Confessional poetry

I probably got a job once, one of my favorites, because I was too honest.

The interview was a bit awkward. The interviewer, a prominent physiologist, scanned over the application and said: "Most of this isn't interesting. But what about the My-Oh-My Club?" This was in 1984.

I stared, colored, doubted, and was silent for a moment. "It wasn't very respectable" was all that I could first choke out. But the man looked at me inquiringly, and I submitted. Here's one of those quotations that aren't exact, but which try to carry the meaning (see Thucydides). Important note: The interview was in Virginia, not in Texas, if that matters.

"Well, after Taco Bell rejected me that summer [1972], I was desperate. The My-Oh-My Club was the only place that would hire me. It was Austin's first place with totally nude dancing, though I worked as a waitress and thankfully, for all concerned, kept my clothes on. Between sets, the place showed porn flicks, some of them with pigs and horses."

As waitresses, by the way, we made no salary, only tips. But we made better money, most of the time, than the salaried dancers. For legal reasons back then, the club banned the placement of folding currency in a certain orifice, and in totally nude dancing, you can't just shove a bill into underwear.

I got the respectable job, which involved ferrying around scholarly manuscripts to reviewers. Later, I learned that the interviewer had known exactly what that dear, departed club was because another physiologist in the department hailed from Austin. And everyone, it seems, had been waiting for my arrival at the interview. I'm sure that the poor people were seriously disappointed by the sight of me.

Much later, the first physiologist asked me why I'd bothered to mention the My-Oh-My Club on my application. All I could say in answer was that the application form insisted on a full employment history.

"You should have lied," the good man told me, if not in so many words. Maybe I should have. But, hey, I did get that job! Honor won the day.

Truly whipped

I told a young woman to stand up for her principles.

Silly me. Principles rarely get anyone anywhere, and I should have advised compromise. I was on the verge of recommending sucking up, but a Cheeks post on ass-kissers made me see the folly of my ways. Fortuitous.

Still, I've never liked myself when I'm at my most angry; when I learn that people whom I hate hate me back, I'm appalled. And I've always recommended being nice to others, especially in the newsroom.

Just after the spouse and I bought our first VCR and were playing "Beverly Hills Cop," I had an odd confrontation with our most timid and paranoid cat, Leskhe, a cat who hadn't had much contact with either humans or other cats in the critical first few weeks.

I put her on a chair with our newest feline, and Leskhe, still fairly young, put up with it, probably intimidated by the gigantic human's interference in her life.

And then, while the spouse and I were taking a break from the movie, I went over and kissed the sleeping female. She bit me, hard, barely missing my eye, and then, having realized in absolute horror that she'd delivered her act of aggression not against a well-furred male cat but against one of her mammoth feeders, the poor kitty let out an extremely high-pitched squeal and ran for cover.

After I treated my wound, I sought Leskhe out. It was with difficulty that I pulled her from under a table. Once on my lap, however, she figured out that I had no intention of hurting her in retaliation. She started biting my hand -- in affection, I hope -- but I put a stop to that. Nicely, I hope.

I miss Leskhe. Here's an old column about her; my private title for it was "Pussywhipped."

Sept. 29, 2000

Leskhe L. Lemur was convinced, 17-1/2 years ago, that we intended to eat her.

Most cats inspect new living quarters; this one bolted right behind a couch. For two years, she sat in a defensible position, and stared out at us with suspicious eyes. In the kitchen, however, she lost her fear; if she thought us like the witch in "Hansel and Gretel," working resolutely to fatten the children up for dinner, she didn't care. Food was her prime imperative, and she bolted it, too.

The meek don't inherit the respect of other cats, and all but one of our little wretches have thrived on tormenting poor Leskhe, who clearly led a deprived early childhood and lacks your basic feline graces, such as grooming others and the ability to understand cat tussling as non-life-threatening. To compensate for her low status among her peers, it seems, she has, over the years, come to lord (or should the word be "lady"?) it over the spouse and me; her imperious yowl is ubiquitous.

