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Category Archives: Words
Food trucks getting anchored
Reader Daniel passes along the news that two of the food trucks from the Vendys — the Souvlaki GR truck (2010 Vendys Rookie of the Year) and Schnitzel & Things, purveyors of a Hall of Fame sandwich — will open storefront locations in Manhattan. The Souvlaki GR restaurant will be in the Lower East Side and Schnitzel & Things will be at 46th and 3rd, not an unreasonable walk from my office for a sandwich of that caliber.
I say awesome. In both cases, the original truck will stay on the road, so it’s not like it means anyone will have more limited access to the food. Naturally, whenever anyplace expands from a single establishment to multiple ones, there’s concern about quality control. But these are two very good food trucks, and you have to figure if they didn’t care a lot about quality they wouldn’t be making such delicious food.
In the Schnitzel & Things SOTW post, I wondered about the future of food trucks. This is not one of the directions I imagined it going, but hey, cool. Perhaps food trucks will prove a legitimate way for restaurateurs to test out their shtick before investing in real estate. You figure it’s great for marketing, too. After all, I’ll now go to the Schnitzel & Things restaurant because I already know their food is good because they drove it near my office and dangled it in front of my face.
Oh, and for those concerned about the food-truck folks spreading themselves too thing I’ll add this: In 2001, on a drive from DC to Virginia to buy me a computer desk for my junior year of college, my dad and I discovered Five Guys. At the time, I believe there were only three locations — all in Northern Virginia. The burgers were delicious and fully customizable, the fries were peanut-oily and cajuny, the decor was white, red and black. I was so impressed that my roommates and I made a habit out of the 20-minute drive. There was also a Krispy Kreme right nearby, and from the start of that year ’til my graduation I believe I put on around 30 pounds.
My will power is a little stronger now, but Five Guys is no less awesome. And there are like a billion Five Guys all over the country. So there’s that.
Incidentally, in researching the number of Five Guys around the country, I discovered that one will soon open in White Plains, not far from my home. So look for me getting significantly fatter in the coming months.
More on David Wright’s streakiness
During the 2010 season, I wondered if David Wright was actually any streakier than any other hitter. I know he has a reputation for ups and downs, but I speculated that perhaps all players endure ups and downs and we just notice Wright’s because he’s the best hitter on the Mets and because we’ve labeled him “streaky.”
Today at Beyond the Boxscore, Bill Petti investigates Wright’s “volatility” by calculating and plotting 10-day moving averages for his WPA (win probability added) from 2005 on. It’s an interesting read with colorful graphs, and using the moving averages seems as good a way as any to try to track consistency. He concludes:
As one would expect, Wright experiences peaks and valleys over the course of the season. If we look closely, however, we see that Wright does appear to have become both more volatile over the past few years and has experienced an increase in stretches where, on average, he negatively affects the Mets chances of winning games. Wright’s positive streaks do not last as long and his negative streaks have deepened and last longer.
Wright’s best year was 2007, where he averaged a WPA of .029 (highest since 2005) and had a standard deviation of .032 (second lowest since 2005). Wright’s lack of volatility coincided with his best overall performance at the plate (OPS+ of 149, offensive Wins Above Replacement of 7.5). Since 2007 we see an increase in deep negative stretches, with 2009 and 2010 looking especially volatile. Essentially, Wright has gone from a consistent high-performer to a boom-or-bust type player.
OK, a couple issues here: First, it’s really difficult to determine if Wright is any more volatile than any other baseball player without points of comparison. Petti shows that Wright has endured longer and deeper slumps in 2009 and 2010 than he did in 2007 and 2008, but he doesn’t show how Wright’s peaks and valleys in any season compare with those of similar offensive performers.
And more importantly, it seems like mere common sense that Wright would have endured more slumps in 2009 and 2010 than he did in 2007 and 2008: He wasn’t as good. Wright enjoyed the best offensive season of his career in 2007. Of course he didn’t have as many slumps then as he did in 2009.
Wright’s wOBA has been on a steady decline since 2007, so it seems to me to make perfect sense that he’d also seem to be getting progressively “streakier” in that time. If I had to bet, I’d guess a similar analysis of Ryan Howard would determine he was way more volatile from 2008-2010 than he was in 2006 and 2007.
It’s a chicken-and-egg thing, of course, because you can say, “oh well maybe if Wright were less volatile the last two seasons his stats for the season would have been as good as they were in 2007 and 2008.” And that’s true, but it doesn’t really matter much one way or the other. Without other players for comparison, we have no way of knowing if Wright’s perceived streakiness is something unique to him or just normal fluctuation, an expected function of performance at his 2009 and 2010 levels.
