Goodbye, Downton...For Now

Like Christmas when I was a child, I wait all year with great excitement and anticipation and then poof! It’s over in a flash and I’m left feeling empty and alone.

Of course I speak of Downtown Abbey. It just started and tomorrow night season three will conclude and then what? Luckily I’ve DVRed all the episodes and bought the DVD so I can console myself by watching them over and over as I’ve already started to do (Hello, my name is Elaine and I’m a Downton-aholic) but still…

There’s nothing like that cold Sunday night in January when, after a hectic holiday season, I need a bit of a pick me up and there she stands, Laura Linney, seemingly as excited as the rest of us, and utters the words I have been waiting eleven months to hear, "Tonight we come back to the spellbinding magic of Downton Abbey." The music starts, we see Isis’ rump waddling along Lord Grantham, and I get chills all over.

And what a season! Superbly written and acted, it kept us enthralled. Bates and Anna, Lord Grantham’s financial downfall, the death of Lady Sybil, Mrs. Hughes cancer scare, a wedding that finally happened and a wedding that never made it back up the aisle. We saw Lady Mary blossom into a kind, lovely woman. Of course, she was there all along under the cold alabaster exterior. And we saw Lady Edith come into her own. And Branson. I wasn’t sure about him at first but he fit beautifully upstairs where he seems to have gained a great respect for the Crawleys.

And downstairs…I cried for Thomas and his tortured soul and loathed O’Brien who doesn’t have one. Will Anna and Bates unlock the horrible secret behind those words, Lady Grantham’s soap? Will Thomas be humbled by Bates’ help or will he revert back to his conniving self?

So tomorrow night I’ll sit in front of my television anxious to see what happens, all the while willing it not to end. A few tissues will become soggy before the screen fades to black, no doubt, and melancholy will envelope me.

Years ago in the heyday of Dallas, my friend Janet and I would watch the season finale and then say that we hoped we didn’t die over the summer before we found out what happened. So here’s my wish for the coming year. I wish for world peace, an economy on the rise, good health, blah blah bah. And come January 2014, on a cold Sunday evening, for Laura Linney to look out directly at me and say, "Tonight we come back to the spellbinding magic of Downton Abbey."

Carnage on the Kalahari

I like TV as much as the next person. Sometimes I just want to be entertained and sometimes I want to learn something from the viewing experience. So when I read in People magazine—my weekly secret indulgence—about a new Discovery Channel series called Africa, I decided to tune in. I’ve watched these kinds of shows before, so I really should have been prepared, but we never are, are we?

The first installment in the series is called Kalahari, referring to a region in southwest Africa. It’s a hostile area filled with fossil lakes and desert fog and has very little water. I was really looking forward to the sweeping landscape and the breathtaking photography these kinds of shows are famous for. And then I started watching. A better name for it would have been Carnage. In big letters. And bolded.

It began with a windswept sand dune and a spider rolling down it. Incredible. And then it moved on to the good stuff—the big animals. I love giraffes, those gentle vegetarians that don’t seem to cause much trouble. That is until another male invades their territory. A giraffe’s neck is six feet long. It weights more than five hundred pounds. When a giraffe fights it starts by swinging its neck like a pendulum, gathering speed and then WHAM! it strikes the other animal continuously until it is down. Horrifying.

It was time to take a break. I pressed pause. I needed a cup of tea and maybe a Xanax.

Act two of Kalahari/Carnage started off with, say it with me people, more carnage! This time around it was between a leopard and an antelope. Antelopes and zebras, do they ever get a break? After that the show moved on to giant, gross, repulsive slimy bugs doing God knows what to each other. Time to fast forward. After the bugs came the birds of prey circling over the remains of some animal carcass. I’ve never been a big fan of birds. Now I know why.

I looked at the clock. Halfway through. Surely they would show me something warm and fuzzy next. They did. Baby ostriches, just hatched, were trying to get across this vast expanse of sand to the watering hole before they died of thirst. And just to make it interesting and get their little hearts going, those sadistic Discovery Channel people tossed in stampeding zebras, a couple of elephants and lions on a rampage.

When was this going to be over? And then…black rhinos, whose numbers have been depleted to fewer than five thousand, gathered at night at a secret watering hole. Something like this had never been filmed. First a mother emerged out of the dark with her calf and then others arrived. It was truly breathtaking.

So in the end, I did learn some things. In one of the most inhospitable landscapes on earth, life prevailed and I was witness to these incredibly beautiful creatures.

Just remember to fast forward.

Alex, I'll Take Popes For A Thousand

Now that the craziness of the holidays is over, I thought it time to turn my attention to more intellectual pursuits; something stimulating and fun at the same time. Something that has the potential to turn into a life-changing event with the added bonus of perhaps adding to my meager retirement coffers. Yes, folks, it’s that time of year again when the Jeopardy! Challenge is upon us.

I enjoy Jeopardy! I don’t watch it every night but I try to catch it a couple times a week. I like shouting out the answers with reckless abandon to an empty room, which gives me the advantage of not being embarrassed if I’m incorrect, which I admit happens. I like final Jeopardy! best and give myself a pat on the back if I get the answer correct—especially if the people on the show don’t. I also scowl at the television if the contestant gets things wrong, telling them they’re an idiot and how did they ever make the cut. Yes, things can get pretty hairy at my house around six-thirty each evening.

