Armenia, Azerbaijan maintain tentative ceasefire

Yerevan, Armenia: Opera House at center.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

At the time of this writing, an uneasy but long sought peace is holding in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region.

Reuters has a good overview of the current situation. The history of the conflict, dating to the Soviet era, defies succinct explication. Suffice to say, hard feelings run deep. It's the kind of conflict that claims the lives of soldiers who were born after it started, the kind of intractable tit for tat that has run so long, no one remembers, as if it would matter, who inflicted the first insult.

Baku, Azerbaijan: me in my happy place.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

In an offensive last week, Azerbaijan gained control of disputed territory it had possessed on paper but not on the ground. A deal was struck to trade the surrender of separatists for the peaceable integration of ethnic Armenians into Azerbaijan. Still, the peace has been tested by skirmishes and allegations of human rights violations. Armenian and Azerbaijani authorities have traded accusations and threats. Presently, the ceasefire is holding. But ethnic Armenians untrusting of Azerbaijan's pledge or unwilling to be integrated are migrating by the thousands from the disputed region to Armenia.

Armenian flag, near Yerevan
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

I visited both Armenia and Azerbaijan in the spring. I met young veterans on both sides. Some had fared all right with lighter duties. Many had seen hot conflict and bore scars both physical and emotional.

What saddened me most was how much the vets were the same on both sides: good young people whose lives had been upended. They believed in their causes, but could scarcely cite a motivation besides a string of offenses of the other. A few even acknowledged that they saw themselves across the front lines and felt remorse for being thrust into conflict with people their own age, as foreign to the origins of the war as they were. Vets on both sides spoke of their families' fears for their safety and their own fears that if they have children, they will be drafted into the same cycle of war.

Azerbaijani flag, Baku
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

At risk of oversimplifying the conflict with an outsider's lamentation on the futility of it all, how could I not wonder at the opportunity cost in so much energy and so many lives, and at whether or why a political solution cannot be found to end the fear and sacrifice.

I enjoyed my time in both countries immensely. Both countries boast stunning sights, from Armenia's extraordinary Matenadaran, a library of ancient manuscripts in Yerevan (reminding me of my beloved Old Library at Trinity Dublin), and ancient Temple of Garni, to Azerbaijan's Ateshgah Fire Temple and towering Bibi-Heybat Mosque.

RJ Peltz-Steele
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

In Providence, Rhode Island, this weekend—not meaning to choose sides, but seizing an opportunity—my wife and I went to Armenia Fest RI, where the ex-pat and ethnic Armenian community put on a fabulous celebration of food, music, and culture. The event, on Armenia Street aside the Sts. Vartanantz Armenian Apostolic Church, was well attended despite a pouring rain. Here are some images (RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), savory and sweet.

Rap Snacks reinvents the potato chip for Americans

Mapco Rap Snacks rack.
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Peckish in a Mapco convenience store in Memphis last weekend, I was confronted unexpectedly with a wall of provocative pleasures: rapper potato chips.

It turns out Rap Snacks has been around since 1994. It was the brainchild of Philadelphia native, Miami-based entrepreneur James Lindsay, CEO.  According to his bio, Lindsay cut his teeth in marketing in ethnic hair products. In 1994, he thought to partner with Universal Records, simultaneously capitalizing on and expanding the brands of rappers and hip-hop artists, selling chips (crisps) and quickly building a $5m company.

Recently I binged season 11 of Jared Keeso's brilliant, if not safe for work, Canadian sitcom, Letterkenny. In episode 1, "Chips," the gang debates the best potato chip. They rightly note that flavored chips were pioneered in North America by Canadians, who have long had a more diverse chip palate than Americans. Flavors such as dill, ketchup, and roast chicken have been around for decades. I remember being awed by the range of available delights when I first visited my cousins in Ontario in 1989.

The chìp de résistance of the Canadian market is the "all-dressed." Mainer Liz Provencher for Thrillist sang the chip's praises, describing its mélange: "a masterpiece of ketchup, barbecue, sour cream and onion, and salt and vinegar flavors all rolled into one chip." When the characters of Letterkenny debated the best chip, they agreed that the all-dressed would have to be excluded, or there would be no contest.

