1. January 2010 by John Arnold.

This is a great recipe for Chicken Tortilla Soup.  It’s fun to make and easy to eat.  Just follow the directions below.

Ingredients:

• Beer or wine of your choice.  Quality is essential 
• 3 - 4 skinless boneless chicken breasts
• 4 chicken leg quarters
• 1 medium white onion - chopped
• 6 large cloves garlic - minced
• 4 - 6 medium to large jalapenos - chopped
• salted sweet butter (Falfurias is good)
• Fresh Cilantro
• Salt
• Pepper
• 2 tbsp flour

Season the chicken with salt, pepper and chopped fresh cilantro and bake at 325 in the oven.

Saute garlic, onions and jalapenos in 2 or 3 tbsps of sweet salted butter on medium heat for about 10 minutes in a large stock pot.  Turn the heat down to medium low and add 2 tbsps of flour.  Cook this for about another beer’s worth of minutes, or a glass of wine if you happen to be drinking that instead.  Stir occasionally and pretend you’re Julia Childs but don’t throw it on the floor.  If you happen to play guitar, this would be a good opportunity to go lay down some sick leads but make sure you come back before the flour scorches.  Two songs on low to medium heat is cool.  When you get back, stick your face right into the top of the pot and take a huge whiff… Fuckin’ A.

Now add:

• 3 14 oz. cans of chicken broth
• 1 quart of Half n Half
• 1 10 3/4 oz can of condensed chicken soup (Try to avoid that ‘fat free’ healthy crap, but if your local grocery store manager has taken it upon him/herself to save us all from cholesterol, whaddya gonna do?

Turn the heat up and bring this to a boil. Then reduce the heat. Up with the heat. Down with the heat. WTF?  Don’t worry - it’s an infusion kind of thing.  While this is heating up, check your chicken.  Check it, don’t choke it. If it’s ready, remove the skin and bones from the leg quarters and divide into nice succulent ‘chunks’ - or whatever, just don’t shred it. Set aside in a bowl.  Speaking of, if your tendencies lie there, this would be a good time for one.  Toke away my friend.

Add the following to the stock pot:

• 1 entire jar of salsa - Get the good shit.  Don’t waste your time or money with Pace’s Picante or some such other crap salsa. Go for roasted peppers, etc., you get the idea. I know you can get shit salsa for like $2.19 a jar, but hey, go $5 - This makes or breaks this soup.
• 1 can of Rotel diced tomatoes and chiles - Medium or Hot.  Hot is good.  So are hot women. Do <ul>not</ul> waste your time with mild.  Hell, if you want mild, just use fucking tomatoes.
• 2 cans Creamed Corn - Don’t ask me who creamed it.  Have a wet clean rag handy in the event the soup splashes up into your face and hair while adding the corn.
• 1 Package McCormick Fajita Seasoning. Yeah, I know. Shut up.
• 3 tsps Ground Cumin (Isn’t that 1 tbsp?  Help me ITT!) - Just dump some in. Who needs spoons anyway?
• Chopped fresh cilantro - when you start smiling at the smell, you’ve done enough.  Does anything smell better??

Mix all of this in the stock pot and turn your heat down to medium low, cover and let that shit stoke for at least 30 minutes!  While this is stoking, grab that chicken that’s been setting aside and prepare it for the soup.  After 30 minutes, add the chicken and continue to simmer for another 15 minutes, or until you’re so hungry you can’t stand it anymore - whichever is longer.

Serve:

Arrange a layer of tortilla chips in the bottom of a bowl and cover liberally with shredded 4-cheese mix, or a cheese of your choice.  Cheddar and Monterey Jack are good but I wouldn’t recommend cheddar alone.  Monterey Jack is better alone if you don’t like to mix things up.  Spoon the soup over the tortillas and cheese and add more shredded cheese on top.  Add a dollop of sour cream, one of salsa and one of guacamole if you care for it. Garnish with fresh chopped cilantro and tortilla chips and serve.

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28. September 2008 by John Arnold.

