I Made Katharine Hepburn's Brownie Recipe

I like cooking and baking, I like movies, and I like history. When those three topics intersect I’m so excited I can barely stand it. And when Katharine Hepburn is involved I expect nothing short of pure awesomeness.According to IMDB, Hepburn was in 52 films, 43 of which were made before I was born. The result of this unfortunate timing of history is that most people my age (38) and younger have no idea what a badass Katharine Hepburn was.I wasn’t familiar with her until a handful of years ago when I saw her in Bringing Up Baby, which is a screwball comedy in which she is hilarious. After that I saw her in The African Queen, The Philadelphia Story, and On Golden Pond. Those four films almost cover the entire expanse of her career, and show her range.But not until I saw a Dick Cavett interview with her from 1973 did I really appreciate how awesome she was. The interview lasts almost two hours, and every single second is worth watching. Cavett didn’t intend to interview her that day.She’d come to the studio to prepare to be interviewed the following day, but instead she suggested they do it right then. She’s very casual, with her feet on the table, her hair a bit of a mess, and not dressed up at all. But she had something incredibly insightful or provocative to say on just about every topic that Cavett brought up. Those two hours are better than anything on television today.I go back to Hepburn from time-to-time. There are various interviews with her on YouTube, and a few interesting print interviews as well. I could easily spend an entire day listening to, and reading her thoughts, to say nothing of the other 48 movies that I have to see.The other day I was scrolling through Facebook and the New York Times posted an article that mentioned Katharine Hepburn and brownies. Of course it piqued my interest, so I clicked on it and read.You can read the article here, but I’ll summarize.It’s written by a woman who twenty years earlier was about to quit during her senior year at Bryn Mawr, which is Hepburn’s alma mater. She told her dad she was going to quit, and her dad, who lived in the same neighborhood as Hepburn, decided to write a letter to the actress and ask her to talk her out of quitting Bryn Mawr. So he wrote the letter and dropped it in her mailbox.Hepburn called the young woman, told her not to quit, and asked her and her dad to come see her. Of course they did so, and they had a nice visit, and that began a bit of a friendship between this woman’s father and Hepburn.A few years later Hepburn was recovering from a car accident, so the father made brownies and dropped them off at her house. She tried one, protested that they had too much flour, and then rattled off her own brownie recipe.He quickly wrote it down, and passed it on to his daughter. And that recipe is the one that The Times published.So of course I had to try the recipe. My last name is Baker, after all.It’s a simple recipe, and, as Hepburn admonished, it’s light on the flour. I won’t reproduce the entire recipe here. You can find it in the original Times article, and it’ll only take about 10 minutes of prep time.And it’s worth every minute. The brownies are delicious.America’s Test Kitchen did a segment a few years ago where they made brownies from scratch and had people taste test them against boxed brownies, and most people preferred boxed brownies.No one would have preferred boxed brownies to Katharine Hepburn’s brownies. The brownies are supposed to be gooey, and it’s stressed in the recipe to keep them in the oven for forty minutes and not to bake them too long. I baked them for thirty-eight minutes, and that was too long (Modern, efficient ovens, I suspect). I wish I would have taken them out five minutes earlier so they were a bit gooier.But they had incredible chocolate taste, perfect texture, and are instantly addictive. I’ve eaten a third of the pan, and I’m about to pawn some off on my kids so I don’t eat the rest of them.So try Katharine Hepburn’s brownie recipe. You’ll be glad you did.Then, after that, watch her interview with Dick Cavett, followed by one of her films.You’ll be glad you did that, too.Wasn't that well-written and fun to read? You should subscribe to my blog and we'll send you an e-mail every time I write a new one. Type your email address in the box and click the "create subscription" button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.

IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: Ladies and Gentlemen, Dick CavettPREVIOUS POST: Can't Handle Daylight Saving Time? Get Over It!

Can't Handle Daylight Saving Time? Get Over It!

