Breakfast: One scrambled egg, some of last night’s leftover oven-roasted potatoes with garlic, one tablespoon of salsa, all wrapped in a tortilla. The black-coffee portion of the meal is still in progress, but I hereby pronounce this breakfast an unqualified success.
Protein at every meal is my goal for the spring. Lately I’ve been corresponding with an urban farmer who lives a couple miles from me, on the other side of Mack Avenue (i.e., Detroit) and keeps a flock of ducks. She sells fresh duck eggs whenever you feel like stopping by, for 50 cents apiece. My bravery in all things culinary wavers a bit here. My reading tells me they taste the same as the chicken variety, with more nutrients; is this true? I never ate eggs until I was in college, when a boyfriend who had been a grill chef at Perkins introduced me to western omelets. I think I’ve been a trouper since then, but there are two kinds of people in the world — those whose breakfasts run to fruit-yogurt-juice and those who are eggs-meat-potatoes, and I’m in the first camp. Eggs are for lunch.
I’m going to get some duck eggs, although mostly I just want to see her flock. There are so many urban farmers in Detroit now it’s no longer a novelty, but I love animals and I love ducks. Jim at Sweet Juniper has friends deeper in the city who keep goats and chickens, and there’s a high school for girls who have children — do we even bother to call them unwed mothers anymore? — that has at least one horse, along with a garden plot that earns them real money. Parts of the city look like rural Mississippi during the Depression, only with curbs. Crazy town.
Speaking of protein, the Free Press has gone so Gannett of late that I’ve practically stopped reading it, but this story caught my eye today — about scientific research on underwater rock formations in Lake Huron, concentrating on a now-submerged land bridge that arcs across the lake between Alpena, Michigan and Amberley, Ontario. Scientists suspect the formations were man-made, and served as Ice Age caribou hunting blinds. Imagine what it took to bring down a caribou with the tools of the era. Alley Oop, you have my respect.
Meanwhile, the graphic with the story has a big boo-boo in it, describing the land bridge as 10 feet wide. No. Ten miles. Details, details.
Years ago I read a story about some ancient human remains found in the Pacific Northwest — Something Man — that are unmistakably Caucasian in nature, challenging the belief that Indians were the first to migrate into North America across the Bering land bridge. The remains were being fought over, with Indians wanting to reclaim them for reburial, and the scientific community, which wants to study them more and maybe recast some theories. The story broke down the sides into approximate camps, with the most troublesome being, essentially, Indian religious fundamentalists, who didn’t want the corpse studied at all, because their version of history is the only one they accept — that they’ve always been there, that they were the first ones there, and the rest of you just shut up. The piece included the comments of a prominent Native American mocking the whole idea of the Bering land bridge, finding it a little too conveeeenient, this idea that the ocean was once dry in a particular place. I guess he’s an Indian fundamentalist, but for my money, I’d rather imagine that land bridge arcing across the lake with its caribou blinds, and the desperate search for protein and nutrition that only required me to consult my refrigerator this morning.
So, bloggage?
Change the names, it’s all the same — lunatic known for his bullhorn protests at something called the Southern Decadence Festival is busted jerking off in a public park.
More $P sockpuppetry. This just gets funnier by the day.
The best picture on the Internet, via the WashPost’s Style Tumblr. Related (to protein and Internet pictures, which brings us full circle): Al Qaeda attacks America with photo of piglet wearing boots. Via the Onion News Network, natch.
I’m off, all.
Scout said on March 1, 2011 at 10:39 am
Lou Sarah’s fans are planning a protest/publicity stunt on March 13. Wonkette is helping with the organizing.
http://wonkette.com/439457/palin-fans-organizing-plan-to-pull-over-side-of-road-to-get-people-in-accidents
$P is seriously the funniest thing to happen to politics in, like, forever. Also. Too.
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coozledad said on March 1, 2011 at 11:03 am
Duck eggs taste better than chicken eggs, and they’re more nutritious. For years they were the eggs you got if you ate at a restaurant, but a bunch of people became ill or died after eating improperly prepared omelets and subsequently chicken eggs displaced them.(The story I’ve heard is the eggs were cracked and left too long in the kitchen on a hot day.)