Our 11-year-old, T. Tadger Tat (once known as Catius Catalepton, I'm ashamed to say), used to delight in pouncing on Leskhe as she exited from the litter box. Her reaction, ultimately, was to make palpable displays of her displeasure on the living-room floor. I felt her pain, indeed, and took to escorting her to the bathroom, where I'd close the door and wait for her offerings. Tadger, whose ears once pricked up at the sound of clay being scratched, lost interest in his youthful game back in 1992, yet to this day, Leskhe still demands her litter ritual. And she insists that I carry her out of the room after the deeds are done.

She who once showed some gratitude for our kitchen offerings now just delivers a "serve me now, vile giants" yowl. More than a year ago, the spouse decreed that we should stop this madness by feeding our babies elsewhere. All our five cats were outraged, of course, and spent several months trying to reverse this scandalous and upsetting situation, but four no longer seem to associate the kitchen with feeding.

Leskhe, however, whose name means "chat" in ancient Greek, knows that she can always talk her meek humans into shelling out a special treat, especially when one of us is foolish enough to hang out in the kitchen and cook. We are the ones now afraid -- that she'll bite the hand that doesn't feed her.

***************

My cat Leskhe (pronounced "Leskay," if you're interested) served as quality control on your recipe of the week.

No, she didn't eat it; she simply did her darnedest to kill it, and yet it lived and thrived.

When I mentioned the dish to our features editor, Louise Whall, she was horrified: pumpkin cheesecake made with tofu? Perhaps I shouldn't tell you this, but she's not a big pumpkin fan.

But the dish turned out to be really boffo, despite our now-oldest cat's assaults on my concentration.

I was so proud of myself. For years I've waited hours for unsalted butter, which I keep in the freezer, to come to room temperature. But this time, I was going to put my clever microwave to use. It seemed so easy to defrost it on low temperature; I could be a contender! But as I stuck it into the wretched appliance, which appears to date back at least 16 years, Leskhe wandered in and gave me her "I need half-and-half" yowls.

Milk products aren't good for most cats, but I've never been able to explain that to the stubborn cat, so I punched in the numbers for my maiden microwave butter defrosting, and then I turned to quiet the cat's imperatives. Alas, instead of microwaving the butter on the lowest temperature for an exploratory minute, I found, as I turned back to my cooking project, that I'd hit it with high power and asked for 10 minutes and 1 second of radiowave time. My six tablespoons of butter weren't soft, as the recipe required, but thoroughly melted. I briefly thought of putting the pathetic substance back into the freezer to firm it up, but time before work was too short. The graham-cracker crust was a royal pain to work with -- was it the fault of having melted butter? I have no idea. But the crust turned out quite edible, and with no extra sugar added. If you're skeptical, use your favorite version of the crust.

Back on my stride after two crusts were formed, I started dumping ingredients for the pumpkin filling into my food processor. Leskhe yowled again. After I'd placated her with a little more half-and-half, I turned back, but I'd forgotten that the recipe demanded that the blending process take more than one stage. As a result, I managed not to process the stuff fully; when I started to pour it into the crust, I found large lumps of cream cheese still present. I smashed them down as best I could and barreled ahead.

With these strikes against my pies, they still gained the spouse's coveted seal of approval. And I snarfed, too, unworried about calories as noble tofu danced down my gullet. OK, I did cheat just a trifle: The recipe in "The Whole Soy Cookbook (Three Rivers Press, 1998)" wants you to use soy margarine, but I disapprove of all margarine, and soy cream cheese, which doesn't seem to be easily available in these parts. And anyway, I didn't have any. So there.