My expectation is — as it was in June — that the only very consistent performers in baseball are the truly excellent (like Wright in 2007) and (to reuse a phrase from yesterday) the downright Rafael Belliard awful.
How is this not terrifying?
OK, this will take a while, but go read this article in the New York Times. I’d tell you to read the cover story from this month’s Popular Science about a “Terminator Scenario,” too, but the link on the website is broken.
I try to reserve my paranoia for comedic purposes. I don’t actually wear a tinfoil hat with any regularity. But I find it difficult not to be at least a little bit legitimately, unironically frightened by the content of the Times article — detailing, among other things, the various advances in computer surveillance techniques — especially in conjunction with the PopSci piece, about recent advances in unmanned military technology and the current lack of any international agreement regulating its use.
Though I like to joke about robot uprisings, a Terminator Scenario (or a The Matrix Scenario) doesn’t really concern me. Some of our most advanced computers glitch out trying to solve Jeopardy! clues; I don’t think they’re going to develop the necessary intelligence and awareness to organize amongst themselves — and against us — anytime soon.
But people are less predictable and more often awful than machines. Though with age I’ve come to realize the pinpoint accuracy of Hanlon’s Razor — never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity — it seems eminently possible that the wrong person or people could wind up at the controls of the advanced surveillance and high-tech killing machines. And then it’s easy to see the clear path to dystopian future.
Just sayin’s all.
Mets sign Segway enthusiast
The Mets signed lefty Chris Capuano and righty Taylor Buchholz last night and designated Ryota Igarashi for assignment.
According to Adam Rubin, Capuano contract provides a $1.5 million base salary with incentives. Back in the middle part of the aughts, after his first Tommy John surgery but before his second, Capuano was a stalwart member of the Gary (IN) Templetons’ rotation (also the Brewers’, but my fantasy league was pretty high stakes back then).
In 2005 and 2006, Capuano chewed up innings and struck out a decent number of batters, a nice if unspectacular pitcher. Though he missed all of the 2008 and 2009 campaigns after another arm injury shortened his 2007 season, he returned to the Brewers in June of 2010 and enjoyed a decent stint as a long reliever and spot starter until he took a place in Milwaukee’s rotation in late August.
In those final seven starts of the season, Capuano posted a respectable 4.14 ERA with small-sample peripherals vaguely in line with his 2005 marks. He featured a similar mix of pitches as he did in his healthy years and actually threw his fastball a touch harder. He seems like a great pickup at the cost, and should earn a role in the middle of the Mets’ rotation if he can stay healthy. That’s nothing certain, of course — he has, after all, had two Tommy John surgeries. But if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t be available for $1.5 million.
Perhaps most importantly, Capuano is apparently a Segway enthusiast. In this 2007 interview, he reported that he was frequently called a nerd by passersby while he sped around Milwaukee on his personal transporter. I can’t speak for my fellow New Yorkers, but I can promise Chris Capuano this: If I ever see him riding around Midtown on a Segway, I’ll call him a different name: “Hero.”
(Hero? That could work for me.)
Capuano also appeared on an episode of The Young and the Restless and was Phi Betta Kappa at Duke. Bronx Banter’s Emma Span recently described him as “blogger catnip.”
As for Buchholz, former roommate and Rockies fan Ted Burke called him “the best setup man in the game” in his healthy 2008 campaign, and though my namesake is prone to hyperbole, Buchholz was pretty awesome that season. A converted starter, in his lone healthy year of full-time relief Buchholz posted a 2.17 ERA and a sub-1 WHIP. Those numbers belied his just-pretty-good peripherals, but even just-pretty-good would be a nice addition to the Mets’ bullpen.
Buchholz missed all of 2009 following Tommy John surgery, returned to the Rockies in July of 2010, then promptly returned to the disabled list with lower-back stiffness. He did finish the year with two healthy innings for the Blue Jays in September. At $600,000 — barely above the league minimum — he seems a worthwhile bargain.
Incidentally, both Buchholz and Capuano went to high school in Springfields — Buchholz in Pennsylvania and Capuano in Massachusetts.
Mark Sanchez eschews pants
Sanchez was the last Jet to leave the locker room. He tugged on his dress shirt and cuff links, twisted a Windsor knot on his tie and tugged a jacket over that still sore and valuable right shoulder. He then fielded questions without shoes or pants.