The Lil Baby "All In."
RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

In recent years, the American market has at last evinced some appetite to experiment, and Rap Snacks has obliged. The colorful packaging of artist visages is complemented by a range of daring flavors. Hoping to seize on an American equivalent of the all-dressed, I selected a chip that had a lot going on. The Lil Baby "All In" chip boasts "salt & vinegar, BBQ, onion, garlic, and more."

Mmmm. The All In was Right On. Welcome to America, flavor. 

You can find Rap Snacks with the store locator, or order in bulk online. Visit the flavor booth to put your own face on a bag of chips.

Burgundian Liège Belgian waffles melt in mouth

The Burgundian, Attleboro, Mass.
(All photos RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.)

Following up my post last week about an IP/contract battle between Massachusetts makers of Belgian waffles, I felt I should—nay, I felt I must, as an objective researcher in the savory social sciences—travel to the Burgundian of Attleboro, Mass., and sample the waffle products myself. I did so yesterday.

Burgundian's classy, European-esque interior

Alas, my investigation did little to draw me toward one conclusion or another on the merits of the case. But I can confirm that Shane Matlock's Burgundian waffles are the most scrumptious morsels of doughy goodness that ever have crossed my lips.

Chicken and waffles, the southern classic that I didn't know about before I married a Louisianan.
Yet I've never had it better, now, than here in New England.
Not pictured: my wife's burger and fries and a couple of local beers on draft.

 

"Banana churros" dessert at the Burgundian.
Yeah, that happened. I'm not proud.

As long as I'm confessing my sin of gluttony today, a shout out to a post-pandemic-new and exceptional establishment in my home state of Rhode Island, Hunky Dory in Warren. My wife confirms that this "southern-influenced celebration of New England" from dachshund Sherbert's parents Sam—himself of "southern mama and Appalachian dad"—and Bay Stater Joanna delivers on its promise.

The "veggie and sweet potato hash" feat. "smoked poblano crema,"
and a "basic brunch" at Hunky Dory, Warren, R.I.
We devoured "Mom's zucchini bread" before I could snap a picture.

The outdoor patio at Hunky Dory with its thriving vegetable garden

We can't wait to go back for dinner. Bon appétit.

Belgian-waffle makers battle over whose doughy goodness won pride of place on Oprah's list

PxHere CC0

Two Massachusetts business are embroiled in a mouth-watering lawsuit over waffles and Oprah.

Oprah's 2021 "favorite things" featured "Eastern Standard Provisions Gourmet Liège Belgian Waffle Gift Box." Yum.

Eastern Standard Provisions is based in Waltham, Mass., and lists its "Classic Liège Belgian Waffles" for sale online. Here's the pitch:

Our artisanal Classic Liège Belgian Waffles are crafted with real butter and pearl sugar imported from Belgium for a light, sweet crunch. Our Classic Liège Belgian Waffles are different than other waffles you may be used to. Most waffles are made with batter, but our Classic Liège Belgian Waffles are made from dough delivering a soft, brioche-like texture and a one-of-a-kind waffle experience.

This is not Eastern Standard's Oprah debut. Its "artisanal soft pretzels" made the grade in 2019.

But wait. Based in Attleboro, Mass., the Burgundian gourmet street-food brassiere claims in a lawsuit (via WCVB) that Oprah picked Burgundian waffles for the list, because Eastern Standard ripped off the Burgundian recipe it had learned under a non-disclosure agreement when the two explored a co-branding venture.

According to the lawsuit, Burgundian founder Shane Matlock learned how to make the Liège waffles while serving in the U.S. Army, when, for three of 15 years, he was stationed on the France-Belgium border, and, the Burgundian website says, he premiered the waffles in Providence, Rhode Island (my home state, near Attleboro) in 2017.

All I know for sure is that I now have a craving for waffles.