This is one of my favorite weekends of the year: the weekend in which we change the clocks and begin Daylight Saving Time. (Do you notice the lack of an S at the end of Saving? That’s correct.)And maybe it’s just a coincidence, but I’ve noticed more stories about the havoc caused by DST than in years past. The New York Times had two stories over the weekend. The New Yorker had a long piece about activists who are trying to do away with time changes, and even the Naperville Sun got in on the action.All of these articles featured people who contend that DST (Daylight Saving Time. Come on, don’t make me type it every time) is the worst thing since before some genius discovered how to sell sliced bread.DST haters have plenty of arguments against it. The New Yorker article claims, “Both transitions wreak havoc. Scientists have found that, on the Monday after daylight saving starts, heart attacks and traffic accidents are more numerous, judges dole out harsher sentences, and employees are more likely to ‘cyberloaf’ on the Internet.”There’s no link in the article to support such claims, but it doesn’t matter. I don’t need a link. Whether substantiated or not, my response to DST haters would be the same.Get over it!Don’t let a one-hour time change throw you off so easily. I mean it’s not like we’re shifting the clock by five hours or something. If today we suddenly expected you to go to bed when twenty-four hours earlier you were eating dinner, then I’d have some sympathy for your complaint. But changing the time by an hour shouldn’t “wreak havoc” as The New Yorker claims.It’s probably too late for this year, since the time change has already happened, but let me guide you through the drastic, life-shifting, havoc inducing shift of sixty minutes. Print this out and you can use it for next year. Then, if it works, maybe you can help make it go viral. And then, after everyone comes to terms with having a twenty-three hour day once a year, we can tackle less important problems like health insurance and terrorism.First, keep in mind that DST begins on the second Sunday it March. That way you wont be surprised. Second, just because it officially begins on Sunday, doesn’t mean that you can’t prepare early. So Saturday night, when you’re ready for bed, do something crazy and stay up for another hour. Live a little.So instead of going to bed at ten, go wild and stay up until eleven. But if you planned on getting up at seven, still get up at seven. Perhaps you’ll be a little tired, but I suspect you’ll survive. Then, live the day. Sunday night go to bed when you feel tired. Sleep. I bet you wake up Monday. And I bet the problem is solved.Some of you probably have children and the time change wreaks havoc with your children.But guess what, they’ll survive, too! Most children’s sleep schedule is probably messed up on Christmas Eve, yet they somehow manage to have a perfectly delightful day the next day.However, in case you need a plan to help your children deal with the change, try this. When they wake up on Sunday, play with them. Engage them. Take them outside. Make them run around. Play games. Do new things. Make them use their minds and bodies so intensely that by evening they’re asking to go to bed. Maybe they get an extra hour of sleep since they’re so wiped out.Then, the next day, wake them up and live.Whatever we do, let’s just stop complaining about the time change. It’s an hour. Sixty minutes. It’s not a big deal. And this summer, when it’s almost nine o’clock at night and there’s still sunlight, you’ll be happy that you endured such hardship back in March.Yes, humans like predictability and routine and blah, blah, blah, but we’re also adaptable. If we can adapt to survive the Western diet, then surely we can survive a time change. If you can’t, then I strongly suggest that you refrain from traveling, because—newsflash—different places have different times.The amount that you worry about the time change is much worse for you than the time change itself.Take a deep breath. Relax. You’ll be just fine.Wasn't that well-written and fun to read? You should subscribe to my blog and we'll send you an e-mail every time I write a new one. Type your email address in the box and click the "create subscription" button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.

IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: Alarm Clocks SuckPREVIOUS POST: Moving the Wrigley Field Bullpens is a Mistake

Moving the Wrigley Field Bullpens is a Mistake

The World Series Champion Chicago Cubs (I’m somewhat surprised I don’t start every blog post with that phrase) have had another busy offseason. I’m not referring to the various roster moves they’ve made, but rather to the ongoing renovations in and around Wrigley Field.Renovations have been ongoing for a few years now, and the stadium is changing bit-by-bit. When all of the work is done, the differences between the before and after photos will be stark. Parts of the stadium will be brand new, yet we’ll still think of it as being more than a hundred years old.The current round of renovations include relocating the bullpens from foul territory down the third base and first base lines, to a space beneath the left field and right field bleachers. Of all the recent changes at Wrigley, moving the bullpens annoys me most.One of the reasons fans have always loved Wrigley Field is because of the many unique features. The ivy, the scoreboard, the marquee, and the bleachers help make Wrigley unique compared to the twenty-nine other ballparks in baseball. And none of the changes to Wrigley have disrupted any of those things. Extra rows were added to the back of the bleachers, and the concourse at the back was widened, but that didn’t change the character of the park at all.However, the bullpens are a classic feature of Wrigley Field as well. Only four other stadiums have their bullpens located along the foul lines. Three of them (Minnesota, Oakland, and Tampa Bay) have no choice because the stadiums were built for non-baseball use, and there’s no place else to put them.The fourth stadium is AT&T Park, home to the San Francisco Giants. It opened for the 2000 season, and not only does it have bullpens in foul territory down the lines, but the bullpens were designed that way to specifically emulate Wrigley Field!Yet next season, Wrigley’s bullpens will disappear beneath the bleachers, and AT&T’s bullpens remain down the lines.From what I’ve read, the Cubs made the decision to relocate the bullpens for two reasons. One, player safety. Having ten-inch mounds of dirt just a foot from fair territory has always been an accident waiting to happen, I suppose. And two, money. Eliminating the bullpens allows the addition of a few rows of (very expensive) seats.Moving the bullpen and adding seats changes the angle of the wall down the lines, so more of the foul line will now rest just inches away from the wall, so that does add slightly more character, but it probably also negates any gain in player safety, as it’s easy to imagine more player-wall collisions as outfields charge toward the stands for fly balls.

Wrigley's old and new left field lines. pic.twitter.com/5GzCzbTIts

— Wrigley Aerials (@WrigleyAerials) March 2, 2017

But even if it is safer for players, brings in more money in ticket sales, and protects bullpen pitchers from the elements (the saddest argument in favor of moving the bullpens), I think it’s the wrong thing to do.Wrigley Field is Wrigley Field because the Cubs player, and because of its character. It’s one thing to make Wrigley more like other parks by adding things (jumbotron, large advertising signs), but it’s something else to make Wrigley more like other parks by subtracting things.Moving the bullpens from foul territory ruins the unique proximity to the action that fans have previously experienced. I sat in box seats next to the Padres bullpen in 2008, and I think my ears are still ringing from the popping of the catcher’s glove with every pitch as Trevor Hoffman warmed up.Sure, there was the incident during a game in 2000 when a drunk fan stole a Dodgers’ player’s hat, and the player climbed into the stands, followed by a dozen of his teammates, but you’ve got to take the good with the bad!The positives of having the bullpens down the line far out numbered the negatives. And the Cubs will lose much more by moving them than they will gain.Part of me also thinks that maybe they should leave well enough alone. I mean, they just won the World Series (how is that still unbelievable!?) with the bullpens down the line, so why not leave them?Tom Ricketts didn’t ask for my opinion before they moved the bullpens though, so all we have left is memories of how Wrigley used to be, before all the renovations.Well, memories and a World Series Championship!Wasn't that well-written and fun to read? You should subscribe to my blog and we'll send you an e-mail every time I write a new one. Type your email address in the box and click the "create subscription" button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.

IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: I Won't Cry if the Cubs Lose, But if They Win...PREVIOUS POST: Movies from my Childhood: Murder by Phone

Movies from my Childhood: Murder by Phone

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about a film from my childhood called Murder by Phone. It’s thirty-five years old, and rather obscure, so it’s not streaming on Netflix or Amazon. However, after I saw it when I was four or five years old it left such a long-lasting impression on me that I wanted to watch it again.Although the film was available on YouTube, and the VHS was for sale on Amazon, I had hoped to obtain a legitimate copy of the film so I didn’t have to violate the copyright in order to watch it.Elliot, a kind gentleman at my work with whom I’d discussed the film, took it up on himself to buy a used VHS copy from Amazon for me. Before I watched the VHS copy, I did a little research and discovered the First-Sale Doctrine. This is a legal concept that states that a person or entity who legal purchases a copyrighted product, may then legally sell that product to another buyer.The VHS tape came from Blockbuster Video, who I assume legally purchased it, and when the store went out of business, I assume someone purchased it from them, who then sold it to Elliot. Therefore, I could watch the film without worrying about violating the copyright.(Not that the copyright holder is going to come after some dude trying to satisfy a thirty-five-year-old curiosity by watching a film forgotten by almost everyone else on Earth. But it’s the principle, I suppose.)So I watched the film, and it did not disappoint! I didn’t remember one single second of it from the first time I saw it all those years ago, but I had the basic gist correct: a madman invents a way to kill people by sending a signal over the phone lines.Richard Chamberlain and John Houseman star, and Michael Anderson is the director.I enjoyed it from beginning to end.First, the madman gets his first victim right away by murdering someone before the opening credits. Not only does the murder occur before we even settle into our seats, but the victim is an innocent do-gooder who had just helped an old guy up from the ground after some hoodlums pushed him to the ground in a subway station.Right away we get the feeling that anything goes with this maniac.A regular film review won’t capture the magic of this wonderful piece of art. Instead, I’ll just point out a few of the “finer” points.During the opening credits the name of the production designer caught my eye: Seamus Flannery. That’s quite possibly the best creative name I’ve ever seen.The film gets off to a murderous start, with a second person killed just six minutes in. And since this is the early eighties, these deaths aren’t that fake, CGI garbage, but rather special effects that took some ingenuity, especially the way the bodies fly through the air in slow-motion after being shocked over the phone.I wish I sounded like John Houseman when I talked. If you don’t know what he sounds like then stop reading this and listen to him.John Houseman’s character is ahead of his time with recycling. At one point Chamberlain’s character is at Houseman’s apartment, and has just finished a beer, and Houseman grabs the can from his guest’s hand and says, “See I haven’t changed; still separate the trash. Cans on the right.”Despite an impressive start, the body count really falls off. I only counted six deaths by the end.In a ridiculous combination that is never fully explained, Chamberlain’s character is both an environmental expert and a telecommunications expert. Neither of his fields of expertise impress the detective trying to catch the phone murderer. When Chamberlain tries to help, the detective says, “Go on back to your soybean patch and leave the police work to the grown ups.”As part of his investigation, Chamberlain destroys a phone in a subway station, and then calls the phone company to tell them about it. He then sits on a bench, waits for the phone repairman to show up, and then talks to him.Now, I’m willing to suspend disbelief long enough to accept that a crazy guy is killing people over the phone, but how in the world can they expect me to believe that a phone repairman would should up that quickly?It takes guts to kill one of the movie’s major characters. I didn’t see it coming, and I almost applauded the person’s death, just because it was so unexpected.One thing we’ve lost with the demise of landline phones is adventure in phone design. Remember hamburger phones? Mickey Mouse phones? We don’t have cool stuff like that anymore.Perhaps the most ironic thing about the film is that the killer possesses this advanced technology that enables him to kill people by sending a signal through telephone lines, yet he has to use a rotary dial to make the call.I didn’t know what to expect from the film, but it did not disappoint. Compared to films that are made today, the violence is rather tame, and while the idea of killing someone through the phone lines might not terrify me as much as it did when I was four years old, it’s still rather unnerving.I enjoyed the process of tracking down and watching this film so much that I hope to find more films that I vaguely remember from my childhood. Some were child-appropriate, some not. But I look forward to watching them from an adult perspective.IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: The Lego Movie SucksPREVIOUS POST: Why You Should Subscribe by e-mail to My BlogType your email address in the box and click the "create subscription" button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.

