Category Archives: Words

Sandwich of the Week

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Lo, a vegetarian option!

The sandwich: Spicy Falafel Pita from Kulushkat, Dean St. between 5th Avenue and Flatbush in Brooklyn.

The construction: Ahh, a lot of stuff. Spicy falafel, definitely. Hummus, some sort of eggplant goo, red-cabbage salad, and maybe some other things too.

Important background information: Falafel might be the No. 1 all-time drunk food. I think it’s the name. Three easy syllables, perfect for chanting once you’ve reached that shameless level of drunkenness where you don’t really care how you appear to the outside world because you’re young and free and you feel great and you just want to let everyone know how much you’re about to enjoy this falafel. “FA-LA-FEL!” Also, it’s fried, delicious, and chock full of carbs for sopping up that booze.

Come to think of it, though, I’m not sure I’ve ever eaten a falafel sober. Maybe falafels are just awesome all the time and I’m missing out. Especially since I really don’t drink all that often, so I pass up a lot of good opportunities to eat falafel.

Kulushkat is about a block from Uncle Barry’s, a new bar in Park Slope owned by a couple of my friends. You should check out both: Kulushkat because they make a hell of a falafel (more below), Uncle Barry’s because it’s a fine bar run by people I know and there’s a Mortal Kombat console in the back. Also, it boasts better odds than most bars that I’ll be there. Say hello. I’ll be the dude with the awesome hair, shouting about falafel.

What it looks like in the soft yellow glow of a Flatbush Avenue streetlight: 


How it tastes: Oh hell yes. Did I mention I’m drunk right now? I mean not right now while I’m writing about it, but back then when I was eating it. In retrospect it’s a testament to my experience as a sandwich blogger that I had the wherewithal and dedication to photograph the thing while stumbling toward the subway after several shots of celebratory Jameson because hey you guys opened a bar!

Anyway, that’s not important now. The falafel is crunchy, not too greasy and has just the right amount of peppery spice — not flaming hot sauce, kick-you-in-the-face-spice, more of a back-of-the-mouth type deal, something more subtle that sort of envelops the whole experience without overwhelming it at all. The cabbage adds crispiness of an entirely different texture than the falafel — oh, and a different temperature, too. That’s good, and an underrated sandwich element, I think. A mixture of piping hot and nicely chilled ingredients. A sandwich construction inefficiency, maybe.

The hummus is creamy and tasty, and the eggplant goo is mushy and sweet. The pita is soft and itself warm, and holds up under the duress of the various wet ingredients.

Oh — something important: I noted, even in my drunkenness, that the dude making the sandwich took time to stagger the ingredients. Scoop in some cabbage, some eggplant, a falafel, then some cabbage, some eggplant, another falafel, and on like that. I must have been visibly drunk, but he still invested the time to properly craft the sandwich for appropriate ingredient variability. It was not unappreciated, good sir.

I’ll amount that my judgment was less than perfect, given the circumstances. But I have not a single complaint about this sandwich. It was awesome.

What it costs: $6. It probably wasn’t enough to be dinner (for me), but it seemed like a good value nonetheless.

How it rates: 91 out of 100. A Hall of Famer, drunk or otherwise. I think.

That is, unless Luis Hernandez makes a late push

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Plan A is still Jose Reyes, but the Mets already have formulated Plan B.

If Reyes is not re-signed, the Mets may try to compensate for that loss of offense by attempting to make Daniel Murphy the full-time second baseman, according to an organizational source.

– Mike Puma, N.Y. Post.

Not to toot my own horn, but I suggested exactly the same thing on the Mostly Mets Podcast a couple weeks ago.

Actually, wait: Absolutely to toot my own horn. Here’s a photo of my own horn. Toot!

Point is, it makes a hell of a lot of sense. I didn’t have any organizational sources or anything, but if Reyes leaves, Ruben Tejada becomes the most obvious internal candidate to play shortstop, leaving a hole at second and the Mets missing Reyes’ bat.