But here’s the thing, they’re not idiots. Not even close. I’ve taken the test before. I sign up, receive my instructions and on the appointed evening I log in and stare down the timer until the test begins.
You get fifteen seconds per question. Just in case you didn’t know, fifteen seconds is not a long time, especially when you have to type out your answer. At least it doesn’t have to be formatted into a question as it does on the show. But you still have to come up with something. The computer spits out fifty questions, moving on to the next one whether you’re ready for it or not. Afterward, they don’t inform you of your score. If you’ve done well, they’ll call. So far they haven’t.

But before you go judging me and shout out the word idiot, do you know who the pope was in the year 1215? Huh? Do you? Because that’s the caliber of the questions you have to deal with. The fact that I get even a handful correct is pretty impressive—or maybe disturbing because, really, why would one know the answer to such a thing? It’s Pope Innocent III in case you were curious, by the way.

So suffice it to say I won’t be asked to be on the genius tournament with the likes of Ken Jennings any time soon, but nevertheless, there I’ll be on January 10 trying my hardest to find out exactly how much I don’t know.

But keep watching the show. You just might spot me—in the audience.

Happy 2013!

Hip Hip Hooray!

Okay. I admit it. I like anything royal. And not just British royalty, but all royalty. If Queen Rania of Jordan is on the cover of a magazine, I’ll snatch it up. When Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden married her commoner Prince Charming, I had to know all the details. And in their heyday, I enjoyed reading about the latest antics of those two Monegasque princesses, Caroline and Stéphanie. On a rainy weekend I like to sit with a cup of tea (what else!) and look through Royalty or Majesty magazines oohing and ahhing over all the beautiful gowns and clothes.

And I don’t just admire (or is that drool?) from afar. I’ve had my own brush with royalty. When I lived in Belgium, I had the honor to have tea with Fabiola, Queen of the Belgians. I was instructed that as an American I did not need to curtsey, but I was to wait for her to offer her hand before extending my own. Being the royal lover that I am, the minute she was within an arm’s length of me, I extended my hand proudly and pumped hers with gusto.  A few years later when her husband, King Baudouin, died suddenly, I mourned with the rest of the country running out to buy a Belgian flag to hang beside my American one in his honor.

But at heart I am a true anglophile and let’s admit it, no one does royalty like the Brits. From the investitures, royal weddings, trooping the colour, and Princess Diana to the scandals, divorces, and Fergie they have it all. Where else can you get pageantry and class along with beheadings, abdication, toe sucking, Camilla Parker Bowles, nudity and knickers? The British royal family has been the bread and butter of many a scandal magazine with Princess Diana alone gracing fifty-seven covers of People.

And so, while I confess to not totally warming up to Kate Middleton like I did with the young Diana Spencer, I was truly delighted to hear the other day that the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge would soon be parents. Of course I’m hoping for a girl that they will name Diana, but a little William Arthur David George Phillip Richard Henry Nigel Honey Boo Boo Windsor would be adorable as well.

So put the kettle to boil, get out the good china and lift your cup. Hip Hip Hooray!

Have Yourself A 70 Proof Merry Christmas

Have Yourself a 70 Proof Merry Christmas!

My sister is a baker. Around this time of year I can walk into her house and the smell of muffins in assorted flavors or little quiches fills her home. She’s big on making beautiful cookies as well. She likes to get up early when no one else is around and a few hours later her kitchen looks like a wonderful patisserie on some side street in Paris. My sister is a great baker because she is precise. She’s the type that when she brings home something new, she takes out the directions and actually reads them first. Baking requires precise measurements and the reading of a recipe. There’s no a pinch of this, a bit of that in baking.

I’m not much of a baker. I’m a really good cook, but baking, not so much. I don’t have the precise gene. When I buy something new I skip the directions altogether and go straight for the plugging in and pushing buttons method.  I like cooking because if you prepare a soup and toss in the sage and the rosemary but forget the thyme, does it really matter? But try making a pumpkin pie, and oh, let’s say you omit the sugar. What you end up with is a concoction that even the dog won’t eat. Really. My parent’s dog would not eat my misguided attempt at trying to have a healthy holiday. Dogs will eat anything, even, well…, anything, and this dog took one whiff of a sugarless pumpkin pie and turned up his nose.

But for some unknown reason, my mother passed on the recipe for traditional anisette cookies to me. It is my job to bake these cookies, which will be devoured while we open up our gifts. On Christmas Eve morning I awake at an ungodly hour to produce about 20 dozen of the things for seven people. We are ruthless when it comes to these small Italian lumps of dough and even my 12-year-old nephew can’t get enough.  So tossing in a bit of this and a pinch of that just won’t work. I have to be precise.

I meticulously set out all the ingredients, the measuring utensils, and set the oven for 425. I measure and mix, tasting a bit of dough as I go along. But when it comes time for adding the tablespoon of anise extract, 70 proof in case you wanted to know, the most important ingredient of all, I happily revert back to my most un-precise nature and toss in the entire bottle. And then I open up another and in it goes. By now the licorice fumes make me giddy with anticipation of devouring these delectable little cookies with their red, white, or green icing. And what about the icing? I can rationalize the insane amount of anise I pour into the cookies telling myself that it will burn off in the baking process, but the icing doesn’t get baked and at least one more bottle of extract gets tossed into it.

The more I think about it the more I’m sure my mother knew exactly what she was doing having me bake the cookies. My sister would have measured out that one tablespoon of extract with the precision of a NASA scientist mixing the rocket fuel.

Christmas morning at my sister’s home is a happy and giddy time.  Eating dozens of cookies with 70 proof icing will definitely put a smile on your face.

Happy Holidays!