Living Your Life on a Tightrope: Reviewing the Documentary Man on Wire

In my search to find a good documentary to watch, I came across Man on Wire.  It's the story of Phillipe Petit, the man who tightrope walked between the World Trade Center towers in 1974.  This film came out in 2008.  It was based on Petit's book To Reach the Clouds: My High Wire Walk Between the Twin Towers written in 2002.

During the first few minutes of the movie, it was kind of hard for me to watch.  That's because there were all sorts of shots of the Twin Towers as they were being built.  I went to New York in the summer of 2000, so I had some sort of idea how high these were.  But knowing what became of those towers a year later, it was eerie for me to see footage of the crews putting the towers together piece by piece.

As far as the movie goes, I think it was put together really well.  There was so much footage that Petit and his crew took that it seemed like he knew someone would put a movie together about the event someday.  I think the situations that were recreated in the movie were pretty good too.

I also enjoyed the music.  It was mostly classical, and there were some songs that were probably released during that time period.

Risk taking seems like an obvious theme in this movie, and Petit seems to tell the people who watch it to challenge themselves.  Toward the end of the film, he briefly talked about how to "live your life on a tightrope".  To me this seems like it's easier said than done.  I think it's hard in a world where I often pressure myself to to stay safe, be smart, do only what I know and not take too many risks or else I might lose what I have.  I wonder how many people my age feel the same way.

Petit didn't seem to let those kinds of things get to him.  Sure, he felt nervous and scared that his plan wouldn't work, but he kept going.  I think he's crazy, but sometimes being kind of crazy brings out something good.  For the people in New York, I think it brought them a new thought that seeing something out of the ordinary is kind of refreshing and amazing, like what the police officer thought and recalled during an interview after "Le Coup", the name Petit gave to the incident.

I think Petit's feelings when he was at the World Trade Center tightrope walking incident and his outlook on life, and hopefully for us, was summed up well in his following remark: 

"What a beautiful death, to die in the exercise of your passion."

Image courtesy of imdb.com

Fresh Blueberries Worth the Sunburn (But Next Time I'll Wear Sunscreen)

Summer arrived in Eugene Saturday (on July 23, no less) with a double-dose of sunshine.  To celebrate, I went blueberry-picking with my friends Britni and Angel.

Instead of going during the cool morning though, for some reason we decided to go during the hotter part of the day, around 2 p.m.  Oh well, it was worth it.  We arrived at Green Hill Aire Blueberry Farm to find a few cars lining the rural road off of Royal Avenue and Greenhill Road in northwest Eugene.  Apparently we weren't the only ones with the bright idea to satisfy the craving for freshly-picked berries.  Britni says it's not truly summer until you go berry picking.

From there you can see some white-capped mountains off in the distance.  I think they were the Three Sisters, but I'm not sure. 

We were welcomed by some friendly folks who have lived there for about 30 years.  They told us they planted the blueberry bushes about 29 years ago.  I thought, if the bushes are older than me, they must be good.

And good they were.  There were so many tasty blueberries, we could have stayed all day.  But then the owners would have had to weigh us before and after we arrived to determine how many berries we actually ate and picked and should therefore pay accordingly.

After guiding pincher bugs and spiders out of our buckets and trying to not to knock off the berries that were still green, we paid for our treats.  To our surprise they only charged us for three-quarters of the two-gallon bucket even though the berries were about an inch below the top.  But I think we would did pick a full two gallons.  We just ate the difference.

I hope we go back again soon.  Until then, I need apply plenty of aloe to the sunburn I got and decide what to do with my berries.  Muffins perhaps?  Or maybe just freeze them and eat them during the next hot summer day.  That is if they all make it home without ending up in my stomach :) 

 

 

Savory Side Dishes

I think side dishes often get overlooked when it comes to trying new recipes. I know I have a habit of looking for a great main dish recipe but I forget that a strong side dish can almost always be modified into a main dish.

I recently tried cooking a couple of side dishes that can be made any time of the year.  They both came from Food & Wine Magazine.  I'll talk about one of them in this blog entry.

But first I'll tell you how I found the recipes.  Whenever I find a recipe in a magazine, I take a picture of it with my phone and use that when I go grocery shopping. That way I don't have to worry about losing a piece of paper, but I can add it to a recipe card later if I like it. I started doing this when I found recipes in magazines in the break room at work.

