Category Archives: Culture Jammin’

Cormac McCarthy reviews Taco Bell

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And so the man defied the villagers and ate the taco. In defiance of the will of those people but also in defiance of some order older than he. Older than tortillas. Than the ancient and twisted cedars. How could we know his mind? We are all of us unknowable. Blind strangers passing on a mountain road.

The man laid there in the village square for three days and nights and took no food and spoke to no visitor. The older villagers said that the man should not have eaten the taco and no sane man would do so and the price of such folly was known to all.

– Yelping with Cormac.

If you only read one fake Cormac McCarthy Tumblr, make it this one. Via Tom.

Also, did anyone see the movie version of The Road? I loved the book, but the movie might have actually been too depressing. That’s the type of story you want to be able to put down and space out, I think. Great Omar work though.

Cricket-fighting revival underway

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Countless members of the Gryllus bimaculatus clan, also known as field crickets, have faced off in the capital’s narrow alleys this fall in a uniquely Chinese blood sport whose provenance extends back more than 1,000 years. Nurtured by Tang Dynasty emperors and later popularized by commoners outside the palace gates, cricket fighting was banned as a bourgeois predilection during the decade-long Cultural Revolution, which ended in 1976.

But like many once-suppressed traditions, among them Confucianism, mah-jongg and pigeon raising, cricket fighting is undergoing a revival here, spurred on by a younger generation — well, mostly young men — eager to embrace genuinely Chinese pastimes.

– Andrew Jacobs, N.Y. Times.

Please tell me this is happening somewhere in New York. Chinatown? Sunset Park? If anyone has a line on an underground cricket-fighting ring, I will pay you money to get me in to a fight. Not like, in the fight against a cricket — that wouldn’t be fair. I just want to get in to the arena to watch the crickets fight, and maybe bet some cash on the cricket I think looks heartiest.

Same goes for cockfighting, and really any illicit animal blood sport. Not that I advocate animal cruelty — I don’t. I just want to check out the scene. I won’t narc you out or anything. Email me.

Actually, for my science fair project in high school I examined social dominance in crayfish, which essentially meant watching a bunch of crayfish fight in a tank in this weird lab-closet in the back of one of the school’s science classrooms. Most crayfish fights kind of suck, actually, but every once in a while they’ll really throw down.

Dude, we need to take a band photo

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“Dude, we need to take a band photo.”
“Alright, I just need to shave.”
“What? DUDE NO!”
“C’mon man, my mom’s going to see this.”
“Your mom’s already got plenty of photos of me.”
“OHHHH!”
“NAKED PHOTOS!”
“Shut up, guys. Can we just take it already?”
“No way, bro. It can’t be here. It should be, like, grimy.”
“Yeah, yeah — like someplace, like, apocalyptic and stuff.”
“Hell yeah bro. Rock and roll”
(Half hour later)
“This is the place.”
“Dude what are you doing? We can’t all look at the camera! That’s lame, dude!”
“We can’t all stand next to each other! What the hell? That’s f@#$ing gay!”
“OK everyone say, ‘cheese!'”
“I’ll murder you dead bro.”
[poll id=”42″]

Next, Adam Sandler gets to be the Jets’ offensive coordinator

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The brash-talking Jets coach plays, of all things, a New England Patriots fan in an upcoming movie starring Adam Sandler. NFL Network’s Rich Eisen revealed the news on his Thursday podcast that featured Sandler.

Ryan plays a Boston lawyer in “I Hate You, Dad,” which was filmed in Massachusetts last summer.

– Manish Mehta, N.Y. Daily News.

Pretty much everything both Rex Ryan and Adam Sandler do these days prompts a hell of a lot of snark, but I’ll tell you this much: I’m going to see the hell out of this movie.

Jack and Jill looks awful, as did I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry and Grown Ups. But as far as I’m concerned, Adam Sandler can do whatever he wants.

I learned so much about what I think is funny from Sandler’s first two comedy albums, “They’re All Gonna Laugh at You” and “What the Hell Happened to Me?”. If I never encountered those tapes as a teenager, I imagine you’d be reading a very, very different website right now — or maybe not reading it at all. If this site entertains you, you owe something to Adam Sandler.

Very, very few comedians remain funny and relevant for any extended period of time. There are a lot of reasons why, none I’m too eager to hash out here. But obviously everyone knows Sandler’s goofy shtick now and he has drifted toward self-parody, so it’s easy to take shots at him.

