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Supposedly very healthy and should be eaten at least twice weekly is wild salmon. I cook it in a hot grill pan. First skin side down and then flip it. I start off with some olive oil with some thinly sliced onions and julienned hearts of palm. After a couple of minutes, throw in the fish. 8-10 minutes later pull out the bad boy. I deglaze the pan with bit of white wine and then add some passion fruit juice and when it is hot pour it over the top. For seasoning, I lightly add the combo Montreal seasoning mix that has garlic, red pepper, black pepper and some sea salt. For sides, it's so easy to steam a cauliflower. And then I do a mixture of wild rice and whole grain rice. Soak it well to get out the starch and wash it a couple of times before cooking. Nice additions to the more delicate salmon flavor.

A Nice Day For A Gay Wedding On Wednesday, five days before a certain red wedding, the city of Monptellier planned on having the first gay wedding in France. While people wanted it to be a day of celebration, there were lots of concerns as well. The weekend before, tens of thousands of anti-gay marriage protestors had set cars on fire and smashed windows in Paris. What would happen when the first marriage actually took place? And so it was that Montpellier woke up Wednesday filled with affection for the grooms Bruno and Vincent, but also trepidation that things would go as badly as the various matrimonials in A Storm of Swords. In the morning, the newspapers all flashed the first photos of the soon to be newlyweds on the front pages and it was clear, if nothing else, that they were gorgeous. Yay! But there was good news and bad news in the papers as well. Out of security concerns, the wedding was moved from the Prefecture (town hall) in the center of town to the new Mayor's office outside of the historic center. On the other hand, the mayor announced that the ceremony would be broadcast on a Jumbotron outside her office and that there would be free beer, wine and sausage for anyone who cared to come by. Within hours, more than 4,000 people took the local (La Croix-designed) trams down to the site and started to drink and eat and get ready for the afternoon's festivities. But then things got scary again. Another group, led by Marine Le Pen, the scariest right wing politician in Europe, showed up to counterprotest. The goons, which is the only term that could be correctly applied to them, scared both local residents and the police force. Soon, it was announced that the Jumbotron and free wine and beer were to be canceled, and that there would just be an audio transmission of the ceremony to those gathered outside. Even more worrying, nearly 300 riot police were dispatched to the site in case Marine's goons got out of control. But then, a funny thing happened. Marine seemed to realize that she was not making her cause look good, and the goons started to disperse. Things started looking up and word reached the crowd that Bruno and Vincent had been whisked into the mayor's office through a back door. At this point the people gathered started to sing the French National Anthem, giving a sense that one was seeing a scene from Casablanca happen in person. Then, tension struck again. Several bomb threats were called in, and the mayor's office was evacuated. More riot police showed up with dogs. Thankfully, it was all a false alarm and soon the wedding party and invited guests were brought back into the mayor's office. At roughly five minutes before the wedding was supposed to begin, the loudspeaker announced what website people could go to see the wedding broadcast live, and people fired up their smart phones. Hearing the events from the loudspeaker while watching the visuals on portable electronic devices is probably the defining image of how life works in 2013, but it still created a sense of solidarity. Then, at 6:03 p.m., the grooms began to exchange their vows. At 6:12 they both said their I do's, Cole Porter's version of Love And Marriage blasted across the loudspeakers, and shouts of joy could be heard throughout the city. At the end of the day, the wedding happened the way it should have happened. The earth didn't explode. No riots happened. The goons went away in shame, and Bruno and Vincent went with their friends and family to a private location for their wedding reception. A nice day for a white wedding indeed! cc totallyoz 2013

