Emily and I like different things for brunch. She tends to like a sweet brunch — french toast and fruit, for example — while I prefer an eggy, savory brunch. So Emily may not agree with the following list of best brunch spots.

My bias is to stick with places that do breakfast seven days a week. The once-a-week omelets just don’t cut it. Here goes:

1. Sneakers in Winooski – best breakfast in the BTV area and has been for at least 10 years
2. Penny Cluse in BTV – a solid 2nd place. A slight southwestern flair here and when the weather turns cold they offer amazing fresh squeezed tangerine juice.
3. On the Rise in Richmond – hippy vibe, so lots of good veggie fare. Delicious breads.
4. Magnolia in BTV – lots of good vegetarian options.
5. Country Pantry in Fairfax – homestyle. The waitresses call you “hon.” Hot open face roast beef for breakfast! Killer Benedict.
6. Sadie Katz in BTV – Jewish deli with excellent latkes and a great vegan mushroom barley soup. Emily digs the challah french toast. Not sure how early they stop serving breakfast on Sundays.
7. Mirabelle’s on Main St. in BTV – a bakery with a french aesthetic. Good sandwiches and their breakfast is just fine.
8. Chef’s Corner in Williston – Sort of like Mirabelle’s but in Williston.

In response to this, Rae went ahead and made a handy flowchart we can follow whenever we want to do brunch. I present it here as a public service for those who care about their Sunday eggs:

In 1994 I did indeed direct Alex’s Smoke script. I shot the film on 3/4″ U-Matic video in a condo in South Burlington with Jay Boulanger, Steve Fortner and Howie Webster in the lead roles. Given my absolute naivete about the filmmaking process, calling the film a “disaster” is probably too harsh. It taught me a lot about filmmaking (and editing in particular) and was a good example of me practicing what I now preach to filmmaking n00bs — make lots of bad films and get them out of the way so you can start making some good ones.

Meanwhile, Alex was busy completely ignoring my sage advice and proceeding with his own production of Smoke, throwing money and professional talent at the script in order to make his first foray into filmmaking more of a creative success.

Alex shot principal photography for his film in May of 1996 (he’d changed the name to Pitch by then because of Wayne Wang’s contemporary feature called Smoke) and I flew out to San Francisco to help him out as a production assistant on his set. Shot in 16mm film and boasting a sizable crew with actual departments and department heads, it was the first real “film” I ever worked on.

Alex was doing a lot of things right for a first-time filmmaker — getting an experienced DP to collaborate with, casting professional actors, shooting on film — but all of that production value cost him dearly. In fact, the cost of his film was so exorbitantly high, it took him 13 more years to finally put the finishing touches on the film.

So here it is. I’d embed the vimeo player, but the film will look better at the vimeo site rather than squished into a Candleblog post. It contains some “adult” themes and language and some nudity, so I think it’s safe to say it’s NSFW.

Congratulations, Alex, on finally putting this great little film to bed. Naturally, I take all the credit.

Over the last several years we’ve developed something of a tradition. Emily and I host the meal and invite my mom; Emily’s parents, sister and niece; our friends Steve and Eve and Steve’s mom; and this year will be the second year we’ve added our friend Alex to the list. That’s 11 people in our little condo. And in addition to feeding everyone, we really like our leftovers, so we make sure to make more food than we can eat at the dinner table.

The menu we serve is actually pretty traditional — turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, green bean casserole, green peas, a corn and squash gratin, biscuits, gravy, etc. We really love the traditional Thanksgiving meal, when done well, but the standard preparation is complicated by the following concerns:

*We only eat local, humanely raised and killed, hormone-free meat. This includes the stock, which we use in lots of dishes, so we need to prep that early. It also means our bird is a lovely, never-frozen fresh Vermont turkey — no Butterballs on our table.

*We don’t like to use any prepared foods either — no Stovetop Stuffing. The one exception are the biscuits. We really like the Immaculate Baking Company’s pre-fab buttermilk biscuits. They’re quick and easy, delicious, and there’s no trans-fat or other nastiness in them. We’re also experimenting with a green bean casserole that adheres to our yummy childhood memories, but that doesn’t rely on condensed cream of mushroom soup and canned onions. My mom always makes the homemade cranberry sauce and she also traditionally brings her famous creamed pearl onions.

The Brine
I brine the bird the night before we roast it. I usually improvise the brine ingredients, using some combination of kosher salt (the largest ingredient by far, apart from water, in the brine), brown sugar, rosemary, molasses and aroma veggies. Then for roasting, I stuff the bird with the veggies from the brine — giving preference to the garlic. The brining process makes the bird taste yummy and helps it to retain moisture while roasting, but mostly we do it because it makes for KILLER stock and gravy, and that influences the entire meal.

