It is necessary to link to this hilarious picture.
Monthly Archive for March, 2005
The infamous Plastic Lawn of Barton Hills
One of the things Zippy and I do every day is, we more or less hook it around Zilkerland at a brisk clip for an hour or so, to see what we can see (or in Zippy’s case, to sniff what we can sniff. Chacun à son goût). We both enjoy the abundant Bohemian deposits and artifacts left lying around by the local citizenry. The deposits and artifacts are abundant because in my neighborhood it is customary to use one’s home and lawn as an expression of one’s inner nutjob.
Take the house with the black plastic front yard. Last year many were baffled by the sudden appearance of sheets of black plastic where the day before had flourished a lush South Austin lawn of St. Augustine, dandelions, and crabgrass. Why? Why?
I’ll tell you why. One fine dewy morning, the owner of this house woke up on a different side of the bed. She tossed aside her crazy quilt, threw open the window, and cried “Evil grass, sent by Klingons to kill me! You will pay!” Or possibly, “If I cover the yard with plastic, they won’t find the shallow graves.” And out she marched with the several rolls of black plastic she had been saving against just such a contingency. She spread this black plastic out over her yard and anchored it with big rocks.
That grass would die a slow, painful death while she watched from the porch, sipping soda through a straw. And no one would ever find the bodies.
Grilled lamb chops with fig glaze
Currently in progress at the Twisty Morsel Institute is a dissertation arguing that the grilled lamb chop tops the list of the best chops–nay, the best foods–ever invented, and yes, I include on that list both the taco al pastor and–after no trivial deliberations–Cool Whip.
Lamb is one of the few remaining meats that declines to grovel before the modern American anxiety over anything that doesn’t taste like chicken, and when I say "chicken" I mean "crap." Lamb has depth. It has integrity. It has fat. After you’ve polished off a couple of chops, no one can tell you you haven’t had dinner, and if they do, you can tell them from me that their pants make them look fat.
Here’s what you do: brush a lamb chop with a sauce the inspiration for which you’ve drawn from turn-of-the-century French piano music. Add the capricious sorceries of wood smoke. And for the love-a-god, open a bottle of Lewelling cab.
God help us, it’s Clapton’s birthday. Which means that today’s Lay Down Sally Alert Level has been increased to:
Red
Listening to the radio today will almost certainly result in exposure to the annoying and grammatically suspect "Lay Down Sally."
Some of you may be saying to yourselves, "Enough patriarchy-blaming, already. What about dinner?" And even if you’re saying something entirely different to yourself, such as "If my gelatinous neighbor doesn’t knock it off with that leaf blower I will certainly have a cow," a few food pictures are unlikely to affect your will to live.
Above: I cannot stop making that most pragmatic of dishes, the enigmatic Spaghetti Jilroy.
Above: Brunch at the Four Seasons with my family last Sunday. Some sort of fig pastry, a slice of bacon, home fries, and ceviche with mango. The Four throws a repulsively sumptuous brunch. The food all looks beautiful, but sadly, once bitten, it only rarely lives up to its glittering promise. This does not stop me from shoveling it in, however, since otherwise I’d have to talk to my family.
My plate looks a little light, but that’s because this was my third trip through the buffet line, and even we Fasters try to slow down before the gout sets in. I’d already worked my way through the ham and sausage and prime rib and duck and crab claws and assorted pâtés, and the sushi and the chicken salads, and the six kinds of bread, and the eggs benedict, and the fruit and the grilled asparagus. After I finished all that, I begged the waiter for but one last thin wafer, but she was all like, no way, dude.
Above: Frozen Ethnic Gourmet Bean Masala. As depressing as it looks.
From MTV: Eminem and 50 display their acute grasp of the principles of couture
Title IX gets its teeth pulled, homophobic Ohio gay marriage ban has super-misogynist side effect, nutjobs contract murder-for-hire to "save" braindead women, Bush lied about WMD, the Constitution appears to have been written in disappearing ink. Big whoop, I say. What about hip-hop? Because according to MTV, the fashion walk-off between 50 Cent vs. Eminem is "Big! Bigger than George Bush and Saddam Hussein! And that’s BIG!"