Pumpkin-Tofu Cheesecake
Crusts:
2 cups graham-cracker crumbs (circa 16 whole crackers)
6 tablespoons unsalted butter (or soy margarine), slightly softened

Filling:
1-1/2 pounds silken tofu
1 cup canned or fresh-cooked pumpkin
1-1/4 cups white sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
12 ounces cream cheese (or soy cream cheese)
1 tablespoon(cq) vanilla extract

For crusts, process whole graham crackers in food processor, then add butter (or soy margarine) and pulse until the mixture reaches the consistency of coarse crumbs. (Greenberg says that you can use your blender; I doubt my cheesy little model would survive.) Pat the mixture into two 9-inch metal pie plates, and refrigerate while you make the filling.

For the filling, puree the tofu and pumpkin in your food processor (or in your blender at high speed). Add sugar, spices, cream cheese and vanilla, and process until fully smooth, scraping down sides as necessary.

Put the pies into a preheated 325-degree oven for 50 minutes, or until cheesecake mixture is firm. Turn the oven off, and leave the pies in the oven for 1 hour. Remove from oven and cool to room temperature. Refrigerate overnight. Serve cool.

N.B.: Greenberg suggests that, if you intend to keep the pies around for more than a day, you should use plain, not silken, tofu, as the fuller moisture content of silken tofu will lead to separation in the filling. Perhaps that's a problem with soy cream cheese, but my delightful little cream-cheesed pies survived happily despite their silken content.

Planned obsolescence?

What is wrong with DVDs? I'd been led to believe that VHS was easily corruptible, but that the tapes would have a decent lifespan of 20 years. Yes, in my VHS copy of "The Fabulous Baker Boys," the piano-top scene plays badly; I'd bought the VHS tape used, and the former owner or owners probably rewinded too much there.

But the DVDs in my short experience with them don't perform well. I'd seen a big problem while watching cable at my parents' house: On numerous occasions, a big scene would start shaking and then die; in one case, the tech in charge wasn't watching, and I had fun waiting to see the film start again. What's the frequency, Kenneth?

When I bought Wahlberg's "Rock Star" on DVD, my first copy wouldn't play at all. The replacement copy from Amazon wasn't new (the DVDs make the difference obvious in the opening screens), and too many scenes started to shake and rattle, or stutter, after one viewing.

Dammit, just now, a recently bought DVD of "American Dreamer" lost a key bit; I can still watch the flick, but I must flip to the next scene after this DVD crisis.

When I buy movies, I do it to see them over and over. I enjoy the convenience of watching films on the computer, but I abhor these drawbacks. Worst, I think, in comparison with VHS, is that one can't watch a small piece of a scene multiple (or myriad) times: We can't rewind (or fast-forward) at will.

The spouse and I have always been late to technology. His 1970 Camaro exchanged its eight-track music for cassette in Christmas 1989. We got our first CD player in 1995. We held back because he was sure that digital cassettes would transform the marketplace.

I've read that DVD technology is advancing, but that two platforms are competing in a nasty way. In 15 years, perhaps, I'll learn all about it.

Straight lines

I've been worrying myself in a big way over serious problems with tone and nuance. I can be snarky, God knows, but I do my best to avoid snarkiness. And yet when I reread all my straight lines, in the most sincere of e-mails, I start seeing other meanings than I'd intended, other tones.

My spouse thinks the impression of snideness a problem with e-mail. I see it as a problem in all writing. Have I been imbued with too much postmodernist lit crit?

A useful story

In late 1996, I wasted a lot of time typing up one of my favorite stories by Saki (H.H. Munro). It didn't occur to me until shortly afterward that I could just get it off the Web.

Here's how "The Lost Sanjak" begins:

The prison Chaplain entered the condemned’s cell for the last time, to give such consolation as he might.

‘The only consolation I crave for,’ said the condemned, ‘is to tell my story in its entirety to some one who will at least give it a respectful hearing.’

‘We must not be too long over it,’ said the Chaplain, looking at his watch.

The condemned repressed a shiver and commenced.

‘Most people will be of an opinion that I am paying the penalty of my own violent deeds. In reality I am a victim to a lack of specialization in my education and character.’

