E. coli outbreak in Hawaii

I’ve flown so much recently all the movies are ones I’ve seen. So I rewatched The Descendants, with George Clooney, part of a series of pretty good movies by Alexander Payne that includes (the highly underrated) Election, About Schmidt, and Sideways.

The opening is something like, Just because I’m living in Hawaii I still have 1512_sideways_wideweb__430x267all the same problems as mainlanders.

Same applies to me in Brisbane.

But I think all movies are about me.

At least I don’t have (the dangerous kind of) E. coli.

Bacteria don’t care where you live.

And perhaps I’ll be judged as more communicative with kids, with the five daughters, than George Clooney, with none in real life.

State epidemiologist Dr. Sarah Park, told  KITV, “There is something going on.”

Over the past month, six patients (five children and an elderly resident) tested positive for the sickening strain of E. coli.

Three of those cases were severe enough the patients had to be hospitalized. Two of those patients then developed a potentially life-threatening complication.

According to the state’s letter, no source has yet been identified for this current cluster.

 

Clooney and Keibler felled by food poisoning in Italy

I’m a big George Clooney fan. It’s related to his coolness as Batman and Danny Ocean. It seems like he never makes a bad movie (except for The American). After a week traveling with the kids, Dani and I watched The Descendants, a Clooney movie we had been saving for a while.

George was at his best; the movie was pretty great.

According to Starpulse.com Clooney and his ex-wrestler and prolific tweeter girlfriend Stacy Keibler were not at their best earlier this week in Italy after dealing with what has been reported as food poisoning.

The couple, who were vacationing at Clooney’s Lake Como home, fell sick after a meal in Cernobbio though the manager of the restaurant in question denies all responsibility.

A source told TMZ.com that both Clooney and Keibler are now feeling fine after their brief bout of food poisoning.

Nevertheless, the manager of the restaurant is refusing to accept that it was his food that left the table with upset stomachs, claiming they must have gotten food poisoning elsewhere.

 

Raw egg aioli promoted for Ocean’s Eleven screening

Dinner and a Movie on TBS is incredibly hokey and contrived, which makes it perfect entertainment fare along with trashy magazines and Tom Robbins novels while recharging at the beach.

During a (probably repeat) screening of the George Clooney Ocean’s Eleven remake on Friday night, the recipe to accompany the movie was ‘Risky Aioli;’ risky because, as the hosts said, the recipe included raw egg.

The host did say that if you didn’t feel up to it (were a wus) a tablespoon of commercial mayo could be substituted instead. They went ahead with the raw egg.

I’m guessing the egg-of-course-we-only-promote-the-cooked-kind industry didn’t register any health objections when the episode originally aired.

New York celebrity hot spot La Esquina shut down, again

Celebrities are a terrible source of information about all things food, and worse when it comes to food safety.

DNAinfo reports the New York City Department of Health closed down taco hot spot La Esquina after a Monday restaurant inspection, marking the celeb-frequented eatery’s second shutdown since May.

La Esquina’s "critical" violations included inadequate refrigeration and holding large amounts of food above maximum temperatures.

In total, the restaurant racked up 64 violation points — well above the 28 necessary to earn a "C" letter grade under the department’s new system.

DNAinfo says that La Esquina’s “secret” underground passageway and cellar level restaurant have helped it earn big name fans including George Clooney, Kate Hudson and Julia Roberts.

But “combustible ceilings and inadequate egress” in those same area’s provoked the Department of Building’s spring shutdown.