Ah yes, the ol’ Ditka.
Athletes answer reporters’ questions in various stages of indecency all the time, but there’s certainly something notable and hilarious about a guy wearing a jacket and tie and no pants. It’s a great look and one I wish were permitted by SNY’s dress code, because f@#$ pants.
As for the Jets-Bills affair: It’s rare in an NFL game that I ever find myself feeling sorry for one team, but it was hard not to pity the Bills yesterday afternoon. Holy hell. The Jets played without Sanchez, Darrelle Revis, Antonio Cromartie, two starting offensive linemen, and their top two running backs and beat the Bills 38-7.
A bunch of dudes we haven’t heard from since Hard Knocks ran wild over Buffalo’s putrid defense. On the one drive Sanchez was in the game, when it was abundantly clear to everyone that he wasn’t going to be throwing any passes, the Bills still couldn’t stop the Jets’ ground game.
It’s difficult to read anything particularly meaningful from the game since so many of the Jets’ principle contributors were in parkas, but I’ll say this: Sitting Revis and Cromartie and Eric Smith was a great way to get the rest of the Jets’ secondary some reps, and the, ahh, secondary members of the secondary responded.
Recall that in the AFC Championship last year Peyton Manning worked over the Jets’ second and third cornerbacks. It bodes well for the Jets, I hope, that Dwight Lowery and Marquice Cole played so well yesterday. And it can’t hurt that they’ve got Cromartie in the fold this year, and that the Colts will be without Austin Collie and Dallas Clark.
But we’ll worry about that later in the week. For now, hooray Matt Slauson:
On regional motorists
New Jersey people can’t drive.
– Justin Tuck.
I think about this a lot. I’ve taken my shots at Jersey drivers in the past, and it’s true that the large majority of motorists on New Jersey thoroughfares cannot, in fact, drive. But the same is the case on Long Island, where I grew up, and in Westchester, where I currently reside.
The principal hallmarks of the bad suburban New York driver are aggressiveness and inability to signal turns. There are subtle distinctions between locales but they’re nebulous — Jersey drivers seem most likely to tailgate, Long Island drivers most likely to cut you off, Westchester drivers most apt to speed in parking garages.
But outside of a driver’s ed classmate who would thrice fail her road test (and once, due to no real fault of her own but to my great early-morning entertainment, hit a seagull mid-flight), all of the worst drivers I’ve ever encountered have been in Georgia, some 800 miles removed from Gotham.
Venerable former roommate Ted Burke and I traversed the 260-mile jaunt from Savannah to Atlanta (via Milledgeville, of course) reasonably early on a Saturday morning in May. It should have been a smooth and calm ride: It was a sunny day and there were few other cars on the interstate.
Problem was, every single car we happened upon was either driving too slow in front of us, too fast behind us, or maintaining a steady pace in our blind spot. Drivers cut us off only to immediately slow their pace. Others sped up when we tried to pass them. It was maddening. All around us we could see open road, but the entire trip was harrowing. I would have been covinced it was some sort of aggressive behavior toward yankees if our car weren’t a rental with Georgia plates.
So I wonder if perhaps most people can’t drive, and longtime New Yorkers like me just associate bad driving with Jersey the way every European country attributes syphilis to a neighboring state.
After all, D.C. drivers, with their wholesale obliviousness, are at least as bad as New Yorkers. And Boston drivers, who combine aggressiveness with a bizarre and uniquely Bostonian chip on the shoulder, might be the worst of all.
Why are there clear regional distinctions in styles of bad driving? Outside of, “well there are lots of old people in Florida,” I can’t think of any reasonable explanation. Are any area’s drivers actually worse than the rest? I don’t know. Your feedback is welcome.
Top Thing of 2010: Mark Sanchez wears a Taco Bell hat
On the Aug. 18 episode of Hard Knocks, TedQuarters hero, Jets franchise quarterback and general handsome-fella-about-town Mark Sanchez wore a Taco Bell hat to a team meeting.
We later heard Sanchez describe Cortland as “awesome” presumably because he was able to make friends with and procure a hat from “the nice ladies at Taco Bell.”
Then, of course, a month later came news that Sanchez grew up near Taco Bell headquarters and is a huge fan of the chain’s fine Mexican-style food products, and that he — like me — orders his burritos without tomatoes.
