Robb Radio - Whatnot

My Old Fashioned Recipe... REVEALED!

nospam@example.com (Robb Spewak) — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:08:08 -0700

Plenty of requests rolling in here at the www.ROBBRADIO.com world headquarters… and they all wanna know how I make a perfect Old Fashioned. So, let’s get started. You can (in theory) make an Old Fashioned with any liquor you want, but I have my favorite.

Are you a bourbon enthusiast? I, too, like bourbon... but I think that you lose the complex flavor of bourbon in an OF. I have used bourbon and I even tried rye, but I prefer a blended whiskey for this drink. Crown Royal is my preferred, but Canadian Club is OK in a pinch. The most fiscally-responsible choice is a brand called Canadian Hunter; it tastes a lot like Crown, at a fraction of the price. Plus, it is rather kind to your head on the morning after.

Gather your ingredients before we begin:

· Blended Whiskey

· Crushed Ice

· Sugar (Either granulated or cubes)

· Bitters

· Club Soda

· An Orange

· Maraschino Cherries

Put some sugar in a rocks glass [either a heaping teaspoon or four sugar cubes] and add enough bitters to coat [10 dashes or so]. Muddle with a spoon to make a paste and add a splash of club soda, then stir to dissolve. Make sure that you use Angostura Bitters. The best BY FAR. Others will taste like licorice or bitter orange, which just isn’t right. Only Angostura tastes like a Barber Shop, which is what this drink requires.

Put 4 oz. of whiskey in a shaker with crushed ice, and add the sugar muddle and a teaspoon or so of maraschino cherry juice. Shake to mix, 8 shakes or so. Regarding cherries, the best brand I have found is Reese. Either red ones or green ones will work (they taste identical), but the red ones look a hell of a lot more appetizing. NEVER buy organic maraschino cherries! They taste, well, wrong.

Squeeze an orange wedge into the rocks glass, add one marischino cherry, pour the contents of the shaker into your glass, and let set one minute. Serve. Enjoy. I promise that you will be glad you did.

--r

Random thoughts brought to you LIVE from Sunday’s Happy Hour

nospam@example.com (Robb Spewak) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 17:56:30 -0700

To quote my hero/mentor Jim Nantz, “Hello Friends.” It’s been busy, and therefore TOO LONG since we’ve shared a little “WHATNOT” time. So, let’s get started.

· I am no expert on Football, but I did have a Sonny Jurgensen poster hanging over my crib as a baby, so I am qualified to tell you this. Redskins? To quote my nephew Baby Dylan, “Yuck”. I have said it for years, but anytime that a team gives up a safety, they will lose. And they should lose. But on the bright side, the safety is the most comical way to score in pro sports. Oh, and by the way… if you had offered me the Titans and 58 and a half points, I would’ve taken it. See? I told you I’m no expert. But I do like to look at sports contests.

· Balloon Boy? I TOLD you this was a hoax on Friday morning. I mean, COME ON. His father is a “storm chaser” who has been on Wife Swap. I’d sooner trust a crooked carnie with mob debts. And I have, which is surely a mistake.

· The second water heater DID have a leak in it! (see below for exposition) After 10 days of so-called “Condensatin’” (about 8 saturated beach towels’ worth), Cletus the Red-neck Tech came back out and exchanged the “new” tank for a third one. Then he told me that they air-tested the flawed tank at the warehouse, and it DID have a leak in it. No kidding? A leak? I wish that I had thought of that…

· I will be the Master of Ceremonies (the MC, as it were) at The Seventh Annual Dinner and Silent Auction for “Teardrops to Rainbows”. The organization does amazing work, and it staggers me with what it accomplishes. PLEASE check out www.teardropstorainbows.org and buy a ticket! This outfit raises money to provide support, services, and financial assistance to children with cancer and their families in the DC area. If you have even a dollar to spare, send it there. They really help out families that are going through undeserved misery.

· My 20-year High School Reunion was last weekend: Vienna, Virginia’s James Madison High School Class of 1989. I went without my wife, so I was without a chaperone… and therefore it was 6^th gear all night long. Suffice to say, if I act like I did at the 20^th when I attend the 30^th, I won’t live to see the 40^th. A great bunch of folks, those ‘89ers… so much love. A great time, and if you ever doubt whether you should go to a reunion, doubt not. GO. And leave your wife at home. Oh, and by comparison, I seem to have held up pretty well. I’m just sayin’…

· Speaking of imbibing, if you wanna make a financially-responsible Old Fashioned, Try Canadian Hunter whiskey. Tastes just like Crown, at a fraction of the price. You’ll thank me later.

