways three mornings a week.

Before Watergate, Bradlee posed his first challenge to the Nixon administration on June 18, 1971, when The Washington Post began publishing a series of articles based upon the “Pentagon Papers,” which detailed the history of America’s involvement in Vietnam dating back to 1945. That day, Assistant U.S. Attorney General William Rehnquist asked The Washington Post to cease publication. After the paper refused, Rehnquist sought an injunction in U.S. district court. Judge Murray Gurfein declined to issue such an injunction, writing that “the security of the Nation is not at the ramparts alone. Security also lies in the value of our free institutions. A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, a ubiquitous press must be suffered by those in authority to preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right of the people to know.”

Judge Gurfein’s decision is worth repeating. And remembering.

It was a decision that echoed the Founding Fathers’ demand for a free and unencumbered press that would, despite any attempts at subterfuge, prevail and establish the truths—no matter how uncomfortable—needed to maintain the republic.

My grandfather was not unlike Ben Bradlee. Although hardly a Brahmin, he was a third-grade dropout who started in the newspaper business as a child—emptying the trash, sweeping the floors, straining the lead that fed the Linotype. He set—by hand—headlines from the type cases and tightened the frames before sliding them onto the Goss press. In time, he would come to own, edit and publish four newspapers. His last paper, The Imperial Republican, was where he finished a career that featured weekly coverage of the comings and goings of his small Nebraska town.

The arrival of visitors from far and not-so-far deserved a column inch or two. The Chamber of Commerce and the Rotary were covered, their business printed for consumption. The Eastern Star was represented, along with the Knights of Columbus and the Lion’s Club. High school sports were a mainstay, as were the summer youth baseball teams. The city council was covered, its workings discussed and analyzed in minute detail, its members held up to the public’s scrutiny.

Grandad Jim Naylor, who was a diehard Democrat in a very red state, would then write a column—frequently addressing the issues of the day or recalling a fond memory of a dog he once called a friend—push the frame onto the Goss and stand watch over his effort come sheet-by-sheet off the press. He would then feed the printed sheets into the canvas-webbed folder, stopping to neatly stack the finished product in piles. He’d have a shave then from the barber across the street in a town that was a blip on U.S. Route 6, and then load the papers into the trunk of his ’48 Dodge coupe to deliver to the post office and the outpost towns of Enders and Wauneta.

He died on a Wednesday, sitting on the john—his week’s column in hand, a circled -30- at the bottom. That is the way newspapermen want to die.

There was a time when I dismissed my grandfather’s efforts. I thought that his paper covered the most inconsequential things as one could imagine. Who, I wondered, cared about Aunt Emily coming to visit her next of kin? Somewhere along the line I came to realize the importance of community, that thing that gave meaning to Aunt Emily’s visit

Aunt Emily’s visits are no longer noted. And the newspapers that once noted them are going the way of so many things we once found to be valuable.

This past week the McClatchy Company, founded in 1857 and publisher today of 30 papers in 14 states, including the Kansas City Star, the Miami Herald, the Charlotte Observer, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the Sacramento Bee, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The filing will eliminate about 55 percent of the company’s debt. It will also transfer control to a group of hedge funds led by Chatham Asset Management of New Jersey.

One can only guess that the Chatham group has little passion for the news business.

McClatchy’s bankruptcy nonetheless underscores the grim reality facing the news industry amid profound transformation in its business and revenue model. According to a report from the Brookings Institution, more than 2,000 newspapers ceased production in the last 15 years. Between 2006 and 2018, McClatchy’s advertising revenue fell by 80 percent and daily print circulation fell by almost 60 percent.

The newspaper industry is in dire straits. Nearly a quarter of the newspapers in the United States, most of them weeklies, have been shut down since 2004, and about 50 percent of newspaper jobs have been eliminated in that time. Daily weekday print circulation for newspapers nationwide has plummeted by about 50 million in the last 15 years.

The on-going demise of print journalism over the past 15 years has a lot to do with an electronic media. Though easily accessed, the content is increasingly unreliable. People who rely on Facebook for their newsfeed are as misinformed about the world as viewers who rely on Fox News; they are mistaking entertainment for factual information, let alone serious analysis.

It doesn’t help that President Trump has called the news media “the enemy of the people.”

That perhaps includes Stars and Stripes, an armed services news outlet that retains its editorial independence and is congressionally mandated to be governed by First Amendment principles. This past week the paper, which was first published during the Civil War, saw its operating budget of $15.5 eliminated—the money to be “reinvested” in the $705.4 billion Defense Department spending proposal.

At my core is the heart and soul of a newspaperman. I like to know what’s going on in the world, as well as in my little corner of it. Newspapers are going the way of the horse-and-buggy and with them goes an important part of our democracy—a citizenry informed by the independent oversight of the government by a free press.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Those of a certain age will remember that strawberries, cherry tomatoes and other small fruits and vegetables appeared on the grocer’s shelves packed in little green plastic baskets. A piece of cellophane, secured by a thin rubber band, covered the produce. Those baskets are gone, replaced by see-through plastic “clam shells.”

I once had the privilege of meeting the guy whose company made those baskets. He wasn’t satisfied with owning the market for plastic produce baskets and, in so doing, becoming a very wealthy man. His primary function at his company appeared to be going to lunch at Ma Maison, where Wolfgang Puck would oversee his saumon fumé and gigot d’agneau Provençal.

At the time we met, I was working as a writer/consultant for a marketing company. I frequently sat in on pitch meetings, in which we’d try to convince potential clients that our services could prove invaluable. In retrospect, it was kind of a crock. Although the line has blurred over time, it was generally accepted then that advertising showed the price of something needed and marketing created a need for something pricey.

But back to Mr. Basket (not his real name). He came to us with one request and that was to make him famous. That is, of course, a tall order. Even if you’re in show business or are a serial killer, there’s no guarantee that fame will ensue, let alone endure.

We brainstormed some ideas about how to help Mr. Basket attain the famous part of rich and famous. We suggested starting a philanthropy to help children, maybe build a new wing at a hospital, support a cure for some disease, or buy naming rights to an elementary school in a poor neighborhood. It turned out that Mr. Basket didn’t care for children and that he wasn’t much interested in giving away his money. When we suggested positioning him as the go-to guy for expertise in his industry, he said that because his company was the only company that made the little green baskets there wouldn’t be much opportunity.

And then we suggested making him the recipient of an award that would draw press coverage which, in turn, would make him famous—if only for a moment.

He liked that idea a lot.

It has been noted that in Hollywood there are more Persons of the Year than there are days in the year. This is true. I helped create a few such awards while working with this same marketing firm for a basic-cable television client we represented.

The format of the channel—really old, black-and-white films and infomercials—had failure written all over it. The owners had convinced themselves that advertisers would be eager to tap into the geriatric market segment. They also believed that an audience of really, really old people would find joy in revisiting movies that were released shortly after the First World War.

To support the launch, we published lots of press releases about the great public interest in the beginnings of the movie industry. We supplied synopses of every movie Pola Negri had ever been in. We went to cable conventions all over the country trying to secure “carry” deals and creating packaging with other channels.

And we hosted cocktail parties at the best hotels in Atlanta, Dallas, Anaheim, San Francisco and Hollywood.

Each party featured some B-movie actor or actress well beyond their prime. For each celebrity event, we would create an award and pay $500 for them to come get it. We’d give them a trophy, a plaque or a medal, they’d say a few words of insincere thanks, and head to the open bar where they’d be peppered with questions about Charlie Chaplin or Technicolor.

It was a harmless sham in the name of commerce because each of the parties involved, including the press we courted, knew it was a sham. In that way, it was much like Halloween: Everybody pretends they’re somebody else for a night and are then rewarded with some candy. At least that was the rationale.

There are, of course, very real awards given to men and women in recognition of their very real contributions to society. The idea is that these people have toiled in the arts and letters, science and economics, philosophy and public service to unite and elevate humanity, to celebrate the very notion of a shared recognition of our “certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Since 1963, the Presidential Medal of Freedom has sought to recognize those people who have made “an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.”

With those parameters in mind, it’s difficult to imagine how Rush Limbaugh is qualified for such an honor. In a talk-radio format of hideous polemics, he has done nothing but stoke the fires of hatred, bigotry, and discord.

For decades he has collected millions of dollars viciously spewing his ignorant vitriol at anybody and anything that he found not to fit his moronic political and social views.

