The Dallas Stars have fired Marc Crawford. I think I speak for many of my readers when I say “People still play hockey? That’s a thing?”
The California Legislature is considering revoking the city charter of Vernon, a notoriously corrupt city in L.A. County. But business owners are worried…
The NYT has discovered the underground trade in “loosies”: sales of loose cigarettes. A “legal” pack, with taxes, goes for $12.50 (thus sayeth the Times); the “loosie” dealer profiled in the article sells loose cigs for 75 cents each, two for a buck, or $8 a pack ($7 if he knows you). And business is good, Mayor Bloomberg.
Tilman Fertitta and the Landry’s chain are trying to purchase McCormick & Schmick’s Seafood Restaurants. Good luck with that.
Should the Chowchilla school bus kidnappers be paroled?
Sagra Italian Restaurant damaged by fire. The SDC ate there, and, well…we wish the owners the best, even if we can’t say we were wild about the restaurant.
I intended to blog this a few days ago: the latest APD suspension is for 90 days. In this case, the officer in question “was rude to a citizen and initially gave misleading statements to investigators”.
Oh, sure, you laugh at me for picking the Cubs to win it all. But I’ll point out that the Cubs have actually won a game this year, unlike certain other teams (cough cough Houston cough cough) I could name.
Your annual slideshow (warning! Slideshow!) of rodeo food (warning! Slideshow!) is here.
Warning: this does include photos of the chocolate covered pickle and the pulled pork sundae. Also, did I mention that this is a slideshow?
(Wouldn’t fried beef jerky be kind of dry? Or is that the point; after eating a big plate of fried beef jerky, you really need one of those $12 beers?)
Latest news from Vegas: the Sahara is closing in May.
This is sad news for me personally. I’ll admit the Sahara was kind of run down, but it was one of the cheapest rooms available on the Strip. I preferred it slightly to the Imperial Palace (which seems to me to be even more run down these days); on my last few trips to DEFCON, I’ve stayed at the Sahara. (Being slightly run down doesn’t bother me too much when I’m on the road. All I’m really looking for is a bed, toilet, roof, and a place for my stuff. I don’t spend a lot of time in my room.)
(I wasn’t planning on staying there this time; since the convention is at the Rio this year, I’m more likely to stay there.)
Coverage from the Las Vegas Sun. The Sun’s coverage makes another good point; one of the stations for the Vegas Monorail (which is also in deep trouble) is the Sahara. I’ll be interested in seeing how that plays out.
(Also: are they going to try to keep the NASCAR Cafe open? I never ate there; the advertising always seemed to be more about quantity than quality, which really turned me off.)
Some things worth noting in the NYT on this fine day:
Michael Ruhlman reviews Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking
Spider-Man, Spider-Man, does whatever a spider
Never mind.
You may ask yourself, “Why would someone pay $20,000 for a replica of an Eric Clapton Stratocaster, ‘complete with every single nick and scratch, including the wear pattern from Mr. Clapton’s belt buckle and the burn mark from his cigarettes’?” You would probably answer that question, “Because they’re a moron.” The NYT would like for you to know that evolutionary psychology suggests you’re wrong:
Yesterday was election day in Bell, California. How did things go?
Noted: Austin now has a Peruvian restaurant. (Okay, technically, Pflugerville.) Yes, I’m thinking Saturday Dining Conspiracy. No, not right away; we generally give places three months after opening before reviewing them.
Slow. Slow. Slow. And WordPress ate the first draft of this post. Argh. “Introduction to Literary Studies” is finished, but “Applications in Business Programming” fires up tonight.
So where were we?
Ken Hoffman in the HouChron on more rodeo food. The chocolate covered pickle makes us gag.
The NYT reports that Julie Taymor and the “Spider-Man” producers are “negotiating”. “Negotiating” in this case apparently means either “work with a newly expanded creative team” or “pack your <stuff> and get out”.
Speaking of art, damn it, art!, Lawrence has brought us happy news for those of you who own iPhones and are fans of Guy Debord, Karen Eliot, Monty Cantsin, and the Karen-headed Smile Monty (see also): there’s an app for that.
By way of Tam, we have learned that the Department of Homeland Security, which is apparently not satisfied with not actually catching terrorists, is going around confiscating Nissan Skylines. The Skyline is a car we were previously unfamiliar with, perhaps because it was never officially imported into the United States. One of Tam’s commenters provided this link to an excellent article about the rise and fall of a Skyline importer in California, which we commend to your attention.