The urge to spawn can certainly raise the price of escorts. Best regards, RA1

We agree on taxes and war. Too bad the last Republican Administration and Congress did not -- twice!!. As for voters easily overturning any tax laws they do not like you mean a very significant supermajority of voters right? It seems only supermajority rules in the US Senate anymore. Also, the sitting House Democrats received over a million more votes in total than the sitting GOP members, yet the GOP controls the House. Another blow for the voters easily affecting Congress. I share your view that those who invest and take risks in business enterprises should be the primary beneficiaries of their investment. But how much is enough? Quite simply, nobody builds a successful business in a vacuum. Obama made this point in his campaign, which the GOP demagogued high and low. Everybody knows this who takes a few moments to reflect on how businesses flourish in this country or any other -- anybody willing to be honest about it. For this country to provide robust economic development ground it has to flourish across the board. It has promote both the Common Welfare and the General Welfare of this country. By Common welfare, I mean benefits to all in common, eg. police, fire, military and national security, etc. By General Welfare I mean benefits that may not touch us all but that do benefit the country in the long run and short run. For example, Head Start, WIC, education loans, affordable accessible health care for all to name a few. So, yeah, the question becomes how much is enough? CBO says the rich get richer, much, and the poor get poorer, and the middle class stagnates or declines and looses many to the class of working poor, if they are lucky to be working at all. Yet the GOP says the rich need more and the middle class and poor should pay more or do without. Where has the trickle down gone? You are quite right that the government is not a manufacturer. It is a service industry and venture capital enterprise. It has served this country well as both. It is also the first responder for economic meltdowns and the intensive care unit for gravely ill/wounded economies. No other entity has the wherewithal to meet that need in a crisis. Some say (mostly conservatives) let a sick economy burn itself out and we will rebuild a new stronger one for the future. The analogy is: let the apartment building burn down. It will be replaced by a new, beautiful, modern, high-efficiency living space that will grace the city skyline. What of the people dying in that conflagration. Unfortunate, but they will be replaced by younger stronger better educated tenants. So much for trickle down and austerity economics. We certainly agree that tax reform is badly needed. Not sure if we agree on all specifics of those reforms, not that I disagree with your above proposals. They sound like a good start.

These signs really make me wonder if I should go back.

