Category Archives: Words

World’s best homonyms?

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I had a random thought earlier that might be an interesting one for you to ponder, perhaps pose the question to your readers: Is there a pair of people who share the same name who are as collectively awesome as James Brown (the Godfather Of Soul) and James “Jim” Brown (the NFL Hall of Famer)? I was brainstorming and couldn’t think of a better example. Do George Washington and George Washington Carver count? I don’t think they do. Michael Douglas and Michael Keaton (born Michael Douglas) don’t measure up, nor do Kenny Rogers the musician and Kenny Rogers the pitcher. Albert Einstein and Albert Brooks (born Albert Einstein)?

– Josh, via email.

Here’s the thing: Even if The Hardest Working Man in Show Business, Mr. Please Please himself, the Star of the Show James Brown didn’t share his name with perhaps the best player in NFL history, it’s a common enough name that there are plenty of people he could be paired with. And in any possible case, even if the other James Brown were pretty damn lame, it’d still be the greatest pair of people ever in terms of collective awesomeness. It’s like how Hank and Tommie Aaron hold the Major League record for most home runs by a set of brothers even though Tommie only hit 13.

The Albert Einsteins are nice, I mean, people really like Al Brooks and Albert Einstein came up with a lot of smart stuff. But as far as I know neither ever recorded The Payback.

A suggestion via my man and near-homonym Ted Burke, perhaps for a distant second place: Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy’s and Dave Thomas, not-Rick-Moranis-guy in Strange Brew. Anyone else?

Sandwiches in space

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Most space food, it seems, is pretty bad, and of course the astronauts know this better than anybody, which is why in 1965 John Young smuggled a Wolfie’s corned beef sandwich onto Gemini III to surprise his crewmate Gus Grissom. It was only a 5 hour flight so it must have been done for laughs rather than to whet a jaded appetite, and after two hours Young duly produced his sandwich. That’s John Young, below. We even have the dialogue.

GRISSOM: Where did that come from?
YOUNG: I brought it with me. Let’s see how it tastes. Smells, doesn’t it?
GRISSOM: Yes, it’s breaking up. I’m going to stick it in my pocket.
YOUNG: It was a thought, anyway.
GRISSOM: Yep.
YOUNG: Not a very good one.

– Geoff Nicholson, Psycho-Gourmet.

If you didn’t have favorite astronaut before, I hope John Young just earned that distinction. He’s got a pretty healthy space resume, too: Dude walked on the moon, piloted the first space shuttle, and was aboard the fastest-moving manned vehicle ever. And he did all that despite a reputation as a renegade after callously sneaking a sandwich into space, perhaps outer space’s first sandwich*.

Later space sandwich experiments apparently went over better, as the post includes this photo:

*- Presumably if there are other advanced carbon-based life forms in the universe, they’ve figured out sandwiches too. If basically every culture on earth could develop some sort of protein wrapped in some sort of starch, I’m not sure why it wouldn’t happen in outer space too. It’s one of the hallmarks of civilization.

Link comes via Twitterer @kmflemming.

The Phillies’ offense is not very good

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It’s true. It’s not Mets Opening Day 2010 bad or as terrible as the Phillies’ starting rotation is awesome, but it’s just nothing like the type of offense we’ve come to expect from the Mets’ division rivals.

Jimmy Rollins, coming off back-to-back seasons with a sub-90 OPS+, is the Phillies’ current third hitter. None of the three guys hitting in front of Ryan Howard got on base at even a 34% clip last year. Ben Francisco is the youngest regular in the lineup, and he’s 29. Last year their offense was just about average, and they had Jayson Werth and Chase Utley playing most days, not to mention Carlos Ruiz enjoying a BABIP-fueled career year.

The ridiculous arms are good enough that the Phillies will still win a bunch of games. But as long as Utley is out — and it’s sounding like that will be a while — they’re going to have massive holes all over their lineup. They’re still a good team, but they appear way more vulnerable now than they did the day they signed Cliff Lee.

But you probably know this already if you watched last night’s game. Cole Hamels’ embarrassing moments, though there were plenty, went pathetically undocumented on the AP wire. Here’s Cold Hamels:

 

Taco in a taco?