I can’t because I still like him too much. I actually think it’s kind of sad, in a nostalgic sort of way, that people see Adam Sandler now as the guy doing silly things in (presumably) awful movies like Jack and Jill instead of the guy doing silly things in hysterical movies like Billy Madison.

And I imagine there will be enough easy chuckles in I Hate You, Dad for me to get through it in support of Rex Ryan’s acting career.

Not looking forward to the inevitable “Rex Ryan should spend less time making Adam Sandler movies and more time studying film” columns though. How dare he do anything else!

Language not nearly safe for work:

The People vs. Nickelback

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But now that [the Lions are] 6-2 and on their way to a potential playoff berth, the Turkey Day matchup with their division rival, defending Super Bowl champs the Green Bay Packers, has suddenly taken on a lot more significance – which is why their fans are furious that the team has booked Nickelback to be the halftime entertainment.

They’re so angry that one fan started an online petition to have the Lions change the halftime show.

– Steve Baltin, Rolling Stone.

Here’s the thing about Nickelback: Who likes Nickelback? Seriously. Have you or anyone you know ever enjoyed any music performed by Nickelback? Is there anyone in the entire world who’s like, “hell yeah, ‘Photograph’ is a dope jam”?

It makes no sense. They sell tons and tons of albums and still get booked to play NFL halftime shows, and yet you will never find anyone who purports to be an unironic fan of the band Nickelback. Is it that their bland brand of fist-pumping post-grunge is considered so inoffensive that lots of people buy their godawful records to play as background music in gyms* and Wal-Marts?

It can’t be that, because I find Nickelback’s music offensive. And I can’t imagine I’m alone. In fact I feel stupid even ripping them. It’s like the music-writing equivalent of a Charlie Sheen roast. Too easy.

I’ll say this, though: Some big record company has offices on the 30th floor of this building. You can always pick out the executives because they’re all fit dudes in their 40s and 50s who wear t-shirts and blazers with designer jeans and fancy shoes.

One time I got on the elevator to find three of them, in uniform, discussing some new band. During the ride one of them said, “I really think they could be the next Nickelback.”

I instinctively and quite audibly chortled, figuring the guy meant it derisively. But all three of them shot me dirty looks, and we rode the rest of the way down in awkward silence. To these guys, being the next Nickelback is a good thing. They’re eager to find the next Nickelback.

Think about that. Right now, not 30 feet above me, there are dudes in expensive jeans sitting around trying to identify bands that are somehow like Nickelback, that they will then foist upon an unsuspecting society that already gets way, way more than its fill of Nickelback. Is there some way to stop them? Am I obligated to do something about it?

I’m only one man. And I’m not sure they’d respect the opinions of anyone in Old Navy pants anyway. But what’s happening in Detroit — this is a good first step.

That city has as rich a musical history as any in this country. And it has, as has been well-documented, fallen on some hard times. The last thing the people of Detroit need now is Nickelback. Hell, the last thing any of us need now is Nickelback. Sign the petition and let those dudes in the elevator know it’s time to stop looking for the next Nickelback and start looking for the next Stevie Wonder.

*- True story: When “This is How You Remind Me” first blew up, I happened to be in a good workout phase. My friend and I decided that we would use Nickelback’s prevalence in the gym’s music rotation to time our workouts — we exercised until Nickelback came on, then knew it was time to leave. But eventually Nickelback came on so frequently that we found we weren’t getting good enough workouts, because we’d never be there more than 20 minutes before that stupid song started playing. FOR HANDIN’ YOU A HEART WORTH BREAKIN’!

Twitter Q&A part 2

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I’ve got a theory about this. I actually wrote about it the last time the McRib poked its head out of its reconstituted burrow: In the 80s, when the McRib came out, most Americans didn’t have access to or a well-developed appreciation for southern barbecue food.

As a New Yorker, I’m not sure I ever even heard of a cuisine called “barbecue” until the late 90s — barbecue was, to me, only a verb: We barbecued hot dogs.

So the McRib was probably the first thing I ever ate slathered in barbecue sauce. And barbecue sauce — even the goopy, super-sweet McDonald’s barbecue sauce — is pretty delicious. The way I see it, the McRib seemed awesome to some people in the early 80s because they never ate actual ribs slathered in actual barbecue sauce, which are just way, way better than the McRib.