The case is The Burgundian LLC v. Hawthorne Food Co. (Mass. Super. Ct. Suffolk Dep't Bus. Litig. Sess. filed Feb. 3, 2022).  The plaintiff alleges, inter alia, breach of contract, violation of state trade secret law, passing off, false advertising, and unfair trade practices.

Brood X cicadas taste terrible, but teach life lessons

A Brood X cicada that emerged early, in 2017
(Flickr by Katja Schulz CC BY 2.0)

If you're like me, the emergence of Brood X cicadas on the mid-Atlantic American seaboard induces more anxiety than is healthy.

I met Brood X face to face only once, when I was a teenager in Baltimore, Md., in 1987.  Every 17 years, the big red-eyed bugs realize that heaven is a place on earth, not under it, and they rise up with a screeching rhythm that's gonna get you.  Unlike locusts, cicadas are clumsy fliers and seem oblivious to humans as a threat.  So simply going outside invites cicadas to crash into your nicest denim jacket.

This time, the cicadas have failed to anticipate a new human threat.  People are popping cicadas onto the grill for purportedly finger-licking-worthy indulgence.  

Fried cicadas in China, 2013
(Flickr by Sharon Hahn Darlin, who didn't eat them, CC BY 2.0)

The appeal escapes me.  Persons of ordinary sensibilities are horrified by cicadas.  CBS News aptly labeled a story on Brood X, "Warning: Graphic images."  Haley Weiss is a normal person.  She wrote for The Atlantic:

Nowhere was that shellfish flavor more evident than in the oven-roasted cicada, though I was quickly distracted from that thought by the realization that the bug had exploded in my mouth like a Gusher. My tongue awash in bug guts, I reconsidered all the choices I’d made in my life that had brought me to that moment.

Oh, heads up, the FDA warns not to eat cicadas if you're allergic to shrimp.  Because that makes sense.

Well, another voice in the inexplicable camp of cicada supporters is my uncle, Tom Peri, a Baltimore biology teacher with a new video series about Brood X.  In four short installments, Buggin' Out with Mr. Peri is now available on Facebook from Notre Dame Preparatory School (NDP).  Each short installment teaches us, as Mr. Peri puts it, that cicadas "aren't the monsters you think they're going to be."  In episode 1, Mr. Peri promises us life lessons to be learned from the humble cicada, such as, "you're at your best when you're rising from a low point." 

Give Buggin' Out a try (ep. 1, 2, 3, 4), and especially share it with kids.  Maybe we can condition young minds to think differently from mine.  Then, in 2038, our only anxiety will be over which cicada food truck to choose.

An NDP upper-level science teacher with decades of classroom experience, Tom Peri won a prestigious Lead. Learn. Proclaim. Award from the National Catholic Educational Association in 2018.  He is a former headmaster of St. John’s Prospect Hall and Towson Catholic High School.

Report from a Social Distance Week 8: Speaking of Football, Magic, and Beer ...

Del's is a Rhode Island tradition.  (Photo by Lady Ducayne CC BY-NC 2.0.)

This will be my last weekly report for a while.  I've tried to make it extra savory.  My law school cut summer compensation, so my lemonade from lemons will be much less screen time in the next three months.  These eight "Reports from Quarantine" / "Reports from a Social Distance" have been a lot of fun to write, and I'm grateful for the positive feedback you've sent, dear reader.  Nevertheless, it feels like work anytime a laptop is staring back at you.

Though still experiencing a record-cold spring, the temperature here is at last topping 60°F (15.5°C) as many days as not.  My sprained ankle seems healed, thanks to my Instagram medical team, so I'm looking forward to more time out of the house.  We're reopening in Rhode Island, but there's not yet any timeline for phase 2, much less phase 3.  As I wrote yesterday, people's patience is wearing thin even here in staid New England.  Here's hoping that falling infection numbers bear out our anxious economic plan.

This has been my week 8 since coming home from Africa, and week 8 at home.  Literally, at home.