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Despite their fans’ demand that they deep fry a taco on a stick, the Twins concession folks have taken the easy way out and brought in local vendor El Burrito Mercado and their Walk A Taco instead. In following the other Midwestern tradition of putting savory food in cones, Walk A Taco is essentially a taco salad in a crispy cone-shaped flour tortilla. It sounds delicious but also a bit dangerous. I’d wait for that thing to cool down lest you bite right into a hot molten volcano of cheese.

– Rob Iracane, Big League Stew.

Iracane runs down the top 10 new concession items in baseball. Walk-a-Taco is most intriguing in my opinion, but there are a lot of promising ideas there. Stadium concessions are often out on the forefront of awesome greasy food innovation. Nothing from Citi Field hits the list, but there’s news that Nationals Park will soon have plenty delicious options familiar to Mets fans.

Hester Prynned

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Ever come down five minutes too late to move your car for alternate side parking only to find the Sanitation Department has slapped on one of those stickers that’s totally impossible to get off without leaving scratch marks and a sticky residue on your window? Councilman David Greenfield hates that too, so tomorrow he’s planning on introducing legislation to ban the stickers, saying fines are plenty for parking scofflaws. He asked the Daily News, “It’s a pretty punitive form of punishment. I mean, what’s next? We’re going to start slashing people’s tires when they don’t park on the correct side?”

– Jaya Saxena, Gothamist.

I’m all for publicly shaming bad drivers and maybe even bad parkers too, but I agree that it’s a little extreme to make driving and parking more difficult — by blocking vision — for those who forget to move their cars for alternate-side parking.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for street cleaning, but I lived for four years on a crowded block that apparently required cleaning four days a week. Whenever I kept a car there — thankfully not all that often — I constantly had to juggle my schedule to make sure I could move it at the appropriate times. Huge pain in the ass.

Plus it was hard enough to find parking in the area that everyone basically just double parked on the opposite side of the street for the two-hour street-cleaning stretch. If you were parked on the side that wasn’t getting cleaned between 11 and 1 and you knew you had to drive somewhere at noon, you had to plan ahead of time to move your car to the other side of the street at some point before 11, then double park it at 11 so you could actually get out when you needed to. And it’s like, I got stuff to do besides shuffling my car around.

I think the people who do deserve scarlet letters for driving are those that try to go through the E-ZPass lane without an E-ZPass. Nothing on the windows, just maybe a bumper sticker that says “I SUCK” so that other drivers will know not to follow that person into an EZ-Pass lane next time.

More on the Marlins’ new ballpark

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Andrew, an urban planner/architect and Mets fan in Miami, chimed in on the Marlins’ new ballpark in the comments section for yesterday’s post. It’s interesting stuff for Mets fans and general baseball fans, so I’m reposting it here. He writes:

Interesting to hear your take on the stadium Ted. I’m a New Yorker (Mets fan of course) that’s been in Miami for about 11 years; a UM grad with fond memories of the old OB; and, an urban planner/architect.

As you correctly assumed, the inception of the stadium was fraught with complaints, major tax implications, and allegations (in our corrupt city, likely true) of back-door dealings. On they plodded and a few years later we are one season from away from baseball in Little Havana. I find myself wondering how the new stadium will (or won’t) impact baseball in South Florida.

Miami is notoriously a bandwagon sports town; this isn’t a stereotype, it’s a legit description of the situation. I worked my way through college at a couple of sports bars and witnessed the ebbs and flows of the “loyal” fans as each the Marlins and Heat won their championships. I am living life in a “post-Decision” Miami, where Heat shirts and license plates are more abundant than when they signed Shaq.

Miami is a major melting pot for Latin America, Cuba, and other baseball-centric cultures and it always seemed to me that there are a tremendous amount of fans waiting for the opportunity to take part in So Fla baseball. Until now the team simply hasn’t found a way to tap the roots of the people here. The Marlins as an organization have done a great job fielding a decent team year after year (with 2 championships in its short history) despite being generally unable to afford their players as they come into their prime. However, it has never translated into a solid fan base. I hope that the new stadium will provide increased opportunities for the cultivation of loyal fans.

The current stadium, aside from being a cavernous place which was designed for football, is sited in an awkward location. Neither in the heart of Miami or Fort Lauderdale, it sits somewhere in between, with no dense population area to support it. In addition to its poor location, Sun Life has no transit access, is positioned to be heavily impacted by rush hour(s) traffic for evening games, and is a logistical nightmare. Parking is a major PITA and circulation around and near the stadium is non-existent. The current stadium is simply inaccessible for many people.

