Fake meat in a can (better than it sounds!)

The editor of the Gay & Lesbian Review Magazine responded to my pitch for an in-depth comparison of the different versions of Brideshead Revisited - novel, miniseries and film - by saying he liked the pitch but it won't work out because it just so happens that they've published a piece on the movie version, featuring an interview with Julian Jarrold, in the issue that just came out! It's a bummer since of all the suggestions I got, that would probably have been the most perfect venue for the piece. So I'm kind of at an impasse with that. On a slightly more positive note, though, Out Magazine just wrote to tell me they're publishing my letter on the same topic in their next issue - the one I wrote in response to their piece on the recent re-issuing of the miniseries in a new DVD package.

Now to skip from obsessions present to obsessions past: I tracked down and ordered a case of Choplets and a case of Veja-Links, the hard-to-find meat substitute products I was introduced to by the Seventh-Day Adventist farm family who babysat me as a child back in Minnesota. They arrived today and were a delicious treat when I came home from job-hunting. They taste just like I remember them and I had an entire can of veja-links, then turned it over to see that serving size is "1 link." (Riiiight.) What IS it about textured vegetable protein, wheat gluten, etc. that is so compulsively scrumptious? And why is this particular brand (Worthington/Loma Linda) so hard to find? It's like one little lady is making them in a cottage in the Midwest or something, and she only supplies a limited number. Anyway, we'll eat well for a while.

Hair as white as snow

Monday 12/22/08

It is STILL SNOWING! In fact I heard 5-6 more inches expected today. I’ve never seen anything like it in all the time I’ve lived in the PDX metro area. It really is almost Minnesotan now. We should invite the drowning polar bears down to hang out and hunt seals. Kirk is downstairs right now opening his bottle of champagne and squeezing juice out of his little oranges to make fresh mimosas. We’ve patched things up although he continues to annoy me, and I him, all the time with almost every conversation we have. He’s been here three days now, using the blizzard as an excuse to escape his house and Cori, who I gather he’s a bit burnt out on. It’s been fun, like an extended slumber party. It’s a little hard to stay motivated, but all I have to do today is type up the Poison/Austin piece for Just Out and interview Kelli Dunham (lesbicomedienne) over the phone for another piece – stuff that doesn’t require leaving the house. Last night Kirk, Scott & I went for a walk around 11 p.m. after being locked in the house all day and going a bit stir crazy. Kirk turned back when we got to Glisan, but Scott & I walked all the way to Biddy McGraws – only to find it just closed! – and back, probably about 2.5 miles. It was nice to get some exercise, and it’s not that bad out when the wind doesn’t blow. Back at the house I finally persuaded them to watch 30 Rock and I think Kirk & Scott saw that it really is a great show. Kirk also made peanut butter cookies last night using a recipe from the Seventh-Day Adventist cookbook I got ages ago from Dave & Ann Reed! I found a copy of an old photo in it I’d forgotten about: me and young DeeDee playing on the tire swing back on the Reed farm, myself about 4 years old, and with a snow-white mullet! That hair would be so ironically cool in Portland right now.