Speaking of commenters, “Bob” (thanks, “Bob”) posted in this thread and provided a link with some new information about our good friend, the spamming scumbag Sven Alstrom. That link, in turn, led us to this one, which also has some good stuff about Sven. We were particularly amused by these two comments from LJWorld staff members:
and:
Sven makes friends everywhere he goes, doesn’t he?
It would fill my heart with delight if someone managed to grow truffles reliably in the United States.
I know there are many people working on the problem (supposedly including one person out near Dripping Springs; this article is from 1984, and I haven’t been able to find anything more recent in Google) but it seems that the growing of truffles is more difficult than you might expect for something that’s basically a fungus.
All of this is by way of introducing today’s NYT article about two truffle growers in North Carolina who’ve been engaged in a lengthy legal battle.
Important safety tip:
I went to the fights last night, and a case of chronic traumatic encephalopathy broke out.
Sirhan Sirhan has been turned down for parole for the 13th time. What’s interesting about this article is that it focuses almost as much on Sirhan’s lawyer, William F. Pepper, and Pepper’s previous efforts:
This gives me an excuse to plug Hampton Sides’ excellent (and Edgar-nominated) book Hellhound on His Trail: The Electrifying Account of the Largest Manhunt In American History
I’m not going to say it deserves the Edgar; I haven’t read any of the other nominated books (I did pick up The Killer of Little Shepherds: A True Crime Story and the Birth of Forensic Science
This is not a strategy I had considered for driving up page views, but good for the Austin Bulldog.
Edited to add: This is the closest thing I’ve found to a discussion of food items at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo this year. No photos. I’d apologize, but I don’t want a photo of the “Pulled Pork Sundae”, which frankly sounds disgusting.
I think the lessons here are:
Sometimes there’s just nothing you can say.
Austin restaurant owners Michael and Yoli Amr were found dead Wednesday morning.
The Statesman touches a little on the history of the Amr restaruants. We (and by “we” in this case I mean the regular Saturday Dining Conspiracy group, as well as pretty much everyone else I know) were big fans of the original Gumbo’s on Bratton Lane, and followed them to the Gumbo’s in Round Rock, Yoli’s Jambalaya, and then Mama Roux, which we thought was a swell eatery. Actually, they were all fine places to eat.
I can’t wrap my mind around this. It looks like they may have had financial problems; I’m sure the economy and the Gulf oil spill hurt them some. But this? It doesn’t make sense. I know things like this aren’t supposed to, and I know we don’t know everything that was going on. But…
Commentary from Rob Balon. Commentary from Statesman restaurant reviewer Mike Sutter.
Edited to add: Lawrence, who was an even bigger fan of the Amr restaurants than I was, adds his commentary here.
This doesn’t really count as “gun crankery”, though guns are somewhat involved.
This 37 Signals essay on the 1972 Chouinard Equipment catalog in turn led me to this NYT piece (from 2008, but I hadn’t seen it before) on George Herter, with particular concentration on his book, “Bull Cook and Authentic Historical Recipes and Practices
Every now and then a copy of Bull Cook shows up at Half-Price Books; so far, I’ve managed to snap up two (one for myself, one as a gift). Collins has it right about what makes the book so fascinating; you’re reading along, and you come to an assertion such as the Virgin Mary’s fondness for creamed spinach, and you say to yourself, “What?”. (Herter was not a big fan of sourcing his material.)
I haven’t been able to obtain any of his other books: I’ve never seen How To Live With a B—-h (though here’s a review of it from someone who found a copy), and the one copy I’ve seen of Herter’s safari guide was priced too high for my tastes. Bull Cook seems to be the easiest Herter book to find; if you run across a copy, I’d recommend picking it up.
(Field and Stream also published a longer history of Herter sometime back; if I can find a working link to their profile, I’ll add it here.)
“Hell yes. We have hundreds of people coming.”
—Danny Payne of III Forks, a steakhouse in downtown Austin, responding to the Statesman asking if he was going to be open tonight, after someone drove a car into the front entrance last night.
Lucky J's menu.
I’ve had a couple of people ask me if I was going to do a review of Lucky J’s once I’d had a chance to eat there. Here you go:
Would I go back? I think I would, but they need a month or two or three to settle into a groove. It would help some if they had less of an Austin slacker vibe. I’d like to try some of the waffle tacos, but the lack of coffee and the weird 11 AM – 4 PM schedule are drawbacks for me.
There’s a guy in Pflugerville who leases out food trucks to independent operators. He had some issues with the way the City of Austin regulated food trucks, and started lobbying for stricter rules “to address health, safety and environmental concerns”. Ultimately, the City Council did make some changes to the law.
Can you guess what’s coming?
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