Why You Should Subscribe by e-mail to My Blog

People smarter than me have calculated that there are more than one billion websites and almost five billion web pages in existence. With so much information available, we’re left with a most basic question: which of those pages are the best, and, thus, worth my time?I can’t comment on all five billion web pages. But I can comment on one. This very page that you’re reading right now. It’s a blog. It’s called Dry it in the Water. It’s hosted by ChicagoNow.And, just in case you’re not familiar: It. Is. Awesome.In fact, the only thing awesomer (yes, it’s a word!) than this blog is you. Yes, you, Dear Reader. I’m talking to you.Because I know how awesome you are, and I know how awesome this blog is, I want to make sure the two of you unite. Yes, you’ve found your way here this time, but what about next time, And what about the previous 272 posts that have appeared here? Did you read all of those?No? What do you mean “no?” You missed a few? You overlooked others? There are some that you meant to come back to, but then forgot about?If only there were a way that you could be sure not to miss any of these posts. Gosh, with the internet being so fancy, you’d think someone would have figured out how to do that.Well, Dear Reader, it’s your lucky day. (And mine, too!) Because if you subscribe by e-mail to this blog, you’ll never miss a post. Every single damn time that I write a post you’ll get an e-mail that says, “That Dry it in the Water dude is thinking again. Click here to read what he’s thinking about.”But perhaps you’re new to the blog, and you’re not convinced that you should subscribe. Maybe you think I’m going on too long, and you’re about to give up on this post, let alone any posts in the future.Let me tell you, Dear Reader, you do so at your peril. I mean, just look at the topics that will be covered in the coming days and weeks:How to eat leftover pizzaThe contents of my carWhy don’t politicians have beards?Murder by PhoneHow did I become a reader?And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Ideas flow into the wasteland of my brain at a constant rate, so I’ll be writing for quite some time. This thing’s just about to take off, so there’s still room for you to get in on the ground floor. Subscribe before it’s the cool thing to do.Then, after you subscribe, visit the archive and read some of the cool stuff I’ve already written. You can find posts about:An invention that lets women pee standing up (which, incidentally, is the most-read post on this blog)How to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwichPenis sizeDumb ParentsThe 939 Saturdays of ChildhoodGunsBeing a VeganThe SybarisResting bitch faceAnd 263 more. If you haven’t read them, do so! They’re good, I promise. (Well, most of them are good. There are three really crappy ones mixed in. When you find them, e-mail me and tell me about it.)Yes, you might see the posts on my Brett Baker Writes Facebook page. However, Facebook can show those posts to as few as 2% of the people who like a page, so it’s likely you won’t see the posts on that page.You might also find my posts through Google. But that’s assuming that you’re looking for what I’m writing about. That’s not always the case though. Sometimes I’m writing about stuff you didn’t even know you wanted to know, and then after I write about it, you’re like, “Yeah, he’s right.”Like HGTV. I dare you to read that post and find one thing with which you disagree. Even though you hadn’t thought about any of it, you know I’m right.So here’s the deal. You don’t want to miss any of my posts. You probably already have an e-mail account. So subscribe to this blog by e-mail. Do it now! It costs nothing. We don’t sell your e-mail address. We won’t send you any junk. And you can unsubscribe anytime. (Although you’ll never want to.)And if that’s not enough to convince you, keep in mind that if I ever give away a million dollars, I’m going to do it through my mailing list. I’d hate for you to miss out.Subscribe below.And thanks for reading!IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: How Did I get to 100 Posts? One at a TimePREVIOUS POST: Our Family's Long Relationship with Where the Wild Things AreType your email address in the box and click the "create subscription" button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.