And yet there he was at the State of the Union having the Medal of Freedom fastened around his neck by First Lady Melania.

A poster boy for the Tea Party movement, he played to the lowest common denominator—the under-educated white male who would come to make up Donald Trump’s political base. With typical bluster and bluff, he took sole credit for creating talk radio, callously disregarding the hundreds who pioneered the format before him. Even his political posturing was a poor imitation of Morton Downey, Jr., and Wally George, both of whom were at least entertaining.

But to think of Limbaugh as the antithesis of a beacon of freedom’s light, we only need review a few samples of his callous bombast.

On Slavery: “…slavery built the South. I’m not saying we should bring it back; I’m just saying it had its merits. For one thing, the streets were safer after dark.”

On Martin Luther King, Jr.: “You know who deserves a posthumous Medal of Honor? James Earl Ray. We miss you, James. Godspeed.”

On African-Americans: “Have you ever noticed how all composite pictures of wanted criminals resemble Jesse Jackson?”

On the NFL: “Look, let me put it to you this way: the NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it.”

On Women: “When women got the right to vote is when it all went downhill. Because that’s when votes started being cast with emotion and uh, maternal instincts that government ought to reflect.”

On Feminism: “Feminism was established as to allow unattractive women easier access to the mainstream of society”

On Native Americans: “Holocaust? Ninety million Indians? Only four million left? They all have casinos—what’s to complain about?”

And yet such commentary is greeted with laurels from Trump—which comes as no surprise considering his own racism (“Very good people on both sides”) and his complete disregard for the truth—and others of his white supremacist ilk.

Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) said Rush Limbaugh “inspired millions of people, still does to this day.”

It is important to consider not only the kind of inspiration Rush Limbaugh might provide, but to whom.

To place Limbaugh in the company of such honorees as Carl Sandburg, Harper Lee, Ansel Adams or Rosa Parks, is not to diminish the meaning of the Medal of Freedom, but to reflect the mean-spirited character of our 45th president. Racism and hate have no place in any discussion of freedom, let alone the place of honor Trump has extended to an enemy of justice.

My guess is that Roseanne will soon be honored. My regret is that Mr. Basket (not his real name) didn’t make the cut.

“Freedom Eyes” montage by Courtney A. Liska

Gigot d’agneau Provençal

One 6-pound boneless leg of lamb, butterflied
1 bottle Pinot Noir
10-12 rosemary
10-12 thyme sprigs
Zest of 1/2 an orange
2 large shallots, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon cracked black peppercorns
1 teaspoon dried lavender
Extra-virgin olive oil
Salt & pepper

Place the lamb into a large, resealable plastic bag. Add the wine, rosemary, thyme, zest, shallots, peppercorns and lavender. Seal the bag. Turn to coat the lamb. Refrigerate for at least 24 hours and up to 48 hours, turning the bag occasionally.
Drain the lamb and removed any solids from the marinade. Return to room temperature.
Light a grill and oil the grates. Brush the lamb with oil and season with salt. Grill over moderate heat, turning occasionally, 35-40 minutes, until a thermometer inserted into the thickest part registers 125° for medium-rare meat.

What is there not to like about football?

Seriously, what isn’t there to like about two teams of helmeted millionaires with hyper-active thyroids battling it out in four-second spurts of action that end in violent crashes of bodies ensconced in thick padding on a vast carpet of grass with stripes and hashmarks while people dressed in striped-shirts blow whistles and throw little yellow flags? Those four seconds are then followed by several minutes of standing around while the players make sure that there are only eleven of them on each side and decide what to do next as we, the viewing public, are bombarded with slick advertising for products that promise eternal youth, a luxury off-road experience, or an alcohol addiction.

I have no idea what the live audience does during commercial breaks. My guess is they alternate trips between the beer lines and the bathroom lines.

While it might surprise some of you, those who know me well know me as football fanatic—as rah-rah, shish-boo-bah kind of fan as one could ever find, for exactly two games each year. The first game occurred this season on a Thursday, September 5, when the NFL kicked off its year with the Chicago Bears hosting the Green Bay Packers and losing 10-3. At least the Cubs won that day, defeating the Milwaukee Brewers 10-5.

Winning is something of a rarity in Chicago, so when the Bears lose their home opener there is nothing left to do but watch baseball until that season ends. That’s when I fall into a winter-long depression, clinically known as getalifeitis, that has me counting down the days on a concrete wall with a piece of charcoal to mark the passage of time before Spring Training begins. (Cubs pitchers and catchers report in just nine—count ‘em—nine days!)

The second day on which I exhibit my unbridled enthusiasm for football is today—Super Bowl Sunday. It’s a tradition I’m proud to share with 83% of the world’s population who own televisions and aren’t interested in movies with subtitles, plus those with an extra 30-grand or so to buy tickets to the actual event, which proves that either you don’t have to be smart to be rich or that you’ve never smelled the inside of a stadium bathroom.

This year is the fifty-fourth time two teams will meet for the NFL Championship. All that’s at stake (other than a modicum of immortality and an increased likelihood of brain trauma) is the Lombardi Trophy, a sterling silver replica of a football—how friggin’ original is that?—named for a coach who actually won the first one and is most remembered for having said, “Winning isn’t the only thing,” before being interrupted by Yogi Berra saying, “Nobody goes there anymore.”

And it was a that moment in sports history when Al Michaels insulted what was left of Cleveland by saying it was “like Detroit without the glitter.”

Actually, it should be noted that each player on the winning team receives ownership of a mid-sized bank, while the losers are each given a used, Soviet-era Yugo (slogan: Yugo, the car won’t).

I trace my interest in football to a previous life in which I owned a Corporate Skybox at the Colosseum, better known in those days as the Flavian Amphitheatre or, as the Romans called it, The Flav. Built between 70 and 80 A.D., the oval structure was built by Vespasian, for whom a motor scooter would one day be named, with financing provided by his son, Titus, who was in the protection rackets. This was publicly financed by Titus’s men stealing the needed money from the public. When you have a loyal army, you really don’t need to float bond issues.

Although they didn’t play football or even futbol in ancient Rome, they did have several games that were lots of fun for the spectators who clamored for any of the 50,000 general admission seats on Sunday afternoons, rain or shine. Reserved seating (30,000 seats) was available through StubHub, but the lines at Will Call were unbelievably long.

When I occasionally channel that long ago past life, I remember enjoying the Gladiators the most. Some of them rode horses and had long spears, and they charged one another—each trying to turn the other into a shish kebab. Others had spiked iron balls at the ends of chains that they swung around and let loose, often killing spectators in the field level box seats that featured beer vendors selling imported Egyptian micro brews in souvenir clay mugs.

The chariot races were pretty cool, but there were too many sponsor logos on the chariots, not enough crashes, and Charlton Heston’s winning record suggested that the races were rigged.

Everybody’s favorite sport for the better part of four centuries was when Christians would be thrown to hungry lions as a test of faith. The lions always won. Always.

Why, after all of that, Rome became a Christian state is anybody’s guess.

Since I’ve now segued to the subject of food, it should be noted that guacamole was the most popular snack food at The Flav, followed by chipotle dove wings, Dodger dogs and moo shu pork-on-a-stick. Because Frito-Lay had yet to emerge as a major player in the world of junk food, “gwak,” as it was called, was served with matzoh crackers. These tasteless pieces of rutted cardboard were left over from 40 years of Jews baking in the “wilderness” where there was no yeast and few Chinese restaurants.

Left to their own devices, the nomadic-but-not-by-choice-nomadic Israelites lived on quail, which they grilled on portable hibachis and served with a delicate sauce of shallots and figs, and manna, which was a boxed dessert that came in four flavors—carob, vanilla, anchovy, and hemlock.

Back in the day, avocados were usually in plentiful supply, even without imports from Mexico. They were cheap and anybody who fooled around with the Roman State recipe was thrown to the lions. If one added mayonnaise, peas or broccoli to the guac, they were forced to eat it before being staked on a hill of fire ants two hours before the lions were let out.

Guacamole is the number #1 dip at Super Bowl parties around the world (except in Uganda) so rather than costing $1.85 per seed pod, the week before Super Bowl the prices usually balloon to around $17, unless you shop at Whole Foods where avocados usually cost $17. (Recent studies have shown that patrons of Whole Foods generally don’t like football and are therefore ready to bore you to tears talking about FIFA soccer—the very model of corruption for 51% of the U.S. Senate.)

