1538 Stirring Occassionally

1538 Stirring Occasionally

It’s on every box of dry pasta, no matter the brand, country of origin, shape or ingredients.  

Boil the water. Put in the pasta.  Cook for X minutes (al dente) or longer (not al dente,) stirring occasionally.

What is occasionally?

It’s not like they mean keep it boiling until, say, Lincoln’s birthday.  Or Christmas. Or the wedding reception for your cousin Daisy with that guy Henry.  (Or in certain locales your cousin Daisy with your cousin Henry.)

So they probably don’t mean a special occasion.  Maybe they mean a “normal” occasion.  Like Tuesday. Or an un-special occasion. Like when you ran that red light last month and got caught and ticketed.

In the case of pasta, some people think every minute  is an occasion. So they stir every minute the pot is on the stove.

Others think stirring occasionally is when it’s about half done cooking.  

Don’t you wish they’d be more specific?

“Stir once every three minutes, give or take” or anything like it would be a welcome change in the directions. If you can actually find the directions in fine print buried among yummy recipes for things you’re never going to cook and a history of the manufacturer which started in a little storefront in Punto Orgolioso, Italy or some other town you never heard of.

The pasta in this house generally comes from Harrisburg, PA.  That’s because the company that bought the company that bought the company that bought the Ronzoni factory in Queens moved it to Harrisburg.  Without changing the wheat. But not without changing the water.

So the little storefront over in Punto Orgolioso doesn’t mean a whole lot.  We’re not gourmets. And we’re not historians, particularly ethnic food historians.

Sometimes we slip in a box of the supermarket store brand along with the Ronzoni.  Who’s going to find out or taste the difference?

And note that not all one pound boxes of pasta still contain a full pound.  The new standard is 13-point-something ounces and shrinking.  But I digress.

When income is good some months, and we’re feeling flush, we do switch from Ronzoni and the occasionally stirring inferior “house brand” to Barrilla. But that’s only occasionally.

Like for Lincoln’s birthday.  Or the cousins’ marriage.  

Shrapnel:

--Congrats to the National Football League.  September, 2015 marked the first month since 2009 that no active NFL player was arrested for anything.  Now THAT’s an… occasion!

--People who investigate shipwrecks are still wondering what happened to the freighter lost at sea during hurricane Joaquin. It was a ship caught in a category four hurricane. Ya think that might have had something to do with it?

--Fifty-seven degrees of separation? Cosby has been given that many honorary degrees.  Now the colleges who were so free with their sheepskins are debating whether to rescind them.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2015

1412 Cosby

Even in his mega-star years there was one thing Bill Cosby never had to worry about.  He need never have feared he’d awaken, open his bedroom door and be overrun by a stampede of women eager to push him back onto the bed.

If true, all the dirt that has surfaced about him -- sometimes resurfaced --  makes you wonder what goes on in his head.

But a mega star he was.  Rich, famous and beloved.  Now, it turns out, rich, famous, beloved family man, Cliff Huxtable -- Dr. Huxtable -- was prescribing and dosing patients with more than “two aspirins and call me in the morning.”

Nothing like a couple of roofies to knock a doc off the pedestal.  If he actually did it.

If it was one woman one time and the case was settled and everyone is keeping silent, it still would be terrible. But it still would be one thing.  Now,  there are too many charges to just ignore.

Yes, innocent until proven guilty.  But.

Cosby is 77, and his career is still in high gear.  Or at least it was getting back there until recently.

Netflix was planning a comedy special for him.  NBC was developing a series.  Those have been scrapped.  TV Land has stopped showing reruns of “The Cosby Show.” He backed out of a booking on Letterman.  Circling the wagons.

What he didn’t back out of was an interview with NPR’s Scott Simon.  When Simon questioned him about the allegations, Cosby clammed up.

There was no comment, not even a throw away “no comment.”  Just silence.  Long silences are capital crimes in radio.  But Simon -- a decent and professional interviewer -- couldn’t even force a grunt out of Cosby, let alone an answer or defense.

The comment not heard around the world.

Back to that lack of a lineup outside the bedroom door:  If Bill Cosby felt he needed sex from a stranger, it couldn’t have been all that difficult to come by.  After all, star, rich, famous.

But to impose himself -- if that’s what he did -- on unconscious women in his hotel rooms or rental cottages is a career ender.  Maybe even if he didn’t.

Silent screen star Fatty Arbuckle was tried three times for rape and manslaughter after a woman died following a party he threw in 1921.

The first two juries hung.  The third acquitted.  Arbuckle was a pioneer comic, one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood.  He coached Charlie Chaplin, discovered Bob Hope and Buster Keaton.  But after the acquittal, his star died.

Cosby is heading in the same direction no matter what happens in a courtroom or behind the locked doors of a settlement conference in the carpeted mahogany paneled office of a Hollywood lawyer.

And whatever he did or didn’t do, his actions now show contempt for his audience, the same audience who made him rich, famous and beloved.  In show business, no court ruling is necessary and no recovery is possible.

I’m Wes Richards. My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®

Please address comments to wesrichards@gmail.com

© WJR 2014