What I'm Reading

Mary Sidhwani, How to Find the True Self Within: Secrets of Relieving Stress and Anxiety (2019).  I'm not the self-help sort.  But my aunt wrote this book.  I can't imagine a more fitting title to kick off my time away from work.  I'm only as far as the introduction, and I'm keeping an open mind.  Audio chapters are available also.  Dr. Sidhwani is the compassionate soul behind the Women's Therapeutic Health Center, based in Ellicott City, Maryland.

John Maynard, The Aboriginal Soccer Tribe (2019).  This unusual nonfiction selection was a gift—name drop ahead 🤭—from Bonita Mersiades, whom I met last year at Play the Game, and of whom I became an instant admirer.  Mersiades is known in world sport circles as "the Australian whistleblower" for exposing FIFA corruption in soliciting nations' World Cup bids years before the 2015 indictments made whistleblowing fashionable.  She suffered enormously for the perceived betrayal, persecuted both professionally and personally.  Watch her talk about it at Play the Game, or read my account of the session.  A powerful personality already schooled in fighting the establishment as an executive in women's sport, Mersiades was not so easily deterred.  She wrote her own book, aptly titled Whatever It Takes: The Inside Story of the FIFA Way (2018); started her own boutique publishing house, Fair Play; and became a renowned commentator on the global business of football.

Knowing my interest in comparatism and sport and society, including research on Australian indigenous media, Mersiades gifted me the 2019 Maynard release.  John Maynard hails from a Worimi Aboriginal community on coastal New South Wales. He is a professor of indigenous history at the University of Newcastle in Callaghan.  Maynard's cultural-comparative work has set Aboriginal politics alongside African American and Native American policy problems.  He's also an avid football fan, and this book is a definitive biography of soccer and Aboriginal society.  The 2019 book from Fair Play is actually a revised update of an out-of-print 2012 original.  If you're a football fan, or you want to buy a gift for one, check out Fair Play's many other titles, too.  They include histories of Aston Villa, Liverpool, and Everton, as well as other socio-cultural studies of Asia and Brazil.

The 12 Minor Prophets.  With our church, we continue our year-long reading program, moving on to the intriguing teachings of the 12 minor prophets.  As usual, the BibleProject has fabulous drawing videos, starting with Hosea, Joel, Amos, and Obadiah.  Worship services are continuing online for now, and, as always, all are welcome, 0930 EDT on Sundays.

What I'm Watching

The English Game (2020).  This limited series was developed for Netflix by none other than Julian Fellowes (Downton Abbey).  Its six episodes are sometimes in a clumsy rush to deliver its upstairs-downstairs social message.  Overall, though, this story about the origins of association football (soccer) in late-1870s England makes for a thoroughly rewarding work of television.  The series uses football, today the world's game, as a lens through which to view evolving society.  The show brings within its scope not only thinning social strata, but emerging women's and labor rights.  Football itself was at a pivotal point of development at this time, transitioning from elite pastime to professional play, and introducing a more sophisticated form of passing play, recognized as the norm today, relative to a simple strategy of dribbling attack.

The story of a working-class mill team making an unprecedented run to steal the FA cup from elite-establishment collegiate players is very loosely based on real events.  Read more at the publication of your choice: Daily Mail, Digital Spy, Esquire, Express, i news, Mirror, Radio Times, The Spectator, or The Telegraph.  Kevin Guthrie is stately as earnest Scottish footballer Fergus Suter; Guthrie was Abernathy in Fantastic Beasts.

The Great (2020).  I watched the first few episodes of HBO's Catherine the Great with the resplendent Helen Mirren, who received a Golden Globe nomination for the lead role.  I've been embarrassed to admit that I found the show too slow and didn't finish it.  Now comes Hulu's The Great to tell me, it's OK, and to make Catherine's remarkable story so much more delightfully digestible.  This dark comedy features Elle Fanning (Maleficent's Princess Aurora and Dakota Fanning's sister) as Catherine and Nicholas Hoult (X-Men's Beast, the big screen's J.R.R. Tolkien, and the most recent Watership Down's Fiver) as Peter III.

