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I’m watching it right now (4 pm-6 pm Pacific time) on KQED. The footage is amazing and I’m finding it very relaxing.

I rented The Shadow of the Moon this weekend, and just now finished the most amazing time watching it with Prom Jr. It is a documentary made by Ron Howard, which uses fantastic archive footage from the Appollo program, interspersed with interviews, recent, current, 2007 interviews, with the astronauts themselves. Prom Jr. started out sceptical, but then became completely immersed, and amazed, and before our eyes developed a fascination with the technology, he was amazed at the idea of multi-stage rockets, and I stopped taking it for granted, too, and realized for the first time, that we were insane to do it, go to the moon, with that technology, and that was what made it glorious.

We went to the moon on WWII technology, it was hair-raising, really, when you consider it, the technology was so crude, it was all improvisation and kludges, piled up on top of each other 300 feet tall, and any failure anywhere destroyed everything. Here, the main engines of the Appollo first stage, they had to develop pumps to pump fuel into those engines, these pumps alone were a tech achievement, they could pump more liquid per second than any pumps ever built, and some of them had to pump liquid oxygen at what, 300 degrees below zero, ever try to start a car at 30 below? To power the pumps they built turbine engines which themselves had a power similar to an electrical power plant, and this just to pump the fuel fast enough for the giant constant explosion that powered those rockets into space.

This was our greatest achievement, and the US has been in decline ever since. We could not build another appollo, hell, the shuttles were all built in the 70s and we can’t build a replacement.

I had a big fat martini and dinner after shooting guns in the desert this afternoon with a friend and his kid and am now watching a documentary on Phillip Glass.

MF is tall in person like DodgerB.

@redmanlaw: I bought a veal breast for $3.00, its a nasty piece of meat, 70% rib bones, tough brisket. I got out the pressure cooker, cut the meat off the ribs and cut it into cubes, cut up the bones, seasoned it all, dusted with flour, and first browned the bones in a skillet with oil, then the meat cubes, then all into the pressure cooker with 3 quarts of water, a chopped onion, a few cloves of garlic, a celery stalk, some parsely.

And now I have a quart of veal stock worth $1,000, veal stock is the secret to everything good in cooking, so full of the collagen, its thick without any thickeners, and rich, but not beefy, flavor, I freeze it and hack off frozen pieces, a piece the size of an ice cube, added to the pan juices after you saute a chicken breast, or a nice piece of fish, and then a pat of butter and maybe a little madeira, or just some parsely, maybe capers, maybe some saffron, its is the secret to quick pan sauces, a hundred variations, and if you have a quart in the freezer, its just like having a million dollars in the bank. If I were crazy I would fill ice cube trays with it, so I can just plunk a cube of it in the pan, but its easier to just take an ice pick and chop some off, than to clean ice cube trays that have had stock in them.

@SanFranLefty: Amazing that, given the idiots that run everything, it’s not all gone. Makes me want to go see those things. Amazing, because my usual reaction is to stay home.

@Promnight: Seriously? That simple? I’ve always wanted to do veal stock but it’s so freakin’ labor intensive with the roasting and the basting and the simmering for 8 hours.

@Promnight: Astronauts sitting in their capsules on top of their rockets used to tell each other “remember, this was built by the low bidder.”

Harrison Schmidt, a geologist, came to my jr high once after walking on the moon on Apollo 14. I saw him arrive in the parking lot. Drove himself to the gig. Shortly after that he became a one-term conservative GOP US Senator from New Mexico. I think Jeff Bingaman, then the AG, beat him in the next general election.

@Promnight: I pulled some chicken breast and drumsticks out of the freezer, added some frozen posole, thawed both and added two cups of the farm fresh roasted green chile Mrs RML had friends purchase for her on Friday (season to taste with salt and garlic, simmer for about 6 hr). It was probably the best posole I ever made, due largely to the chile. Mrs RML said you could almost describe the complexity of its flavor in terms of notes. A huge hit.

Also, my entire backyard is an enclosed dog pen now that I have wire fencing extending the 6 ft wooden fence another 2 ft. Let’s see Fido (a young chow mix named Ewok) try to hop that now. It’s also proof of concept for doing the same thing atop a short chain link fence on the south side to expand his doggie domain.

@Promnight: When I cooked I used to occasionally make a dish of braised breast of veal which was then weighted when cold and cut in slices. Can’t remember any details but I’m pretty sure I got it from Elizabeth David. But I do remember that wonderful stock. I actually did make the ice cubes to add to other things. And I would add calf’s foot to stews, etc. I even once tried to make an aspic. I also remember keeping tubs of goose fat to cook with. Do you cook goose? I always roasted one for Christmas stuufed with apples and prunes soaked for a week in sherry. Then for Boxing day I’d make a soup with goose bones and lentils that was almost better than the goose.

You can’t get quite the same results with Tofurkey.

@blogenfreude: @SanFranLefty: I watched it last night too, and my biggest takeaway was the parks owe their existence to a series of unintentional oversights and flukes. I love how, prior to their declaring it the world’s first national park as part of a run-of-the-mill business day, Congress needed to be reassured that the land was absolute rubbish for farming, mining, etc.

@Benedick: I gave a friend an elk liver so she could make elk liver pate’ (the elk was no longer using using the liver at that point due to a well placed shot from my Marlin 36A .30-30 lever action rifle). Never saw the pate’, never brought it up to her.

@flippin eck: I had an editor who called creation of some of New Mexico’s national monuments and wilderness ares “worshiping erosion.” Lots of dead dinos and oil and gas in those areas.

http://www.blm.gov/nm/st/en/prog/wilderness/bisti.html