Scary Halloween Story

Fantastic Video: Eric Church

I never heard of Eric Church before but this is the best video I've seen in ages:

Movies Where You Can't Believe What You're Seeing

I was just reading in NY Magazine or someplace that a theater in NY is going to show one of my all time favorite movies and one that has been unavailable for years and is also one of those movies that is so fascinating, bizarre and just so original that you can't quite believe what you are seeing on the screen. When I saw this movie in the 70's it was called Outback. The book's and the original Australian film title is Wake in Fright. It's the story of a teacher (Gary Bond) on holiday who is going to Sydney to meet his girlfriend but some how ends up stuck in a small, crazy town called  Bundanyabba or just theYabba. There is a lot of drinking, shooting stuff (kangaroos) and playing of a weird coin-toss game. The fact that it is being shown in a theater in the US may be good news. Perhaps it will be released to DVD sometime in the near future. Meanwhile... here's the trailer:
Outback or Wake in Fright

Austrailia seems to be the home of some amazingly visionary filmmakers. If you haven't seen the how could anyone ever come up with a script like this Welcome to Woop Woop then you really need to find a way to see it. It is outrageously can't look away and truly insane. A small time gangster and bird smuggler (Jonathan Schaech) follows his escaped flock back to Australia where he rents a van and picks up this nubile nymphet  (Susie Porter) who takes him home to Daddy and the family in the town of Woop Woop where the family business is canning dog food (kangaroo, again) and singing Rodgers and Hammerstein songs. It really must be seen to be believed.
Here's the trailer:


Then there is one of the most oddball American movies I've ever seen, The Dark Backward starring Judd Nelson (as Marty) and Bill Paxton (as Gus) as garbage men in a sort of post-apocalyptic grimy city-scape. Marty has dreams of being a stand-up comic and Gus is his # 1 fan and accompanies him on the accordion. Marty is a huge flop, that is... until something happens that changes everything. He starts growing a third arm out of his back and...his career seems to take-off. This is another case of how did anyone come up with this concept and then create a fantastically other-worldy scuzzy, dirty setting. You really have to see this one!
The Dark Backward

And, lastly, another US movie, one that is not just unbeleivably off the wall ... but also funny and deserving of some real love for a great cast that includes Keith Carradine, Sally Kirckland and... in his best role, ever, Tom Waits. It revolves around horses, jewels and a road trip. Don't miss this one. It's a ...shall we say, gem!
(This is the only trailer I could find. From Video Detective)

Where I've Been

First off...I have to apologise to all my great friends who've been calling and e-mailing me to find out where the heck I've been all summer that I can only explain with the following visual aid. I believe ALL will be clear by the end.
Let us begin at the beginning. The 2012 Goodwin Library Seed Swap:













The seed companies sent some fantastic seeds. Combined with the seeds I sent away for I had a super variety of tomatoes to grow plus other things...but as you know from my tomato blog a couple of years ago, I am all about growing tomatoes!














Because we don't have a greenhouse, sometimes growing tomatoes from seed on a window ledge can be iffy...so we always buy some plants from Dr. Tomato at Blue Seal Feed.








Maybe it was growing the seed in the shed that John fixed up or the compost or whatever...but the seed all germinated!





This was an incredible year for growing... maybe the BEST SUMMER ever for our garden. Soon it was time to plant everything outside.

I  planted all the tomatoes, the ones from seed and the plants. Everything started growing like crazy! It was hard to keep up with all the weeding and watering of the 34 raised beds!

      
The seed tomatoes started to ripen



And ripen and ripen and ripen. ALL the tomatoes were ripening...
at the same time!

Now...what to do with all of them?



I dehydrated some. And turned the rest (we gave away a LOT, too) into sauce and relish and tomato jam...

Two kinds of tomato jam

There were STILL so MANY tomatoes to deal with... day after day, night after night of picking and cooking and freezing and canning. I would see tomatoes in my SLEEP! I had tomato NIGHTMARES:

But in the end.. I won the tomato battle