· And regarding Old Fashioneds, I can’t find Angostura Bitters (the KEY ingredient) ANYWHERE in Leesburg. I’m afraid that I’ve bought it (and consumed it) all. I found some in a Manassas grocery store this weekend, and I bought all 6 bottles. The bottles were literally dusty from being on the shelf for so long. But I am hoarding them now. Do you think I have a problem?

· Other brands of bitters aren’t as good as Angostura. Only Angostura tastes like a Barber Shop.

· I have actually picked up a gig as a “Radio Consultant” for the Department of Transportation. Can you fathom your Ol’ buddy Robb as a consultant for the Federal Government? I can’t. At all. But it is true. So keep that in mind the next time you pay taxes.

· I spent no less than 3 hours today getting my son’s XBOX-360 on-line today. At one point (at the peak of my frustration), his friend Zack came up and said, “Mr. Spewak, my dad got my XBOX on-line in about 2 minutes… what’s taking so long?” It took all the self control I had not to introduce a wireless controller to young Zack’s teeth. But I did not, and we are on-line now. Hooray for Dad.

· Oh, and I was informed today that many of my kid’s friends are scared of me. I am the neighborhood “Scary Dad”. Good. The plan is working…

· I am headed to Iowa this week to spend some time in KCJJ-land, and to meet and greet some really nice folks in the heartland of America. If you are anywhere near there on Saturday, October 24... c’mon out. I hear that Murphy’s (?) has the best lasagna in the world… I’ll see you there! And thanks (as always) to Steve Bridges for keeping me on the air. I have more fun on KCJJ than I can possibly explain in a silly blog, and I owe Steve a LOT. But I will NOT mow his lawn. Go Hawks!

· I had a stone-cold blast at Mike and Carla’s “We Got Married” party yesterday. It was a pot-luck thingy (I brought a home-made apple crisp, yum… and I put a plastic bride and groom on it. OLD QUEEN!). Sheerly delightful to see everyone, and I got a good deal on the gift I brought, natch. If I work as hard as I can for the rest of my life, someday I may be 75% as cool as Cerphe (www.cerphe.com). But I doubt it. What’s it like to hang with the guys that made you want to get into the biz in the first place? Kind of Amazing. Mazel Tov, O’Meara’s!

That’s enough for now, because my glass is empty. Have a great week everyone, and check back soon… OK? OK.

--r

“WELL, WE HAD TO FORGET SOMETHING OR WE WOULDN’T BE PLUMBERS”

nospam@example.com (Robb Spewak) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 09:24:39 -0700

You know, it’s funny being married to my wife Cary.

Not “Ha Ha” funny… more like, “Hand me that pistol so I can kill myself" funny. Does that make any sense? Let me explain how she operates, by means of an example:

Last Saturday morning, I was at my computer in the basement (shocking, I know… try to suspend disbelief). Cary comes up to me and casually says:

“I think that our water heater might have a leak.”

I asked her why she thought this.

“Because water is coming out of it”

Hmmmm. That would be a good hint that it’s leaking. The whole “water coming out of it and puddling on the floor” thing. Now, I’m no plumber, but even I recognize THAT symptom. So, I fly into action, and Cary… disappears.

I should tell you that while I dislike the inconvenience of all home repairs, plumbing is what I hate the most. I come by it honestly. Cary and I spent about 10 years living in a 60 year old house with copper pipes and well water. The water was full of minerals that would literally grind away at the pipes. No lie, we averaged a decent-sized leak in the basement 10 times a year. We knew all the plumbers by name! Not to mention the forever moving of wet rugs (heavy!), boxes damaged, and the endless mopping. Good times. So, I hate leaks.

So, back to “flying into action”… Yes, the water IS coming out of the water heater, and the flow seems to be picking up. So, I get all the towels I can carry and dry the floor as best as I can. I get all the boxes and WHATNOT out of the utility room. I turn off the water that feeds the tank, kill the gas, and turn off the heater. Then, I attach a garden hose to the tank, run it out to the driveway and drain the tank. This last move was a mistake.

Had I been thinking, I would have had everyone [especially ME] quickly shower before I killed the tank. Because once the pilot light is out, there’s no going back. And don’t think for a moment that I could (or would) try to relight it. If I did, I know that the house would explode and I doubt that Cary would ever let me hear the end of it (she can be so petty that way). I had last showered on Friday morning. This is a key fact that comes into play later.