‘Lack of specialization!’ said the Chaplain.

‘Yes. If I had been known as one of the few men in England familiar with the fauna of the Outer Hebrides, or able to repeat stanzas of Camoëns’ poetry in the original, I should have had no difficulty in proving my identity in the crisis when my identity became a matter of life and death for me. But my education was merely a moderately good one, and my temperament was of the general order that avoids specialization. I know a little in a general way about gardening and history and old masters, but I could never tell you off-hand whether “Stella van der Loopen” was a chrysanthemum or a heroine of the American War of Independence, or something by Romney in the Louvre.’

The Chaplain shifted uneasily in his seat. Now that the alternatives had been suggested they all seemed dreadfully possible.

Saki runs wild in the rest of his tale. Genius.

Neese's Liver Pudding

I think about the column below with a degree of sadness. Part of the inspiration was a much-loved columnist at the Charlotte (N.C.) Observer who is no longer with us. When he wrote about liver pudding and asked for comments, he was amazed by my story. He wrote back to ask how a marriage could survive between a good Southerner and someone who doesn't eat meat.

After I got my column published, probably 14 years later, I received an angry response from a reader. The letter writer, who knew my husband but didn't know that he knew him (there are differing surnames in our mixed marriage!), informed me that in my column I had offended North Carolina, my husband, and one other thing that I can't remember. The writer also contended that I'd said "liver pudding" when I meant "liver mush," and he claimed that I'd been confused about the identity of the animal who had contributed its liver. I think that the letter writer and I became friends, or at least reconciled, through subsequent e-mails. Only a few years later, I learned that he had died.

I really hadn't meant to offend.
-----

My name is Alison, and I’m married to a Southerner.

Here’s proof, 200 proof, or at least 150: I recently let the spouse out of the house to forage for food, and he came home with two bunches of collards. At least he didn’t cook them with fatback, but, boy, did he cook them, and cook them, and cook them: He sautéed -- nay, saturated -- them first in liberal glubs(cq) of oil, then drowned them in water and flogged their pitiful corpses with at least two hours of brutal boiling.

I must take responsibility; I have only myself to blame. I knew what he was when I married him -- a vile murderer of some vegetables, and a complete bigot when it comes to others -- but love stole away my senses.

Perhaps I considered the potential for low humor, for I fastened on a lover of liver pudding. Liver pudding is a joke even on its home turf, North Carolina. And as I stood in supermarket lines with that slimy, grayish, lumpy rectangle of pig organ and denatured grain -- wrapped in clear plastic, to trumpet its presence to the world -- I would draw my hair closely around my face, hunch my shoulders together and look to the ground. Perhaps no one would recognize me, and perhaps I wouldn’t be able to hear the snickers. But hear them I did; people laughed and pointed at me and my liver pudding.

The spouse cooked it; he cooked it every day. Every day at breakfast in our North Carolina years, the pathetic boy would sizzle up two eggs and two or three slices of liver pudding, or LP, as I called it to avoid having to speak the ugly phrase. Over high heat, he’d let his eggs brown and toughen round the edges (they really snap, crackle and pop!) and his LP shrivel and turn a ghastly blackish-gray.

Day after day, month after month, year after year I watched this unsavory display of devil-may-care cooking, this gut-wrenching show of cruelty to the idea of food. And I watched. And finally, I snapped.

I, who hadn’t eaten meat in 10 years, suddenly saw myself lunge in desperation at his plate and snatch up a small, ragged triangle of the grotesque meaty mush. Yes, I did it -- I popped it into my mouth. I chewed. I swallowed.

Oh, it was foul. Burned and evil. Gaack. Ewwwww.

But my greatest agony was that I had abandoned my principles and only suffered for it: No moment of gloriously guilty pleasure would carry me through the rest of a plodding, virtuous life. No, of all the sublime and toothsome foods with which the world tempts the pure palate, I chose to stray with liver pudding.