The New York Times on September 15, 2008 wrote, “Richard Wright, Member of Pink Floyd, Dies at 65.” Saying Richard Wright was a ‘member’ of Pink Floyd is a bit like saying there’s concrete in New York City.  Richard Wright was every bit as much what Pink Floyd is as was David Gilmour, Roger Waters, and Nick Mason.

I remember watching a dvd about the making of Dark Side of the Moon that contained footage of studio sessions in which Floyd was recording songs not on DSOTM.  One in particular, “Echoes” - David Gilmour and Richard Wright were peforming a vocal duet in the initial verses of the song when Gilmour stopped, looked scathingly across the studio at Wright and said “hangs motionless UPON the AIR.  You’re going to bloody butcher us…”  Richard looked at that moment like he wanted to be anywhere else in the world but in that studio.  That’s probably the first time I really identified with Richard Wright.  When people think about Floyd, the tendency is to think about Gilmour and Waters, but the post-Barrett Floyd would never have been what it became without all four of these passionate perfectionists - Gilmour, Waters, Mason and Wright.

Each one of these men conveyed a compelling message that they articulated collectively through their music.  So compelling in fact, that nothing short of brilliant music would serve to convey it. 

“Us and Them” is, I think, Richard Wright’s greatest achievement.  Orginally written as a background score for the film, Zabriskie Point, directed by Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni, it was rejected by the director as too “mournful… sad” and lay quietly forgotten before being resurrected to be included on Dark Side of the Moon.  This piece of music entrenched Richard Wright as an instrumental influence on the sound and the success that launched Pink Floyd to the next level with Dark Side of the Moon.

It’s a black month, Richard.  Thank you for leaving with us those pieces of you that you could describe on your keys.  I hope you are now at that Great Gig in the Sky.  I hope you are happy and at peace.

You are missed.

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8. August 2008 by John Arnold.

After years of wondering whatever happened to Dr. Threadwell after he suffered a drug-induced mental breakdown, I ran into my college calculus professor the other day.  I quickly observed that he got new shoes.  Unfortunately, he still has not seen anybody about the Testicular Projection Syndrome (TPS) he suffers. 

Grasping the elusive nuances of Calculus and Analytic Geometry requires a healthy dose of misdirection and abstract thinking. If peered at too closely, integral and differential equations, hyperbolic and transcendental functions, trigonometric substitutions and polar coordinates, will confound any attempt to be captured by mental accuity. Thus, distraction and a self-distancing approach to allow for a higher-level appreciation of the fundamental truths and axioms of the medium and their interrelationships are required. Dr. Threadwell understood this well and was a master in conveying knowledge in a highly distracting manner. Many are the times and raucous was the laughter when he stretched to the top of the whiteboard to scribe a parametric equation describing projectile motion, only to turn around to the class and discover he had popped a nut out of the side of that skanky outfit in the process. Projectile motion took on a new meaning.

I took two semesters of Calculus with Dr. Threadwell. The last time I saw him, he was walking through the Business Building, in a haze. Eyes wandering twenty feet above everybody else’s heads, bumping into students every step of the way, no doubt contemplating l’Hopital’s Rule. My best friend in college, who was with me at the time, and with whom I’d just returned from a liquid lunch at Hills and Dales in preparation for our final in Sociological Research Methods, asked me in a very collegiate fashion, “Who the @#!* is that freak??” I just laughed and replied, “That’s my calculus professor, dude.”

Shortly thereafter, right before I was to begin my third semester of Calculus, Dr. Threadwell dropped from sight of the university - no explanations.  I had a hunch that maybe he had gone, permanently, onto that higher plane, and was happier in a place where he could deal with numbers and not people.  For those of us who had made it through those first two semesters and were looking forward to that third and final semester, we were much disappointed to find he had been replaced with an Engineering professor who had no talent or knack for calculus and who was also a very boring dresser.  (More on that later)

We all blamed his disappearance on the Dean of Instruction.

We lost a damn good professor that day…

Dr.  “Spitterman” Benny Cornett, shown here in his favorite Student Disciplinary Appeals Hearing outfit, thank you from all of us for depriving us of a quality third semester of Calculus and Analytical Geometry.

P.S.  Shaving doesn’t help…

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