“TRY: Stopping, sitting down, and becoming aware of your breathing once in awhile throughout the day. It can be for five minutes, or even five seconds. Let go into full acceptance of the present moment, including how you are feeling and what you perceive to be happening. For these moments, don’t try to change anything at all, just breathe and let go. Breathe and let be….give yourself permission to allow this moment to be exactly as it is, and allow yourself to be exactly as you are. Then, when you’re ready, move in the direction your heart tells you to go, mindfully and with resolution.”
Jon Kabat-Zinn “Wherever You Go There You Are” Hachette Books
The bottle is definitely old school. Heavy tonnage. Not exactly carbon neutral!
It has a dense black cherry colour. On the nose its very tight fisted holding on to its aromas like a bargain shopper hunting the bins for a 70% discounted wine. But you can’t snuff out the black cherry, black plum, toasted coconut, blueberry with a twist of coal. On the palate there are moderate tannins but the wine is tight and compact like the U.S. First Division Marines marching at boot camp on Parris Island. There is some cherry, raspberry pie, black pepper, black licorice and Mexican cactus pear intertwined with lavender. Medium finish to this full-bodied wine. Given the serious nature of the wine it is not really a sipping wine but would pair well with high quality grilled Argentinian beef or with a full range if eats at an Argentinian asador. A nice cut of more anti-biotic North American jacked beef would do nicely.
This dense and compact wine will sail nicely into 2026 as its tight clenched fist may be pried open with age like Charlton Heston’s cold dead hand clutching his firearm to the delight of the National Rifle Association.
(El Enemigo Single Vineyard La Esperanza Bonarda 2017, Mendoza, Argentina, Piedemonte Al Sur, Mendoza, Argentina, $21.95, Liquor Control Board of Ontario # 629782, 13.5%, 750 mL, Robert K. Stephen A Little Birdie Told Me So Rating 92/100).
We are moving down the coast a bit from Torremolinos to Fuengirola. The day started with a fly on my lip waking me up. Denise’s brother-in-law was going to give us a lift to the apartment we have rented for two weeks called Perla 2 owned by Sofico. The suitcase was broken as it only closed on one side. We made it safely to our apartment. We invited Denise and her brother-in-law up for a drink on the balcony. We had trouble figuring out how the stove worked but the manager explained how to work it. On our walk we passed a Spanish language school where I enrolled in a two-week class with classes from 7-9 each night. We bought some vegetables, fruit and fish at a market. Stale bread for a ham sandwich for lunch. We couldn’t find anyone to repair the suitcase. I went to my class. Our teacher is called Pablo and I am the youngest student. Most are middle aged people. We had an excellent fish dinner and off I went searching for a discotheque. This routine went on for two weeks. I am not impressed with the Costa del Sol. The water is not particularly clean unlike the crystal-clear waters of Greece and Yugoslavia. There are high rises everywhere and loads of tourists. I am eating very well but there is more to travel than a full stomach. In simple terms there is little excitement here. I might as well be in Miami Beach.
Margaret Mary Stephen Diary Entry: It is fun to cook here. I get up each morning while Robert is asleep and go to the local market which is a large two floor building with the ground floor selling fish and meat and the second-floor fruit and vegetables. There is a huge selection of fresh fish but as expensive as they are we are trying many of them. One shop sells only spices so I bought a bit of many of them. I don’t recognize them but cooked spaghetti sauce with some of them and it was very tasty. The tomatoes are huge and sweet and the lettuce very green and curly. The onions are big and sweet too. I am cooking squash too. The mushrooms are very dirty but once cleaned they are the best I have ever had. The eggs come in plastic bags or cartons. I cook a lot with wine as it is so cheap and tasty.
A comedy about anal sex! Really? Yes and it is handled with tact with really no raunchiness in it. Oh my pushing the envelope in a mainstream film! Can I say daring and innovative?
Laura (Kendra McDermott) in a sex shop with her buddies
Frank Tsigas (George Tramountanas) is a middle-aged family man packing a few extra pounds. His wife Laura (Kendra McDermott) prompted by Frank’s desire for a spicier sex life and her wish to see him shed some weight makes him a bet that if he can loose 50 pounds in three months there is a reward of anal sex awaiting him or as the film politely refers to it as “Browntown” or “chocolate cha cha”. Get it?
As it looks like Frank may win the bet Laura gets increasingly stressed out. Thank goodness for her friends that have a lighthearted view of the matter.
Frank is a professional blogger working for a blogging outfit and for years he has wanted to win “Pitchfest” a contest for bloggers and writers which if won means a publishing deal. Frank anonymously blogs about his bet and hits skyrocket.
If there is such a thing as “comedic tension” it is in this film. It should bring a smile, or more likely a smirk on your face.
I can’t tell you the ending.
Tramountanas as an actor and director has crafted a comedy about a delicate topic and he pulls it off. McDermott excels in her role as a wholesome suburban wife slightly confused and bewildered with the possible consequences of her bet.