Scott Thorson: the lover Liberace remade in his own imageAs the film Behind the Candelabra, starring Michael Douglas and Matt Damon, shows, Scott Thorson lived a life of wild excess with Liberace. Since the entertainer's death, Thorson's existence has been just as strange This piece originally appeared in the New York Times David Segal The Observer, Saturday 25 May 2013 Soon after moving into Liberace's gaudy Las Vegas mansion in 1977, Scott Thorson, then a teenage hunk in the foster care system, learned that the jewel-smitten showman could love just as extravagantly as he decorated. Touring the premises before their relationship began, Liberace pointed out some decorative highlights, which included 17 pianos, a casino, a quarry's worth of marble and a canopied bed with an ermine spread. On the ceiling was a reproduction of the Sistine Chapel with Liberace's face painted among the cherubs. When the pair became a couple, Liberace, who was 40 years older, was just as excessive. He couldn't bear to let Thorson out of his sight. "We were at a hotel in Florida, and Liberace had the manager give us another suite, with windows that faced the beach," said Thorson, now 54. "He knew I'd be near the water and he wanted to be able to look at me." Liberace even wanted Thorson nearby when he worked. So for years, Thorson would don a chauffeur's costume covered in rhinestones and drive "Mr Showmanship" on stage in a bejewelled Rolls-Royce. Thorson would stop the car, then open the door for Liberace, who would emerge in a fur coat with a 16ft train. This routine, which ran for years at the Las Vegas Hilton, is recreated in a forthcoming movie, Behind the Candelabra, which is based on Thorson's autobiography of the same name and stars Matt Damon as Thorson and Michael Douglas as Liberace. The film debuts tonight in the US on HBO and opens in cinemas in the UK on 7 June. One person who might miss the movie's debut is Scott Thorson. He is an inmate at the Washoe county jail in Reno, Nevada, and while the place has its share of amenities – including television – HBO isn't one of them. Thorson has been held there since February, when he was charged with burglary and identity theft, after buying about $1,300 worth of computer and mobile-phone merchandise, using a credit card and licence that weren't his. He was arrested at the Ponderosa hotel, where he and a man he had just met rented a room for $33.90 a night. Changed man: Scott Thorson inside Washoe county jail. Photograph: David Calvert/New York Times/Redux/eyevine "We get a lot of the dregs of Reno, a lot of prostitutes, drug dealers," said Eric Pyzel, a clerk at the Ponderosa, where a nearby bumper sticker reads: "Welcome To Our Country. Just Do It Legally." "The cops are by pretty often. So when they got here it was kind of like, OK, what is it this time?" On a recent Friday morning at the jail, Thorson was sitting in a small room of white cinder blocks, empty but for a sink and a wall-mounted dispenser of disinfectants. Two officers hovered. Not for the first time in his troubled life, he vowed to clean up. "This experience has scared me straight," he said, in a slightly nasal tone that sounds vaguely like Liberace. "There comes a time when you've got to take responsibility. You've got to stop lying and face your mistakes." It's hard to connect this tired and anxious man in a blue prison shirt to the beefcake grinning in photographs in the late 70s. Time, an on-off meth addiction, several stints in prison and what he describes as stage 3 colon cancer have taken their toll. Another reason he looks different: the chin implant is gone. Thorson had it removed in an attempt to reverse one of the creepier episodes in the history of plastic surgery. Early in their relationship, Liberace plucked an oil painting of himself from a room in his Las Vegas mansion and asked a visiting doctor to reshape Thorson's face to look like Liberace's as a young man. Liberace wanted a toy boy and a son. With sex and fatherhood disturbingly entwined, Thorson wound up with a new chin, a nose job and enhanced cheekbones. "I was 17 years old," he said, explaining why he went along with a plan that sounds so lunatic. "Liberace had taken me out of a situation with a father who was very abusive, a mother who was mentally ill. I did everything I possibly could to please this man." The two went on shopping sprees, travelled first-class and spent a lot of quality time with Liberace's shar-peis. Thorson was showered with gifts, including mink coats, an assortment of baubles and a Chevrolet Camaro. They entertained celebrities such as Debbie Reynolds and Michael Jackson. But it all ended abruptly in 1982. That year, Liberace had members of his retinue forcibly eject Thorson from his penthouse in Los Angeles. It was a break-up caused, in part, by Thorson's drug habit, which he says he developed trying to slim down, at Liberace's urging, on what was called the "Hollywood diet," a cocktail of doctor-prescribed drugs that included pharmaceutical cocaine. Thorson later sued for $113m in palimony, ultimately losing a highly public battle fought both in court and in the tabloids. He settled in 1986 for $95,000, according to reports at the time. There was a deathbed reconciliation before Liberace died of a disease caused by Aids in 1987. And that is where Behind the Candelabra ends. But Thorson's life went on, and as he explained in a series of interviews, both in person and via a jail-monitored version of Skype, many of the events that followed are as strange as the ones that came before. The trick is separating the strange from the unbelievable. "His approach to communicating with people is always to play it in a manner that reflects best on him," said Oliver Mading, the man Thorson calls his adoptive father as well as his manager. One evening recently, Mading was sitting in the living room of his home a few miles from Reno's downtown. Sitting nearby was his stepson, Tony Pelicone, who met Thorson through a mutual friend a decade ago in Palm Springs, California. At best, these men sounded deeply ambivalent about being enmeshed in Thorson's life. "He's not a bad person," said Pelicone, who has a swirl of brown-blond hair and a cigarette habit. "He's just twisted and kind of cutthroat." Mading: "He'd sell his mother – " "Then he gives you that smile," said Pelicone, interrupting. The two admit that much of what they know about Thorson's biography they learned from Thorson and that, at the very least, he has an aversion to telling his life story as a coherent, easy-to-follow chronology. During interviews at the Washoe county jail, Thorson was often evasive and moody, deflecting questions about his past to rage against the people who have declined to put up the $15,000 in bail he says he needs to get out of jail. "All these people are getting rich from my story," he fumed, "and here I sit." Earlier this month, he pleaded guilty and asked to enter a rehabilitation programme. He could face as little as probation with a suspended prison sentence to two to 30 years and combined fines of up to $110,000. What's indisputable is that Scott Thorson is no longer named Scott Thorson. He is now known as Jess Marlow, a change Thorson says occurred when he entered the federal witness protection program as the star witness in the 1989 prosecution of an infamous Los Angeles character named Eddie Nash. Nash shows up in the book and movie as Mr Y, described as a drug dealer with ties to organised crime who made headlines for allegedly ordering the so-called Wonderland murders, a grisly quadruple homicide that took place two days after Nash's home was robbed of money and drugs in 1981. (The crime is named after 8763 Wonderland Avenue, where the killings took place.) Nash purportedly learned who had committed the robbery after his underlings beat up porn star John Holmes, an acquaintance of Nash's who later admitted to helping the robbers enter Nash's home. A fictionalised version of these events turns up in Boogie Nights, with a Nash-inspired figure played by a Speedo- and robe-wearing Alfred Molina. ‘Mr Showmanship’: Liberace in his $55,000 marble bath in 1978. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis Thorson says that Nash became a drug source for him in the early 80s and that he later became a partner in Nash's club business. At some point, the two fell out and, by 1988, Thorson was reportedly in a Los Angeles jail for an assortment of charges. There, he says, he was offered leniency by the district attorney's office in exchange for testifying that he happened to be at Nash's home when thugs pummelled John Holmes – which, if true, would make Thorson a kind of Zelig of the Awful. Eleven members of the jury voted to convict. One held out. Nash later admitted to bribing that lone juror, and in 2001, he struck a plea bargain in which he was sentenced to 37 months in prison for racketeering. Now, in his early 80s, Nash is a free man. And he would like to make it clear that he and Thorson were never partners. "No, no, he worked for me," Nash said on the telephone. "When Liberace dumped him, he had nothing. He was on the streets. So I took him in, and he worked at the house. He was good for cleaning. Because I lived with eight girls at the time. Beautiful girls. College girls. It was safe to have Thorson around because he is gay. I had a gay cook, too." Thorson claims that after the trial, marshals in the federal witness protection programme moved him to Florida and gave him a new name. "They had to keep me safe because there was a contract placed on my life by Eddie Nash," he said during one interview. "It started with the marshals taking me to different locations around the country for seven to 10 days, to make sure no one was following," he said. "Texas, Alaska, Seattle." It's an intriguing narrative plot point – man forced to get a new face is later forced to take on a new identity. But the story sounds highly improbable to Bill Keefer, a former federal marshal in the witness protection programme. He has doubts because of where Thorson eventually landed: at a Christian-based homeless shelter in Tallahassee, Florida, called the Haven of Rest. "How much protection could the marshals provide a guy at a homeless shelter?" Keefer asked. At the Haven of Rest, Thorson found religion. And, instead of striving for invisibility, he shared his life story in front of church congregations. He says that he became a popular evangeliser, even appearing on a Pat Robertson TV show. "He would share his testimony about his life with Liberace," said Danny Heaberlin, who ran Haven of Rest at the time. "We had pictures of him with Liberace, because the story was so out there, nobody would believe it otherwise." Thorson says an east coast mafia don gave him assurances that he needn't worry about Nash. True or not, Thorson was unable to stay on the side of the angels for long. After three years at the Haven of Rest, he says, he started using drugs again, and in 1991, was shot in a room at a Howard Johnson hotel in Jacksonville. Local reports described the crime as a robbery committed by a crack dealer. "They thought he was going to die," Heaberlin said, "but he kept living and living." While he was recovering, a life-changing event occurred: a woman from Maine named Georgianna Morrill came to visit. Thorson would later claim she had seen him on TV, spreading the gospel, but that is not how Morrill remembers it. "I read Behind the Candelabra, and I saw the photo on the back of the book and I heard the Lord tell me to pray for this guy," she said, speaking from her apartment in South Portland, Maine. "I thought, I don't even know this man. But I'm a Christian, and, when God tells you to pray for someone, you do." She found Thorson through a Pentecostal friend and soon after the two met, she invited him to live with her in a tiny two-storey red house in Falmouth, Maine. Thorson accepted. He stayed for the next 12 years. It was the second time that he found refuge in someone else's life, but Falmouth was a long way from Vegas, and Morrill was no Liberace. There were periods of domestic calm, with Thorson cleaning up around the house and collecting disability payments that he was eligible for after the shooting. But Morrill wanted to get married, despite all the evidence that the match was a terrible idea. The couple had sex once, she recalls. "That was enough," she said with a giggle. Thorson's homosexuality wasn't the only impediment. He drank a lot, and when he did he would sometimes "get stupid", in Morrill's words, prompting her to call the police. Still, she held out hope that one day he would propose. And one day, he did, but with a ring with a pearl on top that she somehow knew he had purchased with a stolen credit card. "I said to him, 'I'm looking for a diamond ring and one that you paid for yourself,"' she said, laughing. "He got pretty mad that I didn't want it." Morrill speaks with a note of nostalgia about those strife-ridden years. It's a note you won't hear when you discuss the subject with Thorson. "Horrible!" he said of his Maine phase. "It was so boring. I hated the weather. Five feet of snow. It was too quiet. I had to get the hell out of there." Thorson moved to Palm Springs, where he would be arrested a handful of times for stealing groceries and drug possession, among many other charges. Early in this era, he met Tony Pelicone. "I recently learned that he came by our house to meet someone I was dating," Pelicone said. "Later his house burned and nobody was there to pick him up. So I did, thinking he'd stay for a few days. That turned into 10 years." Initially, Pelicone was thrilled to meet Liberace's ex, and he introduced Thorson to his mother and stepfather, Oliver Mading. Mading, a businessman with a background in packaged foods, says he negotiated the Behind the Candelabra movie deal with the producer Jerry Weintraub while Thorson was in prison on drug charges. After his release, Thorson spent his cut of the movie earnings – just under $100,000 – in about two months, mostly on cars and jewellery. "We always knew Jess without money," Mading said, referring to Thorson by his assumed name. "Not that $100,000 is King Midas's trove, but Jess burned through it like a complete idiot." Thorson says he's now penniless because of outlays for cancer treatment. The truth is almost beside the point. An assortment of siblings and half-siblings want nothing to do with him, Mading says. His only real assets today are the intangibles that Liberace bequeathed him, most notably, a peculiar place in showbiz history as the kid that Liberace once adored and tried to remake in his image. "There's always been a love-hate relationship," Thorson said when asked to describe his feelings about Liberace today. "At that time, I was so honored to be in his presence. And I didn't want to go back to my lifestyle in the foster homes, which was pure hell." Their years together scarred him, he says, and partly explain the troubles that followed. But those years were also the happiest of his life. So although he removed the chin implant, he also had a tribute to Liberace tattooed on his forearm. He rolls up the sleeve of a grey thermal undershirt to reveal an inky cluster of curlicued letters and symbols. In the middle is Liberace's name, surrounded by floating musical notes, plus the years that Liberace lived and a yellow rose. "His favourite flower," Thorson said matter-of-factly, rolling his sleeve back down. http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2013/may/26/liberace-scott-thorson-behind-candelabra?INTCMP=SRCH

