Walmart Update : As mentioned last week, Walmart has been trying to open a second supercenter here in Athens. They want to close a current regular Walmart (and thus kill a shopping center that’s barely hanging on) and build a brand new shopping center anchored by the supercenter just down the road on land now zoned for residential use. The planning committee was to meet last week on the issue and vote on what to recommend to the full commission. Less than 24 hours before the meeting, Walmart withdrew the proposal. They say that they suspected it was going to be voted down, so they’d like to have more time to address the committee’s concerns. Had it been voted upon and rejected, they couldn’t resubmit the proposal for a full year. The meeting was held in one of the city’s largest auditoriums to hold the many people expected to attend (most all of the anti-Walmart). I hope that the Walmart people have to reimburse the government for the cost of renting the hall for no reason, but I’m sure they can’t be held responsible. I’ve been asked if I’m anti-Walmart. No, not really. I shop there from time to time when I need a laundry basket or a cheap bookcase or something like that. But I am against this specific proposal. I’m fairly sure Athens doesn’t need another Walmart supercenter, but if they want to open one anyway, they’ve got a shopping center already that they could put it in.

The funniest thing on TV right now is a promo for The Simpsons running on Atlanta’s WB affiliate: a black-and-white old-style test pattern of circles, crosshairs, and the like with Homer’s head in the middle. Then, for 15 seconds straight, there’s a continuous “D’ooooooooooooooh!”, like the old emergency system tests. I laugh out loud every time that comes on. I was hoping they’d have it on-line, but alas.

Officially, I’m still waiting for word on Waiting for Godot. Unofficially, I’ve been approved to direct the play April 14-16 on the Town & Gown Second Stage. The T&G; board is still hashing out one of the three slots, and so that’s why it’s not official. Nevertheless, I’m moving ahead as if everything were a go. You can see how things are going by visiting Weblog For Godot, a weblog I’ve created to be an on-line resource for me, my actors and crew, and you. You’ll find a permanent link on the sidebar to the left, right under “I went to the Gobbler”. It’s a bit sparse right now, but as things jump into high gear there’ll be plenty to see.

The Post Office wants to raise rates another penny, making first class stamps cost 34 cents each. I just figured out last week that stamps are now 33 cents. A few weeks ago, I bought two flats of stamps at the post office. All of them were 32 cent stamps. A good clerk concerned with customer service would have warned me, but she let me spend 10 dollars on old stamps without saying a word. I proceeded to use them all, still not knowing that they were wrong. One day, I received a letter with a 33 cent stamp on it, and that caught my attention. All of my letters had been delivered; not one was returned for insufficient postage. I looked through all the letters I had recently received, and some had 32 cent stamps, some had 33. It seemed the post offce didn’t care, so long as there was a stamp on there of one sort or another. Anyone else notice this? Has automation gotten sloppy over there at the USPS? Or do they just not care about that extra cent? A bonus: I used the last eleven stamps to mail an express mail envelope to Beth in New Mexico and they were delivered uncancelled, ready to reuse.

Inspired by my recent visit with Randy, I’ve revived my sourdough starter. I used to cook with it a lot, back when Randy and I shared an apartment in Socorro (his name was on the lease with me for at least a year, but I don’t think he stayed one night in the place), but I haven’t in years. When I returned from Wisconsin, I immediately began a new culture. It was ready to use this weekend, and use it I did. I started Saturday with sourdough pancakes, just to be sure the culture was good. When those turned out quite tasty, I spent most of Sunday making several dozen sourdough english muffins. These are so fun to make because they’re unlike most other bread products. The dough is much softer than regular bread, and they’re baked on the stovetop, in a griddle or frying pan. Here’s the recipe so you can try them yourself. If you don’t have a sourdough starter, they’re easy to make. The link above is a good resource.

