Nerd to the rescue

With the assistance of my new helper I was able to turn out a Betty Crocker sour cream coffee cake for our church coffee hour, and also, ahem, Lacy Oatmeal Cookies. They went, too!! We had a big crowd.

This is what happens when you bring in a Sunbeam Mixmaster. People gather!

I love that ad up above, the seasoned cook gazing admiringly at the appliance. Being a novice I had so much fun, standing over this antique whirring machine. Here is something I love about the Internet: You will always have access to some nerd who delivers arcane information you desire.

Researching my Sunbeam Mixmaster I found this site where, this guy has obviously devoted his life to Sunbeam Mixmasters. He is the biographer of the Sunbeam Mixmaster the way I am of Leonard Pennario.

About the Model 9, the Mixmaster I own, he wrote:

This model appeared in August of 1948. Some of the new features include a plastic tip on one of the beaters to help turn the bowl. Also the decal changes during the model 9 production run. Early model 9s have the early style decal and the later ones have decals like in the picture.

I am reading that fascinated.

I had been puzzling over the plastic tip on one of the beaters! I was thinking: Oh well, it probably got worn off the other one, but that's OK. Now I see it is as God intended.

The chronicler also wrote of a previous model, Model 7: "This model is first with the beater ejector. A simple twist of the handle and out come the beaters."

And I go: "Oh! That's how the beaters come out!"

I could not figure that out on my own! I had begun to think I had an earlier model because I could not find a beater ejector.

Live and learn.

Thanks to the nerds on the Internet!

Out from under the Net

Son of a sea cook, my home computer has been on the fritz and keeping me away from the Web log! Well, the computer is not entirely on the fritz. I could use it for my book.

End result, as we say here in Buffalo, I got a lot of work done! That woman up above in the picture? That was me yesterday! At least that was what I felt like.

It made me wonder if Leonard had reached down from the sky somehow and flicked a switch.

No Facebook for me!

No Web log!

No YouTube! Luckily I have my stereo.



 It is a learning experience, I will say this, not to have the Internet. You realize how often you use it, how easily you can be lured onto it. Every other paragraph I was re-reading, I would think of checking something, of looking for something, and then -- Doh! No Google!

No eBay, so I could not check to see if a certain publicity picture had surfaced. Hey, you never know.

And I am not undisciplined. I actually have pretty good self control. Sometimes I laugh at myself, when the Internet is not down, because I want to look for something and I deny myself. "Overruled," I will say. "Not necessary."

And yesterday it felt kind of good to have my computer as uncluttered as my desk.

But occasionally something does come up you want to check. And -- so primitive! I am thinking of checking the spelling of someone's name, or something, and ... what do you do?

"Maybe I have this book downstairs," I caught myself thinking.

A book! What a concept!

I have my teacher Stephen Manes' vintage Grove dictionary. I treasure it even though it pre-dated Pennario and so he is not in it. So there is that.

Yesterday I was wishing I had the Encyclopaedia Brittanica.

So primitive!

The Pope Tweets

The Wall Street Journal has a great video of the Pope Tweeting.

It is great to watch His Holiness walking into the room and everyone kneeling and kissing his hand. It is so obvious how that is business as usual, that is the way things are done, well, when in Rome. After making that spectacular entrance the Pope sits down at the I-Pad and sends his first Tweet. At least it is his first English language Tweet.

Ha, ha! I love watching the look on his face as they are telling him about it and reading it aloud. That is the way Leonard Pennario would get when anyone tried to get him to pay attention to the Internet. Pennario never wanted to look at anything on line but he liked me to tell him about it.

Just the way Pennario did, the Pope has a pretty good head of hair, I cannot help noticing. Beautiful white hair.

I am going to have to figure out how to follow the Pope on Twitter. Perhaps if I entertain him I will have his ear and I can complain about things in the Church that are bothering me.

On the other hand forget things in the Church that are bothering me. The Pope and I can Facebook and Tweet into the night about the piano music of Schubert.

Watch His Holiness get hooked on Facebook and Twitter.

Watch him start playing Farmville. He will go up against Don Paul. We will be reading messages like, "Benedictus XVI is working in the stables." "Benedictus XVI has harvested a bushel full of yellow squash." That is how he signed his Tweet, Benedictus XVI.

Too cool.

Fun with the Preakness and Wolfram Alpha

Because of the Preakness Stakes, I was thinking today about Leonard Pennario and how he loved horse racing. If Pennario were alive I am sure he would be watching the Preakness. He watched it last year.

But what about this crowd of slugs and schufts at the Preakness? I just found this on the Baltimore Sun's site.


Imagine wanting to be a part of this! Pennario would be aghast at this scene. That is for sure.

It is almost as bad as George Bellows' "I Remembering Being Initiated Into the Frat." Remember that?

But Pennario did love horse racing albeit in a very genteel style I would never be able to glimpse on my own. Pennario would go to California horse races and often he would be asked to crown the winner.

My brother George has a very funny story about how when the great pianist came to Buffalo and we all ended up at the Hyatt, there was a conversation about horse racing going on. Pennario was at another table in a whole different conversation but George said you could tell he was tuned into the horse racing conversation that was going on without him.

This is the funniest part of the story: Someone raised some question about some jockey or other, and you could see Pennario nodding, trying to answer the question while continuing to converse with whoever it was who was monopolizing him at the time.

Which was probably me. Ha, ha!

I am web-logging about the Preakness because that is one of the topics everyone is searching for today. I want people to be searching for Preakness and find themselves on the Leonard Pennario Web log.

You have to learn to use trends like this to your advantage!

For instance everyone is searching for "Wolfram Alpha." I have absolutely no idea what that is. But I am going to go with it anyway.

Say the name Wolfram to me and I think of Wolfram von Eschenbach. He is the troubadour from "Tannhauser." Pennario and I went to see that opera together!

I heard Wolfram sing the "Evening Star" aria while I was sitting next to the Alpha Pianist. That is something I will never forget!

How is that?

See, we are on top of the trends here at the Leonard Pennario desk.

Welcome, new fans and followers!

Poor Playboy

Fascinating things are in the Wall Street Journal if you read the fine print. For example the other day I read a story buried deep inside the paper that said that Playboy is going to be cutting costs. They are going to combine their July and August issues.

Who knew that Playboy's chief executive officer is named Jerome Kern?

I did not know that!

I could not find a picture of the Playboy Jerome Kern so I ran a picture up above of the real Jerome Kern instead.

In tribute to whom, here is the clip from "Show Boat" that Leonard Pennario and I used to love and talk about. Pennario loved Irene Dunne. He loved how she danced in this clip.

Now I have watched that scene twice. Wow, Hattie McDaniel lucked out in that movie, hooked up with handsome Paul Robeson.


"I even love him when his kisses got gin."

He flashes that great smile when she sings that.

Isn't this great? Where else would you find this? This is more pleasant to think about than our E.B. Green-designed Memorial Auditorium coming down ...


... that is for sure. That is a picture I took the other day. Who needs to look at that? I for one would rather look at Paul Robeson.

But back to Playboy. Now it seems quaint next to all the other stuff out there. The little story in the Wall Street Journal acknowledged that. "Playboy has seen its audience decline due to the proliferation of options for adult content." That is what the paper wrote.

What about "Penthouse Forum"?

Remember the readers we picked up from that? Ha, ha!

I am going to try that again. I am going to get "Playboy" right up there in today's headline so when people Google it, they will find us.

But poor Playboy. All they need now is us as part of the competition.