At times laugh-out-loud funny and taking great liberties with history—TV Catherine only arrives in Russia for her wedding to the already-emperor, whereas the real Princess Sophia had been brought to court decades earlier—the story is, as the show's title card disclaims, "occasionally true"—as in portraying Count Orlov, played ably furtively by Sacha Dhawan (Doctor Who's latest Master), as an enlightened co-conspirator in Catherine's inevitable coup. The magnificent sets meant to emulate 18th-century Russian imperial opulence include one real Italian palace and several English castles and houses.  Be warned, there are brief and highly fictionalized portrayals of violence against animals.

The Politician s1 (2019).  This creation from Glee trio Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, and Ian Brennan was much hyped, but ... weird.  I was interested enough to watch it all the way through.  But Glee it is not.  The Politician lives somewhere amid a wicked ménage à trois of Napolean Dynamite, My So-Called Life, and Alex P. Keaton.  Dear Evan Hansen's defining stage star Ben Platt snagged a Golden Globe nomination for the lead role, and he's terrific.  But the story of a socially awkward teen hell-bent on winning his high school presidency as a ticket-punch on his life-road to the White House is more aimless in the execution than the funny trailers suggest. Season two is expected in June; I'll probably skip it.

Good Eats Reloaded s1-s2 (2018-2020).  Devoted fans of the 14-season Food Network phenomenon that was Good Eats (1999-2012), we went twice to see cinematographer-turned-food-guru Alton Brown share his scientific approach to the culinary art on stage, in 2014 and 2016.  At the latter show, Brown caused an eruption of audience elation upon a cryptic clue that Good Eats might be coming back.  It has, and season 15, retitled Good Eats: The Return, is now free to view in 13 episodes at the Food Network online.  In the interim, Brown made two seasons of Good Eats Reloaded, the second coming out weekly now from the Cooking Channel, available there and on other platforms.  At first I did not want to watch Reloaded, because they looked like just rebroadcasts of the old show.  I was wrong; they're much more.

Hosted by Brown, Good Eats Reloaded is an often hilarious, sometimes MST3K-like look back at Good Eats highlights with plenty of new content.  Contemporary Brown mercilessly mocks his younger self, often breaking away to tell us, for example, how he cooks a burger now, with decades' more experience, or that he no longer uses rolling pin rings because, what seemed like a good idea at the time, they broke soon after the show was filmed.  Sometimes there are all new recipes; he cuts out early from s1e01 Steak Your Claim: The Reload to show us how to make my favorite Korean comfort food, bibimbap.  But, I say, leave out the fish sauce 😝 for the authentic urban-Seoul variant.  Speaking of eats ....

What I'm Eating

Lasagna.  My wife made her incomparable vegetable lasagna (pictured before the oven) for Mother's Day.  Get off my case.  I made breakfast.  She likes to cook.  It's her escape.  Heaven knows she deserves to escape.

Antoni's baked turkey mac'n'cheese.  Furthermore for Mother's Day, we had a family Zoom on my wife's side, wherein everyone made mac'n'cheese comfort food, feat. ground turkey, from Antoni's cookbook, Antoni in the Kitchen.  (That was just one of three Mother's Day Zoom calls.)  The product was tasty, but heavy.

Crepe cake.  Another self-sacrifice 😉 in the #SaveOurRestaurants campaign, we went back to neighbor-owned Crepelicious for its signature, 14-layer, green-tea crepe cake.  Speaking of heavy...

I'll lose weight after lockdown.  Promise.

What I'm Drinking

Mardi Gras King Cake.  My last order from Community Coffee brought Mardi Gras King Cake to my door.  It tastes almost sweet on its own, flavored as it is with cinnamon and vanilla.  It recalls my wife's king cake from March and reminds us of our beloved New Orleans, an especially welcome nostalgia since the cancellation of this summer's AALL conference there.

Koloa Estate.  We took an interlude from Community to visit the far side of the continent with medium-roast Koloa Estate from Kauai Coffee.  Kauai brands often get a bad rap because they're not 100% Hawaiian grown.  You're forgiven if the package led you to think otherwise.  Still, if you don't overpay, it's a solid coffee, for a blend, with some of that nutty flavor that characterizes beans grown in Pacific Rim soil.

