Category Archives: Items of note

Friday Q&A, pt. 3: The randos

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https://twitter.com/Ceetar/status/246601797068795904

Whoa.

Also, click over to Ceetar’s blog for the craft-beer stuff you’ll never get here.

https://twitter.com/IanBinMD/status/246604851797188609

The latter and it’s not even close. The Jets/Giants needling always just seems silly to me, since clearly the “New York” in their team names refers to the city, not the state, and East Rutherford is very much part of the New York City metropolitan area.

The Brooklyn thing is funny mostly because I’ve met a shocking number of people who actually live in Brooklyn and don’t even know that it’s true, and it’s just absolutely baffling to me that someone could ever move someplace without being able to locate it on a map. Plus I’ve got a lot of Long Island pride, in large part because I’m a troll and I know a lot of Long Island natives try to hide it or pretend they’re from someplace cooler. C’mon guys. There’s no place better for beaches and delis and good old-fashioned brodowns.

https://twitter.com/daxmontana4/status/246614412893499392

I don’t know; I’ve never really been a man of slight to medium build. Plus typically I don’t coordinate Halloween costumes with my wife or anyone, so I’ve never really tried thinking about funny group costumes besides the A-Team. Maybe your family could go as the A-Team, with the baby as B.A.?

I always just pick a different funny mustache man. I’ve been Burt Reynolds, Wilford Brimley and Magnum P.I. in the not-too-distant past. I really need a good skintight one-piece chessboard bodysuit so I can be Freddie Mercury already. Also, I should probably drop a few pounds first.

Have you considered being Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love and the naked swimming baby from the cover of the Nevermind album? Might be cold for the kid though, depending on where you live. Also, you need a swimming pool. Just brainstorming here.

 

Requiem for a mustache

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Kevin Gilbride’s mustache, a legendary lip adornment that won two Super Bowl championships and was respected as one of the most enduring examples of responsible facial hair in sports, died last month in a shaving accident at the Giants’ practice facility here. It was believed to be about 41.

– Sam Borden, N.Y. Times.

Sam’s a friend of the site, but this important item of journalism would be linked here even if he were its oldest enemy. With this, the “no play for Mr. Gray” thing and her obvious appreciation of me, the Gray Lady is really cutting loose lately. Someone cue up a Shelley reference before the paper’s reputation collapses.

Discounted bacon possibly available for trade from some guy

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There is a fever for bacon in this country. How do we tap into that? If we don’t do something to put Oscar Mayer in its rightful place, then shame on us.

– Tom Bick, Oscar Mayer’s director for integrated marketing communications and advertising.

So what did Bick and his boys in integrated marketing communications and advertising come up with? Something called the Great American Bacon Barter, in which an LA-based actor and comedian has been charged with making his way across the country without cash or credit cards, using only his bartering skills and the 3,000 pounds of Butcher Thick Cut bacon furnished to him by Oscar Mayer.

Here’s the thing, though: The article says Butcher Thick Cut bacon runs $8.99 for a 22-ounce package, which means this guy’s armed with just short of 20 grand worth of bacon, at least in retail value. Seems like it just can’t be that hard to make it across the country on that — living pretty damn well, I might add.

Do you have access to the Internet? Because maybe you could just look up the buyers for various regional supermarkets, offer to undercut the local distributors, then barter your bacon for cash money and drive across the country living like a king. Even if you allow for nearly a 200-percent retail markup, you could pawn off 2,800 pounds of that delicious bacon and make almost $5,000 with which to travel, some $40 of which you could use to purchase a toaster oven to cook the 200 pounds of bacon you reserved for personal consumption.

Spirit of the game? Maybe not. But hey, you gave me all this bacon and I have a very particular set of skills, one of which is telling people about how great bacon is and trying to get them to give me money for it, another of which is eating bacon. So I’d like to take a crack at it.

Hat tip to Moses for the link.

Stupidity overwhelming

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You ever have a day when it feels like the weight of the world’s stupidity is crushing? That’s this day. It seems there’s just an avalanche of stupid thundering down upon me, an unending and unavoidable onslaught of stupid on my TV and in the papers and on the Internet and out in the street, the type of frustrating, mind-numbing stupid that just makes me want to bail on everything and hole up in a basement somewhere and eat Sun Chips and listen to Pet Sounds on repeat.

But that’s not really an option, so I’m going to take a reset and just not mention any of the stupid things I’ve heard or seen or read this morning. Instead I’ll write about Taco Bell in a minute, it being Taco Bell Tuesday and all. For now, watch this monkey mess with these tigers. This monkey’s OK in my book.

Twitter Q&A: Quick ones because it’s Labor Day weekend and no one’s out there and oh I’m so lonely

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https://twitter.com/DanDotLewis/status/241590622425849857

Assuming we’re not counting P-Funk and such: Orlando Magic at the arcade. Love Shaq, always, love hearing the NBA Jam announcer guy get all worked up about Scott Skiles. I know most people say “Boomshakalaka!” but to me, “SKILES!” will always be the defining noise associated with the game. On the Sega Genesis I usually used the Supersonics because Shawn Kemp was great for dunking and because in my youth I was randomly a huge Detlef Schrempf fan.

https://twitter.com/MLBoorstein/status/241590576850554881

Who still buys cream cheese in bricks? Is that for baking? I think I’ve purchased cream cheese in a brick like twice in my life and both times in cases of emergency. I can’t remember what the cream-cheese emergency was, but I imagine it was a situation where I had bagels and they were going to go stale if I didn’t eat them soon and the place I went to for cream cheese only had it in bricks. Total disaster.