The first side that I cooked was called Summer-Vegetable Casserole.  The ingredients are very simple, but it does take a while to complete.  You'll need the following ingredients:

1. Extra-virgin olive oil, for drizzling
2. 1/2 pound Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and sliced 1/4 inch thick
3. Salt and freshly ground pepper
4. 1 yellow bell pepper, thinly sliced
5. 1 small onion, thinly sliced
6. 1 large garlic clove, minced
7. 1 teaspoon thyme leaves
8. 1/2 pound plum tomatoes, sliced 1/4 inch thick
9. 2 small zucchini (1/2 pound), sliced on the diagonal 1/4 inch thick
10. 3 tablespoons freshly grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese 

Instead of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, I used Parmesan cheese.  It wasn't until after college and started really cooking for myself that I realized that I could buy a block of hard cheese and grate it myself instead of buying it in a can.  I think it tastes much better too.

If you want to get really "fancy", buy a wedge of Pecorino Romano cheese.  It's kind of expensive, but it has a great flavor and is a nice change from other standard hard cheeses.  But for this recipe, I think your favorite hard cheese will do just fine.

Here are the recipe instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350°. Coat a 9-inch baking dish with olive oil. Spread the potatoes in the dish in an even layer; drizzle with oil and season with salt and pepper. In a bowl, combine the bell pepper, onion, garlic and thyme and season with salt and pepper. Arrange two-thirds of the bell pepper mixture over the potatoes and drizzle with oil. Top with the tomatoes and the zucchini; drizzle with oil and season with salt and pepper. Cover with the remaining bell pepper mixture and sprinkle with the cheese. 
2.  Cover the casserole with foil and bake for 40 minutes. Increase the oven temperature to 425°. Uncover the casserole and bake for about 20 minutes longer, until the vegetables are tender and glazed on top. Let stand for 10 minutes. Serve warm.

This dish would be really good with baked or grilled chicken or your other favorite meat.

Shooting My First Gun

A couple weeks ago, I went to Florence to visit the Campbells. While I was there, Nathan's dad Kim offered to teach me how to shoot a gun.

"Sure," I said.

"Which one?" he asked. They have a lot of guns.

"I don't know," I said.

He picked up a Weatherby pump action 12 gauge and told me it would be a good one to try. I thought it was big, considering it was about three-quarters of my height.

So after getting instructions on how to load it, hold it and use the safety, he handed me some ear muffs and we were off to the back deck to give it a try.

It was a little heavy, but was able to manage. He told me to aim for the trees, not the wood carvings shaped live cute bear cubs attached to the trellis arch.

I lined up with the sight, took a deep breath and fired. The air started to smell like fireworks, and a green piece of plastic from the shell shot out with it. The kick wasn't that bad. I just had to make sure I didn't move very much.

Nathan kind of smiled or laughed and said I needed to pose for a picture. I held the gun and smiled for the camera, but Nathan said, "No, you need to stand like this with the gun on your thigh."

I thought that would be really weird, but he said, "Everybody does it that way."

Because I'd hardly seen pictures of people with guns, I figured he was right. So I posed and smiled.

After that, Kim asked if I wanted to try another gun. I said okay and we went back inside to pick out another one. I chose a 357 pistol.

I held on tight and fired two shots. The kick was definitely not as bad as I thought it was going to be.

After Nathan shot some bullets, we headed back inside. Kim showed me how to unload and clean the guns before putting them away.

I'm glad I finally learned how to shoot a gun, even if probably looked a little silly doing it.

Thanks Kim!

Waking Up to a House on Wheels

As I was going through some of my old pictures, I completely forgot about the time I woke up on a Sunday morning to the sound of crews moving a house down my street.

An old white house on 18th and Patterson was being moved to a new location in order for an apartment complex to be built in its place.

To tell you the truth, the sound that I actually woke up to was a police officer making a phone call to get somebody to tow a car that was in front of my apartment.

There were sandwich board signs up and down Polk Street and other areas of town that said you couldn't park there during certain hours on Sunday, August 8, 2010 or else you would be towed.

That car got towed. I don't know whose it was. It had been there for a few days. I wonder if anybody else got towed.

But shortly after that, I heard a big truck and ran downstairs and outside to see what exactly was being moved.

I wasn't the only one ready to watch. Three neighbor ladies were already there watching with their cameras ready to snap some pictures. Somebody even set up two folding chairs so they could sit and watch the house go by. You would think they were waiting to watch a parade or something. I think we were the only ones outside.

If it was a parade, it was the slowest one I've ever seen. It took what seemed like forever for crews to lift up the power lines one by one as the house passed underneath. The house snapped a few tree limbs off in the process.

A couple of motorcycle cops got the cushy job of escorting the procession. I heard the house got moved to somewhere in west Eugene.