Sharish Blue Magic Gin.  I brought this gin back from Lisbon.  Its name is the Arabic name of its home town, Monsaraz, in the southeastern Alentejo region of Portugal, and the unusual whale-fin bottle shape pays homage to the region's easterly hills.  Sharish is made by António Cuco, who, according to various accounts, was an unemployed teacher when he started experimenting with distillation in his home pressure cooker in 2013, set to head a multimillion-euro operation in a few short years.

Sharish's defining feature is its brilliant blue color, more indigo in brighter light and undiluted density, and its "magic" is that this color turns to pink in the presence of tonic.  I experimented, and it was fun. The blue color comes from the flower of the blue pea blossom, clitoria ternatea, in fact named for its, uh, feminine shape.  Tonic really does change the color, not just dilute it, shifting the acidity balance to alkaline, like when we played with pH paper in grade-school science class.  When the novelty wears off, a gin with a rewarding and summery flavor remains.  Sharish leads with its fruits, raspberry and strawberry, and they're backed up by a palette of Alentejo-grown botanicals: angelica, cardamom, cinnamon, ginger, and licorice, besides the blue pea and juniper.  Sharish goes down so pleasantly, even straight, that its 40% ABV sneaks up on you.

Clitoria ternatea is not a European native, and this is not the only gin that uses it.  The flower goes by many names around the world, including butterfly pea and Asian pigeonwings.  It's an Asian native and has long been known in Asian cuisine, notably Thai blue rice.  The flowers give Empress 1908 gin an indigo hue and a savour overlapping with Sharish.  Made in British Columbia and shipped worldwide, Empress is easier to find in North America, though I think a rung below Sharish in finish.

French 75.  I wanted to make a special cocktail for my wife for Mother's Day.  The French 75, a champagne-and-gin mix, was the signature favorite of Count Arnaud Cazenave in 20th-century New Orleans, according to the John DeMers book, Arnaud's, that I wrote about two weeks ago.  I used a Bon Appetit recipe, a French champagne, and New Amsterdam gin.  My French 75 made me feel like a high-class continental cultural import.  I was so carried away that I briefly joined the neighbor's bichon frisé in looking down (figuratively) on our lab mix.

Death by King Cake.  I ventured to the "essential" liquor warehouse to bring my wife two new beers to try for Mother's Day.  We love whites and sours.  Both of these were indulgent treats.  Death by King Cake let us end the day the way we started it.  From Colorado-based Oskar Brewing, King Cake is a 6.5% ABV white porter brewed with vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, cacao nibs, orange peel, and pecans.  Oskar promises Death by Coconut coming soon, an Irish-style porter in the same "series."

Key Lime Pie Sour.  Of all the food and bev I've tried around the world, I remember vividly my first frozen-key-lime-pie-slice-dipped-in-chocolate-on-a-stick in Key West, Florida.  That was the moment I realized that humanity had achieved Roman Empire-level gluttony on a global scale, and that our fall is inevitable, probably coming sooner than later, but that it would be a helluva ride down.  This is that in a beer.  From New Hampshire-based Smuttynose Brewing Co., there's an adorable seal visage on the back of the can. 6.3% ABV.

It was a Zoom Mother's Day


Stay thirsty, my friends!

Eating and Drinking images by RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-SA 4.0 with no claim to underlying works
Zoom captures by RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 with no claim of data protection waiver

Report from a Social Distance Week 7: For lockdown horror, 'Dr. Rick' prescribes hibachi, водка, and tulips

My new doorbell cam
spies a ne'er-do-well.

Quote of the Week:  "Murder hornets, but with the right lawyer, manslaughter bees. 🐝"  —attorney Jennifer T. Langley

Our stay-at-home order is formally lifted in Rhode Island as of today, May 9, though in this phase one, most restrictions remain in place as either mandates or recommendations.  I’m not eager to go out much myself until we have effective antibody testing, and then we'll see.  And we’ll have to hope and pray that our economic reopening doesn’t drive up the infection numbers.  Three days ago, with stay-at-home still in place, I saw dozens of kids playing basketball at Burr's Hill Park.  Parents were there, too.  “Knock it off,” Governor Gina Raimondo would have said.