The famous Austen sentence

The BBC "Pride and Prejudice" miniseries cuts it into two unequal parts. The first: "You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy." The "if you suppose that" is killed, and the next sentence that Ms. Ehle speaks begins with "The mode of your declaration merely spared me any concern I might have felt." The rewriting, I suppose, keeps her breath to swell her song.

A complaint

Why doesn't there seem to be an easily accessible DVD of "The Fabulous Baker Boys"? I had to buy my big brother a VHS copy.

I was stunned and outraged when I discovered, during a Sunday jazz brunch at Manuel's in Austin, that this brother had never seen that film. As I found after he got it, watched it, and drooled, he'd once met Michelle Pfeiffer at some school thing for kids. He didn't pounce, damn him.

The soap opera that I watched almost religiously from 1982 until 1994, "The Young and the Restless," stole the Pfeiffer-on-the-piano scene. The soap also stole the orgasm scene from "When Harry Met Sally."

Another bit of rambling: In my youth, back before videos, I watched "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" more than once. Ten cents a dance.

You saucy minx!

"You saucy minx!"

My big brother just addressed an e-mail to me with that subject line. It's a quotation from "Love Actually," a film I sent him recently.

The bro, who has sent me a number of videos in the past, including the Garson/Olivier "Pride and Prejudice" and "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm," had just sent me the Keira Knightley "P&P," apparently having bought the thing on the day it was first available on DVD. I immediately sent him, or had Amazon send him, "Love Actually" and "Notting Hill."

"Love Actually" worried him. Some of the stories didn't end happily enough for him, a guy. I recommended, and I recommend, the extra scenes on the DVD, especially the first one.

"Notting Hill" also worried my elder brother a bit. Not very likely, was it?

I had to yell: "Stop taking these things so seriously!"

He just got one of my latest shipments: "You've Got Mail." When I watched that flick a few days ago, several years after I'd first seen it on TV, I was a tad uncomfortable with it. But I wholeheartedly endorse its stand on zingers.

In my youth, by the way,I memorized the following famous sentence from Austen's "Pride and Prejudice": "You are mistaken, Mr. Darcy, if you suppose that the mode of your declaration affected me in any other way than as it spared me the concern which I might have felt in refusing you, had you behaved in a more gentlemanlike manner." But try to say it without losing breath. I'll have to look at the BBC "Pride and Prejudice" again to see how it's done.

A final note: I'm not trying to stand up for Mrs. Thatcher here.

Another movie reference

I just responded to a beloved interlocutor with "Damn you, Rebecca Ryan!" He won't get it, probably, unless he looks on the Web. Short answer: See "American Dreamer."

Happy endings

Dan Puckett's lovely blog makes me ashamed of my taste in movies. In movies, I always fall for the formulaic pieces with happy endings. I haven't seen a movie in a movie theater since "Sense and Sensibility," and the only film I went to over and over (four times?) while in its first run was Stallone's first "Rocky."

Here's what's weird: I love Greek tragedy. I particularly love Euripides' "Medea" and Sophocles' "Ajax." I can deal with unhappy endings when I expect them (though the endings in those plays were meant to be unexpected, as was that in Sophocles' "Oedipus Rex"). Hell, for years I wrote headlines counting the number of dead.

Still, in my light entertainment, and especially at my age (I was born in 1954, a year before Dan Puckett's 1955), I go for pieces that don't depress me. Puckett mentions a Swayze flick that I've never seen; for that matter, I've never seen "Ghost." But I did just get "Dirty Dancing" on DVD.

Heath Ledger? My lust for the young fellow was storied. But I've seen only one of his films (on satellite; it made me late for work): "10 Things I Hate about You." I refused to watch "The Patriot" after I learned of Ledger's character's fate, and I couldn't watch "A Knight's Tale" after a few minutes. I've never gotten around to renting any of the guy's other films. Dan Puckett's blog note has made me want to see "Brokeback Mountain," but wait! Won't the movie depress me?