I have had sim rides like that. The simulator operator can make the sim do things that are not natural in a real airplane, during some of which, they usually warn you to avert your eyes. Of course, boys being boys, some HAVE to look and then start to feel queasy. Now don't you wish you had an escort sim to practice un-natural things or is that an inflatable object? Best regards, RA1

I remember that back in the US, the farm-raised salmon was required to have notification on the packaging if there was coloring added. Try for the wild. More expensive, but according to Dr. Oz, much, much better for the body. Down here, the large piece of wild filet(I think) that I bought was about $12.00/pound. At times, I think the supermarket prices might be too high for some items, but then I think of the crappy meal I had after going to Clube 117 down on the corner of Candido Mendez and Rua da Gloria and a couple of pounded, breaded chicken filets set me back $20.00US plus 10%tip and whatever is the raw food cost that I am going to be cooking at home isn't so bad. Poaching is a great way to do fish, it just takes longer.

Yes, poaching salmon is great, and very easy. Especially now that decent groceries carry good-quality fish stock, usually packaged in cartons like the good chicken stock. ihpguy's recipe sounds great too. I am going to try that next time I get some salmon. (Odd that, around here in NC stores, price has nearly doubled in the last month for farm-raised salmon from South America. Is it to do with spawning season, or something?)

Guess what? This Sunday's friendly, the only test match at the Maracana has been postponed due to safety issues. It is like withholding spooging when one is really excited. 72 hours before showtime..ZIPPO. And if anyone is not up to speed on the problems at the Engenhao, where the track and field will take place in 2016, the roof problems are not really roof problems. When they built the place - the enormous arched supports from which the fabric roof is suspended - used substandard steel.

There are a few threads I have moved today as I got so tired of seeing them in the top threads and I also thought that both were getting a bit nasty for my tastes. I was told by one poster this week that I didn't know the word nasty and I may have higher sensitivities than most. I agree with that as it is one of my flaws. PLEASE, show curtsey to other members on this site. If this is not possible, please do not post on those threads. We do hate to loose members but we much prefer a site of gentlemen than mean girls. This is not directed at 99 percent of our members. But, if you think it is you, you may be right. Please show respect to others. Please be kind. Please do not continue to post nasty shit about the other site. We leave those threads up for a bit when we feel they are relevant but they usually turn into nasty posts with hurt feelings. Please do not discuss Benjamin Nichols on this board. Yes, I know that is asking a lot as we have one member who can be his twin (literally) trying to gain support for him and another member his nemesis trying to devour him like a fresh born vampire feeding for the first time. I don't guarantee that I'll remove posts about Ben on this board but I am likely to move them all to the Sandbox. (let me think about it for a few days and I'm sure I'll sleep my pissiness off) "Oz, why are you so mean today?" Well, I have had multiple emails and PMs and posts that were reported as problematic that I can't even smoke a bit of weed and enjoy my day (it is the Lord's day and I'm in Texas so I need to be buzzed). Jeeze, if there is no amount of medical marijuana that can cure this headache, I am hoping moving those threads to the Sandbox might cure it. If not, fuck it, I'll go find a cute twink and get a BJ but if I am buzzed when I do that, he might take advantage of me and I'd hate that to happen (or would I?). Look, we want participation here but we want positive discussions about topics and not bitch fests. If I wanted to read that, I also know what sites I can find that on (mentioning no names purposefully). Thank you all for your participation. Truly, we do appreciate it! (Read this post, catalog it as Oz is loosing it, and then laugh it off as that Bitch has had one nasty day. I'm sure he will be back to his normal perverted self tomorrow)

You will note it is an old picture. As a Kentucky boy (years ago) man I am familiar with this "failed" restaurant concept. It was started after the Colonel sold out and the new owners decided to try a new restaurant concept, similar to Arby's, it failed badly. Now if you are looking for the KY Beef Oz favors you will find lots of it about the state, some in a few surprising places.