The new stadium on the other hand will sit right in the heart of little Havana (where the OB used to live), be much more central to the greater Miami area, and can be accessed a variety of ways. It will be closer to where the possible fans live, not the retirees and transplants living in Boca and northward. Hopefully this will help establish a cadre of passionate fans that come to root on their team.

While I’m sure it will be a great venue for baseball (as many of the new stadiums are), sadly it is a lurching spasm of sheet metal that pays no homage to the historic roots of its community. Despite strong efforts by local architects (and a friend of mine who spent an entire studio in architecture school studying the area and creating a much more sensitive design), the Marlins brass felt the stadium’s design had to be emblematic of the cutting edge (the worst rationale in architectural history; see every new hospital built since 2000). While the retractable roof will be a welcome addition to baseball in So Fla, surely a more contextual design would have blended better with the community. Large structured parking will face the stadium’s neighbors; they failed to utilize a proliferating trend of surrounding garages with habitable spaces (shops on the ground floors, at the least). This would have helped to enhance the adjacent streets much more than blank parking garages. I fear that the neighborhood streets will ultimately be damaged frontages as opposed to being reinvigorated by the new development. In the end the stadium was about the Marlins organization and their players, not the community.

I wish the Marlins good fortune in their new stadium, but hopefully we Mets fans continue to represent and dominant the new stadium just like we have Sun Life over the years.

Norm!

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He is the host of “Sports Show With Norm Macdonald,” which makes its debut on April 12, and which Comedy Central excitedly hopes will do for professional athletics what “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart” did for politics.

His relentless candor as a joke teller and his all-over-the-map career trajectory have given Mr. Macdonald, a relaxed and casually vulgar comedian who grew up in Quebec City and now lives in Los Angeles, a reputation for rebelliousness that he says is undeserved. Though it may not be evident in his material, he says he is mellowing.

– Dave Itzkoff, N.Y. Times.

I’m using someone else’s computer at work today so I’m seizing this opportunity to read his entire allotment of New York Times articles for the month. Is that how it works? If so, sorry bro.

Anyway, good feature on Norm MacDonald, who — as you might have figured out — is something of a hero to me. The article discusses briefly his ousting from the Weekend Update chair, but doesn’t mention how terrible Colin Quinn was in Norm’s stead. I was a big Kevin Nealon fan and I didn’t love Norm at first so I thought I’d eventually warm to Quinn, but it never happened. The segment went from being the highlight of the show to the low point every week.

I also like that Norm’s calling the new show “Sports Show,” which is basically the anti-joke we’re going for — but never really selling — with “The Baseball Show.” Consider me psyched. TiVoing the hell out of this.

Mets hurt Pedro Feliciano’s feelings, too

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That’s not right that he said that’s why they let me go. I read that and it hurts because I like Dan, he’s one of my good pitching coaches. He’s saying they didn’t want to sign me because I’d blow out this year. That hurts.

– Pedro Feliciano.

Aw, shucks. We — and by we I mean me — love Perpetual Pedro around here. Dude just goes about his weird incredibly specialized business. And now Dan Warthen has hurt his feelings.

Presumably his shoulder still hurts more or else he’d be pitching for the Yankees and not on the disabled list. The good news is he has $8 million over the next two years, and maybe a lesson that asking for the ball every single day isn’t necessarily the best way to secure the best contract.

Twitter Q&A-style product

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Hell yes it was awesome. Sad thing is I was in the press box, where fist-pumping is frowned upon.

What’s less awesome is it’s a moment that will certainly be overlooked by the trade-David-Wrong set next time he strikes out in the same spot. It’s like I said in my season preview: We expect Wright to come through all the time, so the spots where he does are hardly notable. Too many people remember the whiffs and forget the go-ahead doubles.

This is totally unscientific, but I expect Wright to return to his 2006-08 form in 2011. I can’t say why; maybe it’s the regime change, the new hitting coach, a stronger lineup around him, whatever. Could be just blind Mets-fan optimism.

Technically yes. I ate a sandwich that was of Cuban ancestry: The Fritas Cubana from Morro Castle in Little Havana. It’s a burger with sausage meat mixed into the patty, covered in crispy shoestring fried potatoes. Pretty excellent.

