…I don’t know of a man, woman, or child alive today who doesn’t enjoy a nice refreshing cup of ham.
(Seriously. The little bistro downstairs in my office has been selling Cup’O’Ham. Also Cup’O’Turkey. They just started doing this about a month ago. Is this a paleo thing? Any ideas, anyone?)
TMQ is back from his bye week. And we’re back from the holiday. (Yes, we did have a nice Thanksgiving, complete with gun shopping and range time. Thanks for asking.)
Before we jump into this week’s column, we want to take this opportunity to observe that the Washington Wizards are 0-12, and folks are starting to take notice. We’ll come back to that.
Larry Hagman: A/V Club. LAT. NYT. Dallas Morning News.
I have vague memories of “Mr. Food” being on TV in Houston when I was young. Since a couple of people have sent me this, here’s the obit for Art Ginsburg from the NYT.
Edited to add: Hector “Macho” Camacho has passed away after being removed from life support.
Okay, technically, Spaghetti Carbonara Day is tomorrow, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to post tomorrow.
Plus, today’s NYT has an amusing article about the dish, complete with recipes.
Obit watch: former senator Warren B. Rudman, of Gramm-Rudman fame.
I don’t think this would be a good SDC destination; while I’m sure you can get food at Buc-ee’s, it isn’t really an SDC sort of place.
However, we’ve had conversations about going to the Cooper’s in New Braunfels, so we could kill two birds with one stone…
According to the study, “18.5% of 12th-grade students admitted to using a hookah in the previous year.” I’m trying to wrap my mind around this:
Maybe I’m stupid, but I just have a real hard time visualizing large numbers of teens either buying hookahs and tobacco off the Internet and smoking with their friends (and all the fuss that entails) or hanging out at the local hookah bar.
Unless by “teens” they mean “18 and 19 year olds”, in which case they need to smoke a heaping hookah of STFU flavored shisha.
Meanwhile, in the LA Unified School District, “student stores” are making money hand over fist selling food to students unhappy with the school cafeteria’s “healthy” options.
Street price for a bag of Flaming Hot Cheetos is a buck, by the way.
I honestly did not know, when I wrote this morning’s “Random Notes”, that the Guy Fieri review was blowing up the Internet. (My link was, however, up before FARK’s.) Even if I had, I probably would have linked it, if only for future reference.
So. Anyway. Questions. So many questions.
Is it legitimate to write a restaurant review composed entirely of questions? (Except for the “Thanks” at the end.)
(I’d say, “Hey, it is a writerly device. If his editor didn’t have problems with it, neither do it. I wouldn’t do it too often, though.”)
While the New York Times was busy trashing Guy Fieri’s restaurant, Guy’s American Kitchen was donating half of all sales to the Red Cross.
— Steve Krakauer (@SteveKrak) November 14, 2012
So if you give money to charity, that somehow exempts your restaurant from criticism of the food and service? I’ll keep that in mind for the restaurant I never open.
Next the New York Times will send Anna Wintour to review Old Navy. She’s going to have so many questions! That’ll show ’em.
— Steve Krakauer (@SteveKrak) November 14, 2012
So the fact that a restaurant is in Times Square and caters to the tourist trade should exempt it from criticism? So the NYT should, instead, be reviewing the latest vegan joint in NoHo, or whatever the trendy neighborhood in NYC is these days?
(Edited to add: I wonder if Steve Krakauer feels it was beneath the NYT to review a steakhouse located in a strip club?)
I love the “most of whom have never heard of…the New York Times”. I bet if you asked 100 random people on the street, in any city in the United States, to name a newspaper, the vast majority (I’d go over 90%) would name the NYT.
And, from EaterNY, “The Worst Lines of Guy Fieri’s NYT Review, With Cats“. This just tickles my funny bone; I can’t explain why.
I kind of like Guy Fieri. But I’d note this review whether it was of a Guy Fieri restaurant, or some other random place in NYC. Not since Ninja can I recall a review this vicious in the NYT.
