1. I decided back in 2018 to enhance my smart Vizio viewing experience by purchasing an Amazon Fire Stick. Last week, after nearly four years, my Fire Stick crapped out. I bought a new one. It arrived on Monday and today I read the installation instructions emailed to me by Amazon, watched a video, and read the printed materials that came with the product.
I over prepared!
Installing my new Fire Stick was a breeze.
With the Criterion Channel back in action on the Vizio, I decided to dip into the channel's featured Bill Wilder collection and watch Double Indemnity, a movie I've heard and read much praise for over many years, but had never seen.
In it, Fred MacMurray plays a vain insurance salesman who joins forces with an unhappily married woman played by Barbara Stanwyck to cash in on an accident insurance policy they tricked the woman's husband into purchasing.
I won't spoil the movie by telling how the two got into cahoots in the first place nor will I reveal how the scheme they plotted works out.
I will say that if you enjoy black and white movies, especially one like Double Indemnity, in which the interplay between light and shadow, between spaces of openness and confinement are an external portrayal of the inward lives of these characters, then you will probably enjoy the visual artistry of Double Indemnity and the way it explores the dark inner regions of both of these characters. The look of the movie significantly enhances the twists and turns of the plot.
2. Last week, I got out the crab shells I put in the freezer back in February when Debbie, Christy, Diane, and I enjoyed the Elks Crab Feed at home. Over a few days, I made a batch of crab stock.
I used one of those quarts today to make a chowder, not a fish chowder, but a potato, corn, onion, carrot, and celery chowder. It was kind of a cross between corn chowder and potato soup. It was easy enough. I made a pool of olive oil in the bottom of the Dutch oven and heated it up. I added the chopped vegetables to the oil, sprinkled some flour over them, and cooked them until the onion was soft. I then poured the crab stock over the vegetables and brought the liquid to a boil, turned down the heat, and let the vegetable cook until they were no longer hard, but not mushy either. My last move was to add whole milk to the pot, heat the chowder some more, and, within an hour, I ladled myself a bowl of this comforting concoction, not too thin, not too thick, seasoning it only with some black pepper.
3. As I have written in this blog about 4,000,000 times, for the most part, I rarely ride the binge watching train. Another series I love, along with Midnight Diner, that I have never binge watched, and that I've been watching episode by episode for about six or seven years now is Foyle's War.
This evening I took some time to figure out what the last episode I watched had been and I tuned into the first episode of the fifth season.
Entitled "Plan of Attack", this story begins with Foyle's life after having left the police force, the struggles the department is having in his absence, and zeros in on the death of a devout Roman Catholic mapmaker who is, deep within himself, a conscientious objector to the war, but, despite the moral conflicts he experiences, continues to contribute his expertise to the war effort. He seeks counsel from a local priest, a German refugee, who escaped Nazism before the World War II broke out.
As with so many episodes of Foyle's War, this one deftly ties together story lines which at first seem unrelated, but which work together to unfold shocking developments in and around Hastings.
One more thing: I got so absorbed in cooking, eating, and reading film scholars' reflections on *Double Indemnity* that I forgot tonight was Poetry Break night. Bill Davie's reading starts at 7:00, but I didn't tune in until about a quarter after seven. I'm not sure what I missed, but I got to hear some astonishing poems and I know I can go to YouTube and watch what Bill read before I tuned in.
This life of movies, cooking, and listening to poetry can be hard to keep straight at times!
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