Our Family's Long Relationship With Where the Wild Things Are

I wasn’t a reader as a kid. I’d see other kids who always talked about books they read, or would discuss a movie and say, “But the book was better,” and it just seemed so foreign to me.Reading is boring. Why the hell would someone want to read when they can watch TV or go outside?(I’m going to stop myself before I go off on a tangent and this ends up as a 2,000-word post. We’ll cover my development of reading in a future post. And I’ll link to it here.)But my opinion changed, and by the time I had kids I decided that I wanted to read to them. Every single day. Whether they understood what I was reading or not.I read Little Women to my oldest daughter when she was seven or eight. It took forever, but it’ll always be one of my fondest memories, especially since I wasn’t around her as much when she was younger, so I didn’t read to her as much as I did to her younger siblings.For the past twelve-plus years I’ve read to my kids. Maybe not quite everyday, but almost everyday. And everyday for long periods of time.So we’ve read countless books. Everything from four page hard cardboard books to the Brothers Grimm and Edgar Allen Poe stories I’m currently reading to my older sons. (Public service announcement: Don’t read Poe’s story “The Black Cat” to your kids before you read it yourself to screen it for suitability. Yikes!)After reading so many books it’s difficult to choose just one to satisfy tonight’s Blogapalooz-hour in which ChicagoNow bloggers are given a topic and then challenged to write a post in one hour. Tonight’s topic: “Write about a book or publication that is special to you or has had a big impact on your life.”The books that I’ve read to my kids immediately came to mind. But how to choose just one? (Again, to avoid a tangent, I’ll write a post about all the great books we’ve read and link it here.)But any time I think about what we’ve read, one book in particular always stands out. It’s the one I’ve read the most times to my three youngest children. It’s one of a few that we’ve actually worn out. The spine of our first copy gave way and pages started falling out. I have that one tucked away in a tote, and have been reading a new copy for the past half-decade.The book? Where the Wild Things Are. Story and Pictures by Maurice Sendak.I first read this book in a children’s literature course in college. The professor, George Bodmer, loved it and we spent a couple of class sessions talking about the way the pictures creeped beyond their boundaries, and how the wild things were drawn, and the irregular punctuation, and on, and on. I loved it, and I tucked away the title to be recalled when I had my own children.It was one of the first books that I read to my son soon after he was born. And we never stopped reading it.It’s not an exaggeration to say that I’ve read that book two thousand times. Often more than once in a night. Often every single night for weeks at a time.And in reading the book so many times, I’ve developed a sort of performance style. I keep the same pauses for the same beats: “The night Max wore his wolf suit, and made mischief of one kind,” beat beat beat while turning the page, “and another….”I make the same hand motions. “And Max said, ‘I’ll eat you up!’” As I read those words my hand tickles the stomach of the kid to whom I’m reading. I make a claw motion as I read, “And showed their terrible claws.”There are three pages in the middle of the book in which Max and the wild things are swinging from trees, but there are no words. So I improvise the same words on all three pages: “Bum bum bum bum bum BUM.” And punctuate it on the next page by raising my hand when Max says, “Now stop!”There’s more to it. The book is longish, and dramatic, and very melancholy, so it’s perfect for sharing and performing.And it will always be special to me because of how many hours we’ve spent reading it, just me and one, or two, or three of my kids. As they’ve grown, and we’ve read more books, and they’ve learned to read on their own, Where the Wild Things Are remains constant. We still come back to it. It never gets old, even though they know the story entirely.It’s a thread that runs throughout their childhood, and throughout my parenthood. At this point, it’s more than just a book.(Also, I considered writing about the Baseball Encyclopedia. Another future post, the link to which you’ll find here someday.)IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: Watching Jaws With my KidsPREVIOUS POST: Should I Ignore A Copyright to Watch a Film From my Childhood?Type your email address in the box and click the "create subscription" button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.

Should I Ignore A Copyright to Watch a Film From my Childhood?