But it’s not just about fashion. What about the children?
Because America never tires of hearing its favorite arguments over and over, here are two old dudes dispensing the same old old-dude crap on the subject of the hip-hop problem.
Old Black Dude Stanley Crouch, writing in New York Daily News, opines that maybe people ought to reject the notion that misogyny is "authentic" black behavior:
"…Black women have begun to break away from all of the conventions that button their lips when they find themselves disturbed by rap’s demeaning lyrics and videos.
The regular defense of the worst of hip hop is that these images should be accepted because they provide a way for black men at the bottom to become successful. An additional aspect of this defense is that young men are making so much money one should not mess with the flow of the dough. The next defense is that anything that makes money is good – especially if it is not illegal. At the end of the argument is the manipulative racial ploy that black people should not use "white" standards to attack something that comes out of the neighborhood, that arrives from black street culture. This last point has been far too successful for far too long among middle-class blacks, who are often made to feel as if they have lost contact with their roots and should never question anything "authentically" black, lower class and street."
Old White Dude David Hinckley, also writing in New York Daily News, opines that whatever it is, if it’s popular, it must be OK:
"What we really need to do is take a step or two back and remember why hip hop, a style that’s been under constant fire for 30 years, not only thrives today but has become our dominant popular music. Because it speaks to its listeners."
Brilliant.
Bush’s Department of Education "clarification" of Title IX has set women’s sports back 30 years (see story in LA Times here)
To make it easier for colleges to screw women over, new federal guidelines make women’s civil rights an "opt-in" issue.
That’s right. Rather than requiring equal opportunity across the board, Title IX compliance can now be established if schools merely send students an email survey assessing women’s "interest" in sports. Non-responses will count as non-interest. Thus, women’s opportunities in school sports are equal to men’s only so long as enough girls remember to send in their survey. Lovely.
As far as I can determine, men are not required to return email surveys that affect their civil rights.
This is great! They should apply this method to everything. I know! Let’s make black people send in emails expressing their interest in not being slaves!
As soon as enough girls forget to renew their civil rights by email, state schools can ditch those pesky women’s sports programs and get back to concentrating on what they do best: churning out America’s supply of thickneck date-rapist jocks and the sexy cheerleaders who do them.
As usual, they did something funny on KXAN last night.
First they showed two hours of "Law & Order." The first hour was "Law & Order: SVU," the show about mutilated women. It will hardly surprise you to learn that this episode employed a popular patriarchy-affirming device: terrified, helpless, beautiful Chinese sex-slaves in Fredericks of Hollywood negligees. This device enables producers on autopilot to merely flip through their catalog of crowd-pleasing misogynist tableaux:
• Bruised-face hottie in negligee, crying? Check.
• Body-bag unzipped alluringly to reveal exsanguinated hottie corpse in negligee? Check.
• Brothel-bust scene with negligee hotties interrupted in act of servicing johns? Check.
• Terrified hottie in negligee getting shit kicked out of her in dark alley, begging for life? Check.
The next hour, "Law & Order: Criminal Intent" had hardly any mutilated women at all, only shots of dead guys who had been "shot point-blank in the face with a 9-mil" by another cop-show staple, the psychotic nebbish. I almost called the network to congratulate them.
Then, because I’m always up for a laugh, I watched the local news. The gripping top story was about a hail storm the day before.They referred to the hail storm as "Mother Nature." Mother Nature had expressed her wrath by killing some birds with all that hail.
Perky young Julie Shields*, one of the Hitler Youths** employed by KXAN to read the news, gravely warned her Law & Order-watchin’, mutilated-women-lovin’ audience: "the video you’re about to see may be disturbing."
