Recently in Television Category

When I first started researching Sicily, one of the things I read is that it's popular to eat gelato for breakfast, and in a particular form: as a filling in a bun. I just couldn't picture it. Well, here's the picture:







I've not been out in population centers in the morning so I could see people actually walking about with this in hand for breakfast, but I have seen plenty of folks eating it at other times of the day: gelato (2 flavors in one, as is the Italian way) in a brioche. This isn't mine. It's....someone else's, about 5:30 pm today. If you think about it, it's pretty much a cream-filled donut or pastry.  Pretty much. Right?

Others prefer the other traditional way:





I love the fact that the table has a little sub-table for those of smaller size to stand and eat their gelato with everyone else.

At a gelataria/bar in Pietraperzia, on the way back from Villa Romana Del Casale (more on that later). We were just driving through, but I think we will go back at some point to check out various points of interest. But it was early evening, I had promised gelato, and this was open. We ran the gauntlet of the men sitting outside, staring silently at us, as well as the gauntlet of the probably tired, and therefore perfunctory proprieter, but that's okay - it was worth it. The best gelato of the trip so fare - melone and fragole for me. Perfect.

(Where are all the Sicilian women in the late afternoon/early evening, anyway? Cooking, I suppose...)

(To explain the "two flavors" - if you've never had gelato, the concept is that you get two flavors in your cup or cone. Although it is very hard to convince certain parties in our parties that "chocolate" and "chocolate" are not, indeed, two different flavors, and it wouldn't hurt anyone to try something new... )

Marcel LeJeune of AggieCatholics has alerted me to the fact that Catholics Come Home is now allowing their videos to be embedded. They produce fantastic videos that have apparently had a profound affect in areas in which they have been shown (supported by diocesan followup - in Phoenix, for example) - but for a long time did not permit them to be embedded at other websites.

Good shift in policy!

 Check out all their videos

CBS is airing a made-for-television film tonight about Irena Sendler

As a Polish Catholic social worker in the early 1940s, Irena Sendler created and led a conspiracy of women who moved in and out of Warsaw's Jewish Ghetto disguised as nurses employed by Warsaw's Health Department. Though they worked under the guise of merely attempting to prevent and contain the spread of Typhus and Spotted Fever, Sendler and her brave cohorts emerged each time with the children of consenting Jewish parents. The children were sometimes sedated and hidden inside boxes, suitcases and coffins as a means of rescuing them from their imminent deportation to death camps. They were given new identities and placed with Polish families and in convents. Sendler kept a hidden record of their birth names and where they were placed with the hope that they would some day be reunited with their own families.

In 1943, the Nazis discovered Sendler's daring and dangerous ruse and arrested her. She was tortured by Gestapo agents and suffered broken feet. On the day of her scheduled execution she was rescued by "Zegota," the underground network with which she worked to save the Jewish children.

As a result of Sendler's efforts, approximately 2,500 children were smuggled to safety. Not a single child she rescued was ever betrayed or discovered by the Nazis.

The movie is based on the authorized biography of the heroine, Mother of the Children of the Holocaust: The Irena Sendler Story, by Anna Mieszkowska, published in 2005.

Catholic News reports:

But Father Basil Clark, who watched the show on television at his home in Broxburn,Scotland, was not surprised.

He has seen the situation unfold many times before, having regularly accompanied Boyle, 47, on the annual Legion of Mary pilgrimage to the Marian shrine in Knock, Ireland.

"When I watched the judges' faces it reminded me of what I was like when I first saw Susan singing -- absolutely blown away by the quality of the singing and by that fantastic voice," said Father Clark, dean of West Lothian, the district that covers Boyle's home village of Blackburn.

"Anyone who sees her for the first time behaves the same way. I have never heard her sing badly, though she might lose the words if the stress gets too much," he told Catholic News Service in an April 16 telephone interview.

Well, actually there is no book. And guess there's no "letter" either. Or is there? I got pretty confused about that, but I gather that it was a fake - that Roman had been generating this documents for years and selling them to the "bastard church."

Big Love wrapped up a third, shortened (because of the WGA strike) season, leaving me hoping that I'm really not going to have to wait another year and half to see what happens next.

(Oh, and did anyone watch Kings? I completely forgot. I'll catch it online later this week.Let me know if it was worth it.)

Bill, surprising no one, has declared himself the founder of his own Church - the Prophet. Roman is dead (I assume) killed by one of the few genuinely good characters in the bunch, Bill's brother Joey.

And the Greenes...well..the Greenes. I wrote to someone last night that if I can ever create a character as evocative and strange as Selma Greene...I'll have achieved something. The sister of Roman Grant, tied up with the uber renegade Greenes, butch as can be, but tearfully jealous of Hollis Green's apparent attachment to the girl they kidnapped....phew.

...After which we will stop TVBlogging for a week, since I have completely lost track of Lost and there is nothing else I watch.Well, well - they showed the Endowment ceremony, and I have to say, concerns about some sort...

I first heard about this show - miniseries? - a while back, but it had flown off my radar until today when my daughter said, "Hey that Kings show starts tonight." The concept is intriguing, as is the cast. Well,...

What's going to be dramatized on this weekend's Big Love is still not completely known - the basic plot is that Barb, who was raised traditional LDS, is brought up for excommunication. The image from the episode that was published...

This past week's episode of Big Love didn't rock the way the previous two eps did, but it was still very good, with several great moments - the creepiness of the funeral with the deceased Kathy's twin in attendance, Wanda...

(At some point I will start thinking of nifty titles. In order to garner a lot of hits through searches, I imagine many will need to include "Britany Spears" or "Brangelina" or perhaps even.."Obama!")So, Big Love has been terrific this...

Many of you know of Fr. Robert Barron, the excellent preacher and teacher from the Archdiocese of Chicago.  He has many video and audio clips at his website, some available for sale. EWTN is broadcasting one of his series, "Conversion"...

With one episode left for the season, Big Love is heating up, and very well.  There were many excellent, some weird moments in this week's episode, but what interests me the most is the rather ingenious way that the impact...

Big Love , the HBO series about a suburban polygamist family in Utah, is nearing the (cue HBO guy's sonorous voice) EXCITING CONCLUSION of its second season. I wasn't too, too interested when the show started, and was a little...