I’m really fond of the Valley of the Lepers.

It’s early Sunday morning here in Howdygramland. The house is quiet, Sam is asleep and I’ve got TicTacs and a nice Marcytini to keep me company. It just doesn’t get much better than this. (Okay, sometimes it does.)

From our What the Hell Were They Thinking department comes my review of a little-known film called The Iron Petticoat (1956), an unfortunate, British-made cold war comedy that might be the worst movie ever produced. It’s a Ninotchka wannabe starring — brace yourself — BOB HOPE and KATHARINE HEPBURN. Seriously. Hepburn is a humorless Russian air force defector named Captain Vinka Kovelenko who wears medals to bed, brushes her teeth with a rag and has an accent so hideous you’ll be tempted to stab yourself in the head with an ice pick. Hope plays ladies’ man Major Chuck Lockwood and manages to throw in every sarcastic comedy gag from the Bing Crosby “Road” pictures. Apparently both stars realized the movie stunk before it was even finished and Bob Hope pulled it from public access for more than 40 years. (Too bad it didn’t stay there.)

After we watched the aforementioned Hope-Hepburn suckfest Sam made me promise to choose a quality movie, so we opted for Ben-Hur (1959) and loved every sweaty, inspirational minute of it.

My favorite scene is when Judah comes back from Rome in that gorgeous “young Arrius” outfit and pops in with a dozen sweet rolls to surprise his old friend Messala. (I might be kidding about the sweet rolls.) I’m also really fond of the Valley of the Lepers and don’t understand why everybody got so upset about moving there. I thought it looked nice.

In case you’ve been wondering about our weather in north Texas at this time of year, it was a balmy 80° on Saturday with more of the same forecast for today and Monday. Not bad for the first week of December! On the downside, however, we haven’t had any measurable rain around here for MONTHS. According to an article I read online last night, 94% of the state is abnormally dry, 55% is in severe drought, 25% is in extreme drought, our water storage reservoirs are only 64% full, 75% of our ranch cattle have been moved out of state and 45% of our winter wheat crop is considered “very poor.” In short, this is very, very lousy. AND IT’S ALL RICK PERRY’S FAULT.

I ordered something new and exciting the other day from Netrition.com. This time it’s a line of low-carb sugar-free crapola from a company in New Zealand called Jok-n-Al. They make apricot sauce (a sweet & sour knockoff), sweet & hot chili sauce, cocktail sauce, plum sauce, cranberry sauce, tomato onion relish and an entire line of fruit spreads. I ordered the apricot sauce and chili sauce. This is hugely exciting on a number of different levels, but mostly because nobody else makes anything remotely like them, I’ve never eaten food from New Zealand and I miss sweet & sour sauce desperately. Please stay tuned for a full report.

I’d better get myself to bed now. Thank you for reading this.