Now, barbecue restaurants are everywhere. I can walk to Virgil’s and Daisy Mae’s from here, or get on the subway and get to Hill Country and Dinosaur and Blue Smoke and Smoke Joint. Why am I going to settle for a McRib? If I want McDonald’s, I want something that tastes like McDonald’s — a Big Mac and fries, or Chicken McNuggets. If I want barbecue, I’m going elsewhere.

I suspect the only reason people make a big deal about the McRib now is nostalgia.

If this is some sort of Internet campaign to out me as a nerd, I’ll make things very easy for you guys: Yes, I’ve seen Monty Python and the Holy Grail dozens of times.

I thought it was about the funniest thing imaginable when I was 10, and I practically had the thing memorized. It’s the type of thing I quoted and referenced for so long that I now do so unintentionally, saying things like, “very well,” or “it’s a silly place,” to (attempted) comic effect because they’re part of my, ahh — oh lord — idiom.

So yeah, I have a bevy of quotes at my disposal to answer Jay’s question and a paraphrase to speak to Vinny’s. But I’ll skip them, because SABR-friendly sandwich-blogging is nerdy enough on its own.

Oh man, really? That’s awful news.

Unfortunately, moving to Manhattan means I won’t be able to stay on the Taco Bell beat as vigilantly as I did in Hawthorne. There’s a weird Taco Bell tucked into the back of a deli on 3rd Ave. in the 50s, not far from where I get on the subway. So I’ll be able to get my fix when I need it.

But it’s a well-documented fact that Taco Bell tastes better in the suburbs. This is likely partly due to the scarcity of Taco Bell in Manhattan proper. But it’s also that you usually have a car in the suburbs, and suburban Taco Bells have drive-thrus. You don’t even have to get out. It’s amazing.

Anyway, that’s terrible news about the $5 Cheesy Gordita Crunch box. According to TacoBell.com, the featured Big Box Meal is the Chicken Flatbread Sandwich box. And the Chicken Flatbread Sandwich is no substitute for the Cheesy Gordita Crunch.

 

 

Six classic songs that were supposed to be jokes

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“Sweet Child” went on to hit number one on the charts, helping Guns N’ Roses’ album Appetite for Destruction secure its spot as the top-selling debut album of any band in the U.S. So let this be a lesson to every creative person reading this: What you like, and what your audience likes, are probably going to be very different. It’s probably best to just go with it.

– Colin Murdock, Cracked.com.

Via Jonah Keri, an excellent read on some unlikely hits. I knew the backstories to a few of these, but not all.

On a vaguely related note — and in the spirit of ego-boosting established by the last feedback-form post — I’m probably going to queue up some TedQuarters Greatest Hits (ie reruns) for whatever day I wind up taking off to move next week. If you’ve got a particular favorite post that you’d like to make sure your fellow readers see (or that you’d like to read again but are too lazy to search for), please suggest it here:

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Which is the New York Timesiest?

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May I present two excerpts from recent articles in the New York Times sports section:

On second-and-goal, they lost track of Charles Clay in the end zone. He seemingly had time to recite the poem “Ozymandias” — backward, in Ukrainian — before the play devolved into an incompletion on the other side of the field.

– Ben Shpigel, Oct. 18, 2011.

Then, just as the Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols used his bat to conduct Game 3 in three stunning movements — a trio of towering home runs struck with the thunder of the symphony timpanist Douglas Howard — the visiting conductor Hannu Lintu used his baton to conduct the orchestra.

– David Waldstein, Oct. 23, 2011.

I want to know:

[poll id=”40″]

Birth of the Cool J

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I was about twelve when I started writing my own rhymes. One day in junior high, there was this lone kid, wearing a knapsack, walking about twenty or thirty feet in front of me. It was just the two of us in the hallway. He was kind of diddy boppin’ and singing his version of the children’s song “This Old Man”—”This DJ, he gets down, mixing records while they go round.” I couldn’t see his face, but I could hear the echo in the hallway. It was as if he was in another dimension, in slow motion, like a dream. But the way he did it, I was, like, “I wanna do that right now!” After that, I was writing, writing, writing. At fourteen, I started sending out demo tapes.

– L.L. Cool J.

Click through to check out GQ’s excerpt of the new oral history of Def Jam by Bill Adler and Dan Charnas. Easter Egg: Among friends and family, LL Cool J goes by his middle name, “Todd.”