This phenomena—known as price-gouging—is an economic principle known as, well, price-gouging. There are those who might find this practice to be the result of American ingenuity. It’s not. It’s the product of greed. If there is an increased demand, the prices tend to unfairly skyrocket. This is seen at disasters when bottled water suddenly costs $35 a case; at Valentine’s Day when the price of a dozen red roses is equal to a season lift-ticket at Aspen; and during Derby Week in Louisville, where a single room at a flea-bag motel is a mere $750 a night, but has free WiFi.

Only at Thanksgiving, when the market price of a turkey drops from $1.79 a pound to free, does this model not work. Even Alan Greenspan didn’t have an answer, which may or may not have had something to do with his exit from the Federal Reserve in 2006. (I tend to go with the theory that he just wanted more time to play clarinet duets with Woody Allen.)

At Whole Foods, turkeys cost in the neighborhood of $11 a pound because their turkeys are not only organic, but they were raised listening to Mozart and Liszt, and having their wattles massaged by unemployed PETA freaks. (Recent studies have shown that patrons of Whole Foods generally don’t like Thanksgiving either, and are therefore ready to bore you to tears talking about Unitarianism, a faux religion for aging hippies.)

This year’s Super Bowl promises a game that will take 50 percent more time to complete than a regular season game. That’s because Fox charges somewhere in the neighborhood of a trillion dollars per minute for commercials and Rupert needs the cash. Also, nobody’s been able to make Joe Buck stop blathering about God-only-knows-what he’s always blathering about. There will be a half-time show that will be closely watched by those hoping for wardrobe malfunctions.

Personally, I’m looking forward to eating a boatload of chili, bratwurst, beef sliders, pulled pork, ribs, meatballs, clam chowder, shrimps, fish tacos and wings.

Now I just have to convince Geri that a vegetable tray without Lit’l Smokies is just a vegetable tray.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

“Flav” Guacamole
as told to Pliny the Elder

3 ripe avocados
1/2 small onion, minced
2 Roma tomatoes, seeded and diced
3 Tbs. fresh cilantro, chopped
1 jalapeno pepper, seeded and finely diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 fresh lime, juiced
1/2 tsp sea salt

Slice the avocados in half, remove the pit and skin and place in a mixing bowl.
Mash the avocado with a fork and make it as chunky or smooth as you’d like.
Add the remaining ingredients and stir together. Chill.

Home & Garden Television (HGTV) is, from what I can tell, a 24-hour quasi-DIY cable network with programming geared to make its viewers feel bad about their houses by showing what other people with a line of credit at either Lowe’s or Goldman Sachs have done with theirs.

The network has several shows that are meant to be uplifting that I find disheartening. Is it a sadistic tendency that drives producers to document the struggles of 30-somethings in a desperate search for beachfront properties in foreign lands? Or is this just what we’ve become?

One of HGTV’s shows presents a family of five living in a linen closet, which can be remodeled for the cost of the five-bedroom house next door that just happens to be for sale. After an agonizing 30 minutes of remodeling the closet, the family opts for the house next door which greatly upsets the woman who had overseen the closet remodel. This is edge-of-your-seat programming for the network’s demographic, many of whom spend their days crocheting trivets or inventing new ways to play Checkers.

There’s another show in which a family picks out a dilapidated house in a marginal neighborhood and then allows the show’s hosts to rebuild it, landscape it and decorate it, right down to the place mats on a dining room table that has been fashioned from repurposed outhouse doors. The purchasers of said house aren’t even allowed to drive by to check on the progress. At the show-stopping grand reveal, they are thrilled with everything except the strange odor coming from the dining room.

Some of HGTV’s programs feature very attractive young women in hard hats, halter tops and skinny jeans knocking down brick walls with sledgehammers. They perspire while they do this. A lot. It is an awe-inspiring show.

The best of the HGTV programming that I’ve suffered through is the fantasy-reality “My Lottery Dream Home.” While entertaining in sort of a RuPaul way, the show demonstrates what is basically wrong with America—greed and avarice (the two words mean the same, but seem always to be used together), envy, sloth and poor taste in interior design.

It’s hosted by a realtor-cum-designer-cum-reality TV host whose apparent first interest is finding a patch of undecorated skin that can be flooded with new ink. He dresses a bit like a toreador as he enthusiastically escorts happy couples to homes that they might want to purchase with the monies won in various lotteries.

On any given day, it’s difficult to tell if the happy couple is happy because they won a million dollars, or because they’re going to be on television, or because they are being shown a house with an entry hall that is bigger than the entire apartment in which they raised their five kids in Hoboken.

There is a lot of hugging in this show and David Bromstad, the personable host of the program who is flirtatious to everybody, likes to compliment his guests on how cute they are in the little outfits they chose to wear while visiting mansions—an activity that most of them have clearly never done before. Many of the “guests” seem like they’d be more comfortable living in the servants’ quarters of these homes than in the main part of the house where a riding vacuum cleaner might prove handy.

This “reality” show is kind of an unwitting cross between “The Beverly Hillbillies,” which once inspired embarrassed laughter, and “Queen for a Day,” a ‘50s-era game show that evoked a staged empathy from an audience trying to determine which of the contestants had the most miserable life and was therefore most deserving of a four-slice toaster and a steam iron.

The males of the couples appearing on “Dream,” seem curious about the possibility of their being any outbuildings on the property and appear to be oddly focused on the lawn. The females seem most impressed by multiple bathtubs that double as lap pools, walk-in closets (“I could live in here!”), and composite countertops in kitchens that frequently have four ovens, eight burners, a char-broiler and a flattop grill. Add a few microwave ovens and it could function as an Outback Steakhouse.

It’s while everybody is wandering around lost in the cavernous kitchen that we learn about the couple’s extended family, which is typically large enough to warrant having its own telephone directory. It seems too that these family members are perhaps unemployed or unemployable, drive old domestic cars with “Ron Paul for President” bumper stickers, and will be spending every weekend for the foreseeable future at the new mansion—lolling about the pool, drinking at the thirty-foot-long wet bar, and keeping Mrs. Couple busy at the flattop frying vegan burgers and zucchini-bacon.

There are several threads of improvised plots that twist and turn along a course as predictable as a Roadrunner cartoon. While Pops is fretting about maintaining a yard the size of a cow pasture, David calls him “silly” and reminds him that he’s a millionaire and can afford to hire gardeners. It is at about this point that David turns to Moms to make sure than the kitchen island, which is about the size of Maui, is big enough to handle the hundreds of free-loading relatives who’ll start sponging off them as soon as the ink is dry on the buy-sell.

That’s when it’s revealed that she’s planning to use a significant portion of their new-found wealth to develop a serious drinking problem.

The sudden wealth that has spurred the mad-dash search for better digs is spoken of only at the beginning of the show.

“How much are we spending?” David asks in a way that suggests he might be putting up a third and moving into the granny suite. If the subject of money ever comes up again, it is usually in the form of subtle little reminders that the guests are millionaires, as in, “Don’t worry, you can afford anything now.”

This is precisely the moment that the “reality” in Reality Show should kick in. Maybe a spin-off like “My Dinner with an Accountant” or “Meet the IRS” or “Orange Isn’t My Best Color” could be developed as companion programming.

Moms and Pops tell their story about having won that elusive million dollars after investing $100—on a whim—in scratch-off lottery tickets at their local 7-Eleven and littering the front seat of their ’83 Plymouth Reliant with foil scrapings from the tickets and the detritus from the gas-station corn dogs they had just washed down with 64-ounce tubs of Pepsi. A winning ticket is produced and they both suffer mild heart attacks. After remarkable recoveries—without defibrillation, no less—they drive to the Verizon store and empty their checking account buying cell phones clearly smarter than either of them. Pops then uses his new device to call his boss and sing him a couple of choruses of his favorite country song, “Take This Job and Shove It.”

Moms and Pops then attend their first-ever press conference, announce their good fortune to the world, and begin to fully realize just how extended their extended family is.

They hire the Sicilian agent they just happened to meet at the 7-Eleven who promised them book deals, personal appearance tours, and product endorsements but so far can only get them on David’s house-hunting adventure show.

The happy couple tells David they’d like to spend around $750,000 for their dream home. He squeals and bats his eyes (which he does a lot anyway), and the search is on, with David cautioning that the couple’s cap is “pretty low” for Palm Beach. After three house showings and three costume changes, the couple settles on what used to be the seven-bedroom, nine-bath guard’s house at the Kennedy family compound that has free WiFi and a bowling alley in the basement. Everybody toasts this occasion with goblets of tap water in a chic neighborhood restaurant.

David air kisses them goodbye and drives off into the sunset.

The Happy Couple moves into their furnished house and open their first piece of mail, a congratulatory letter from the New Jersey State Lottery with a certified check for $546,373 and no/cents.

Oops.

Assemblage and photography by Courtney A. Liska

Minestrone

Straight from la cucina povera, comes this Italian soup that is nutritious, delicious and cheap. It takes some time (don’t rush the process) but is worth every minute. Serve with some torn pieces of crusty bread and Parmesan cheese.

Butter, extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
2 carrots, sliced into rounds
2 celery stalks, sliced
1 large potato, diced
4 oz. green beans, fresh or frozen
2 small zucchini, split lengthwise and sliced
½ small head of green cabbage, roughly chopped
1, 14-oz. can diced tomatoes
6 cups chicken or vegetable stock
½ tsp. dried thyme
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1, 14-oz. can cannellini beans

Melt about 2 Tbs. butter and 1 Tbs. oil in a stock pot over medium heat. Add the sliced onions and cook, stirring occasionally, for 6-7 minutes.
Next, add carrots and celery, stir to coat. Cook another 3-4 minutes.
Add potatoes and green beans. Stir to coat and cook 3-4 minutes.
Add zucchini. Stir to coat and cook 3-4 minutes.
Add cabbage. Stir to coat and cook 3-4 minutes.
Add tomatoes, stock, thyme, and salt and pepper to taste.
Turn heat to high and bring to a boil.
Reduce heat to medium & simmer, covered, for 45-50 minutes.
Add cannellini beans. Simmer another 5 minutes.

Note: If you have a rind of parmigiano-reggiano cheese, add it to the soup along with the tomatoes. It imparts a wonderful flavor. Remove before serving.

If there is one thing on which Democrats can agree it’s that on January 20, 2021, President Trump hand over the White House key to a Democrat, make his way across the South Lawn with his brood in tow, board Marine One, and never be seen again except on visiting days.

All that is left to decide, of course, is which Democrat will have the opportunity to defeat the man who promised to “drain the swamp” but turned out to be the creature from the black lagoon.

Jeff Flake, the former GOP senator from Arizona, said that if a Senate vote on impeachment were done by secret ballot, Trump would be removed from office. That implies that a significant number of GOP members recognize that Donald Trump is a pathological narcissist with early stage dementia—a habitual liar with little contact with reality. Yet they stand arm-in-arm, defiant in their support of him. The party has allowed him to retain command of the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet because it would be politically inconvenient to do otherwise.

The President’s actions are possible only with the cowardly acquiescence of congressional Republicans.

Depending on which pundit or commentator one reads or hears, any or none of the Democrat candidates will be able to unseat Trump on November 3. In an ideal world, the ideas and policies presented by a candidate should be what matters. But, in words spoken about issues I once raised, Brian Schweitzer, at the time a candidate for the Montana governorship, said, “The important thing is to win.”

There is little doubt about the importance of winning. After all, it is a contest. But at what cost? And to whom? I wish such cynicism weren’t part of the equation. I would far prefer to hear what a candidate actually believes than hear what he or she thinks the majority of the electorate wants to hear.

(I would also like to see an end to political advertising on television. To put that in perspective, I hear that the people in hell would like some ice water.)

At this point in the game, it is too early to predict who might be the Democrat candidate, but it certainly is not too early to speed up the winnowing process. Each of the candidates has admirable qualities, from Andrew Yang wanting to give everybody a thousand dollars a month to Joe Biden’s lifetime of political experience. Elizabeth Warren is a sharp-as-a-tack policy wonk with a plan for everything, while Amy Klobuchar seems the pragmatist with a beguiling sense of humor. Pete Buttigieg is clearly the intellectual in the lineup, and both Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer are capable businessmen who could write a check to cover whatever deficit the country might have on inauguration day. There are others who drift in and out of the discussion as well.

And then there’s Bernie.

During the 2016 election cycle, a friend of mine suggested that if we ever decided to colonize Mars, Bernie would be the ideal man to run it. I’ve used that line before, and it still makes me laugh.

When Mike Royko placed the moniker “Governor Moonbeam” on Jerry Brown in 1976, everybody laughed, including lots of California Democrats. And then Royko—a hard-nosed, gruff-and-tumble columnist if ever there was one—apologized to Gov. Brown, calling the sobriquet an “idiotic, damn-fool, meaningless, throw-away line.”

In 1980, at the Democratic National Convention, Royko noted that the best speech had come from Governor Moonbeam.

“I have to admit I gave him that unhappy label,” Royko wrote. “Because the more I see of Brown, the more I am convinced that he has been the only Democrat in this year’s politics who understands what this country will be up against.”

Somewhere in the mix came the word “visionary.”

Brown wore his vision on his sleeve, campaigning twice for the Presidency, in 1976, and again in 1980, when his slogan was “protect the earth, serve the people and explore the universe.”

The “moonbeam vote” belonged to the young, idealistic and non-traditional.

Before seeing the light, as it were, Royko found endless amusement in California’s oddities. “If it babbles and its eyeballs are glazed,” he wrote in 1979, “it probably comes from California.”

Bernie Sanders clearly has captured the “moonbeam” vote of the young, idealistic and non-traditional, and in that vote might lie the future of America.

Some of Sanders’s rhetoric might sound like so much babble to some ears. But his eyes are not glazed; they are clear and focused sharply on reshaping our society into one whose governing agencies will provide both aid and opportunity, will honor and protect our rights, and won’t play into the hands of the very wealthiest of Americans.

He has been fighting the same fight for his entire political career. He is stubborn and he knows the battlefield. And he understands fairness.

Albert Einstein noted that there is a moral belief that “the life of the individual only has value [insofar] as it aids in making the life of every living thing nobler and more beautiful.”

I embody the very definition of a bleeding-heart liberal. I was raised that way. Both my paternal and maternal grandparents had framed portraits of FDR and JFK in their living rooms. I was also raised to question authority, and to try to approach issues or problems with an open mind, which remains a liberal attribute.

But I was also raised in a time when Democrats and Republicans reached across the aisle to meld their differences into solutions that served a common good. Philosophy and ideology often took a back seat to the practical aspects of governance.

To paraphrase President Obama, there’s a lot of paperwork.

I’d like to believe that Everett Dirksen, the erudite Republican senator from Illinois, would have stood against the incarceration of children at the border, the stripping the needy of benefits, the attempts at voter suppression, the gifting the wealthy of tax breaks at the expense of education, health and social benefits. He’d have been joined by other Republicans of that by-gone era who would not recognize, or acknowledge, the GOP of today.

How, I wonder, can one get a good night’s sleep knowing that Meals on Wheels has become less of a burden to Wall Street? When one looks in the mirror each morning, is there some sadistic satisfaction knowing that children aren’t being fed lunch because their parents can’t afford it? What does a member of Congress think about getting pay raise after pay raise after pay raise while keeping the minimum wage stagnating at 1979 levels?

Trump’s trade war with China was disastrous to the American farmer from the get-go, but checks totaling $28 billion were written to farmers over the past two years. The funds came from other social programs the USDA raided (at Trump’s prompting and without any Congressional debate). The biggest recipients, by the way, were “farmers” who wouldn’t know one end of a pitchfork from the other but who run multi-billion-dollar agri-business empires from executive suites.

In 2016 Trump led a vigorous campaign that ennobled the under- or un- educated white male to hang on to a social standing built on racism and xenophobia. He gave license to those who feared they might become the disenfranchised and the marginalized. His campaign was a giant scare tactic that fed upon the basest instincts of the electorate. There was once a time when his behavior alone would have been his downfall.

A lot of the pundits are suggesting that the only way to beat Trump is to oppose him with a centrist. Well, that might do the trick, but I’m not convinced. The chameleonic Trump can play-act a centrist, but he can’t play left of center without alienating his Tea Party base.