(Also, Jacques Pépin wants you to steam your turkey. I thought that was an Albany expression.)
Jessica Tata: guilty of felony murder.
Why is it so hard to get Joseph Kony and the Lord’s Resistance Army?
In other words, something that’s not easily solved by posting videos on the Internet.
Karolina Obrycka, the bartender who got the crap beat out of her by a Chicago police officer in 2007, has been awarded $850,000 in damages against both Anthony Abate, the cop who beat her, and the city itself.
Can we have Federal supervision of the Chicago PD now? (Also: LAT coverage.)
A/V Club obit for Elliott Carter.
NYT obits for Darrell Royal and influential former wine columnist Frank J. Prial.
Another election result that amuses me:
The referendum failed, 53% – 47%.
And another one: voters in San Francisco actually rejected a proposal “that would have taken the first steps toward draining Hetch Hetchy Reservoir and drastically revamped the way much of the Bay Area gets its water.”
From the Department of Wow: University of Houston cornerback D.J. Hayden is in the hospital. His condition is listed as “critical but stable” according to the HouChron. What happened?
This Statesman “story” is…just…odd.
Edited to add: A little more information on D.J. Hayden and his injury:
More from Dr. Lowe: “This injury has never been seen or reported in association with a football injury and is more associated with high-speed motor vehicle.” Huh? There’s a photo caption: “…a freak injury normally associated with high-speed motorcycle wrecks.”
Dr. Lowe also apparently said that this kind of injury has a “95 percent fatality rate”. I have no problem believing that.
Or, what I would do if I was put in charge of the Republican party (and “resign immediately” wasn’t an option):
So looking over this list, what I’d do is…turn the Republican party into the Libertarian Party. That’s a recipe for success. Then again, if the LP can’t get traction in a two-party system, maybe subverting one of the parties isn’t such a bad idea…
I started writing this yesterday, but decided to wait until this morning to hit the big “publish” button. Oddly enough, it appears I’m not the only person thinking this way.
Before we start in on this week’s TMQ, we want to note a story from today’s New York Times that bothers us. We think it is appropriate to talk about here, as it deals with things TMQ has been hammering on as well. After the jump, we’ll get started…
This is a “chocolate pudding parfait” I purchased from our little lunch spot/snack bar downstairs at work.
It kind of looks like they had some issues with the topping.
Indeed, I might even go so far as to say that they were having…whipped cream difficulties.
(Thank you. I’ll be here all week.)
This is just breaking, and I’ll probably have more to say about it later: Lance Armstrong is leaving his position as chairman of the Livestrong charity.
(I still haven’t had time to go through the USADA report. Sorry.)
Meanwhile, we have a couple of interesting things from the NYT:
There’s a longish piece about the “Rebecca” case, focusing on Ben Sprecher and how he claims he got taken.
More:
Somebody really wanted to believe. Either that, or there’s more going on here than meets the eye.
Have you ever wondered where escargot come from? If you order them in many restaurants, they were probably imported from France in a can. But if you order them in a higher-end restaurant…
…the NYT has a profile of Mary Stewart, snail rancher.
J. Peterman, call your office, please.
($39.75 a pound.)
Wyclef Jean, a musician, had a charity called Yéle devoted to helping the people of Hati.
The key word there is “had”.
More:
How much does your charity have to suck to make Sean Penn look good?
And more:
But the NYT isn’t all politics and scams and fraud all the time. Sometimes, they let people loose to have a little fun. Or, sometimes, the editors step out for the day, and the children get to play unsupervised. I can’t decide which one applies here:
There is a quote, commonly attributed to Albert Einstein, (but probably apocryphal, at least in this form) “Make things as simple as possible, but no simpler.”
There is another quote, commonly attributed to an anonymous actor in a commercial, “I’m not a doctor. But I play one on TV.”
What do those have to do with this week’s TMQ? After the jump…