fish at your own risk or my retro fish experience

 The thing that Brent has been animating lately is a scene in which Leonard causes a flood in the film and kids start fishing in the street. The flood is animated but the kids, and the fish, are most definitely real! After being greeted with a closed sign on most days, even after calling ahead, Mike & I eventually made it to this little wooden shack on a pond that houses a local fishing club/trout hatchery. There was a huge old  stove in the middle of the club, squishy white linoleum flooring and a fifties looking food counter offering, strangely, burgers. A group of older hunched men waiting for the rain to pass were circled around the stove in rusted folding chairs and raincoats looking at Mike and I suspiciously yet interested. I really was waiting for someone to whip out the story about the time they caught that big fish but, sadly, no one did! After retrieving the little guys from a pond they gave me my change in 2 dollar bills (!) and we left with coolers filled with 4 trout (2 were freed and 2 were eaten after filming).

Then, Brent tells me he wants another scene involving fish. I think "Yes! Back to the hatchery! Now I'll get my tall tale!" But no! He wants a different kind of fish! More precisely a whole dead fish! More exactly a whole dead fish skeleton! Trying to find whole fish for sale in an area overrun with "Rod & Gun" clubs is a bit difficult. This means, when running errands in NY, we picked up some whole fish in Chinatown!

It happened to be Chinese New Year so we had to dodge crowds and confetti and dragon parades in addition to all those people trying to buy bootleg designer purses and Faux-lexes. The day was unexpectedly warm and we had not come prepared to refrigerate the fish. This led to the frantic purchase of a (very fifties looking) freezer bag type thing and the collection of New York's finest gritty-gray snow to fill said bag with to insulate the fish! Now comes the fun (?) part: trying to boil the fish to keep a full fish skeleton intact (any pointers on this?). First, to the store for something, anything, to mask the scent of boiled fish...