Chivas USA.
“What?”
The other Major League Soccer franchise in LA.
Not to worry, though. In a fantastic example of “it’s not working, do it even harder!”:
Soccer. The next big thing. Any day now.
Obit watch: October 28, 2014.
October 28th, 2014Your loser update: week 8, 2014.
October 26th, 2014For various uninteresting reasons, we actually caught the last few minutes of the London game featuring loser favorites, the Detroit Lions. Rarely has “clown shoes” been a more accurate description.
TMQ’s football gods will be insufferable this week.
Tell us how you really feel, Steve.
Sounds like the Texans played well. And the Browns somehow managed not to be a factory of sadness this week. As much as I hate Buffalo, the game against the Jets filled me with glee, mostly because watching them struggle makes me even happier than watching Buffalo lose.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Oakland
I like the Raiders’ chances. Their next three games are against Seattle, Denver, and San Diego, none of whom should lose to Oakland.
Edited to add:
Detroit held 3 time outs and didnt use any at end of half — game only half over and already the Lions are phoning in.
— Gregg Easterbrook (@EasterbrookG) October 26, 2014
Heh. Heh. Heh.
TMQ Watch: October 21, 2014.
October 23rd, 2014Pete and Repeat walk into bar in this week’s TMQ, after the jump…
Headline of the day.
October 23rd, 2014(This gives me a chance to repeat Karl‘s joke: “What’s the difference between Kenny G and an Uzi? An Uzi only repeats itself 20 times a second.”)
Obit watch: October 22, 2014.
October 22nd, 2014Apologies. It was a busy morning and a busy afternoon.
Probably the only Ben Bradlee obit you need to read. I think Bradlee’s legacy and influence (good and bad) will be debated in the coming days. And I note that the WP doesn’t shy away from mentioning “Jimmy” along with Watergate and the Pentagon Papers. But I like this:
(NYT obit for another perspective.)
Also among the dead: Nelson Bunker Hunt, of silver fame.
If they actually make this movie…
October 21st, 2014…I am there, man.
Stephen Frears is (allegedly) going to direct Meryl Streep in a biography of Florence Foster Jenkins.
(“Remembering Florence Foster Jenkins” from the Carnegie Hall website. Just in case you are unfamiliar with “The Glory (????) of the Human Voice
A double handful of food related randomness.
October 20th, 2014During one of my dinner conversations over the weekend, the subject of “Family Affair” came up for reasons I have forgotten. (I don’t think the initial discussion started out with Anissa Jones, but Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, what a sad death.)
In the course of the conversation, I stumbled across this: The Family Affair Cookbook
Something else that came out of another dinner conversation: does anyone remember The Magic Pan? Yes, it was a chain (owned by Quaker Oats?!) and I don’t believe there was ever one in Austin. There was one in the Galleria in Houston; I ate there a couple of times, and have fond memories of it.
Googling to see if there were any Magic Pans left (spoiler: no) turned up a few links I want to immortalize for reference purposes:
Magic Pan recipes from Uncle Phaedrus. Actually, the whole Uncle Phaedrus website is probably bookmark worthy; if you’re anything like me, you have to kind of like a guy who combines food and Sherlock Holmes.
By way of Uncle Phaedrus, here’s a file that contains some of the Magic Pan master recipes. Just in case you have a steam kettle and want to make 17 pounds of Beef Bourguignon.
The Crepe Cookbook
Crepe Cookery
The Magic Pan Project appears to be offline.
This guy likes the VillaWare V5225 Crepe Maker
Damn. Now I’m hungry, and there’s no way for me to get crepes. I think Crepes Mille may still be on South Congress, but there’s no way for me to get there on my dinner break. Flip Happy Crepes is closed (I really do hope they get the brick and mortar thing figured out.) The Original Pancake House has some crepes, but not a whole lot, and they close at 2.
Anybody got any other crepe sources in Austin? (I am aware of that company that sells pre-made crepes at HEB, though I’m blanking on the name right now.)
(Crossposted to the SDC Logbook, because that’s just the kind of hairball I am.)
Your loser update: week 7, 2014.
October 20th, 2014Oh, Cleveland, how could you?