In my rash youth, of course, back in the 1960s and early 1970s, I did seek out and like bleak films. But that was in another lifetime, and besides, the wench is dead.

Banned

Sheesh. I'm now banned from testycopyeditors.

Oh, well. I had fun while it lasted.

Persona non grata

I'm persona non grata at testycopyeditors.org. Probably half of my posts there are deleted by the management. True, what I write is often a digression; I can't help that, can I? But some of my best stuff has been canned.

My reference, for example, to a book review that almost made it to the AA-S:

The new hystericism: Whole lotta shaking going on (joke headline, of course)
---------
Rachel Maines, _THE TECHNOLOGY OF ORGASM: "Hysteria," the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction_, Johns Hopkins (1999)
--------
The job of sex, indeed. Too few men have ever wanted to do it right, historian Rachel Maines writes, so physicians have been forced to step in since at least the time of Hippocrates.

...
*********

And what about my reference to bad behavior inspired by newspaper jargon? Yes, after reading a job posting on the Web, I responded to the phrase "send tears to ..." with the reprehensible e-mail "Would you like them in small vials or in Mason jars?" Things got uglier after that, alas.

Still, I myself kill quite a few of my testycopyeditors posts right after I've put them in.

Workers meekly eat what they're fed

(Sunday, Dec. 24, 2000)

It's not good form to look a gift meal in the mouth. Show me free food and I'll usually follow it anywhere. For any crumb that comes my way, be it ever so humble, I'll gratefully yelp: "Please, sir, I want some more."

Usually. But put me in the place of Bob Cratchit, and I'll be the one snarling and barking "Bah, humbug" at such goodies as my hapless employer brings to the table.

I'm not as cynical as I once was. Back in the last century, in months when News-Leader employees had been good, we were treated to a Wednesday cookout of hamburgers and hot dogs, plus squeezy-soft white-bread buns, sweet and gooey potato salad and perhaps even some oily potato chips thrown in for good measure. My vile theory? That our bosses were doing their malnutritional best to cut short our retirement years.

How ungenerous of me! We haven't had one of those little celebrations in a good, long time; no doubt the company is struggling with severe guilt over its food failures of old.

Oddly enough, I was almost alone in my outrage. We had no picket lines, no angry mobs of bedraggled workers shouting "Give me nutrition or give me death!"

Perhaps they're all too weak from lack of decent food. Heck, my sheeplike co-workers rarely complain about our invariable year-end bonus -- a small turkey or a smaller ham.

I was finally going to take a stand! But when, in a fit of meatless pique, I threatened to resurrect the long-dormant Suggestion Box and lodge a protest, one of my superiors nearly wept in horror and begged me: "Don't do it, Alison! Next year, we might get nothing at all!"

Would that be so bad? Let's show some backbone, darn it! Sometimes less is more -- and nothing is most. Take last week's newsroom Christmas meal (please!). The fare was hardly calculated to give some of us needed protein or give anyone a surfeit of vitamins. The one redeeming feature was the mashed potatoes.

So here's my rallying cry for the overfed and undernourished. Workers of the Ozarks, unite! Let us all demand this glorious menu next year: Peanut, Tofu and Sesame Soup; Wheat Germ Loaf; Dandelion Salad; and Elegant Yogurt Compote.

And for our bonus? A tastefully decorated tin of soy nuts. Talk about comfort and joy. No, don't thank me.

Kenny Wayne

I wrote the following column in the year 2000. My friend, Kate, was only 30 or so. In fact, she put me through hell. It was cold outside at the end of the concert, but the roadies had suggested that we could get autographs from the band members, and Kate was young and idealistic. So Kate and I waited for two hours in hopes of signatures while the best and the cutest strode through the doors of the tour bus. I didn't buy Kenny Wayne's next album, though I did download the two songs with Noah Hunt. OK, so I'm an old romantic.

