Holiday Cocktails

Wassail! The holidays are upon us, and it's time to start thinking about specialty cocktails that are in tune with the festive feeling we are all...feeling.

With that in mind, put aside those summer-y egg white-based recipes and start thinking about using the whole egg in your drink of choice. Here are a couple of recipes to get you started:Those drinks sound SOLID!

Economy Makes Startling Rebound

As you may remember, See's Candies™ stopped selling the Gift of Elegance™, which experts determined was a sure sign that the U.S. economy was "in the crapper". Well, happy days are here again! The Gift of Elegance™ has returned!:

Synergy

Supplemental M*A*S*H post

These terrible-looking books were a common sight on drugstore paperback spinner racks in the 70s:
These titles beg the questions: How does "M*A*S*H" get to all these fun places, and does it have to go back to Korea afterward?

The Weird Offspring of M*A*S*H

This long-running tv series was spun off from a successful movie based on a semi-successful book.

Toy M*A*S*H latrine. I didn't have this, but I had the toy operating theater.

Eventually, it had its own spin-offs and semi spin-offs.

First, a semi-spin-off: Wayne Rogers (Trapper John McIntyre) playing a different comedic doctor in the tv spin-off of the Walter Matthau movie House Calls.

At a approximately the same time, Pernell (Bonanza) Roberts was playing the titular role in Trapper John. M.D., a hospital drama with only the most tenuous connection to the movie/tv series of M*A*S*H.

This was all very confusing to me as a child!

Then it got even worse: AfterMASH, the sequel spin-off, featuring three character actors from the show: Harry Morgan, William Christopher, and Jamie Farr. Oof! A big, lifeless flop. For years, I forgot that Father Mulcahy was in this--I thought Radar O'Reilly was the third one...but he just appeared in two episodes.

But wait, there's more! Gary Burghoff filmed a pilot called W*A*L*T*E*R in 1984!

You can read about the whole thing in the Wikipedia link, but here's the horrible plot:

The episode opens with Walter O'Reilly in his cousin Wendell Micklejohn's apartment. They are getting ready for their workday while watching the start of a television interview. The interview shows journalist Clete Roberts following up on the members of the M*A*S*H 4077th. The previous week Roberts had interviewed Hawkeye Pierce, and this week he is catching up with O'Reilly. At the police department and through store windows on the street, O'Reilly and Micklejohn catch pieces of the television interview, giving viewers of the pilot a chance to sample the potential series and to build a bridge between the events of M*A*S*H and W*A*L*T*E*R.

Viewers learn that O'Reilly returned to Iowa, where he failed at farming. He sold the farm and the livestock and sent his mother off to live with his aunt. His bride left him for another man after their honeymoon. O'Reilly decided to commit suicide, and went to a drug store to buy sleeping pills for an overdose (as well as aspirin, because sleeping pills give him headaches). The drugstore clerk, Victoria, cheered him up and they became good friends. His cousin Wendell helped him get a job on the police force. Walter solves a dispute between two strippers, and gets his wallet back from a young would-be thief whose father had died in Korea.

MALM again

I managed to finish assembling MALM last night without too much tsuris. It's sitting off to one side of our living room right now, looming like the monolith from 2001. Tomorrow (Saturday) we'll extract the old brokedy-ass dresser, vacuum the spot where it's sat for the past seven years, and wobble the new one over there. Huzzah!

Passages

Noted CNN host and crazy person Lou Dobbs has announced his immediate retirement from CNN.
"Over the past six months, it has become increasingly clear that strong winds of change have begun buffeting this country and affecting all of us," Dobbs said during his Wednesday broadcast. "And some leaders in media, politics and business have been urging me to go beyond the role here at CNN and to engage in constructive problem-solving as well as to contribute positively to a better understanding of the great issues of our day and to continue to do so in the most honest and direct language possible."

"And so today I announce my intention to finally apprehend the menace that has made a mockery of Our Broken Borders. Frito Bandito, your days are numbered!"