I won’t bore you with the details of my home warranty plan, but I did figure one thing out. If you want your repair to be classified as “Priority”, just tell them that you cut off ALL the water to your house (maybe even if you didn’t…). “No hot water” won’t get you bumped up… “no water at all” will do the trick. Good to know. So, with that little white lie told, I get in touch with my plumber who tells me that he can maybe get me a heater on Sunday, and I should see him about 9am. OK, progress.

Sunday comes, and by 3pm, no word from my plumber. So, I call him and he apologizes for not getting to me sooner. Thanks. The receptionist lady who has my phone number was apparently at a football game and so he could not call me. Right…

But, says he, they will be out on Monday. Not first thing, mind you. But as early as possible. It’s nice to have “Priority” status.

Sunday, we literally have to warm water on the stove to bathe my naked children in the kitchen with a washcloth. Like Little House on the Prairie. Exactly NO ONE was thrilled with this development. I got to help Cary wash her hair in the kitchen sink. Where we prepare food. That we eat. Yuck. Speaking of “yuck”…

I had still not showered, plenty of dirty plates in the sink, and now it’s Sunday night. So far… 36 hours, no hot water. Luckily being an unemployed disc jockey, I probably wouldn’t have bathed nor done dishes anyhow. (“nor”? Can spell check be trusted here?) But my hair was starting to look as greasy as Don Draper’s. And to quote Lynyrd Skynyrd, “Oooh, that smell…”

Monday, at 11am, the plumber arrives. He is reddest of rednecks with a nervous demeanor and the slight build of a jockey. The installation proceeds without incident. After an hour of the tank warming up, the Spewaks have hot water. And a short 76 hours after my last shower, I take another. It was nice. But, should your hair bead like a freshly waxed Buick after a rainstorm? I shampooed twice.

Monday, the cocktail hour. I mix up an Old Fashioned and go look at my new water heater to admire it and relish the notion that this crisis has passed.

It’s leaking. Again.

I notice the puddle, and I say words like “Drat!” and “Fiddlesticks!” Then, like a reflex, without thinking, I shut off the water and the gas and drain the tank. AGAIN. This is still a mistake, which I’ll explain momentarily. I call the redneck tech and say that the tank is leaking.

He asks, “The New One?” This is a silly question since he took the old one away with him (which cost me 40 bucks). I told him yes, and he says, “Well, that shouldn’t be happenin’!”

REALLY.

He says he’ll be back first thing in the morning. OK, terrific. I look outside to see if the tank is still draining and because of all the hot water hitting cold pavement, my whole driveway is fogged up like the “Thriller” video. The neighbors must think I’m retarded.

Prior to 6am on Tuesday my phone rings, and redneck tech is ready to go (he really did mean first thing). The fog has cleared and he’s standing in my driveway. I let him in, and I swear if he smelled anymore like cigarettes, he’d have MARLBORO written on his forehead. Good Morning. Blech.

“I think I’ve figgered it out!” He’s all smiles. Surprising, no missing teeth. “It ain’t leakin’… it’s condensatin’!”

WHAT!?!?

I was so tired, that I didn’t have the energy to say (in my best David Niven voice), “Do you possibly mean… CONDENSING?” But he kept on a goin’…

“So, you see, you ever take hot water in a glass out on a winter… no wait—take a glass of cold water out on a hot day and the glass gets all sweaty-like and whatnot and what it’s doin’ is it’s condensatin’! If you take it out it’ll condensate ALL DAY!”

I seemed to recall this from 7^th grade.

“Well sir, all that water in the tank, you see, it ain’t hot yet and so it’s cold, so it’s condensatin’. That’s the water you see! Condensatin’! No leaks here, just give it about 24 more hours and no more condensatin’, and no more water. See, if you hadn’t have drained your tank AGAIN, this would already be fixed.” It was nice that he took a brief moment to blame ME.

Then, as if to finish the discussion and emphasize his point, he looked at me with a serious expression and said it once again. “Condensatin’.”

I said, “Huh. I didn’t expect that. You should warn your clients to watch out for that, because I didn’t know that happened.”

He said, “Neither did I.”

WHAT?!?!

“But another plumber told me about it. Condensatin’.”