From the year 2000:

Fine. So the spouse walked out on me last Monday. I'd worked out my revenge.

The old turncoat wasn't yet out the door when my young date arrived to whisk me off for a hot night in center city: dinner and a concert, and maybe even some dancing.

The spouse put on a happy face about his trip to Columbia, Mo., for five (count 'em) days of dry lectures on orality and literacy in olden times. But envy was surely gnawing away at his innards. "Kate" (as I'll call her) and I were on our way to a true feast of the inner child: grooving (or whatever word youngsters use nowadays) to the Websters and the Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band. After 15 staid years in Springfield, off and on, I plunged into the music scene with both feet forward.

"Kate" knew my middle-aged fears; she knew I had ear plugs at the ready. But she had no mercy. After we indulged in some serious carbo-loading on South Street, my date lined us up outside the Juke Joint, and, once inside, staked out a position right in front of the stage, and the speakers.

I expected to retreat, and quickly. But I was paying the spouse back, and it isn't often that 46-year-old women are given the license to ogle good-looking young men. So I ogled. And I hung fast in front of the stage, for more than 3 1/2 hours.

I still look back in anguish. While "Kate" was dancing and waving and whistling with the best of them, I just stood there for most of the night, stiff and self-conscious. I was fiddling so desperately with my ear plugs that even the grim bouncer posted in front of us chuckled. And a nymphet in heavy makeup and little else, who squeezed up beside me to flaunt her wares to the musicians and roadies, actually apologized to me for hurting my ears with her squealing. Man, I felt old.

But I got into the swing of things. By the end of the night, even I was dancing. I had to: After hours in one position, my legs were falling asleep. Perhaps the nymphet knew that -- as she dashed off to the band's bus once the music stopped, she kicked over a bottle of beer onto my feet as a wake-up call.

Revenge? I'll bet that the spouse had it all planned.

************

I survived a night on the town with impressive stamina for a woman of my age.

Perhaps I was driven to greatness solely by the sight of young rock hunks. But I suspect that a fine plate of pasta from a South Street bistro was the real source of my amazing energy.

The dish I offer you here isn't half as fancy as the one that got me through the evening. But it's easy -- not a recipe that will drain any cook, young or old. I found it in "The Complete Vegetarian Pasta Cookbook" (Chartwell Books, 1995), edited by Emma Callery.

Pinwheel Pasta Bake

1 1/2 pounds of dried rotelle (multicolored wagon-wheel pasta), cooked and drained
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 cloves of garlic, crushed and minced
1/2 pound of mushrooms, quartered
1 cup of chopped zucchini
3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
1/2 cup vegetable broth
11/2 cups of grated sharp Cheddar cheese

Heat olive oil in a large pan, then saute garlic for 2 minutes. Add mushrooms and zucchine and cook, covered, for 5 minutes, or until softened. Stir in parsely and vegetable broth, and cook, covered, for 10 minutes more. Add the rotelle, then stir in the Cheddar. Put mixture into a deep casserole dish, and bake, in an oven preheated to 400 degrees, for about 20 minutes.

Basketball follies

I'm constantly dating myself -- wait, that sounds wrong! -- with my references. But I was always inept. I've just learned how to spell Pete Carril's last name, and I went to several of his games when I was an undergraduate, and I have always worshipped him. When I was a graduate student at UNC, I wondered for a couple of years what Dean Smith's first name was. My husband was slack-jawed when I finally asked.

I still have a crush on the late Jim Valvano. Phi Slamma Jamma indeed.
I still remember the headline "Yes, Virginia, there is a Chaminade."

Wanna hear about my long-standing passion for Kurt Rambis? OK, that's pro ball. My lust for him started when we were stuck far from Chapel Hill and couldn't get any ACC games on the television. That was in the early 1980s. In 1999, my screen saver at work was Rambis in a three-piece suit when he was head L.A. coach. I still love him.

Sic transit gloria mundi.