Sanders and Warren, who have both worked across the aisle, are the polar opposites of Trump. They both have Wall Street, Big Pharm, and the insurance and banking industries shaking in their Berluti Oxfords. Those groups are genetically pre-disposed to fear any kind of regulation that would hinder their chances of stuffing a few more bucks in their pockets. Trump has been more than pleased to help his billionaire friends by conducting a three-year fire sale of Nixon-era environmental protections that will no doubt continue apace.

The young, idealistic and non-traditional—as well as many older, more conforming centrists—envision a future that offers a clean environment, equal opportunity, health care for all, public education and a transparent government, values once held sacrosanct by Americans of every stripe. They are not looking for handouts; they are looking to redraw the pie chart that favors military spending and tax cuts for the rich. They want their taxes used to buy social value.

They believe that people whose financial well-being is compromised by unforeseen health issues should not have to look to bake sales and Go Fund Me campaigns for economic salvation.

The future, after all, belongs to the next generations, and they should be encouraged in their participation and admired for their ardor to make a world in which they want to live.

Although I’m not putting any bumper stickers on my truck quite yet, I believe that the sooner the Democrats get on the same page and whittle the ticket down, the better they’ll fare in November. The “he-said, she-said” pissing match between Warren and Sanders this past week was a distraction the Democrats can ill afford.

New Hampshire and Iowa are just around the corner, and if we’ve not settled on a candidate by the end of Super Tuesday (March 3), Trump probably won’t have to hand over the White House key.

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska

New Year’s resolutions are, for the most part, ridiculous…rarely more than inane exercises in futility.

Though well-intentioned, they quickly become empty promises made in the hopes of improving various aspects of one’s life: lose weight, get in shape, make more money, quit beating the dog, visit really old people you don’t know on Tuesday afternoons, read more, watch less television, limit your daily Facebook time to seven hours, try to understand a cricket match.

Okay. We all get it. And, ultimately, we all fail. After all, not even the Brits can explain a cricket match, a game they foisted on India as punishment for leaving the United Kingdom.

Since New Year’s Day I have heard from no fewer than six people—each of whom I find to be intelligent and reasonable folks who seem also to bathe regularly—that they had resolved to “declutter” their lives.

I don’t believe I had ever heard the word “declutter,” although I sensed correctly what it might mean. The Oxford English Dictionary defined it as a verb, “to remove unnecessary items from (an untidy or overcrowded place).”

It seems like an awkward way of saying “getting rid of stuff,” as in “this year I’m getting rid of stuff.” The idea of decluttering one’s garage or office is one thing, but one’s life seems somewhat dire. For instance, can one’s spleen be considered “an unnecessary item” in an overcrowded place?

Merriam-Webster, which has been explaining words and their usages since 1828, noted that the word was first used in 1950. How they know that is anybody’s guess. Maybe some British guy said it first in 1933 in a London pub but nobody thought to write it down.

What I can’t believe is that declutter is a whole year older than me and I’ve never heard it until this year.

My mother kept a tidy house (with the help of a maid who came on Tuesdays) and she insisted that my sister and I maintain a level of cleanliness in our rooms that would have impressed God. But she never said, “Go declutter your room or there’ll be no dessert.”

Merriam-Webster, which still publishes dictionaries in book form so that short folks will have something to sit on during meals, has a feature on its website that lists, by year, when words and phrases were first used. Once again, I don’t know how they know this stuff but it’s mildly entertaining to note some of the entries.

For instance, the phrase “funny farm” was first used in 1950 to commemorate the Surgeon General’s acknowledging that “being a whack-job” was a real thing. So too was “empty suit” coined, which no doubt refers to politicians. “H-bomb” also came along in 1950, which is totally understandable. “Test-drive” came into use that year as well. Was this phrase a marketing device? Were customers once not allowed to drive a car before they bought it? Maybe a “trial spin” was allowed.

That mid-century year also saw the phrase “training wheels” come into use. What were they called before that? Seriously, I want to know.

“Pastitsio” also made its American debut in 1950. The Greeks, who derived both the word and the dish from the Italians, had been using that word even before they got around to inventing democracy. It was Socrates’s favorite brown-bag lunch, which he frequently ate on the steps of the Parthenon during his Tuesday dialogues with the Cretans.

I’ve read that the typical American spends the first two-thirds of life accumulating stuff and the last third getting rid of said stuff. Apparently, these phenomena are unique to Americans, as I’ve not seen any mention of Hungarians, for instance, in these studies.

The math is problematic since it’s nearly impossible to accurately divide our lives into thirds. I have no idea when I’ll slip from this mortal coil nor do you. If you miscalculate, you might have a good time accumulating stuff until you’re 50 and not make it to 75, which will leave a house full of crap for your kids to deal with. On the other hand, you might accumulate stuff until you’re 50 and start getting rid of stuff on the 75-year plan and live to 90, which leaves you living for 15 years with nothing but a pair of flannel pajamas, a thread-bare Barcalounger and a tea kettle.

Now, to answer your question from a paragraph ago: Yes, there have been actual studies about this stuff.

I haven’t read too deeply because I don’t have to. Some things in life are clearly obvious. I remember when Senator William Proxmire (D-Wisconsin) handed out his monthly Golden Fleece Awards which commemorated wasteful government spending. One time, he skewered the Office of Education for spending $219,592 in a “curriculum package” to teach college students how to watch television. Perhaps it’s needless to say, but most of us had learned to watch television by the time we got to college.

I put that in the same category of the Trump children being Court-ordered to take classes in how not to steal from a charity. “Don’t do it,” seems to be about the only thing that can be said about the matter.

I would like to spend the rest of my life being paid to discover the obvious and then make the talk show circuit to talk about it.

“Well, Conan, you probably have stuff you could get rid of,” I’d say with commanding authority. “At least that’s what my research has shown.”

Then he’d laugh and cut to a commercial begging the television audience to buy stuff.

Decluttering is a necessary step in life, I guess. I’ve found myself decluttering from time to time, like when I take out the trash every afternoon.

I recently read an article in the Philadelphia Inquirer about an elderly couple who have lived in a Georgetown brownstone for forty-five years. They are moving to a smaller, one-level apartment just a block or so away. To help facilitate their move, they needed to “downsize,” a word first used in 1975, although do we really know that?

Anyway, this couple decided to declutter by hosting a downsizing party.

They had food and mimosas and they invited people they knew and people they didn’t know to come to their brownstone and help themselves to the books, lamps, dishes, glassware, candles, table linens, collectibles, political campaign buttons and bumper stickers, and cook ware that had been accumulated over forty-five years. No money exchanged hands and the couple didn’t have to set up displays on folding tables in the driveway, not that Georgetown brownstones have driveways. They also didn’t have to gather up what didn’t sell and schlepp it to the local thrift shop.

Karen and Fritz Mulhauser, the hosts of this party, told the reporter that they had fun and had accomplished their goal of decluttering as they downsized. It was what might be called a “win-win” situation, a term first used in 1962.

Chances are pretty good that I’m in the last third of my life, so I’m doing a bit of decluttering every day. The problem, of course, is the amount of time spent having wistful moments of nostalgia with every item I pick up. One of these days, maybe, we’ll “Mulhauser,” a term I coined just this past week.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Pastitsio

Regarded by many as a Greek lasagna, pastitsio is based on the Italian pasticcio, which means “mess.” This recipe is adapted from The Food and Wine of Greece by Diane Kochilas.

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
3 onions, diced
1 ½ pounds lean ground beef
1 large garlic clove, minced
3 cups diced tomatoes
1 cinnamon stick
1 tsp. ground nutmeg
Pinch of ground allspice
4 whole cloves, minced
10-15 black peppercorns, crushed
Salt
1 ½ pounds penne
4 oz. Kefalotyri or Parmesan cheese, grated
4 cups béchamel
2 egg yolks, beaten
1 cup fresh ricotta, or myzithra, drained

In a large skillet, heat 2 tablespoons of the oil and sauté the onion until translucent, 5-7 minutes. Add meat and continue stirring until meat begins to brown. Add garlic, tomatoes, spices, pepper and salt. Lower heat and simmer, covered, for 35-40 minutes, until liquid has been absorbed and meat is cooked. Remove pan from heat, let meat cool slightly. Remove whole spices.
While meat is simmering, boil the pasta to al dente. Remove, drain and toss with a little of the oil and half the grated cheese.
Preheat oven to 350°. Lightly oil a large (9×13) baking pan.
Make béchamel. Melt 4 Tbs. butter, add 4 Tbs. flour, stirring to make a roux. Slowly add 4 cups of warm milk, stirring until fully incorporated. Whisk in the egg yolks, ricotta cheese and half the remaining grated cheese.
Toss the pasta with a little of béchamel. Spread half of it on the bottom of a large baking pan. Pour in meat sauce, spreading evenly over pasta. Sprinkle with 1 – 2 tablespoons grated cheese. Make a second layer of the pasta. Pour béchamel over pasta, making sure it’s evenly spread over top of pan. Sprinkle with remaining grated cheese.
Bake for about 45 minutes, until béchamel thickens and swells and a golden brown crust forms on top.