Stuffing
Technically, this is “dressing,” because I don’t stuff the bird. Why? There are differing schools of thought, but I happen to think:

• Sticking bread inside a roasting bird means you have to roast it longer (in order to avoid salmonella) and that dries out the bird, as does having bread inside of it, frankly.
• There isn’t enough room in the bird for all the stuffing we need, so since we’re baking an extra pan of the stuff anyway, why dry out our beautiful bird?

My recipe for this is dirt-simple. I cut up loaf bread (any yummy brown bread that doesn’t contain high fructose corn syrup will do — if it’s local, so much the better) and let it dry for a few days (it always takes longer than I think and I try to do it really early because cooking in a kitchen filled with pans of drying bread is tricky). Then I cut up a bunch of onions and celery, mix it all together and moisten generously with stock. You don’t need much salt if you’re using stock from a brined bird, but I like to add lots of black pepper and some rosemary. Thyme is a popular stuffing herb, but I’m a rosemary guy. Your mileage may vary. Then I bake it while the bird is cooling right after coming out of the oven. Done.

Potatoes
It almost doesn’t matter how these are prepared because they’re just going to get drowned in gravy anyway. I like them with skins or without. I prefer them creamy and smooth, but I’m fine with the lumpier kind too. Lot’s of black pepper is the key here. If I’m feeling really decadent (when am I not?) I like to use generous amounts of butter and heavy cream and whip them senseless. Garlic is a nice addition. Emily prefers a drier, lumpier spud, but she throws a dollop of sour cream on them on the pate.

Sauce
It’s all about the gravy. My mom is the gravy queen of our Thanksgiving. This year we’re going to make a Marsala wine and mushroom sauce for the table too.

Now I have to go home and clean the kitchen. We’re a week out, and my Thanksgiving prep begins tonight! Feel free to add your own traditions and recipes to the comments.

Also, this happened yesterday. Mazel tov, NTodd!

Now here’s an assortment of stuff to keep you amused, mid-week…

• Why you smart, energetic twenty-somethings should think twice before starting a non-profit.
• Aaron Sorkin and David Fincher are teaming up to tell the story of Facebook.
• Check out these crazy-amazing photos of bats drinking water.
• Ron Howard is directing a film based on comics about H.P. Lovecraft, which just seems inherently ironic to me. I mean, this is the guy who directed Cocoon.
• OMG, this must be where Tim & Eric get all their inspiration from.
• Notes on the Red Dawn remake.

Emily and I just got home from Selene Colburn’s History of the Future Collection dance performance. Neither Emily nor I consider ourselves conversant in the art or appreciation of dance, but despite our philistine handicap, we enjoyed ourselves a great deal. The mix of dance, humor, science (yes, science) and video (some of which was created by me, incidentally) was just perfect for keeping the performance accessible and meaningful for a dunce like me.

Tonight’s show was sold out, but I believe there are still tickets available for tomorrow’s show and I highly recommend it.

In honor of Selene’s performance, I’m posting this 10-minute film I made in 2007 that combines elements from a couple of the pieces she presented tonight. This is about as close as I’ve ever come to making an “art film,” but I hope I get the chance to flex my art-film muscles some more in the future.

In the future, I’m an art-film director.

History of the Future Suite from Bill Simmon on Vimeo.

Here’s how they arrived at the list, on which Steve is listed as #44 — one higher than Lou Dobbs. I think Steve should consider this alone a personal and professional milestone.

And because all of this has to ultimately be about me, I’ll note that the still they used for Steve is taken from Digital Pamphleteer, the film I made about him back in 2007.

W00t!

Wednesday 7/15:

• Flew from BTV to PDX. Arrived at 1AM local time. Sat next to ACM sisters and brothers from Great Neck and The Bronx, NY on the plane.
• There was little food to be found anywhere near the hotel. Had to scavenge.

Thursday 7/16:

• First day of the ACM conference. Pleased to run into Elliot Margolies right away, whom I remembered fondly from past ACM events (check out his interviews with PEG luminaries here).
• Attended a panel on the Denver Open Media Project, which was the buzz of the conference from my perspective.
• Lunch at a lovely Vietnamese place with Spine.
• Following the conference I met up with my (ex girl) friend Deb for drinks. Spine joined us after he got out of work. (Note: most of my old friends here have become athletes — planning for marathons and triathlons and talking about running/biking half of the time.)
• Ended the day by taking in the new Harry Potter film by myself (Bear elected to stay in), which was surprisingly good.

Friday 7/17:

• ACM day two. The morning session was about building sustainability through documentary work. It was an inspiring panel and I came away with lots of notes to try and implement at VCAM.
• Got interviewed by Elliot for his afore mentioned interview series. Talked about videoblogging classes at VCAM, social media outreach and New Media Office Hours.
• Lunch with Spine, Carolyn and little Jolie at an Ethiopian place.
• In the afternoon I went to a (literal) nuts and bolts presentation on video engineering. I left early because I was losing steam and not getting much out of it.
• Bear and I attended the Hometown Video Awards, at which Bear accepted RETN’s Overall Excellence award. We were seated at the same table with Bill Nolan, author of Logan’s Run.
• After the awards, We avoided the inevitable karaoke. Bear went back to the hotel and I hooked up with Daniell from Telvue and Forrest from Manhatten Neighborhood Network. Thus began my long evening with ACM 2.0 folks — the young guard of community media — comprised of Denver Open Media whiz kids and 20 & 30-something staffers from NY, MA and OR. A hotel room at the Ace Hotel in downtown PDX (coincidentally where I’m typing this post right now) was our locale, and as Daniell said the next day, what happens at the Ace Hotel stays at the Ace Hotel (but of course, I have video).
• I made it back to my hotel at 2AM or so and learned there was a shooting nearby and that Snoop Dog was apparently staying at my hotel (these two events were unrelated as far as I know). Spent 30 minutes relaxing with some ACMers in the lobby before crawling into bed for a short nap before morning.

Saturday 7/18:

• The tension between old guard ACM and the new young turks was palpable at the morning session on open source community media centers of the future, but the moderator (Tony from Denver Open Media) was really great at threading that needle (though his co-presenters were less diplomatic). There is some understandable fear of technological change from traditional CMC folks and some reluctance to embrace a new model of organizing staff and resources — particularly a model that so fervently eschews traditional relationships with technology. It may take some time to sink in, but the DOMP folks “get it” and some older guard folks just don’t quite yet… but they’re coming around.
• The 2nd session I attended was on copyright and creative commons. The presenter was funny and smart, but the information was mostly review for me.
• The keynote luncheon was a panel and I got some good leads there on possible relationships for VCAM to foster and I really think we should have a presence at NAMAC in August.
• Hooked up with Spine in the afternoon and picked up XJ3 and prepped for our excursion to a big outdoor rock show featuring Andrew Bird and The Decemberists. It was beautiful.
• We followed the rock show by heading to a bar where a friend of Spine’s and XJ3′s was celebrating her 40th birthday. I saw a few folks I’d met on previous trips out here and had some yummy mixed drinks.
• We ended the night at a fries cart where I randomly ran into my friend Craig from Amherst Community Television. I enjoy bumping into friends in other cities. It makes me feel connected to things.

Sunday 7/19:

• Slept in, playing catch-up on lost sleep from the previous couple of days.
• Went to brunch with Spine at a great place called The Tin Shed. Best veggie gravy and biscuits ever. Went shopping in a little bohemian district of boutiques and comics shops.
• In the afternoon we met up with XJ3 and Susan at an outdoor theater-in-the-park performance of the classic Trek episode Amok Time. We had great seats and I shot some video, which I’ll post later (it’s on a HD at Spine’s). It was a crowd pleaser. We met up with my old friend Laura there and made plans to reconvene at her place in SE PDX that evening.
• Laura and Adam hosted a lovely summer evening dinner of gazpacho, berries and greens with lots of yummy beer. Deb, XJ3, Spine and some of Laura and Adam’s neighbors enjoyed the cool summer evening together in the back yard. We called it an early evening because Spine had to work the next morning.

Monday 7/20:

• Slept in again (ah… vacation) and spent the day in St. Johns where Spine’s house is. Wandered the village a bit and made lunch in Spine’s kitchen. Read the first volume of Y The Last Man (purchased the previous day).
• Drove Spine’s car into town to meet Spine and take the train downtown to a showing of Moon with XJ3. It was excellent — better than expected even.
• Post-film dinner and discussion was fun and delicious. Said goodbyes to XJ3 and entreated he and Susan to visit Vermont soon.

Tuesday 7/21:

• Today Spine is having his bathroom redone so I left the house with him in the morning and I’ve been spending the day in downtown PDX. Thinking about a matinee, depening on start times.
• Bought a copy of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home (finally) and read more than half of it at Powells.
• Our evening plans remain unknown.

I’m taking the red eye home tomorrow night. It will be good to be back in Vermont, despite the despicable weather there this summer (all the more annoying in comparison to Portland’s dry, sunny, breezy summer). See you All back east!

• Attend the national Alliance for Community Media conference
• Visit with new and old friends
• See The Decemberists and Andrew Bird play an outdoor show
• See the movie Moon
• Attend a live theater-in-the-park performance of the classic Star Trek episode, Amok Time. Yes, you read that correctly.

Does that sound like a perfect week or what?

The first of these was called “Scrambled Eggs” and was about the simple joy of eating… scrambled eggs. The second one was an anthem dedicated to tangy, processed Velveeta cheese.

Audio cassette recordings of these gems existed at one point, though I’d be hard pressed to find copies now, but last night my friend Eric emailed me a link to a digital copy of a performance of “Velveeta” recorded sometime between 1994 and 1998. It brought me right back.

Click here to experience the delicious, drunken three-part harmony of this cheesy anthem.