And I’m gonna let THIS guy light the pilot light? Luckily the house didn’t blow up. Yet. And yes, I am still seeing some condensatin’, but not as much. The dishes are clean, we did laundry, and I smell as fresh as a daisy.

When I paid the tech, I wrote something in the memo line of the check.

I wrote PLUMBIN’.

EVERY Beatles Song Montage...

nospam@example.com (Robb Spewak) — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 09:34:44 -0700

I got a bunch of nice feedback on this item from yesterday's episode of The Robb Spewak Show on The Mighty KCJJ. It was in Segment 10, but I thought that I would also post it as an isolated entity. It runs about 10 and a half minutes and includes every song by The Beatles in (roughly) chronological order. If you care, I used the Stereo re-masters, but mono'd out the final mix. Click below, and enjoy... It's not only Gear, IT'S FAB!!!

ULTIMATE BEATLES MEGAMIX

"An Old Fashioned the way dear old Dad used to make it..."

nospam@example.com (Robb Spewak) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 11:07:54 -0700

...And if you think that I am an "Old Queen"... Check out the video of THIS Sissy-Mary professing his love for my favorite cocktail. This video is cool, but I still like my recipe better... except maybe for the flaming orange. Let's all have a "flaming orange"; just hit the button marked "booze". FABULOUS!

It's NEVER Too Late to be a Patriot...

nospam@example.com (Robb Spewak) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 10:21:00 -0700

Believe it or not (and I was surprised too!), a LOT of the ROBB MOBB have emailed saying they want me to post this audio montage, which I have cleverly entitled "The 4th of July Megamix." As it turned out, this aired as the "open" of the LAST episode of The Mike O'Meara Show (July 2nd, 2009), but I didn't know that it would work out that way when I produced it. Either way, here 'tis... Enjoy, and God Bless America. Please click:

"The Fourth of July Megamix"

“WE’RE OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD, EXCEPT NOT REALLY…”

nospam@example.com (Robb Spewak) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 10:16:00 -0700

So, I guess that is the first “WHATNOT”… which is basically my ROBBLOG.

Well, after 17 years of slaving at the Ol’ Salt Mines (as Fred Rutherford would say to Ward Cleaver), I have found unemployment to be exceptionally weird; it changes lots of things. For example, I never need to stop anymore in the evening and wonder if I should have “just one more drink” (I usually go for it), I get to sleep until I wake up EVERY morning, and all the elementary school moms already know that I am the Dad that can always be there. After all, where else do I have to go? Book Fairs, classroom volunteer, emergency babysitter… I am there ALWAYS. Sadly, no “Mr. Mom” sexual-electricity between me and the other stay-at-home parents, but my fingers remain crossed.

Anyhow, there are things that NO amount of unemployment could ever change. I still love Ebbish (which is what I call The King of Rock and Roll), I am still the same “Old Queen” that you know and love (by the way, there is a criminal lack of classic musicals available on Blu-Ray. I’m just sayin’…), and I still have an amazing, almost Michael Phelps-ian knack for screwing up gifts for my wife Cary. Longtime listeners will remember how I gave her the same white gold cross necklace for Christmas TWO YEARS IN A ROW. I am an ass. That said…

Cary’s birthday was this week. Now, about two months ago (I still had a job) I was watching (not surprisingly) Turner Classic Movies (TCM; channel 256 on DirecTV, which is like Mecca for those of us who were born in the wrong decade…). They ran a brief promo for a ONE NIGHT ONLY SPECIAL EVENT. I leaned forward in my easy chair for a closer look.

Well, I already knew that 2009 marked the 70^th anniversary of the ZENITH of the Hollywood studio system... which meant that 2009 also marked the 70^th anniversary of both Gone With The Wind AND The Wizard Of Oz. Now, you may be wondering, “How much of an OLD QUEEN is my old buddy Robb?” Well, so much that I pre-ordered my Blu-Ray’s of BOTH of these two classics last year, because I knew that the 70^th anniversary editions would be out in time for Christmas ’09. The releases hadn’t even been announced yet! I think that I have owned every release of GWTW since it came out on Beta in the mid-80’s. My checkbook was ready.

So, the ONE NIGHT ONLY SPECIAL EVENT was a big screen showing of WIZARD in a real theatre. Popcorn and everything. They were gonna show the classic flick, totally restored, in Digital HD, and they promised me that it would look like it did when it hit screens 70 years ago. EXACTLY. A remarkable, precise duplicate of the original print from 1939. JUST the way it looked when it first released. ONE SHOWING ONLY, in ONLY 100 theatres in the whole country. And, they had the amazing courtesy to schedule it on my wife’s birthday. Terrific.

