14 movies watched.
(6 watched during vacation)
Maggie’s Plan
Funny! And complex, while also being sweet.
Hail Caesar!
For anyone who loves movies.
Old Joy
Mostly silent movie about a friendship that has run its course.
Love & Friendship
Devious and delightful. 
The Fits
Captures an incredible amount of coming-of-age stuff with minimal dialogue.
Grandma
It’s good to have a grandma to go to bat for you.
Girls Season 4
I can’t help but love these flawed specimens. 
Man, oh man do I love this show, despite not wanting to spend any moment in real life with any of these characters.* I felt that this season was more logical in its character progressions and I particularly enjoyed the introduction of Mimi-Rose Howard into the Girls stew. There were some awesome lines that I neglected to write down and some incredibly good scenes.**
Cost: Free from library (after a long wait because I missed the appearance in the catalog by a week or so.)
Where watched: at home. One episode per night at first and then probably the last four in one sitting.
*Even Shosh, my favorite and the most normal in her quasi-spectrum way, would massively annoy me after about 30 minutes.
**Just three: Ray telling off Dezi; someone trying to explain to Hannah about boundaries; the Mimi-Rose/Adam/Ace/Jess awkward dinner
poster from: http://www.target.com
An excellent episodic film with solid performances by all. I enjoyed Lily Tomlin’s Grandma to be something more complex than a kindly older lady.* There was great reflection of life choices by women (and a few men) of all ages, which was interesting.
Cost: $2.75 from Videorama
Where watched: at home
*For most of the movie, she was the opposite of kindly.
poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2015/grandma.html
This was first in my post-mortem Yelchin catch-up viewing and I’m surprised I hadn’t ever gotten around to watching it given that I was a fan of Downey Jr, Davis and Dennings when the movie debuted. I found that though the actors went all-in with their acting stuff, this movie did not really hang together. For this I blame the script, which was random and sometimes dumb.
Cost: $2.00 from Videorama
Where watched: At home.
poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2008/charlie_bartlett_ver3.html
Being a fan of both of the gentlemen on the poster, I was also a fan of this movie which I found amusing, even though some of the plot made no sense whatsoever. I was quite surprised at the Rock’s portrayal of Bob Stone as a nerd in recovery, still shell-shocked from his high school experience.* There were some very good lines in this film.
Cost: $5.00
Where watched: McMenamins St. John’s Pub with one other person who didn’t ever laugh, making me the crazy lady laughing alone in the room for a second day in a row.
*Like, he was acting. Which I hadn’t realized he could do.
poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2016/central_intelligence.html
It was another dry month in the music realm. I think I have’t been listening to music very much and it seems like when I do, the radio keeps playing the same old same old. I don’t even have a decent “Songs of Summer 2016” list started.
So I went with this. Mostly because it gets played a lot on the radio and I’m not sick of it and also because it’s got dude backup singers. I’m a fan of the backup singer.
Further, I appreciate how the lead singer manages to shove so many syllables in a small bit of music: How am I gonna be an optimist about this?
Here’s to next month having something new and exciting.
An excellent coming of age allegory with the incredible and aptly named Royalty Hightower as Toni, a girl who has put in her time training as a boxer. But the dance/drill team calls to her, even after some of the older girls start having unexplained fits. There’s not a lot of dialogue and not a lot of action, but there is a lot of of coming-of-age stuff I don’t usually see on film, and I could not get enough of this movie, or Hightower’s performance.
Cost: $5.00
Where watched: Living Room Theater with Matt
poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2016/fits_ver3.html
I found the original movie hilarious and this one was funny too. It had the added bonus of quasi-female empowerment (quasi- because it was written by five guys–nary a woman in sight). It was ridiculous in its ridiculousness and I had a very good time watching it.
Cost: $5.00
Where watched: Jubitz Cinema. All alone in the theater, laughing like a crazy person.
poster from: http://www.impawards.com/2016/neighbors_two_sorority_rising_ver3.html
It’s another year and another Sunday and another Sunday of Sunday Parkways. As this is the North Portland Sunday Parkways, Heidi and Kevin hosted their annual post-ride party.
Kevin grills! Bella hides from the sun!
New to the party this year was Cornhole. Matt turned out to be a ringer, winning all of his games.
Bella!
Figs and umbrella
This was the party at which Matt’s birthday cake was consumed, today being Matt’s birthday. Happy birthday!
Thanks Heidi & Kevin for yet another good party!
I make cakes. From scratch. With homemade frosting. It’s what I do. I’ve been changing people’s mind about cake for years now. (I think most people think they don’t like cake because they’ve only experienced grocery store cakes. A real cake from scratch is an entirely different thing.)
But the boyfriend likes ice cream cakes. And it was his birthday. And so I did some research (thank you internet) and made him a Baskin-Robbins-style ice cream cake. Here’s how I did it.
I found a recipe for cake in my America’s Test Kitchen Family Baking Book. The recipe I used was for Pantry Chocolate Cake and was designed to be baked in an 8×8 pan. I baked it in a cheesecake pan (I think that’s a 10-inch pan? It might be 12-inch.) and watched it carefully so it didn’t burn. Then I froze it. I happened to freeze it for a week, but a few hours would probably be fine. If I do this again, I will cut the cake down a bit. Maybe to an inch in height? I feel like a smaller layer of cake would not be so solid.
When I was ready for the ice cream layer, I set out the ice cream to soften for about 30 minutes. While it softened, I prepped my tray, which was some cardboard with aluminum foil taped to it.
I removed the cake from the cheesecake pan bottom and set it directly on top of the tray. Then I replaced the cheesecake ring around the cake as if the bottom was still there.
In went the ice cream. I smooshed it out so it was even, and even got out my dough scraper to level the top. That was an unnecessary thing as there will be icing to even things out, but I wanted a totally flat surface. At this point everything went back in the freezer for several hours. Like maybe eight.
What the internet research turned up was that the “icing” on Baskin-Robbins cakes is just softened vanilla ice cream. A-ha! So I set out vanilla to soften for about 20 minutes and then removed the cake from the freezer and the cheesecake ring from the ice cream. (A hot knife helped with this.)
The frosting part was difficult. I found that I had to work very quickly and a thicker layer was better than a thinner one. Like normal icing, I did the sides first and then the top. It was not as smooth as I wanted it to be, but it was also getting melt-y, so I put everything back in the freezer where it stayed overnight.
Once the icing was rock-solid, I made a ganche (I use multi-purpose chocolate truffle sauce which was from the early-to-mid 2000s Oregonian Food Day section and which does not seem to be in their recipe archive. Boo!) and put it in the refrigerator until it was solid. Then I got out my decorating tools and did my best to decorate. (I’m more of a baker than a decorator.) I found myself wishing I could work IN a freezer, so the icing wouldn’t melt as I was attempting to garnish. It ended up messier than I wanted, but I knew no one would really care.
The finished product was happily consumed by many. This is not a cake you can whip up in an afternoon, but if you plan out the time, it’s several short steps over several days and isn’t too taxing.