Waterfowl eggs are horrible boiled, but you have to if you are going to salt and store them in the Asian fashion. I’ve tried to acquire this taste, with no success. There are people who insist salted duck eggs taste like Brie, but they’re more what I’d imagine a Tallegio would be like after a carrion bird has vomited it up on the roof of an old barn in August.
Ducks have true penises, and can introduce fecal matter from the female’s cloaca into her egg duct. This results in a little greenish lump on the yolk of the egg that squeamish people throw away.
When ducks consume acorns, the tannins turn the yolks black. They cook to yellow, but it’s fun to horrify hungover breakfast guests with them.
“You’re going to love this. Do you have any idea how much Mitterand paid for a single necrosed duck egg? Thousands, man. And you’re about to eat three.”
Ducks are siphon feeders and will stick their face in a damp pile of anything. Their dietary expectations are somewhat on the low end: in this they’re not much different from chickens, it’s just they seem to relish eating shit more.
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Jeff Borden said on March 1, 2011 at 11:04 am
Yes, it’s looking more and more like the “sell by” date for $P has passed. Her popularity within the GOP continues to trickle down to sewer depths and her gaffe-a-minute lifestyle is wearing down all but the most fanatical of followers. Her political commercial masquerading as an Alaskan travelogue not only has not been renewed for a second season, but revealed her to be a paper pit bull unaware of the most basic rules of hunting and gunsmanship. This must be a terribly bitter pill for Moosezilla, who loves herself more than life itself and requires constant attention the way Charlie Sheen needs coke and hookers.
A pox on John McCain and his political handlers for ever introducing this snowbilly to the national stage, but God Almighty, perhaps the long nightmare is finally coming to a close.
I’m guessing within two years, she’s at the grand opening of a new Wal-Mart store, or perhaps visiting a car dealership, while she joins Judith Miller as a correspondent at Newsmax, LOL.
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Dorothy said on March 1, 2011 at 11:06 am
Just imagine if $P and Dan Quayle mated? The comic possibilities boggle the mind.
Scrambled eggs are my favorite thing to have for breakfast on Sunday. A dash of hot sauce, salt & pepper, a little shredded cheddar cheese, maybe some diced green onions once in awhile. We have become egg snobs now that we live in the country. A neighbor has chickens and we get them from her roughly 9 months of the year. It’s almost time for the girls to start laying again!!
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LAMary said on March 1, 2011 at 11:14 am
Duck eggs make great custard or Bavarian cream. Consider bread pudding made with brioche and duck eggs.
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Julie Robinson said on March 1, 2011 at 11:32 am
Notice how the Rev. Storms had a quick excuse that he was just relieving himself into a bottle? Methinks when they run his record, they’ll find it isn’t his first time.
Our daughter has friends in Chicago who keep chickens and bee hives on their condo deck, and are planning to add pygmy goats to the mix. She also raves about the eggs. We used to get fresh eggs from neighbors when I was a kid but I mostly remember being awed by the number of double yolks.
My mom’s folks were dairy farmers so we always drank fresh milk when we visited. Today I’d be thrilled but back then I turned up my nose at the heavy cream globules floating around on the top. No one in the family dairys* anymore, in fact the current generation put pigs in the dairy barn after my grandparents died. Now they just raise corn, corn, and more corn; a perfect example of Michael Pollan’s Iowa monoculture farming.
*To “dairy” is to be a dairy farmer, at least in Iowa it’s how they refer to their occupation.
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LAMary said on March 1, 2011 at 11:56 am
Younger son Pete had leftover potatoes and scrambled eggs for breakfast. He had them with Sriracha sauce and no tortilla. Generally anything savory is enhanced with Sriracha right now. We go through phases.
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Connie said on March 1, 2011 at 12:07 pm
Our daughter brought us a bottle of Sriracha sauce over the holidays, and it quickly became a staple. Sriracha and brown sugar mixed is a great stir fry sauce.