My shirt never touched my back as I ran to my computer and bought tix for the whole family. My mind spun gleefully as I imagined talking to my kids about “the good old days” (before DVD’s… Hell! Before VCR’s!) when WIZARD on TV was the cornerstone of my television year. So, I bought the tickets (10 bucks a pop). I even paid the convenience charge of 2 dollars per Spewak… but I didn’t find it convenient whatsoever.

Mrs. Spewak was delighted with the tickets. I actually felt that I had succeeded this year with her birthday present… suddenly being her unemployed husband wasn’t a total disappointment.

We had an amazing dinner at Coastal Flats (if you’re ever in the DC suburbs, check it out… tasty.). I asked the staff to “embarrass my wife” but I was told that even though it was her birthday they “don’t sing”. Instead, they brought her a banana pudding with a candle on it. Still, the evening was cruising along at “successful.”

We got to the theatre just in time to secure a block of seats together in the 5^th row… not bad. The theatre was filling rapidly with lotsa noisy kids (which is OK, because it IS a kid’s film, and it’s not like I needed to hear the dialogue to follow the plot), but the thing that bothered me off the bat was that the auditorium was hot. I put it at 75 degrees or so. Hot and humid. Yuck. And being shoulder to shoulder in a filling theatre made it worse. But I wasn’t going to complain and ruin the Birthday… no sir, not me.

So, finally the program started. It kicked off with a brief documentary about the film hosted by TCM Host/Historian Robert Osborne. Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this swishy grande dame of classic cinema, but to see him 40 feet tall on the siver screen and gliding across the floor and lisping to me that, “We will be off to see the Wizard in a few minutessssssssssss…” was truly a sight to behold. That’s when the trouble started.

The video and the audio started to drop out. Like a bad You-Tube video. Like a dirty DVD. The audience laughed at first… then the booing began. I actually remained calm at first, after all… this was just filler, not the movie that we all came to see.

We soldiered through about 15 minutes of this tedious, jumpy documentary, and I saw something that really blew my mind. There, on a MOVIE SCREEN in 2-foot letters:

“Windows XP Has Encountered a Problem and Needs to Shut Down”.

I felt my jaw drop to my chest in disbelief as I watched the familiar exercise of a computer restart play out on the biggest monitor in town. Slowly. About 200 phones come out and start taking pix of this unusual sight. It was surreal, and I also notice at this time that at the bottom of the movie screen, the “Start” button was about 2 feet lower than the computer clock. So, not only was the movie screwed up, but the projector was crooked. The walk on the yellow brick road was going to be uphill this time…

So, they restarted the computer, the lights dim… and the lame documentary starts from the beginning. Bad. Instead of seeing the movie, I see Queen Osborne come swishing towards me again, except now we’re 30 minutes behind schedule and worst of all… it’s still having the same audio/video skipping problem.

At this point, the head teenager who runs the theatre announces:

“I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but we’re having some technical difficulties…”

REALLY.

He goes on to explain that after another computer restart, they will skip the documentary and begin the feature presentation. Exactly what I wanted to hear! So, I settle back in my seat, try to ignore the screaming toddlers and my sweaty brow and imagine what it would be like to check my Facebook page on a movie screen. I imagine it would be great. Amazingly, Cary is still smiling.

Lights dim. Nervous anticipation. Audience claps. The familiar MGM logo fills the screen. Leo the lion opens his mighty jaws and says: “Ro. Uh. Uh. Oa. Or.” The picture drops out. Same problem. Lights Up.

“WINDOWS IS RESTARTING”.

I turn to Cary and say, “If I have to watch Robert Osborne sashay on that screen one more time, I’m going to kill myself.” She smiled… and asked if I wanted to go home. I nodded, and the kids were on board with it too.

I got all my money refunded (even the convenience charge) and some free passes for our wasted evening… but I still had to apologize to Cary for another present that wasn’t. She claims that she was happy just to get out of the house, and I almost believe her.

I do have a lingering feeling of disappointment that we (especially my kids) got shut out from seeing that restored print, JUST AS IT WAS FIRST SEEN 70 YEARS AGO. What, if any, progress have we made? I was left wondering… how did MGM manage to show the film in 1939?

They must have had a Mac.