Oh, I almost forgot the week's most exciting news.  Hitting the grocery store first thing in the morning, we scored a whole package of toilet paper!

Knock it off.  This is week 7.

What I’m Watching

Knives Out (2019).  This movie is a rollicking good time, an Oscar-nominated screenplay in the hands of a classic cast.  Daniel Craig, with a credible Mississippi drawl, proves why he’s so much better than Bond, and Jamie Lee Curtis, well, enough said.

Ozark s3 (2020).  I finally caught up, and there’s a reason why this show was viewers’ number one new binge in lockdown.  The show remains intense, not for the faint of heart.  I didn’t see coming that Helen would play such a pivotal role in season 3.  Now I have to make room on my top TV lawyers list, category: drama, for Janet McTeer’s Helen Pierce (link to spoilers).  This is not Newcastle UK-born McTeer’s first turn as a TV lawyer; she played Patty Hewes’s vengeful secret sister Kate Franklin in the final season (2012) of Damages.  In the Marvel universe, she’s Jessica Jones’s mom, Alisa Jones.

American Horror Story: 1984 (s9) (2019).  For me, AHS has never been able to top season 5’s super-creepy Hotel (2015-16), with Lady Gaga, but season 9 was enjoyable.  It’s AHS’s answer to Stranger Things, and I can’t get enough of these tongue-in-cheek ’80s tributes.  As usual, the anthology series assembles an all-star squad of regular and guest stars.  Carrie Fisher daughter and “Scream Queen” Billie Lourd well anchors the cast.

Locke & Key s1 (2020).  I was pleasantly surprised by the first couple episodes.  The show may fairly be described as YA, employing the convenient contrivance that the adults can’t see the evil spirits.  Nevertheless, it’s creative and cleverly executed.  Our teenage heroes occupy a haunted house, of sorts, in coastal Massachusetts.  Really the series is filmed mostly on finely crafted sets in Toronto with gorgeous outdoor scenes in UNESCO World Heritage Site Lunenberg, a port town on Nova Scotia’s southeastern coast.  I’m fast becoming a fan of lead actor Connor Jessup, who played Ben Mason in Falling Skies (2011).  The Locke & Key story is based on a 2008-13 graphic novel series (Amazon) of the same name and in a style that pays homage to H.P. Lovecraft (a Providence, Rhode Island, native, see also Atlas Obscura) and Richard Matheson (obituary).  A Fox pilot that wasn’t picked up, Locke & Key also was a 2011 TV movie by director Mark Romanek, who directed the recent s1e01 of Tales from the Loop.

Outer Banks s1 (2020).  I'm not going to pretend this is more than it is.  Another YA offering, sometimes I like to immerse myself in the equivalent of what my grandmother called her "stories," pretty people in the throes of impossible melodrama. Bonus, Outer Banks actually has a thrilling story from writer Shannon Burke and the filmmaker Pate Brothers. It's Treasure Island meets 90210, and I thought that before I learned that Burke's most recent and successful novel, Into the Savage Country (2016), was, he said, inspired by books including TI, Kidnapped, and White Fang.  The show totally confirmed my suspicion that my niece and nephews growing up on the OBX lead frenetic lives filled with intrigue, murder, and buried treasure, all interlaced with vertiginous adolescent lust.  The cast, the usual twenty-somethings pretending to be ten years younger, are mostly relative newcomers, well handpicked from the minor character ranks of such other recent features as Stranger Things, Black Lightning, and The Hate U Give.  On the adults-as-adults side, American Horror Story alumna Adina Porter, also a veteran of True Blood and Newsroom, turns in another spellbinding performance as Sheriff Peterkin.