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LAMary said on March 1, 2011 at 12:15 pm
On the same page as the best picture on the internet:
http://www.sadanduseless.com/2011/02/awfully-photoshopped-russian-wedding-pictures/
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prospero said on March 1, 2011 at 12:20 pm
Horse races on our beach. Beautiful animals, and they run like hell. This is an annual outdoor party, reminds me of the Head of the Charles Regatta in Boston. Oldest horse in the race won.
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BigHank53 said on March 1, 2011 at 12:32 pm
Duck eggs have larger yolks (proportionally) than chicken eggs. I’ve heard the flavor described as “creamier” than chicken eggs. Buy a couple, scramble them up, and you’ll know for sure. Cheap food experiment, and they’re local.
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moe99 said on March 1, 2011 at 12:36 pm
Gawker must be overwhelmed. I can’t raise the site.
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Rana said on March 1, 2011 at 12:36 pm
When I travel I’m an eggs-and-bacon breakfaster (breakfasteer?) – there’s something about that hit of early morning protein that’s just perfect for long road trips. At home it’s more what I can stick in my face without thinking too hard – hot milk with coffee and sugar in it, cold cereal with milk, and something resembling a fresh fruit, depending on season. Lately I’ve been adding a bowl of miso soup to the round up; something about the hot saltiness makes it a great capper for the rest of the meal.
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Rana said on March 1, 2011 at 12:39 pm
LAMary – whoa. What is up with all the tiny spouse joke pictures?
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LAMary said on March 1, 2011 at 12:48 pm
Gawker had a redesign so it’s been screwed up. I can see the list of stories but I can’t expand and read the whole story.
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prospero said on March 1, 2011 at 12:52 pm
The Russian wedding pictures remind me of Kids in the Hall–I’m crushing your head.
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Jeff Borden said on March 1, 2011 at 1:08 pm
Hey, there’s some great news for working people emanating from Wisconsin. There’s a new poll showing enormous buyer’s remorse about Scott Wanker and solid support for the unions. Additionally, there are something like 1.1 milion Wisconsinites who will sign a petition to recall this bonehead and eight Republican state senators who are his main posse.
I have little faith in the ability of progressives, liberals and labor to actually cash in on public sentiment, but it would certainly be lovely if this creep’s efforts to crush the little people while hand-jobbing the Koch brothers was the first spark in a revival of grassroots activism on the left. I can dream, can’t I?
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Rana said on March 1, 2011 at 1:50 pm
I’m dreaming right there with you, Jeff.
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Connie said on March 1, 2011 at 1:51 pm
My parent’s wedding pictures from 1953 including one of those tiny spouse pictures – groom standing on hand of bride while she shook her finger at him – so it’s not just a photoshop thing.
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Julie Robinson said on March 1, 2011 at 1:56 pm
Off-topic: Mom Jeans and the Dreaded Long Butt:
http://www.graspingforobjectivity.com/2009/03/mom-jeans-and-dreaded-long-butt.html
Informative and hilarious. And don’t miss the sequel on Grandma Jeans:
http://www.graspingforobjectivity.com/2009/03/new-studies-prove-that-replacing-mom.html
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Dorothy said on March 1, 2011 at 1:59 pm
Julie you mentioned bee hives. That’s our new “thing” this year. Rather, it’s my husband’s new thing. He has ordered two hives and all the subsequent equipment that goes with. He’s hoping it will do wonders for our vegetable and flower gardens this year and in years to come. He’s very intent on doing a good job with this – went to a class from 9-3 a few Saturdays ago, joined the local beekeeping organization. I told him I’m happy for him to be busy with it (like a busy bee!) but I’m leaving all the work in his hands. I’m not going within 100 feet of the hives if I can help it.
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paddyo' said on March 1, 2011 at 2:03 pm
Hey, Nance — for your Alley Oop musings, that ancient human with the Caucasian leanings was Kennewick Man, named for the Columbia River town not far from where folks playing on the shores of a reservoir on the river found the remains.