At the end of the season, a reporter asked Terry Collins why he wouldn’t give Murphy a position to spend the offseason working on. Collins said he was waiting to see “where some guys end up.” I read that at the time to mean that Murphy would concentrate on second if Reyes left. This report adds a little weight to that, but really no more than common sense does.

Oof

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Man… the Patriots. Oof.

It’s bad enough that the Jets lose a winnable game at home to the Comedy Bad Guys of Football, with their stupid handsome smirks and ultimately unstoppable offense.

I actually have no follow to that. That’s it. It’s bad enough.

What happened there? I was sitting in section 336 so I didn’t have the luxury of instant replay as often as I’d like to figure out what the hell was going wrong, but it looked like the Jets’ offensive line decided to pay homage to the Collin Baxter era all of a sudden. S

And the defense absolutely could not stop Stupid Brady and the Stupid Pats’ offense once they went to the hurry-up, all the way down to just not covering people at all. I get that it’s confusing, but did you not know the Patriots were going to come at you with that?

Also filed under “suck:” The final score. This one was a lot closer than 37-16 for most of the game. Man I hate the Patriots. Why are they so stupid and bad at defense and good at beating the Jets?

Oh and I don’t know if this was a Twitter thing or whatever, but why were the Jets operating out of the shotgun and with empty backfields so often? Was it because their line couldn’t stop anyone, or because the Patriots can’t stop the pass? Because it makes it a hell of a lot easier to stop the pass when you know it’s coming.

Same thing all year long for Eric Smith, by the way. Go back and watch the videos I did with Bassett in September. I hate to be mean but the guy’s no good in coverage. Awesome tackler, can’t cover. Not a recipe for good safety play against a team like the Patriots.

I’m tired. That’s a late game, fellas.

Intolerable team signs detestable pitcher

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According to about 8,000 different people on Twitter, the Phillies are close to signing or have already signed Jonathan Papelbon to a four-year deal worth $50 million.

Papelbon’s coming off a strong season and has always been a very good closer, outside of a shaky 2010 campaign. But a four-year deal with the Phillies will encompass his age 31-34 seasons and pay him handsomely to provide less than 70 innings a season.

If the deal goes through, the Phillies will have roughly $93 million committed to five players for 2013 — Papelbon, Roy Halladay, Cliff Lee, Chase Utley and Ryan Howard. Those are all great players, of course, but by then they’ll be an average age of around 34.

The Phillies have shown a willingness to spend a ton of money lately — their payroll neared $170 million in 2011, according to Cots. But I refuse to believe dedicating so much money to so many older players is a great way to sustain a winning franchise, and given that Howard and Utley are already showing signs of decline it’s not hard to see (and cross our fingers and hope for) all the ways in which the Phillies could crash and burn within the next couple of years.

Most Mets fans don’t want to believe that, I know, and will instead point to the Papelbon signing as an example of the rich getting richer — the Phillies forgoing their 2012 first-round pick to sign Proven Closer McGillicuddy and Win At All Costs because That’s What Winning Teams Do, Heart and Guts.

And in truth, given the likely limited time in which the Phillies have to take home another championship, maybe it’s not a terrible idea to go all in for another run or two before the payroll grows lousy with old men. But they can go screw anyway. And adding Papelbon, perhaps the game’s most revolting closer, just spews more flammable vomit on the smoldering puke pyre that upchucks its way to the top of the NL East every year.

And don’t even ask me how the flaming vomit could itself vomit. It’s the Phillies. They find a way.

Oh and you know Papelbon’s going to grow a chin beard now. It’s written in to the Phillies’ facial-hair policy, actually.

