Gelatin and Green Olives...Together At Last, United In Deliciousness!

Wonderful memories of my Grandma Mary, who most certainly would have made this Jell-O salad and served it proudly with dollops of mayonnaise...all the while with a Pall Mall burning between her fingertips manicured with Revlon's Fire and Ice and a highball awaiting her when she finished the chore.

From 1976: Oh, How I LOVE These

I'm old enough to remember The Bicentennial. That summer, I was five years old.

I remember going downtown in Lafayette, IN, for the big parade. My sister and I were wearing matching red, white, and blue outfits that Mom made for us (in those days, Mom made all of our clothes...she is a superb seamstress).

I don't have any videos of that day or that parade or that summer of 1976, but these two videos come very close to what my memories look like. Enjoy.

If It's Friday, That Must Mean That I Am Having Meds-Related Hallucinations Where, In My Mind, It's 1981

The only thing that can be said about this tune: Fuck yeah!

This tune is off a brilliant album called Worlds Apart. Yes, I own it, and it rocks. It rocks so very, very hard.

Saga is from Canada, the land of other such brilliant bands as Rush and Loverboy.

This tune peaked at #26 on the Billboard pop chart in March 1983. (Is it just me, but was the fall of 1982 to the summer of 1983 a particularly splendid time for music?)



Now, pardon me. I have to shove a wad of Chewels in my mouth in defiance as my Dad banishes me from the dinner table yet again for declaring that Ronald Reagan Is The Biggest Disaster To Have Ever Befallen This Country.

(p.s. I miss you, Dad.)

Oh, Dad. I Miss You So Much.

Robert Edward Weiss

"Bob"

October 13, 1945 - September 28, 1999

Three More Delicacies From The Joys Of Jello, 1963

If I showed this to my sister, Jane, she would look at me and say one thing: "Grandma Mary."

Yes, our paternal grandmother loved to make all matter of cold salads involving fruit-flavored Jell-O (she liked lime the best), canned fruits and vegetables suspended, like bewildered flies in honey, in the gelatin. Each plate of the salad was always served with a dollop of mayonnaise, which she would serve with a flourish that never left a chip on her Revlon's Love That Red fingernails (the woman always had a flawless manicure), or disturbed the ash on her ever-present Pall Mall.

Then she would sit down at the dinner table, take a sip from her Manhattan, and say, "I have been seated, so you all may begin."