Cool story from the Freep, BTW . . .
And since you’re into ducks, here’s a link to the odd-duck world of mallard/domestic duck hybrids from a birding website that doesn’t take itself so utterly and completely seriously as to not have fun with it.
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nancy said on March 1, 2011 at 2:05 pm
Kennewick! That’s it! I kept thinking Kennebunkport Man, but no, that’s George Bush.
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ROgirl said on March 1, 2011 at 2:21 pm
LAMary, On the redesigned Gawker site there’s an icon at the top of the page you can click to change the view so that it looks more like the old design.
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MaryRC said on March 1, 2011 at 2:22 pm
I’d love to have ducks if only to have this duck house.
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MaryRC said on March 1, 2011 at 2:23 pm
Have you seen the Sheen Family Circus yet?
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Deborah said on March 1, 2011 at 2:26 pm
Coozledad after reading your comment #2, I’ll never eat duck eggs and I love eggs. Gross.
Those photoshopped wedding photos are ridiculous. The weirdest ones are where the brides are about to do something violent to the miniature grooms they are holding while the grooms holding the tiny brides are worshiping them, what’s up with that?
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paddyo' said on March 1, 2011 at 2:29 pm
Too much vodka, Deborah . . .
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LAMary said on March 1, 2011 at 2:53 pm
ROGirl, I have to click on that icon just to get the list of stories. I think the combination of whatever changes they made with the firewalls and blockages my company has on our computers put the whole thing out of commission for me.
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4dbirds said on March 1, 2011 at 3:26 pm
A large bottle of Sriracha lasts about a week in our house.
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Little Bird said on March 1, 2011 at 3:28 pm
Speaking of eggs, tonight Deborah, her husband and I are celebrating 8 years in Chicago… with quiche. Quiche with bacon and leeks. It’s the pretty much the only way I’ll eat eggs.
I may have to try this with duck eggs sometime!
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Jeff Borden said on March 1, 2011 at 3:33 pm
COMING SOON TO A CUT-OUT BIN NEAR YOU . . .
Bristol Palin, the daughter of Tea Party favorite Sarah Palin, has signed a deal for a book her publisher describes as the first “intimate, behind-the-scenes look at her life.”
Entitled “Not Afraid of Life”, the book will be published this summer by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins. The company announced the deal on Tuesday but declined to say how much it was worth.
AAAAIIIEEEEEEEEEEE!
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MichaelG said on March 1, 2011 at 3:34 pm
Duck eggs do taste differently from chicken eggs and I’m not crazy about them. I have heard and LAMary seems to confirm that duck eggs are great for baking. I haven’t tried them there.
It seems like most of Gawker Media’s web sites underwent makeovers. They all suck. They are ugly and user unfriendly and just plain don’t work. Why do so many web sites change themselves so often? Take Microsoft’s Bing Maps. It used to be an excellent site. Now it’s totally unusable.
I guess it’s the old saying: “If it ain’t broke, break it.”
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on March 1, 2011 at 3:58 pm
Thank you, Paddyo’; the thing about the Kennewick controversy was not so much about the bones as the “skull reconstruction” done with clay and such, which ended up looking, as many archaeologists chortled, like Jean Luc Picard.
The laughing stopped when an Odinist group (I am not making this up) put in a NAGPRA request for the remains to rebury them, stating that they were “clearly Caucasian.” Not based on morphology or DNA, but in how the reconstruction works. There are Native American groups still asking for the remains based on NAGPRA, and the current question is whether a current specific tribal group can/should be able to claim 12,000 year old mortuary remains, or if science has any standing to do testing. It’s come up again in England, where the new coalition government has (perhaps inadvertently) put forth a requirement that any human remains older than 1850-something have to have a reburial plan, going to and before Stonehenge materials (4,000 BP). Post-1850 human remains are property of whatever estate has a claim.
So Kennewick and its cousins are still in litigation . . .