My Tom Cruise moment came not in tighty-whities and stocking feet with an air mic performing Bob
Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll,” but pajama-clad in the bathroom mirror playing Mendelssohn’s Concerto in E minor, Op. 64 on my air violin.

Perhaps I was raised to be a snob. There was jazz and there was classical music in my family home. My sister once commandeered my father’s stereo to play a Beach Boys album she had acquired. His angered response was to buy her a record player so he would never again have to hear “Surfin’ Safari.” Wanting a record player of my own, I bought The Shape of Jazz to Come by Ornette Coleman and had it playing when Dad came home one evening. Manhattan in hand, he announced liking it well enough for me not to get my own record player.

I readily admit to my haughty ways. As a panelist on a PBS television show in Los Angeles I reminded the rock critic with whom I was sharing the sound stage that while he covered sociological phenomena, I covered art, i.e., jazz.

Though I draw the line at country music, which is actually named in my permanent health record as an allergy, I have had moments of great enjoyment and satisfaction with so-called popular music. As a drummer I played a lot of rock, folk and blues. It seems that my interest in much of that music today provides a sense of nostalgia; I’ve listened to little pop music since sometime in the mid-‘70s.

My bad.

Assembling a Top-20 list has been an interesting exercise because at the core of each selection is a sense of art that transcends its category. Much of it reflects both the jazz and classical music on which I was raised. After a couple of weeks revisiting the following albums I realized that to a great extent, they reflect the various parts of my youth. And most of the songs are really just fun to sing along with.

In no particular order, the following represent my Top-20.

Traffic > The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys (1971) A British band led by Steve Winwood and Jim Capaldi, Traffic featured different forms and offshoots of rock including jazz rock and progressive rock. Drummer Jim Gordon and saxophonist Chris Wood enhance the effort.

Jefferson Airplane > Surrealistic Pillow (1967) The quintessential work of psychedelic rock represented the 1960s counterculture era—a San Francisco bohemian scene transitioning from the ‘50s Beats to the ‘60s Haight-Ashbury counterculture. The album was the first album by a band featuring Grace Slick and Marty Balin.

James Taylor > Sweet Baby James (1970) If you were alive in 1970, James Taylor probably played a significant part of your personal soundtrack. I know he did for mine. He has a natural sense of phrasing—the hallmark of any singer—and sincerity in his interpretation of his, and others’, songs.

The Beatles > Rubber Soul (1965) A mix of pop, soul and folk musical styles characterize what I find to be the band’s best effort. Period. For my ears, the album was transformational in taking a pop group to a level of conceptual art that would pave the way for Sgt. Peppers and the White Album.

Laura Nyro > Eli and the Thirteenth Confession (1968) Elton John was exquisite in his assessment of the singer-songwriter Laura Nyro: “The soul, the passion, just the out and out audacity of the way her rhythmic and melody changes came like nothing I’ve heard before.” “Eli’s Comin’,”” Stoned Soul Picnic” and “Wedding Bell Blues” are tunes we all know and love.

Temptations > Anthology (1978) Groove and harmony define the best street-corner group there ever was. “Papa Was A Rolling Stone,” “My Girl,” “Ball of Confusion,” “Just My Imagination.” Any questions?

Crosby, Stills & Nash > Crosby, Stills & Nash (1969) I had listened to this album a dozen times before seeing the group make its concert debut at Chicago’s Auditorium Theater on August 16, 1969. The vocal folk-rock supergroup made up of singer-songwriters David Crosby and Stephen Stills and English singer-songwriter Graham Nash, created a catalog of songs noted for their intricate vocal harmonies and political activism. I found “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” to be an astonishing feat of artistry.

Lou Reed > Transformer (1972) I lived on New York’s Lower East Side (7th and D) at the dawn of the punk-rock era, though nobody knew it as that at the time. The Fugs, the avant-rock group whose specialty seemed to center around vulgarity, worked regularly at a joint on St. Mark’s Place. Lou Reed was the Prince of the East Village though, his songs conjuring images unique to the time and place, none more so than “Walk On the Wild Side,” a song depicting a world of transsexuality, drug addiction, male prostitution and oral sex.

Stevie Wonder > Songs in the Key of Life (1976) Soul, funk, R&B…whatever you want to call it, Songs in the Key of Life is masterful piece of musical effort. “Sir Duke” remains a favorite cut.

Joni Mitchell > Court and Spark (1974) Her most successful album shows both a writing and singing talent that is hers alone. It is a folk-rock endeavor with loads of jazz inflections that she would use from this point on. “Help Me” and “Free Man in Paris” are ageless classics.

Siegle-Schwall > Say Siegle-Schwall (1967) A Chicago-based blues band that never went too far but made memorable music.

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band > East-West (1966) This seminal album reflects a sense of jazz-infused blues from the modal style of Miles Davis, to the hard bop of Nat Adderley (“Work Song”) and John Coltrane’s Indian raga. Mike Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop play key roles, as does keyboardist Mark Naftalin, right down to Muddy Waters’s “Two Trains Running.”

Mother Earth > Living with the Animals (1969) An American roots band, Mother Earth displayed influences from gospel, r&b, jazz, country and even a touch of psychedelia. Singer Tracy Nelson lent an earthy quality to this band that had once featured Boz Skaggs, guitarist Mike Bloomfield and keyboardist Mark Naftalin.

Marvin Gaye > What’s Going On (1971) If Marvin Gaye had recorded nothing else, he would still stand tall among the giants of soul. This album was a concept album in which thematic ideas were presented in a song cycle. The album is something of a social protest, its ideas centered around narrative of hatred, suffering, drug abuse, poverty and injustice in the Vietnam War era. He was once quoted as saying he wanted to “write songs that reach the souls of the people.”

Donny Hathaway > Donny Hathaway (1971) If singing were a cure for manic-depression this Chicago-born singer might still be with us. He was 33 when he took his life, but he left this incredible album of pop, gospel and soul tunes that do no less than astound. The most prominent of the covers were his rendition of Leon Russell’s “A Song for You” and a gospel-inflected cover of Gladys Knight & the Pips’ “Giving Up”, written by Van McCoy.

Seatrain > Seatrain (1969) An earthy roots band that deftly fused rock with bluegrass. It’s a feel-good album, with violinist Richard Greene adding vibrant colors to a list of tunes that includes Lowell George’s “I’m Willing.”

Atomic Rooster > In Hearing of Atomic Rooster (1971) A British hard rock band with a revolving door of personnel that included drummers Carl Palmer and Ginger Baker, and singer Vincent Crane, created a music of intense excitement. Personally, I loved the drum tracks.

The Rolling Stones get two spots on my list: Let It Bleed (1969) Beggar’s Banquet (1968). From the first album, “Gimme Shelter” is simply the best rock ‘n’ roll song ever recorded. It is an incendiary anthem that speaks to its time. From Beggar’s Banquet comes “Sympathy for the Devil” and “Street Fighting Man,” two more classics from the quintessential rock band.

The Band > The Band (1969) On its own, after being the backup band for Bob Dylan, The Band offered an appealing blend of folk music and early rock and roll. Each of its members—Rick Danko, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel, Robbie Robertson, and Levon Helm—brought a certain virtuosity to a unique musical form.

The problem with lists is not what’s included, but what isn’t. For that I apologize to scores of pop artists who have brought joy to all of us.

Photo montage by Courtney A. Liska

I’ve been told, by my wife no less, that I worry about things that wouldn’t occur to many others to worry about. I blame my faith; she blames my mother.

This was evidenced this past week when I was awakened at 3:30 one morning wondering why there don’t seem to be any aquariums in doctors’ offices anymore. What had changed? And, why? Was this some kind of dream?