I did not eat a traditional pork/pickle/mustard pressed Cuban sandwich, though. That’s unfortunate because I really like those, but I figured I have had plenty of ’em before and I’d never had a Fritas Cubana. Plus the place I was hoping to have one — Las Olas Cafe in Miami Beach — is now closed. I did enjoy a Cuban sandwich of sorts the last time I was in Florida, in West Palm Beach.

I’m reasonably certain it’s just Starship’s “We Built This City” on infinite repeat.

Paul Assenmacher, and it’s not even close.

Well my first instinct is to just say astronaut ice cream on a roll, but did they have astronaut ice cream in 1969? When did astronauts get ice cream?

I’m thinking you need the sandwich to be patriotic, so Russian dressing is right out. Same goes for French and Italian, I suppose, and the Thousand Islands are a little too Canadian for this endeavor. Sad thing is there’s no “American dressing.” Does mayo count as American dressing? Mustard is too European. Ketchup seems to be of American origin, but I’m not sure I want to put ketchup on such a monumental sandwich. No disrespect.

This is hard; I’m trying to think like a 1969 deli owner. How’s this: I take turkey breast, cut it into strips and batter and deep fry it. Those, with Cheez Whiz — doesn’t get more American than Cheez Whiz — and some Open Pit barbecue sauce, the tangy red type (a nod to Tang, of course). And on a hero, obviously. Only problem is the red barbecue sauce and yellow cheese might look vaguely Soviet. Commies.

That’s a pretty gross sandwich in concept but I bet in reality it’d be pretty awesome. Especially in 1969, which is probably before a lot of good sandwiches had even come out. Why does no one make turkey fingers, anyway?

I’d probably call it The Apollo. Pretty mighty name for a sandwich.

As far as I’m concerned, yes. I’m something of a descriptivist when it comes to sandwiches. It has to be on a case by case basis, but generally as long as something is wrapped in starch and portable, it’s a sandwich. Thus, Jamaican beef patties are sandwiches. Wraps are sandwiches. Burritos are sandwiches. Empanadas? Sandwiches.

Kentucky hot brown: Not a sandwich. Delicious, undoubtedly, but the whole OG point of sandwiches is that you can eat them with your hands without getting your hands messy. Try that with a hot brown someday. Also, sounds like some sort of perverse thing you’d joke about in ninth grade.

Also, my friend Jake is fond of pointing out that Jamaican beef patties might be the world’s most consistent food. I’m not sure that this is certainly the case in Jamaica, but in Brooklyn pretty much every beef patty you can find — whether you’re getting them at the beef-patty place, the pizzeria, the bodega, wherever — tastes the same: Amazing.

 

To be cheese-jected

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Of course, Pizza Hut has been putting cheese into pizza crusts — where it manifestly does not belong — for decades now. What makes their new endeavor different is that they’re now jamming either pepperoni or what I’m pretty sure the TV ads refer to as “meaty” (full stop), which is a short way of describing a pizza crust crammed with shards of sausage, bacon and “beef.” Pigs and cows, in other words, but only the parts of which are choice enough to be cheese-jected into pizza crust.

– David Roth.

Roth, whom I was prepared to call one of my favorite writers on the Internet even before he complimented my sandwich reviews, just tears Pizza Hut apart here — and not in the way Pizza Hut wants to be torn apart (at the perforated crust). I’ve been saying this since the stuffed-crust pizza came out: How about instead of coming up with new pizza gimmicks, you put some of that research and development into making better pizza?

Fun fact: Sophomore year of college my roommate Will won a year’s supply of Pizza Hut by winning some dumb contest at Midnight Madness. “A year’s supply” amounted to something like 30 coupons for free pizzas, of which we used, I am pretty certain, one. We ate one Pizza Hut pizza and realized we never wanted any more ever. We thought about ordering all our remaining pizzas in one shot for some sort of craft project, but we never got around to it, what with all the video games there were to play.

Fun fact, pt. 2: I ate Pizza Hut once again, about five years after the sophomore-year order. After a couple of weeks in China, I confessed to a friend and fellow traveler that, though I appreciated the Chinese food we had enjoyed and didn’t want to seem uncouth, I was desperate to eat something I could identify. Turned out she felt the same way, so we hit the Hut. There are Pizza Huts everywhere in China, and they’re reasonably fancy restaurants, like as if they won the fast-food wars. Problem is, they still serve godawful Pizza Hut pizza. About three bites deep I was ready to go back to delicious Chinese unidentifiable-meat-in-goo.