You might want to think of this as a ground-breaking comedy and crafted to deal with a sensitive topic almost taking it to the level of a spoof aka chocolate cha cha.
The film arrives on digital platforms on March 22, 2022.
“Fundamentally, mindfulness is a simple concept. Its power lies in its practice and its applications. Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment and non judgementally. This kind of attention nurtures greater awareness, clarity, and acceptance of the present moment reality. It wakes up to the fact that our lives unfold only in moments. If we are not fully present for many of those moments, we may not only miss what is most valuable in our lives but also fail to realize the richness and the depth of our possibilities for growth and transformation.”
Jon Kabat-Zinn “Wherever You Go There You Are” hachete Books
A flock of flies has become our morning alarm clock. After lunch I took the bus back to Malaga to get the Scrabble game Mom had left at Hotel Las Vegas. It was a long trip but a delicious homecooked dinner of Coq au Vin was the reward. I creamed Mom in a game of Scrabble. Her mother has taught me well so I am a Scrabble Master!
7July1972: Torremolinos, Spain
With these damn flies it is like beat em is not working. Perhaps we should join their team? We headed into the city centre after I crushed Mom in Scrabble. I haven’t seen such a mob on the bus since Greece and Yugoslavia. We stopped in at the tourist office and inquired how we could get to Morocco. We stopped a butcher’s shop and bought two huge steaks which we had for dinner with baked potatoes. While I have my doubts about anything unique about Torremolinos at least I am eating well. For all I know this place is a Miami Beach of Spain?
“‘Then the mortars came in again. Chuckler got a big chunk in his left thigh, close up to the crotch.’ Runner laughed in retrospect. ‘It was funny. He was so scared he lost the family jewels. ‘Are they all right?’ he asked the corpsman. ‘Quick, tell me they are all right?’ ‘Take it easy’ the corpsman tells him. It wasn’t even close. You got plenty of sack time ahead of you.’ So the Chuckler lies back smiling. He was so relieved you’d think he only cut his finger or something. I swear he’d have begged the corpsman to shoot him if it had been the other way.”
4July1972: Awoken by the flies buzzing all around. I killed 11 of these pesky brutes. Eggs, ham and toast for breakfast. We then went over to our American friends, Gloria and Buddy, and met them at their hotel pool and we stayed until 6 and left. Coming home we had to cross a busy road which took us five minutes to do. I am more used to avoiding donkey poop in my travels than automobile traffic. We returned home to a battle with the flies. I killed 24. We had Mom’s beef bourguignon and rice for dinner and went to see an old black and white film with Audrey Hepburn and Shirley McLain.
5July1972: Woken up by the flies. We took the bus to Marbella and Mom insisted we go to a restaurant described in “Europe on 5 and 10 Dollars a Day”. After asking four or five people we found it. It was under new management and the prices had changed from what was described in the book. We had spaghetti and meatballs at 12.5 pesetas each. That is less than a dollar for both of us but Mom’s spaghetti is better. On the way back we stopped at Fuengirola and we rented an apartment at Sofico for two weeks. $8.50 a day. Margaret Mary Entry; The butcher at the market across the street is a huge women with blonde hair tied in a bun. You should see her handle a knife! I bought a chicken and pointed where I wanted it cut and nearly had my finger chopped off.
It is 2022 and tonight the Canadian Women’s Hockey Team is playing for a gold medal against the United States in the Beijing Olympics. Having been watching the Canadian women’s hockey team playing over the last decade I take them for granted but the journey to national recognition certainly couldn’t have easy. And between you and me the women’s hockey game has a different pace and the prohibition about body checks brings out the finesse of hockey you will not see in men’s hockey. Quite frankly it is captivating and Canadians are slowly giving recognition to women’s hockey stars.
But there are pioneers in women’s sport such as Lusia “Lucy” Harris who exploded onto the women’s basketball scene in the 1970’s after joining the Delta State women’s basketball team in Cleveland, Mississippi where she powered the team to three successive national championships and was part of the United States Olympic basketball team at the 1976 Montreal summer Olympics where she scored the first basket in women’s basketball Olympic history.
But after that it seemed she had nowhere to go as there was no WNBA in existence. She was drafted in 1977 by the New Orleans’s Pelican’s NBA team but declined the offer and ended up coaching her high school basketball team. Her bi-polar disorder surfaced after the Montreal Olympics.
Lusia comes across as a humble and giggly athlete that accepted the reality of the day after her basketball career and without bitterness and with grace. She was one of the first women inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame.
You might want to shake your head and say she deserved better but with grace and dignity Lusia accepted the reality of the day. But her dynamism and huge basketball skills advanced women’s basketball and thanks to this documentary one can see her role played by a very classy lady. There is no bitterness, no recriminations just her love of basketball that will be her biggest tribute. She died at 66 in January 18 in Mississippi.
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