Thanks Mike Sciarappa -- side dish mystery solved!

Thanks for your comments Wendy and Mike -- Bruno's really brings out the nostalgia in people!

I'm pretty sure the small screen in Canada reference comes from one of your brothers Karen.

Best to avoid international incidents!

Thanks for the link Betsy! I want Robert Emmet's ring!

Thanks Betsy! A friend just emailed a bunch of us the other day to see if we want to go to this exhibit. I've been wanting to check out Hillwood for a while, so this seems like a good excuse. Once the storm passes!

I'm glad you liked it!

@NorthernOutlaw -- The sequel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQK2pANtARU

I hope I live to see it.

This reads like one of those robocomments seeking to sell Nikes, but more clever.

What songs were you singing in your childhood?

Say what?!

Coincidentally, I just made the simpler Martha Stewart asparagus and gruyere tart last night. I found the puff pastry at the Tenley Whole Foods and got the last (non-chocolate) one. I hope that's not the last one for the season! On the other hand, it cost a (to me) shocking $10 for one sheet, so maybe it won't be a regular item on my shopping list anyway.

slopine -- The first movie I remember seeing Brad Pitt in was A River Runs Through It, and I remember thinking boy, he needs to play Robert Redford's son in a movie. I never dreamed he and Jon Voight's daughter would later become king and queen of the prom.

Probably. At tennis this morning I must have shouted "mercy!" a dozen times. But no shrieking!

I thought it was fun. They seem to have edited out the notorious "as if" comment!

My comments get so filled with spam ads for sports shoes and get rich quick schemes I sometimes miss these wonderful real posts. I thought I'd share my mother's memory of Bruno's: "Bruno's steak sandwich - thin slices of toast covered with thin slices of delicious steak. I'm quite sure that there was some butter involved and maybe a touch of garlic. It was accompanied by chow-chow - mustard pickles and probably some kind of potato, although Dad and I can't remember what kind of potato, if indeed there was some. I probable told you this story a hundred times, but here I go again. Dad and I were crossing the street, heading to Bruno's, when my obstetrician drove by and wagged his finger at me. We went anyway. Mom" @J O'Mara: My father said he remembers there was a Jersey City politician named O'Mara back in the day.

Oh, I don't know. I think if your biggest accomplishment in life is to have cut a record that girls all over the country danced to in their rooms with their best friends, that's pretty good.

That would be great. Get right on that!

Separated at birth.

Not until now -- bwaaannng! I loved Franklyn Ajaye.

You're so right Lynn -- he was great. Tonight I told my dad that I didn't want to build "Win Win" up too much in case he and my mom were disappointed, and he said he wasn't worried about that, and that with a McCarthy movie "you almost don't know why you like it." That might sound like a back-handed compliment, but I think it's a full-on compliment, and so true.

Trey -- I thought True Grit was a better movie, but you've got to hand it to Black Swan for having such a dramatic effect on me. I think. Reminds me of Bill Murray's "saw it on a small screen in Canada" non-review. http://www.mbpalaver.com/mbpalaver/2007/02/moviepalaver_th.html

My favorite line of episode one was when Maggie Smith asked "What is a weekend?"

The content of the movie was just increasingly unsettling. I almost fainted in a few other movies in my life -- see, e.g., http://www.mbpalaver.com/mbpalaver/2008/02/moviepalaver-os.html -- but here I made the mistake of thinking walking out to the lobby would make me feel better. Though I did feel very peaceful and comfortable lying on the ground with my eyes closed with a bunch of strangers hovering over me asking if I was okay. I thought it was a dream.