Advanced Trolling

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In Jack and Jill, Sandler looks at sibling rivalry without that acrid love of dysfunction now so popular on TV and Broadway. It’s obvious that Los Angeles ad exec Jack and his hefty, homely, still unmarried sister Jill who visits from New York will mend their rift but the fun is in watching the healing process. The film’s comedy (as in adult petulance and coach potato behavior) shows the depths of kinship—similarities siblings can’t help sharing but learn to accept in themselves. And Sandler’s always protective—as when Jack insults Jill but warns “I can say that because I’m her twin.”

All Sandler’s best comedies (Grown Ups, Bedtime Stories, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry and the great Spanglish) are really love stories. He explores affection without the class and gender guilt Judd Apatow hides behind (such distraction scuttled Apatow’s grandiose Funny People). Sandler’s willingness to appear “dumb” is what makes his films so cathartic. He thrives on being unembarrassed—the key to classic comedy going back to the Greeks.

– Armond White, CityArts.

White takes exactly the right approach to a Jack and Jill review, baffling the crap out of the CityArts commenters.

This happened

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OMG OMG OMG OMG.

I’m not going to bother cutting these up and putting them in chronological order because I assume you’ve been on the Internet for a while and you’re pretty good at decoding these things by now. You’ve seen Memento, right?

Ahh… ahh… holy hell, the awesome. It’s blinding.

What do you think they talked about? I mean, I know they talked about knuckleballs. But do you think they told like, stories of different sticky life situations their knuckleballs got them out of? Great knuckleballs they have thrown? The sense of alienation a knuckleballer feels in a rotation full of conventional pitchers?

I mean we’re talking a full day and a half’s worth of conversation here, so that’s a lot of knuckleball-speak. Presumably they covered all those topics and more, maybe some deep knuckleball talk we civilians can’t even really conceive with our current level of understanding.

In any case, it was probably sweet. I hope they resisted the urge to hold a knuckleball competition though. C’mon guys, this was supposed to be a bonding thing.

Hat tip to Eric Simon.

Score one for the centers

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The line has protected Mark Sanchez. It has helped to revive the rushing offense, which has averaged 130.7 yards over the last three games, all victories. A fourth straight win, on Sunday night against the Patriots, would shift the balance of power in a division — and possibly a conference — that the Jets urgently, desperately, want to win.

“He’s really irreplaceable,” tight end Dustin Keller said of Mangold. “You can get a guy in there and coach him up as much as you want, but you can’t replace all the knowledge and the time that he’s put in with these guys.”…

The improved rushing game has forced opposing defenses to at least consider moving up a linebacker or a safety to guard against the run. It also sets up more play-action opportunities, one of Sanchez’s strengths. According to ESPN Stats and Information, Sanchez completed 11 of 12 play-action passes Sunday against Buffalo for 125 yards and a touchdown, the 8-yarder to Santonio Holmes that extended their third-quarter lead to 20-3.

– Ben Shpigel, N.Y. Times.

Good feature in the Times on Nick Mangold, loaded up with stats showing the way the Jets have turned it around since their center returned. Some of it is probably coincidence — the Jets offense happening to gel later in the season, sample size, facing poor defenses, all that — but some of it is definitely Mangold.

The difference between Mangold and Collin Baxter is so great that it changes everything about the way the Jets’ offense can operate: They can move the ball on the ground, which forces teams to pay more attention to their run game, allowing their receivers more space in coverage — especially on play-action passes. Good offense breeds good offense. It’s why it’s always easier to call plays after big gains.

Me, writing elsewhere

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Remember that stuff Patrick Flood wrote about his jumpshot in his long-ass David Wright thing? Sometimes I feel a little bit of that when I write outside the confines of this blog now. I am so comfortable writing for people who read this site regularly that when I think about writing for new audiences, I feel compelled to show them why they should read this site regularly, then I start worrying that I’m trying too hard, and on and on like that.

The good news is that usually once I stop thinking about who’s going to read what and actually start writing, things flow OK and I wind up with a piece I’m no more or less happy with than the posts I make here. All of which is a long-winded way to say you should go check out my guest column at Baseball Prospectus today.