Rosenbush Cafe

An overflow crowd of 92,138-plus fans attended the Crimson Tide’s spring game Saturday in Alabama’s Bryant-Denny Stadium. Quarterback John Parker Wilson lead the White team over the Crimson, 20-13, led by the first-team defense. Wilson completed 18-of-36 passes for 244 yards and 2 touchdowns.

University officials were forced to turn away fans in the first half and this attendance for a spring scrimmage nearly doubling the school’s A-Day attendance record. The previous high attendance for an Alabama A-Day game was 51,117 at Birmingham’s Legion Field in 1988.

“It shows the passion that people have for the University of Alabama, and it certainly makes me feel great about being here as head coach,” new coach Nick Saban said.

Frances in the nursing home

Homecomings can be bittersweet and I expect my mother’s return home Monday, April 23, 2007, after six months residing in a nursing home, will be disorienting and confusing. I’ve hired a sitter to assist me in her daily routine which consists mainly of eating, sleeping and watching television. No conversations anymore although Frances will display witticisms and engage in brief repartee on non sequiturs when least expected. She’ll laugh mischievously as if she knows your secrets and is about to reveal them to the world.

The house renovation was expensive, tedious, necessary and incomplete. Funds began running low as the nursing home bills devoured my savings similarly to the Alzheimer’s disease consuming her memories. The kitchen was remodeled and some minor house cleaning but between bouts of melancholy and procrastination much remains unresolved. Such is life, eh?

When I spoke my first words, I was unable to say “Mother,” although my first three words were reportedly, “Nar, dad and Coke.” Imagine my parent’s delight and confusion as I cooed for my father, a nonsensical name for mother, followed by an unsolicited (and never paid) testimony to the power of the leading soft drink in 1953. For the record, I’m not much of a Coca Cola drinker today.

Nar reached a milestone Tuesday, February 27, 2007, when she became the second oldest member of our family at 93; her mother Rosa Loveman Bridgewater died in 1976 at age 96. Most relatives died in ranges from their sixties to mid eighties.
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The University of Alabama Crimson Tide Football returns with the Golden Flake A-Day Game, Saturday, April 21 in Bryant-Denny Stadium, kickoff at 1:05 p.m. (CDT) and televised live by CSS, with Chris Stewart, Tyler Watts and George Teague covering the action. Rosenbush Cafe’s Henri Villas is home to tailgating fans every year since 1987. This fall we’ll cover football with unique perspectives and the fans will keep us closer to every game. (Apologies for not updating these Entrees but my mother’s homecoming was, as expected, time consuming and my top priority. Everything is moving along slowly but there will be updates coming before April ends).

Reviewed by Henry B. Rosenbush
Review Contains Spoilers and Profanity

If you were old enough in the 1960s and 1970s chances are you either visited a Grindhouse theater or watched the genre of film that designation evokes. In the bigger cities, like New York’s Times Square on in Hollywood on Western Avenue, these theaters were everywhere. In the south, where I was raised, it was at the Drive-In Theaters where these films played. Grindhouse movies came from an earlier expression; back in the 1930s burlesque films were grinded out like sausages and the nickname was born.

These low budget films often featured a cornucopia of rough violence, even rougher sex, drugs, cheap but often effective gore and profanity.

Crown International, Amicus, Samuel Zarkoff, Roger Corman these were the familiar names from the era. The genres were multi-leveled with low budget horror flicks popular for being raw and unforgiving like Night of the Living dead, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Hills Have Eyes and the original purveyor of hard core cheesy gore, Herschel Gordon Lewis. The gamut of sub-genres like Exploitation, Sexploitation, Blaxploitation, Kung Fu, Mondo, Zombies and Women in Prison/Nazi Torture as the main courses.
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