They’re a total mess, and you usually waste half the cream cheese trying to clean up the edge of the foil with the knife, then ripping the foil, then having to cut back the cream cheese to fit inside the foil. And don’t tell me to just ditch the foil and stick the cream cheese in a sealed container inside my fridge somewhere. Not going to happen. I already do that with butter, and I won’t concede more valuable fridge space and tupperware to a less versatile spread. Just buy the whipped stuff.

https://twitter.com/chrispalm/status/241593005138649091

I have, and I hate to say it but I was a bit disappointed. A bunch of stuff blew up and that was certainly sweet, but it was way too much with the cutesy wink-wink nod-nod hey-we-all-used-to-be-action-stars stuff. It’s such a shame to have awesome Jason Statham and awesome Jet Li and most-awesome-of-all Terry Crews in the movie and have them all take a back seat to Sylvester Stallone, who’s a complete caricature at this point and impossible to understand. Bruce Willis can still hang with anyone, but Arnold Schwarzenegger was so, so bad, and not bad in the good way.

If you read with any regularity you know I love action movies. But part of what I most love about action movies — especially on the big screen — is their ability to completely enrapture me so I get lost in the movie and forget everything that’s happening in the real-life world. And I just don’t think that’s going to happen when post-Governorship Arnold Schwarzenegger is in the movie, especially when he’s all “I’LL BE BACK” even though the movie is not Terminator. Schwarzenegger and Stallone are too famously Schwarzenegger and Stallone to be believable characters in the movie. Same thing happens for me with Tom Cruise now.

https://twitter.com/happyhank24/status/241595231894638592

Do people still say those things? They shouldn’t. People definitely said those things before the season, but I suspect those same people now love the hell out of Whitestone Mike. It’s still a small sample, but Baxter’s got over 200 plate appearances of being a very good big-league player now. And he always hit in the Minors, to boot. He should have a role on the Major League team moving forward. What that role will be depends on what players the Mets can bring in this offseason.

Rollerball and it’s not even close. I wrote about my experience at a free screening of Rollerball here.

As for the worst movie I’d want to remake? Hmm. I don’t know if I’d want to remake any movie at all, and I think if I did want to remake a movie it would be one I considered good even if most people didn’t. Oh — I got it: Brewster’s Millions. Underrated movie, original premise, timeless theme, could use a contemporary twist.

Serious guide to sandwiches seriously lacking

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The good people at Serious Eats put together a guide to sandwiches. It’s good and an entertaining read, but what’s missing? Only the best sandwich I’ve reviewed on this site: Chicago’s native Breaded Steak.

I’ve met a handful of native Chicagoans who’ve never heard of Ricobene’s or their specialty sandwiches, so I can’t fault Serious Eats for missing them. But you should not. Plenty of readers have now been to Ricobene’s on my recommendation, and all report experiences as good as mine. This is one of the best sandwiches in the world. If you’re in the Windy City, don’t miss it.

Friday Q&A, pt. 2: General curmudgeonry

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https://twitter.com/TooGooden16/status/239032628446109699

I suspect Mark is partly kidding with the words per post joke, but it’s true that I’ve been missing in action for most of this week. I can’t say if my work in general has been slacking before that; I find that the things I write that I think are best are rarely the same as the ones readers think are best.

This blog now counts as some part of my responsibilities here, but it is and always has been primarily a labor of love. And most of the time, I love writing it. But in order for the blog to be good — in my eyes, at least — I do need some time away on occasion. For one thing, hunching in front of my computer wreaks havoc on my back, and sometimes when the pain gets strong enough it’s the only thing I can think about and my writing suffers. That’s kind of what happened yesterday.

For another, sometimes I just need to think about stuff and experience stuff to try to keep creating fresh content for this site. I had conversations in Binghamton that will in part inform my writing all offseason, plus time on the road to clear my head a bit.

Truth is, my typical daily obligations here force me to spend less time than I would like on posts, but that’s why they give me a paycheck and call it work. If I were to try to write any more than I already do, you wouldn’t miss it when it was gone because it would utterly suck.

Sometimes I toy with the idea of bringing on like-minded contributors to bolster the site’s content and afford me more time to work on lengthier posts and such. But though I’m pretty sure I could find willing and talented writers, I’m not sure I could in good conscience ask someone to volunteer his or her time for a site named for me.
https://twitter.com/rcooverbrooklyn/status/239026590003122179

Dude, your standards are just way too high. I mean, I don’t know you or anything but from your Twitter feed it seems like you’re a pretty funny guy. And if you’re following me I suspect you’re extremely handsome. But you need to understand that no one’s perfect, and that someone’s annoying little quirks that keep you at bay now could become the very quirks you love about that person if you’d only give them a chance. For crying out loud, Robert, you need to take some chances here.
https://twitter.com/bagelsNrahtz/status/239025720205131776

Probably not. It’s a funny joke and one I’ve mined for material plenty of times before, but it’s only one joke and you summed up the entire joke in your Tweet: The MLB Draft has something called a “sandwich round” and sandwiches are delicious. I’m not above beating jokes to death — you can blame Carlos Beltran for that — but putting in real research by looking through past drafts just seems like too much work.

Programming note

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I’m traveling this morning so things will be slow here for a while. Taco Bell Tuesday may or may not come later; it depends on traffic and if I can find any more Taco Bell items of note when I do get set up.

For now, enjoy this episode of The Sandwich Show, which I think got buried in the theme switch: