Category Archives: Words

Cutting Danishes is a real problem

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If you’re anything like me, you almost never have danishes because of the cutting issue. Those things are so unwieldy! They’re so soft and potentially flaky that you’re almost never going to get an even-edge cut, and then at that point, why do you even want to eat the thing? Plus, you’re inevitably going to get delicious danish goo all over your knife and be forced to lick it off the blade, putting your tongue at risk. I mean danishes are good, but c’mon already.

Luckily Canada has you covered. Check this thing out. This is a highly pressurized blade of water:

Apparently it has other uses, like cutting peaches and linoleum. Also it’s just pretty awesome in general. Mostly I’m just thankful we can finally eat danishes without so much fuss.

Mini-golf search

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OK, let’s do this like this.

What I need: Your help.

What I seek: An outdoor,  18-hole obstacle-based mini-golf course within a half hour of New York City, preferably with at least one colorful moving object somewhere in the field of play. Does that exist somewhere?

What I already know about: Various terrain-based mini-golf courses in New York City and its environs, many of which I have played, several of which I have strong opinions about, one of which I have been banned from for life. Technically, at least. I’ve actually been back there multiple times since the ban was enacted and no one said anything, probably because their so-called lifetime ban was half-hearted at best. Turns out you can snap a putter over your knee in quasi-kidding, quasi-real frustration and go back to the same course a month later without penalty.

What I fondly remember: Nunley’s, the tiny amusement park on the border of Baldwin and Freeport on Long Island, which featured an awesome-in-my-memory mini-golf course that had a spinning whirling thing, a loop-dee-loop, and various other hilarious distractions. Could it be that this type of course has always been the outlier, and I have just assumed there used to be more like it because it so happened the course I grew up playing mini golf on was that way? Or did the cost of operations on courses like that one drive mini-golf course operators to reconfigure their grounds toward the terrain-based courses that dominate the landscape today?

Why I care: Because mini golf is awesome, especially when there are obstacles. Also, I might as well practice for that bachelor party I’m going to in Lake George later in the summer, so when I get there I can be all, “oh hey guys, haha, maybe we should play a little mini golf” and then dominate my friends in mini golf thanks to rounds and rounds of practice. WHO’S ALWAYS LAST PICK IN PICKUP BASKETBALL NOW, GUYS? Oh it’s still me.

What you should do: Tell me about any course you know of that meets these requirements by email or on Twitter or in the comments section below.

What’s also worth noting: There’s a pretty awesome-looking terrain-based course on Randall’s Island, it turns out, right under the RFK Bridge. There’s a shuttle bus that will pick you up from the Upper East Side and take you there for $12. Seems like a good idea for a date, fellas. Also — and this is what inspired this post — a new seafood place in Red Hook has its own mini-golf course, plus bocce and cornhole.  The seafood place also has a shuttle bus.

This also appears intriguing, though obviously it’s not outdoors.

 

The Phillie Phanatic has been sued four times this decade

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Suzanne Peirce claims she was attending her sister’s wedding at The Golden Inn in Avalon on July 17, 2010 and was poolside with the Phanatic, who was “engaging in various antics” during a comic routine, according to a lawsuit filed last week in Common Pleas Court and first reported by Courthouse News,

The Phanatic suddenly picked up both Peirce and her lounge chair and tossed both into the pool, according to the suit….

This isn’t the first time the Phanatic’s been accused of being too fanatical: in 2010 the Daily News found he’d been sued at least three other times in the last decade, once for hugging someone too hard. In 2010, a woman attending a Reading Phillies game with her church group claimed he sat on her legs, making her arthritis act up and ultimately led to a knee replacement, a lawsuit alleged.

– Jason Nark, Philly.com.

You’re going to want to click through and read this one. Apparently the Phanatic wasn’t even a part of this wedding, he was just hanging out at this hotel on the Jersey Shore doing his thing, which of course includes chucking unsuspecting women into pools.

To the Phanatic’s credit, he’s probably under a lot of workplace-related stress, what with (presumably) getting intentionally vomited on and offered sex for tickets all the time, plus having to suffer through whatever Cole Hamels chose for his warmup song every fifth day, plus having to put out fires between Jayson Werth and Chase Utley in the clubhouse, plus now having to pretend to actually enjoy watching Jonathan Papelbon carry on in the ninth.

But then there’s a lot about the Phanatic that suggests he’s part of the problem. Case in point: He has been sued at least four times this decade.

Via Howard Megdal.

Which Mets are worth a shift?

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Mark Simon at ESPNNewYork.com looks at the Mets with the most pronounced pull tendencies in advance of the series against the Rays, who employ aggressive defensive shifting. Not surprisingly to anyone who has watched a Mets game in the last couple of years, Jason Bay and Scott Hairston pull nearly everything. I imagine aggressive infield shifting would/will hurt Bay in particular, since he seems to get many of his singles on ground balls that find holes on the left side of the infield.

In a related story, a guy at my weekly baseball game in Brooklyn downloaded some iPhone app that tracks stats and creates spray charts. I, too, almost exclusively hit my ground balls to the left side of the infield. I’ll hit line drives up the middle sometimes, but everything on the ground goes to the shortstop, the third baseman, somewhere in between, or right over the third base bag. I’m a bit concerned that once the data is available visually, opponents will shift their second baseman over and destroy my BABIP. Pete if you’re reading don’t say anything.

Taco Bell Tuesday

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As part of the more-regular-features initiative that (thus far unsuccessfully) brought you Wikipedia Wednesday, I’m hoping to make every Tuesday “Taco Bell Tuesday,” featuring at least a post about the latest from my Taco Bell Google alert. Maybe this will continue. No promises.

Most of the news today focuses on the upcoming launch of the Cantina Menu, Taco Bell’s effort to compete in the Chipotle/Qdoba/Baja Fresh space.

At iradiophilly.com, iradioal makes a strong point: This does seem like the first salvo in the Franchise Wars, no? Demolition Man was set in 2032, so Taco Bell has 20 years to realize the prophesy. No word on when we start replacing toilet paper with seashells.

Taco Bell invited select bloggers and journalists to taste the new Cantina Menu at the Empire State Building last week. Gothamist provided a funny but judgy review. Also, and more importantly, WTF? Seriously, Taco Bell? After all I’ve done for you? What has Gothamist done for your brand before this? Answer me that. Search the site for Taco Bell and it’s all pink slime and Hazmat suits and LOLTacoBell stuff. I HAVE A TACO BELL TAB. I understand they get 50 times my traffic or whatever. But last I checked you can’t put a metric on love. AND ART.

Next, in a feature that will likely frequently get link-love here if Taco Bell Tuesday continues, the OC Register’s Taco Bell Crime of the Week reports on a scheme to sneak marijuana into an Indiana jail using Taco Bell as a front. A prison guard got caught wrapping up weed and Suboxone in Taco Bell wrappers and bringing them to work in his lunchbox. Presumably it was a bit disappointing for his clientele every time they bought the weed and it didn’t come with Taco Bell. No access to Taco Bell has to be like the 14th or 15th worst thing about being in jail.

Finally, there’s a new Taco Bell commercial featuring a wedding party in a limo that stops by Taco Bell for Fourthmeal. We did that at my wedding, except it was more of a late lunch, in the gap between the ceremony and the reception. It was my wife’s idea, too, and a really good way to make me feel good about the marriage from its first hour.

The mehs have it

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As of right now, 63 percent of responders said “meh” to the news that Jenrry Mejia will move to the Buffalo bullpen. If you did — or even if you didn’t, since I have no way of knowing — here’s your opportunity to be a little more specific.

The following poll assumes you agree that Mejia would have more longterm value to the Mets if he could stay and succeed as a starter, since healthy starters typically throw about 130 more innings in a season than relievers. But if you don’t agree with that, feel free to abstain or voice your dissension in the comments below.

[poll id=”111″]

You think that sucked?

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Yeah, this installment of the Subway Series was bad, but not nearly as bad as the script of Prometheus. And I get that you might share your office with some obnoxious Yankee fans and put extra stock in the three games, even realizing that they’re only three games against an opponent outside the Mets’ division in the course of a 162-game series. And you probably recognize that Prometheus is a summertime sci-fi action thriller, not exactly Oscar bait.

But though a series including a blowout loss with Johan Santana on the mound, a couple of solid starting-pitching efforts wasted, a slew of strikeouts in big spots and a bullpen meltdown culminating in a walk-off Yankee Stadium home run, it’s hardly as taxing or as baffling as the plot of Prometheus, a movie apparently aimed to clarify one moment in another movie from 33 years ago that mostly opens up dozens more questions that need clarification.

Why is the cyborg the most relatable character? Why does he start acting irrationally and in some way that doesn’t seem to benefit his maker/programmer, even though he’s a cyborg? Why is handsome-ass Guy Pearce in the movie to play an old guy in awful old-guy makeup when there are hundreds of capable old guy actors looking for work? Why does the dialogue seem like it’s written by a 9th grader? Without SPOILERing this, why are certain humans affected certain ways by the things that happen in the movie when other humans are affected in other ways? Why do they bother doing the thing so many movies do now where they set up an obvious sequel when nothing about the movie really makes me care what happens next?

And yeah, just like enjoying a brutal series of Mets losses is still way better than not watching professional baseball games, Prometheus was still great to look at as a computer-graphics spectacle. But really, if the outcomes are going to be so wholly unsatisfying, why bother with things like standard nine-inning games or a loosely rendered plot? Next time maybe just have a home run derby or a story-free celebration of contemporary computer-graphics technology in IMAX 3D and we’ll all enjoy the awesomeness without the accompanying heartache and confusion.

Idris Elba and Scott Hairston are still sweet though.

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We had Internet issues in the office today so I couldn’t do much work for a while this morning. Luckily, one of the producers who sits across from me was working on some piece about Mike Piazza that required him to sit there watching Mike Piazza highlights on his monitor. They were awesome because so is Mike Piazza.

[poll id=”109″]