When I was a kid every doctor and dentist had fish tanks in their waiting rooms, just as every barber shop had a myna bird that whistled at the women who walked past. Obviously, the #MeToo movement is responsible for the myna bird becoming extinct. But that’s another story because we have bigger fish to fry. So to speak.

While the aquarium enigma might invite dark-state conspiracy theories, I prefer to simply allege foul play on the part of Big Pharm and Moscow Mitch.

Elaborate aquariums—many of them salt-water—were installed to help patients pass the wait with calm visions of angel fish, red cap orandas and other colorful denizens of the miniature deep rather than reading three-year-old editions of National Geographic or Readers’ Digest.

These installations were extravagant and far more interesting than the one or two goldfish or black mollies that lived in bowls with fake flora and a ceramic castle that were on every kid’s dresser. The aerated aquariums featured exotic flora that shimmied in the backlit tank; fish swam around the plants, seeking to hide from the predatory baby barracudas and hammerhead sharks that were an inch or so longer than their prey. Frequently, there were scenes of the Miami skyline painted across the back of the tank.

These tanks helped regulate people’s blood pressure while they nervously awaited their appointments during a more innocent age that had far fewer diseases than we do now. Nobody was gluten-free, for instance. Like the fish, Big Pharm helped regulate people’s blood pressure but with little pills that cost a lot. To protect its profits and build an audience of hypertense men who would soon need Viagra, Big Pharm replaced the fish tanks with television sets that broadcast Fox News, which Big Pharm owned until selling out to Rupert Murdoch, the Australian media magnate.

It’s only appropriate to note here that the Pulitzer Prize-winning Mike Royko, Chicago’s Voice of Irreverence for more than 30 years, once noted that “no self-respecting fish would want to be wrapped in a Murdoch paper.”

See how that all connects? Fish, Beta-blockers, Big Pharm, Murdoch, Fish…

My father sold goldfish and I, as the dutiful son, fished the little fry out of the big tank at the back of his store, dropping them into plastic bags that fit perfectly inside the same kind of box used for fried rice at Chinese take-out places.

I should note here that Dad wasn’t really a pet fishmonger. He owned a few Ben Franklin stores. It was at his flagship store that he had a large tank stocked with fan-tailed mollies in three colors: gold, black and mottled. “Mottled molly” was always fun to say out loud when some kid chose that as a pet. They cost 35 cents each; or, maybe it was 15 cents. It wasn’t much. And it cost a lot less than trying to win one by tossing a ping pong ball into a little bowl at a carnival. Dad also sold fishbowls in three sizes, ceramic castles, tiny chips of stone in four colors for the bowl’s floor, and several kinds of plastic flora. We also had fish food that came in little orange boxes. Everyday after school, I’d fish out the dead fish with a little net and flush them down the toilet in the employee’s rest room.

For a very brief time, my father also sold birds. Parakeets, canaries and myna birds, all of which created a horrible mess as they eyed the fish tank hungrily. They were also loud, what with their constant chirping and the myna’s high-pitched whistle. (My grandmother was gifted with the store’s last bird, which outlived her. She had taught it to swear in Bohemian.)

He also got into the turtle trade. We sold a lot of them because their life expectancy could best be measured in hours (usually due to over-handling or dropping them), whereas fish could survive for several days in stagnant water. In retail terms, the turnaround was pretty quick, the margins high.

Though nobody knows why, turtles were popular in the 1950s, maybe even later. I had lost interest in pet turtles by the time The Beatles arrived in 1964 because, when you think about it, turtles make really lousy pets. They lived in plastic, dish-like things that had a water pond and a curving staircase leading up to a platform decorated with a plastic palm tree. Every now and again they’d amble down to the water and climb back out. That took about an hour or two in a bowl the size of a dessert plate. The rest of the time they seemed content to hide inside their shells dreaming about catching insects or something. I really don’t know what turtles dream about.

Sometimes you do something really stupid as a child that you only remember because it’s become a part of the family lore and you’ve been reminded of it for most of your life. According to my family’s lore, when I was about two, I took the family’s turtle apart. It was alive when I started, so I’m told, its legs and head next found floating lazily in a small bowl of milk I had procured for what I can only assume was to be a two-year-old’s version of cream of turtle soup. It didn’t get that far.

My sister screamed hysterically, which eventually caught the attention of my father whose job it was to deal with this reptilian crime scene. I don’t remember anybody talking about any punishment I might have received, but I do know that the turtle pieces were swaddled in Kleenex and placed in a Barnum’s Animals Crackers box that was buried with great ceremony under the juniper bushes next to our front stoop. There were prayers and songs, and the whole neighborhood seemed to have gathered to mourn this tragic death and pay their respects.

Apparently, I was so impressed by this new-found ritual that I suggested we get another turtle, kill it, and have another funeral.

Geri doesn’t like fish. That’s not completely accurate. She likes halibut—provided it is grilled after marinating in mayonnaise, Worcestershire, teriyaki and soy sauces. She likes fish and chips, provided there is malt vinegar and we happen to be in England. She also likes Pepperidge Farms Goldfish® Baked Crackers which, by the way, smile…but only about 40 percent of them. Isn’t that interesting?

But Geri’s had bad experiences with fish during two noble efforts at trying it. At a restaurant in Burbank she once ordered trout. It was served with its head still on. At first contact with the trout’s cloudy gray eye, she was done. At an ocean-side restaurant in Kona, Hawaii, she ordered a fish garnished with almonds. One of the almonds bore a striking resemblance to a cockroach which, in fact, it was.

And then there was Paris. Ah, Paris. The corner hamburger joint in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine was packed and we were a hungry group of six. A little restaurant on a quaint side street offered, as its plat du jour, petit friture poisson avec frites, or, as it was explained, fish and chips. France is pretty close to England so we ordered the fish. Of course, we had no choice because that was the only thing on the menu. That’s a very French thing, by the way. And why, for even a moment, would I think that French and English food had anything remotely in common?

Our lunch consisted of fried blanchaille, which, roughly translated, means “shiny guppies with eyes.” They were served whole. We were each given a large bowl of about a hundred of them. I heard people at the table utter the word “bait.”

Lunch that day ushered in a whole flood of memories about doctor’s offices and goldfish and turtles and my father, who was a dealer in pet fish, yet so much more. Lo these many years I had managed to suppress those memories until awakened that recent morning I mentioned earlier.

And then I began wondering what kept me from having turtle soup while we were in France. After all, turtle soup in France would have to have cream. Right? I knew that when I was two.

Photo illustration by Courtney A. Liska

Soupe de tortue (Turtle Soup)

1/3 cup grape seed oil
2 pounds turtle meat, diced
2 shallots, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 leek, diced (white part only)
1 Tbs. Kosher salt
1 Tbs. onion powder
1 tsp. ground white pepper
1 tsp. celery seed
1/2 tsp. cayenne pepper
1 bay leaf
1 tsp. dried thyme
6-8 c. chicken stock
2 russet potatoes, diced
2 carrots, diced
5 Tbs. butter
4 Tbs. cornstarch
3/4 cup cream sherry
1 cup heavy cream

Season turtle meat with salt and pepper.
In a large soup pot, heat the oil, over medium high heat and add the turtle meat.
Brown the turtle meat for 5 minutes or so, then add the shallots, minced garlic and leeks, and sauté 5 minutes longer.
Add chicken stock, kosher salt, onion powder, white pepper, celery seed, cayenne pepper, bay leaf, and thyme.
Bring to a boil, then turn down to very low heat and simmer for about an hour, until the turtle begins to soften.
Melt the butter in a large frying pan, over medium heat and add the diced potatoes and carrots, and sauté for about 5 minutes. Sprinkle the vegetables with the corn starch and stir. Add the sherry and stir until the cornstarch is dissolved.
Add mixture to the stock pot and stir until the soup is thickened, and bring to a medium simmer.
Once the potatoes and carrots are fork tender (7-10 minutes), turn heat to low and add the cream.
Serve hot.

Before moving to Montana some twenty-six years ago, I found a handbook that seemed just the ticket for the whole family to read. An Idiot’s Guide to Montana had as its subtitle, “How to behave in the Last Best Place and not piss off the natives.”