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Oakland
Gehry watch.
October 17th, 2014TMQ Watch: October 14, 2014.
October 16th, 2014Not really feeling it this week. Sorry. Let’s just get started and see where this goes. This week’s TMQ, after the jump…
Phoenix, no ashes.
October 16th, 2014Lawrence was kind enough to throw me a backlink for my SF Bay Guardian entry. So I thought I’d note here, just for the record, that the Providence Phoenix is also closing down. From what I can tell, the PP is part of the same media group that owned the Boston Phoenix, which shut down last year. (Also, this gives me an excuse to exercise the “Rhode Island” tag.)
I remember picking up a few issues of the PP back when I was going up to Rhode Island on a semi-regular basis, but I don’t recall much about it beyond it being a fairly generic alt weekly. Again, I’m sorry for the folks who are losing their jobs; no snark here. But it is hard to see what the PP had to offer that isn’t duplicated elsewhere.
Also, this gives me a chance to link to yesterday’s TechDirt article about SXSW: Populous, a consulting firm that’s been working with SXSW organizers, is proposing “clean zones” for SXSW:
According to the report, the “Clean Zone” would be a perimeter around some part of the city that:
“protects the brand equity of SXSW and its sponsors but would be made to work with existing businesses and their interests so as to uphold sponsor values and private property rights—in return this may involve a financial exchange linked to the permit process that provides the City with additional funding for security and safety personnel.”
Part of the “clean zone” proposal talks about doing “soft searches” for “forbidden items”. It isn’t clear what that means, though there’s speculation that “forbidden” = “doesn’t have an approved sponsor logo”.
A fair number of people seem to be reading this as part of SXSW’s ongoing struggle to get rid of “unofficial” SXSW events, and I kind of think it is hard to read in any other way.
I’ve felt for a while now that SXSW is too big, and I’ve expected a major disaster of some sort. But the funny thing is: we had our major disaster this year, and none of these proposals (or any other proposal I’ve heard) would have prevented it. As a matter of fact, the only thing I can think of that would have prevented it, is more substantial barriers on the closed-off streets.
Kind of seems like SXSW is becoming all the things the AusChron purports to dislike, doesn’t it?
Random notes: October 16, 2014.
October 16th, 2014Obit watch: Elizabeth Pena. The name may not ring a bell at first, but she was in John Sayles’ “Lone Star”, “La Bamba”, “Jacob’s Ladder”, and was the voice of Mirage in “The Incredibles”, among a whole bunch of other credits. And I have to give a shot-out to this bit of trivia:
(Video at the link.)
People who know me are aware that I’m kind of a map geek. The very small handful of people I’ve let into my apartment can attest to this; my decorating theme is “maps”.
So I think this is kind of cool, for obvious reasons: free downloadable USGS topographic maps.
Guardians of the Bay Area.
October 14th, 2014The San Francisco Bay Guardian is shutting down.
I’m sorry for the people who are losing their jobs, but my main reason for making note of it here is that I did a fair amount of coverage of their legal battle with SF Weekly back in the day: a battle that included, yes, hookers and blow. (Also here, here, and here.)
Random notes: October 13, 2014.
October 13th, 2014The New York Times may have killed their chess column. Or perhaps not.
Greg “Three Cups of Tea” Mortenson is trying to make a comeback. (Previously.)
The WP also has a longish story about the Navy silencer scandal, covered previously here.
At one pretrial hearing, a defense attorney for the auto mechanic, Mark S. Landersman of Temecula, Calif., accused the Navy of impeding the investigation by destroying a secret stash of automatic rifles that the silencers were designed to fit. Prosecutors immediately objected to further discussion in open court, calling it a classified matter.
The destroyed weapons were part of a stockpile of about 1,600 AK-47-style rifles that the U.S. military had collected overseas and stored in a warehouse in Pennsylvania, according to a source familiar with the investigation.
I really don’t have much to say, but the thought of a warehouse full of “AK-47 style rifles” brings a goofy smile to my face.
Your loser update: week 6, 2014.
October 13th, 2014It was a near thing, but Jacksonville managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Likewise Oakland.
So, six weeks in, NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Jacksonville
Oakland