Sourdough English Muffins

1 cup soughdough starter| 2 tbs sugar
2 cups milk| 1 tsp salt
4 1/2 cups flour – I use an unbleached light whole-grain flour, but you can use all-purpose flour
cornmeal
In a large mixing bowl, combine starter, milk, and 4 cups of flour. Mix well, cover loosely, and let stand overnight. Mix together remaining flour, sugar, salt, and soda. Sprinkle over dough and mix in. Knead dough on a floured board until no longer sticky (this takes an extra cup or so of flour). Roll out dough to 3/4 inch thick. Cut into 3 inch rounds. I use a tuna can with both ends cut out. Place one inch apart on cookie sheet or board sprinkled with cornmeal. Sprinkle more cornmeal on top. Cover and let rise until doubled. Bake on griddle or skillet at 275 degrees for 8 to 10 minutes on a side, turning once. If you are not using a non-stick cooking surface, you may need to lightly grease it. When done, I let cool to room temp, fork split (go all around edges with a fork, being careful not to fully split the muffins), and freeze together in a plastic bag. When you want to use them, they thaw quickly (10 minutes or less), split easily, and can be toasted to get that just-baked flavor. Makes 24 - 30 muffins.

I’ve been following a relaxed version of John Walker’s The Hacker’s Diet for almost a month now. Relaxed because he makes a very strong case for menu planning and calorie counting that I have chosen to ignore, instead relying upon my intuition and experience to improvise all my meals. Of course, he says that’s the worst mistake one can make, but in the three+ weeks I’ve been doing this I’m down 15 pounds and feeling great. I’d like to drop another 50 pounds this year. People who know me may gasp and say that there’s no way I have anywhere near 50 pounds to lose, but they wouldn’t guess by looking that I’m at 255 pounds right now, either. It’s in there, somewhere near the middle, packed in like lead bricks. And it’s coming out.

When I was in Wisconsin, I went to The Gobbler. This is my story.

Yet another IFC movie sucked me in last night. This time it was Exotica, directed by Atom Egoyan. This one is a thinker, with a set of dark not-so-likable characters with intertwined stories. Most of the action takes place in and around a Toronto high-class strip club (even still, there’s less sex and nudity than Sirens). As the movie progresses, presonalities and actions are put into context a bit at a time until the last fifteen minutes where everything fell into place and the power of the movie hit me full force. It appeared that the movie was going to be about porn or sex, and indeed, if you were to watch any random five minutes of the film you would think that was true, but Atom masterfully uses that setting to tell an entirely different type of story. Following Exotica was the David Lynch film Nadja, a modern dracula movie that looked like it has promise. Dr. Van Helsing (Peter Fonda) has finally killed Dracula in modern-day New York and now Dracula’s daughter, Nadja, can escape from his shadow and be her own self. A great line at the beginning as Van Helsing is describing Dracula: “He was like Elvis in the end. Careless. Drugged. Surrounded by zombies. The magic was gone.” But, it was late, and I went to bed.

I find out tomorrow whether or not I get to direct Waiting for Godot this Spring. The project has plenty of support from the powers-that-be, but the scuttlebut is that there’s so much support that it’ll get passed over for a Second Stage slot for a probable slot for next season’s Main Stage. Second Stage shows are low budget shows that run for one weekend. Main Stage shows have a much larger budget and run for two weeks. I’ll be happy with either one. Second Stage lets me hand-pick my cast, Main Stage requires open auditions. Anyway, I’ll know tomorrow night.

The local PBS affilliate is now broadcasting 24 hours a day, and so at 1:30 in the morning I’m watching the new series of Nature, Inside the animal mind. Episode one, Are Animals Intelligent? , is wonderful. Of course there’s the footage of dolphins and chimps doing smart-lookng things, but there’s also the learning behavior of birds. Pigeons were shown a Picasso painting and a Monet painting. Pecking on Picasso gave food, Monet did not. When they had that down, other paintings from the two artists were shown. The birds could recognize who painted paintings they had not seen before, and whether they’d get food or not. Then Matisse was introduced, and the birds confused Picasso and Matisse at about the same rate that art students did.