Initially, I thought “natives” was in reference to indigenous people. I was wrong. The word was used to describe people who had been born here and therefore had special privileges that nobody else would ever enjoy. Birth rights, if you will. Many advertised their specialness with bumper stickers that read, NATIVE.

I find the whole native thing bewildering because, as has been noted, many natives can trace their lineage to a great-grandmother who simply couldn’t turn enough tricks to get to the coast.

That being said, the book came in handy with well-thought cautionary advice we’ve endeavored to heed.

There was a chapter about driving, for instance. It explained how real Montanans didn’t need four-wheel-drive vehicles, let alone any of those made in a foreign country. Up here, Ford and Chevy have ardent admirers; Toyota, Subaru and Volvo were listed under a section called, “communist cars.” A sub-chapter was titled “We don’t use turn signals,” followed by another called, “I’ll park wherever I damn well please,” that explained that Montanans had been parking long before anybody had thought to bother with all that yellow paint.

There are several references to the land in Montana, such as, “Do not call your 20 acres a ranch, even if you have a breeding pair of alpacas.” “Ranchette” would be more appropriate, but sounds stupid—like something a realtor might say.

The book also warned against calling farm subsidies “rural welfare.” And it advised that when listening to a rancher talk about life in the Big City, it’s best to just look down and scratch the dirt with the toe of your boot or Birkenstock, whichever might be the case.

Unless you own a cow, you aren’t allowed to wear a cowboy hat. The only exception is rodeo night, to which attendance is mandatory or you won’t be allowed to vote in the next general election, an action that tends to deter Democrats who wince at team roping and are more likely to be vegan.

Cowboy shirts with sleeve fringe are only for tourists and country singers with at least one gold record. Jeans are worn outside the boot, unless you’re from Texas which presents a whole host of other problems. Wearing clothes made by L.L. Bean, Patagonia or Armani is ill-advised; Levi’s, Carhartt and Filson are acceptable brands. New blue jeans are to be weighted down and dragged wet behind a horse for several hours before wearing. (This is a time-honored tradition to keep one from looking like a dude.)

Other than to complain, nobody talks about the weather. You’re allowed to say, “If you don’t like the weather, wait ten minutes,” but only after you’ve lived here through three winters—all of which may happen concurrently. One just never knows. And remember that Montana has three seasons: Snow, mud and tourists. Outdoor grilling is a year-round activity. Baseball is typically played in the rain, unless it’s snowing.

Montana is a drinking state. In the old days before there were cup holders you could drink in your car or truck, even if it was moving and you were behind the wheel. If you were suspected of being drunk behind the wheel, whoever suspected you of such would just give you a ride home. Finding your vehicle the next day was your punishment.

Bar etiquette is important to know. Feel free to order a Cosmopolitan but be prepared to suffer the consequences. The same is the case with wine, unless it’s boxed white zinfandel. Best to stick with a “ditch,” typically a Canadian or bourbon whiskey with just enough water to make it look like it was siphoned out of an irrigation ditch. Know that “brew pubs” are what gave rise to the popular expression, “Die Yuppie Scum.”

Everybody over the age of 12 is armed but not dangerous; they are a friendly lot who do the two-finger wave when driving.

The state bird is a Western meadowlark; its flower, the Bitterroot; its tree, the Ponderosa pine. There are a lot of elk, except during hunting season. And there are wolves that some people believe eat children. There are grizzly bears that, once dead and stuffed, make handsome welcoming mannequins in hotel lobbies. The state food is the pasty, sort of a calzone stuffed with chopped beef, potatoes, rutabagas and onions that was first served to miners in Cornwall, England. Smothered in a quart or so of gelatinous brown gravy, they’re a lot better than they sound.

Music is important in Montana, especially the kind you hear around campfires or in bars where Coors Light is the most popular beer. People frequently line dance. Frank Zappa submitted his song, Montana, as the state song. It was rejected, probably because of the song’s focus on dental floss. Elvis is truly loved here (still) and it would be unwise for anybody to say what I once wrote shortly after his death: “The saddest part of his funeral was that they didn’t bury his records with him.” Never, never say that aloud.

Montana does have its sacred cows, but the Idiot’s Guide made no mention of the Moss Mansion. I double-checked just to make sure.

I’ve never been to the Moss Mansion, although I thought I had been, which is what lead me to disparage it as the “tackiest place in Montana” on Facebook recently. What I actually was disparaging was the Alberta Bair house. Either way, a whole lot of people let me know that I had pissed them off.

As young people tend to say these days, “My bad.”

The Moss Mansion, which is suspected of being haunted, is in Billings and it is where I’d like to go now just to see how wrong I was in thinking it was that other place. But what I had to say mistakenly about the Moss Mansion does apply to the Alberta Bair House.

The Bair place was built by Mr. Bair, a sheep rancher known as Mr. Bair. (It’s rumored that he and Moss might have been friends.) From what I recall, the Bair place, which is not a mansion, started out as a simple clapboard farmhouse to which addition after addition was made in the form of a single room for every thousand sheep the Bair family sheared. The rooms dump into each other without the benefit of a single hallway.

I should mention that the house is located in the middle-of-nowhere. Unless you’re already there, it takes a minimum of four-and-a-half hours to get there from wherever else you might be, unless you have access to a helicopter, in which case you’re more likely to visit Bill Gates’ place in Big Sky.

Mr. Bair had a couple of daughters who spent the Great Depression in Europe, buying up tchotchkes from monarchs and tyrants who were going belly up and dumping their stuff for mere pennies on the dollar. A lot of the stuff was gilded. They’d send the stuff home and Daddy would shear some sheep and build another room to house what he famously called “crap.”

On the side, Mr. Bair amassed an impressive collection of Western art and Indian artifacts by trading lamb chops with the likes of Charlie Russell and a few tribal chiefs. And that really upset Mr. Moss whose Mansion needed artwork that wasn’t impression-era oil paintings of lilies or renderings of Jesus on black velvet. (I made that up.)

This whole Moss-Bair thing has been an embarrassing situation I’ve created for myself, however unwittingly. Notice how that didn’t stop me from writing about it, however. (Most essayists would gladly sell their mothers for a story idea.)

In closing, I’d like to apologize to those who I offended but who really owe me an apology because I didn’t call anybody names—they did. And they’re the ones who thought the use of the word “tacky” somehow defines someone as nouveau riche.

I should also mention that I didn’t shed a single tear when Elvis died. And I really don’t much care for Butte, either.

Photography by Courtney A. Liska

Pasty
One of the most mispronounced words in the Montana dialect, the pasty is featured on the official seals of many small Montana towns. Although it can be stuffed with almost anything—I’ve heard of them being stuffed with carrots, peas, parsnips, turnips, pepperoni—the official Cornish pasty, after which the Montana version is widely modeled, has been given Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) in Great Britain. Producers are restricted to making the stuffing with onion, potato, rutabaga and beef.

They’re not difficult to make and I would suggest avoiding the frozen ones altogether.

For the Pastry:
1 cup all-purpose flour
Pinch salt
2 ounces butter (or half lard and half butter) cubed
3 to 4 tablespoons water (cold)

For the Filling:
1/4 cup onion (finely chopped)
1/2 cup potato (cut into 1/4-inch dice)
1/2 cup swede/rutabaga (cut into 1/4-inch dice)
1/2 cup rump steak (cut into small cubes)
Salt (to taste)
Freshly ground black pepper (to taste)
1 large egg (lightly beaten)

Place the flour, salt, and butter into a large bowl.
Using your fingertips, rub the butter into the flour and salt until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs, working as quickly as possible to prevent the dough from becoming warm.
Add the cold water to the mixture and stir until the dough binds together, adding more cold water a teaspoon at a time if the mixture is too dry.
Wrap the dough in plastic wrap and chill for a minimum of 15 minutes and up to 30 minutes.

Heat the oven to 425 F.
Divide the pastry into 4 equal pieces and roll each piece into rounds the size of a salad plate.
Place the onion, potato, rutabaga, and meat into a large mixing bowl and combine thoroughly. Season well with salt and pepper.
Divide the meat mixture evenly among each pastry circle and place to one side. Brush the edges with beaten egg.
Fold the circle in half over the filling so the two edges meet. Crimp the two edges together to create a tight seal. Brush each pasty all over with the remaining beaten egg.
Place the pasties on a greased baking sheet and bake for 45 minutes until golden brown.
Serve hot or cold.