Basic Versus Baller: Travel at Any Cost s1 (2018-19).  The perfect virtual escape from lockdown, I'm torn between loving these guys and burning with envy that I didn't think of this first.  Brothers Marko and Alex Ayling, "the Vagabrothers," went to university in southern California and were teaching English in Spain when they started vlogging in 2012.  They became a YouTube sensation and were invited to make 10 episodes of this show for Tastemade, an eight-year-old, Santa Monica-based, food-and-travel media company that has carved out a lucrative niche on the digital frontier.  The show is available on various platforms; I'm watching on Hulu.  The conceit is that in each episode, one brother gets to live the high life and the other has to hostel it, as they explore destination cities and their food worldwide.  Sponsorships figure in unobtrusively.  The competition angle is light-hearted, as the brothers succeed in sharing the delights of different price points and put local culture on center stage.

Progressive ads.  Progressive Insurance—which has never had a worthwhile deal for me—has a hilarious new ad character, "Dr. Rick."  “Progressive can’t protect you from becoming your parents” is the theme; Dr. Rick's intervention was forecast by two also funny "parentamorphosis" ads seven months ago.  Two new 30-second bits are “Group Outing” and “Pillows.”  There’s also a 74-second mockumentary on YouTube.  Progressive’s faux Zoom lockdown ad, with Flo, is pretty funny, too.  Progressive uses the Boston-based ad agency Arnold, and Martin Granger directed.

What I’m Eating

Miku Japanese Cuisine.  To #Save­Our­Restaurants, we ordered curbside this week from nearby Miku: wonton soup, crispy calamari, pork gyoza, sesame chicken, and a ridiculous portion of hibachi chicken.

What I’m Drinking

Community House Blend.  A new order arrived from Community, and we started with the solid house blend, a medium-dark roast.

Водка Окно в Европу.  We took a short interlude from our gin habit.  The name of this Russian vodka by St. Petersburg-founded Ladoga Group translates to “Window on Europe.”  I brought it back from Russia, mostly for the pretty design on the bottle.  Inside, what can I say, it’s vodka.

Dry Line Cape Cod Gin.  A Christmas gift from my wife, this briefly barrel-aged, organic-cane-sugar double distillation from South Hollow Spirits in North Truro, Massachusetts, leads with juniper berries harvested locally from eastern red cedars, and follows up with angelica root grown in a compost of Truro Vineyard grape skins.  My bottle is from small batch #10.  The Boston Globe aptly said it “has a soft bite,” and Drink Hacker likewise reported a “palate … extremely soft for a gin of this alcohol level,” 47% ABV, with a “sweet and lengthy” finish.

What I’m Doing to Stay Sane

Google Nest Thermostat and Hello.  We gained some distraction through home improvement and a socially distancing visit from our masked local technician.  Google’s thermostat gets a 👍 thumbs up; its doorbell gets a 👎 thumbs down.  The thermostat we bought to replace our broken one.  It’s pricey, but we expect to recoup savings from all those times we both leave home and forget to turn the heat off.

The Hello doorbell/security cam was a gift.  It makes a quality image and shares a futuristic look with the thermostat.  But it comes with a lot of shortcomings.  First, the Hello is almost useless without a paid subscription.  The device itself has no processing ability; it’s dumber than a mere motion sensor.  The Hello must constantly stream image to and from Google just to check for motion.  Hence, the subscription is necessary if you want the device to be anything more than a doorbell.  Second, the data stream eats bandwidth and will ruin you if your service is capped.  Third, the cloud-based detection algorithms have a long way yet to go.  The motion sensor is oversensitive, set off by trees and shadows.  The sound sensor is a non-starter on our busy street.  These shortcomings are all understandable for a work-in-progress product, but not for one that demands a monthly fee.  I have a Blink camera already, and I’m much happier with that.

Watching spring spring.  The tulips are opening, despite a continuing cold that diverges daily more from seasonal highs.  The birds are fighting it out for access to the feeder.  Sometimes #QuarantineLife is just about watching the grass grow.

Happy Mother's Day!

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Photos and video, except in "What I'm Watching," RJ Peltz-Steele CC BY-SA 4.0