The intersection of two of this blog’s favorite subjects, Mark Sanchez and Taco Bell, quite clearly deserves its ranking as the top thing of 2010, and should earn consideration for the lofty title of Greatest Thing Ever.
I have spent the past three months lobbying everyone from the custodian to the CEO at SNY to help me set up an interview/bro-date with Sanchez at Taco Bell, but I don’t think anyone fully understands how obviously this needs to happen. So I will lobby the Internet: Mark Sanchez, eat a burrito with me.
No. 2 Top Thing of 2010: F**k You
Anyone who says any song that came out in 2010 is better than Cee-Lo Green’s “F**k You” is flat-out wrong. And I recognize music is a subjective thing and all that. But this song is objectively amazing. It’s so good that the fact that it’s a Grammy-nominated single with an expletive in its title (and chorus) is not even the most notable thing about the song.
First, there’s the transcendent vocal performance. Cee-Lo, late of the Goodie Mob and Gnarls Barkley, wails out a pitch-perfect breakup song, mixing funny lyrics and believable emotion. The end of the bridge, when he belts, “I still love you!” then segues back into the chorus, that’s… I don’t really have a point to make about that except to say it’s awesome.
The production is sweet, too. The tune is catchy as anything, a modern take on a classic upbeat, summery Motown feel. Nothing fancy, just funky gleeful soul.
It’s so enjoyable and so perfectly poppy that I have to imagine even the parental-advising Tipper Gores of the world would be hard-pressed to react to it any way but tapping their feet and whistling along, ignoring Cee-Lo’s frequent use of the titular four-letter word. Then when it ended, Tipper and her cronies would probably listen to it again, because it’s just that catchy.
And then, the song’s success is in itself a testament to new means of distribution, via downloads and Internet and satellite radio. F**k You could never have become popular on broadcast radio alone because its censored version — “Forget You” — sucks in comparison. Why, if the song is so good and the performance is the same should one little word make such a difference? Because people don’t say, “aww, forget you,” after a bitter breakup. The explicit version feels more authentic, and the juxtaposition between the angry lyrics and the poppy tune is lost when the former are softened.
The song is a monument of awesome weirdness, and its success represents the rare instance when some truly amazing music catches hold in the mainstream. It is nominated for the Grammy for Record of the Year and Song of the Year. Normally, I could hardly care less about the Grammys, but if F**k You wins I’ll gain a lot of respect for the awards.
Oh, and it’s got a sweet video.
No. 3 Top Thing of 2010: Ricobene’s Breaded Steak sandwich
On Sept. 5, 2010, my life forever changed. I ate a breaded steak sandwich from Ricobene’s in Chicago. Here’s what I wrote a few days later:
When I finished, I stumbled out to the curb, dizzy and delirious. A couple of cops pulled up, and instinct told me to run — I felt like I had just done something illegal. I couldn’t, though. I couldn’t bring myself to leave the front of the restaurant.
I knew I had to leave Chicago the next morning, but I tried to consider ways I could have another breaded steak sandwich before I did. I thought about walking back in and ordering another right then even though the coma was already setting in.
Not knowing what else to do, I tweeted a few nonsensical things. Playing with my phone gave me an excuse to keep standing there.
It started raining. I kept standing there. I knew I probably looked like a crazy person. I didn’t care. I was a crazy person. I was standing outside a restaurant, right next to a live-poultry market and under the freeway overpass, in some odd area of a city I don’t know because I couldn’t tear myself away after eating an inconceivably good sandwich.
Some three and a half months later, my mouth still waters whenever I remember that sandwich. The tender breaded steak, the sweet marinara, the fiery giardiniera, the cheesy cheese. Just thinking about it frustrates me now because I can’t have one whenever I want. I try to think of excuses to get back to Chicago. I’m pushing my wife toward pursuing a residency there. The sandwich was that good.
Sometimes I wonder if I could reproduce it myself at home. I have a deep fryer, after all, and certainly I can make marinara. A bunch of places online will deliver hot giardiniera. After bbilko suggested in the comments section that I make Sept. 5 a TedQuarters holiday, I targeted that as the date I should attempt the sandwich. Problem is I want one sooner. Could I pull it off? Would it even come close to the original?
Doubtful. That was one hell of a sandwich, the best I ate this year and among the best I’ve ever eaten. The only reason it fell to No. 3 on the Top 10 Things is that I only had one of them and I destroyed it so quickly, fleeting wonderment. Also because it set the bar for other sandwiches unreasonably high. Someone please open a Ricobene’s franchise in New York.
Tedquarters 