When I was a kid my parents didn’t put many restrictions on what my two older sisters and I could watch. I don’t know if they were intentionally lenient, or if they just had bigger things to worry about than whether some movie gave me nightmares.As a result, I ended up watching a number of things during my early childhood years at least ten years sooner than I should have. But I’m not a mass murderer or anything, so I guess watching age-inappropriate dreck didn’t affect me too profoundly.I’ve forgotten most of the stuff that we watched, and for good reason, I’m sure. But over the past 30 years or so there are three particular scenes from films I watched as a youngster that have stuck with me.Two of the scenes I’ll leave for a later post. (A cliffhanger. Something I picked up from those movies.) But one scene has me in a quandary. And I’m hoping you can help.I don’t know how old I was when I saw this movie. I’m guessing I was four, but I know for sure that I was no older than five-and-a-half or so. I don’t remember the circumstances under which I watched it. I’m pretty sure my dad was watching it, and since this was the early eighties and VHS rentals probably hadn’t expanded into Peoria, I suspect he was watching it on broadcast television.And since I was so young, I remember next-to-nothing about the movie. I don’t know any of the actors in it, or who directed it. I can’t really describe the movie very well. This one thing that I remember about the movie, which has stuck with me for almost 35 years, is literally all I remember about it.I can’t picture the exact scene, but I suspect the film is just a collection of the same scene over and over again anyway. That repeating scene is a good summary of the entire plot: a guy calls someone and sends some sort of signal or electricity over the phone line and kills the person on the other end of the line.Are you kidding me? Do you have any idea how scary that is to a kid? I could just go answer the phone and then a minute later find myself pushing up daisies? How the hell do I protect against that? In that era the only way to find out who was on the other end of the line was to pickup the phone and talk.So even though I claim that it didn’t screw me up, watching that film, or scenes from that film –I have no idea if I saw the whole thing—must have impacted me somehow since I’ve thought about it off and on for the past thirty-five years.For a long time I’ve wanted to watch it, but I had no idea what it was called. I’d describe it to people, and they’d return a vacant stare. When I worked in a video store in the late 90s I searched for it, but had no luck. I’m sure that I Googled it before and found nothing, but I might be wrong about that because this time a simple search of “movie kills people over the phone” returned the title right away.Murder By Phone. (Alternate title: Bells)Just like that, a mystery that has lasted most of my life, solved. I was so excited I couldn’t stand it.And as I checked the IMDB page for the film, I couldn’t believe that reputable actors starred in it. Richard Chamberlain. John Houseman. Sara Botsford. Those aren’t actors I usually associate with films that might have appeared as B-movie staples on USA Up All Night back in the early nineties.Maybe there’s more to this than meets the eye.The only way to find out is to watch the film. Unfortunately, it’s not on Netflix or Amazon. The Chicago Public Library has a copy of it on VHS, but I don’t live in Chicago, and I’m currently on my public library’s blacklist for overdue fines.Amazon has a used copy available for $19, so I could go that route, but I’m not certain my VCR works.Which brings me to the quandary that I’m hoping you can help with.It is available on YouTube. Someone uploaded it in five parts. I could just click on over and watch it right now. However, I have a long-standing moral objection to illegally watching copyrighted material.On the other hand, we’re not talking about the hottest new release here. It’s not like I’m watching it on YouTube to avoid paying money that will go to the people who created it. There’s no way that I can watch this that will compensate the people who made it.The VHS tape from Amazon is used, so that money is just going to the reseller. There’s a new copy for sale for $64, but that’s just going to a reseller as well. I could pay my library fine and get the library copy through interlibrary loan, but the creators get nothing from that either.So I guess what I’m asking is should I allow myself off the moral/ethical/legal hook here and just watch it on YouTube?Are copyright exceptions granted for situations where lifelong mysteries are solved? Does this film’s importance to me outweigh whatever the copyright holders would lose by me watching the film for free at this point?I suspect not, but I’m interested to hear what you have to say! Leave a comment below.And let’s all hope that this technology can’t be updated to kill us through Ethernet lines!IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: Watching Jaws With my KidsPREVIOUS POST: Alarm Clocks SuckType your email address in the box and click the "create subscription" button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.