My hands flew to my face to shield my delicate eyes, but dang, I peeked. Julie showed us a grackle lying motionless in the grass.
About the only thing more disturbing than a deceased grackle would have been hippity-hoppiting fluffy bunnies.
_______________________________
* She owns a Chihuahua named Peanut
** I do not imply that Julie Shields is a Nazi. I know nothing of her political leanings. I merely observe that, like the overwhelming majority of the talent at KXAN, she is extremely Caucasian.
Fig. 35: Comely halibut fillet and grilled plantain
The Twisty Switchboard has been swamped with calls from the sorely peckish demanding the recipe for chicken-burgers. Not down with the chicken-burger craze? Both the glaze and the secret sauce can be adapted to any chicken-free grilling situation, such as when you win in a raffle a comely halibut fillet and some plantains (see Fig. 35, above).
Glaze
1/4 cup soy sauce
2 T orange marmelade
juice of 1/2 orange
2 T canola oil
3 or 4 scallions, quartered
2 or 3 cloves garlic
a Fresno chile, quartered
a pinch of allspice
Whirl all ingredients until liquidy in your Cuisinart Mini-Prep. Reserve in an alternate receptacle, but for the love-a-god don’t clean out the Mini-Prep.
[Note: Mr. T pities the fool who hath no Mini-Prep. Harsh words, I realize, but they're for your own good. Cusinart's Ronco-esque claim, "Never touch another knife for the rest of your miserable life!" is goofy (what's so bad about touching knives?), but the Mini-Prep really does have 1001 uses around the home, boat, or office. It's the only Cuisinart product worth a damn, I tell you whut]
Secret Sauce
4 T mayo
2 canned chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
zest and juice from the other half of the orange
salt
Whirl all ingredients in the Mini-Prep with the residual glaze stuff in it. Refrigerate until ready to use.
Burgers
1 pound ground chicken breast
buns
1 charcoal grill, rack well-oiled, fired up with mesquite
Divide ground chicken into single-serving clumps. Knead a tablespoon of the glaze into each clump and shape into pucks. Grill, basting frequently with glaze. Top with secret sauce, and thank me brokenly.
Under no circumstances put cheese on this chicken-burger!
[Note: Typepad refuses to upload today's Morsel Institute photo. What you are missing out on is documentation of a "chicken-burger," which idea turns out to be only about half as ill-conceived as you think]
[New Note: Here is the "chicken-burger" after all]
It is rare that a single word, as opposed to a full-blown catch-phrase or meme, should attain the status of crappy meaningless cliché, but have you noticed that lately no 21st century English sentence is complete without the word snarky?
Snarky is used often and incorrectly in a context of glowing admiration for the one so described. It is my contention that what is often meant by “She’s so snarky!” is actually “Her wit is delightfully ascerbic.” In this case, please, just say “Her wit is delightfully ascerbic.” Or, “She is Dorothy Parker.”
In the event that the subject is an object of disdain, consider that there are always better ways to describe a cagey wiseass with self-eminent delusions who lacks real substance, than to rely on mots that lack bon-ness. I suggest “She is a fucktard.” Or, “She is David Spade’s penis-nose.”
You know, if somebody had euthanized David Spade back when he was begging for it on that crappy sitcom, we wouldn’t even be having this discussion.
So profoundly unpleasant is this snarky–particularly when spake with an American accent, which sends the word up through the sinuses and contorts the mouth into an Upper Class Twit of the Year grimace–that it soils anything it touches with a viscous mist of its own putrid essence. This means that it is the exclusive, holy province of teenagers. Anyone else who dares speak it is inescapably an even bigger asshole than the fucktarded David Spade penis-nose under discussion.
Joining the slogans on T-shirts in the $2 bin at Walgreen’s, all McDonald’s ad copy, and ribbon-shaped car magnets, snarky is now the minion of Mediocrity, and would be, in a prettier world, execrated by anyone over whom Truth and Beauty still hold even the slightest sway.
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