Alarm Clocks Suck

I’m a night person. I used to think I was a morning person, but my night personness has been confirmed by a recent observation: I don’t want to get up in the morning. If I was a morning person I’d wake up and think, “Oh hell yeah, it’s the morning, let’s do this!”Instead, I think, “Morning? What the hell happened to all those hours I just had? How’d they go by so quickly?”I think most people in the world are night people. In fact, maybe it’s controversial, but I’ll go ahead and say it: morning people are not to be trusted. If it weren’t for school and work, I’d think the day began at 10:00 a.m. What the hell are you morning people trying to pull over on me by getting up so early?It seems, however, that I might be in the minority on this. Two of my kids attend the local elementary school and they start at 8:10. I’m expected to be at work at 8:30. I live an hour away from my work! Ain’t no time to be sleeping until 10:00 a.m.Since I didn’t start writing this post until after midnight, it’s obvious that I like to stay up late. The only problem with staying up late is the morning. Oh you dreadful, wicked sonofabitch morning. You come so quickly.Turns out the only way I can face the morning—well maybe “face the morning” is the wrong phrase. The only way I can start the morning before it’s half over, is to employ an alarm clock.I suspect that alarms clocks in all formats were invented by the devil. Do you have evidence to dispute this? No, of course you don’t. So just agree with me. Alarm clocks were invented by the devil. Lucifer. Jerk.However, since we live in the 21st century and we have to make everything all fancy, many people don’t even use alarm clocks. Instead they set alarms on their phones. And by “they” I mean me.I wrote a blog post not too long ago about how I didn’t even have a cell phone. But now I’ve caved and not only do I have a cell phone, but that damn thing wakes me up every morning. No wonder I avoided getting one for so long!I’ve thought about getting a rooster to act as my alarm clock, but I pity that damn bird the first time it wakes me up too early on a weekend, so I’ve refrained. I don’t want my kids to grow too attached to it and then have to explain what happened the first time it woke me up at sunrise on a Saturday.So I’m left with the alarm on the phone.One thing the phone has going for it is that it allows me to pick my poison. If I had to listen to the incessant buzzing of a regular alarm clock every morning I think I’d end up stabbing someone. Is there any sound in the world worse than that buzzing? No.My phone knows this, so it provides a wide variety of noises to ruin my sleep. And they all have these fancy names like Clarity, Flutter, Glow, and Tribute. I scroll through the noises as if any one is better than the others. They all suck though. They’re all ruining a perfectly good night of sleep.I’ve chosen Clarity as my alarm sound because it’s obtrusive enough to wake me up, but not so annoying that I want to throw my phone against the wall when I hear it. Instead, I calmly swipe up to turn off the alarm, and the phone gets to live another day.Now, there’s one more issue we have to resolve. The snooze button.I don’t know who invented the snooze button. I suspect it wasn’t Lucifer, but maybe his assistant. But whoever invented it wasn’t doing you any favors.If you’re a fan of the snooze button, let me explain why you’re wrong. Don’t worry, you’ll thank me later.So right now you probably hear the alarm, hit the snooze button, and think, “Yes, I have ten more minutes of sleep.” But guess what! That additional ten minutes is going to be the crappiest ten minutes of the night. You’ll be lucky if you even fall back to sleep, and if you don’t then you’ll become homicidal because you were shortchanged ten minutes of sleep.I advocate the Sleep Until the Last Minute method.Here’s how it works. We all have a go time. This is the last minute at which you can wake up and still make it to school or work on time. This is the time you should be setting your alarm No snooze. No “ten more minutes.”No! The alarm sounds and you spring out of bed and you’re good to go. Yes, waking up and going will be a challenge at first, but it’s more than offset by not waking up earlier than necessary. Stop wasting valuable minutes to substandard sleep. Squeeze every last minute you can out of it.Morning’s going to come no matter what. You might as well manage it the right way.And whatever you do, don’t buy a rooster!IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: A Few Thoughts About SleepPREVIOUS POST: My Son's Orchestra Performance Near-DisasterType your email address in the box and click the "create subscription" button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.