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Rana said on March 1, 2011 at 4:49 pm
Julie, I am laughing at the Mom Jeans! This is one small advantage to being short-waisted – I have an active incentive to avoid Mom Jeans, because if I wear anything other than low-rise pants, I end up with the waistband just under my boobs, unable to breathe.
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prospero said on March 1, 2011 at 4:58 pm
ai kno3 ai;,ll get slwgged for thiw or ignored.
breqkfqwt when you hwve the time without pork productw ie w 3weted opportunity.
the other white meat? Good wuewge hqnt put me on the cholewterol highwqy to hell. Sausage is a great invention of mankind Like chili, leave out the beans. When anybody thinks beans go in chili, I am way skeptical. On a biscuit with horseradish and good mustard. With good coffee? One thing is de rigeur. Good coffee. Leftover good pizza is all the food groups if you include a brewski. . Earlier the better to get a good start on the day. Sausage and biscuits. The full-boat schmir with sausage, good coffee and keith jarrett winging it Tons of coffee. I like yogurt and real fruit. But could , please, one of y’all tell me what Greek yogurt is? How is that different from yogurt? What exactly does that mean? Greek?greek yogurt? I read classical Greek in HS. Jesuit school, you know? What the hell is greek yogurt? There is no way to say how much I CAN’T SAY I UNDERSTAND. THIS SUCKS. This grosses qre connected with the high school kid i w
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prospero said on March 1, 2011 at 5:11 pm
So , I’m the biggest asshole rver. YOU HQVW GOT TO BE KIDDING. WHAT WOULD YOU SAY ABOUT ME? you qre so full of shit it’s qwtounsing.
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jcburns said on March 1, 2011 at 6:12 pm
Qwtounsing indeeeed! Please excuse me, I have to play a triple word in scrabble.
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Scout said on March 1, 2011 at 6:14 pm
Dear prospero, I love you. I am so painstaking about what I write here, what with all the smart writerly folks. And you, you just let your freak flag fly. Bravo, darling.
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Rana said on March 1, 2011 at 6:21 pm
Greek yogurt explained.
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Dorothy said on March 1, 2011 at 6:30 pm
Cannot stop laughing at what Scout just said.
I sometimes picture Prospero with one hand tied behind his back, an eye patch crookedly hanging from his forehead and a bottle of Dewars perched on his knee while he types his entries. Not every day of course – just once in awhile. No offense meant, Prosp – but your crazy stuff is legendary around here and I am dying to know why they look like they do on days like today.
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LAMary said on March 1, 2011 at 6:45 pm
A few weeks ago it was suggested Prospero had peaked a little early that night. That’s the best explanation I’ve seen.
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deb said on March 1, 2011 at 6:51 pm
Duck eggs are awesome in baked goods, but you need to adjust the number because they’re bigger. I’ve successfully substituted a single duck egg in recipes that calls for two chicken eggs. But I find them a little much, flavor-wise, on the breakfast plate.
Jeff @ 17: We cannot recall Scott Walker just yet. In Wisconsin, you can’t recall nobody, nohow, until they’ve been in office for a year. (And he’s been in office only a few weeks. Funny, seems like longer.) So far, the only recall petitions circulating here are for the Democratic senators who are still hiding out in Illinois.
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alex said on March 1, 2011 at 7:32 pm
MaryRC—very cool duck house but I can’t imagine how you’d get the danged things to actually nest in it. I put out real ones and they get taken over by other critters. The only time I had ducks nesting on my property that I can remember, they staked out a spot underneath an evergreen ewe against the house and then later abandoned it. I wouldn’t have even figured out they were there but for Daddy Duck standing as a watchman in the driveway and going ballistic on anything that moved.
I haven’t tried duck eggs that I recall. From the sound of the discussion here I’m assuming the eggs are like the meat—overrated. (And according to cooz at #2, rife with the same purulence found in humans who bang on both sides.)
Kennewick man, Kennebunkport man. Probably the same level of evolution of mental functioning in either species. All animalistic swagger, all self-serving. Seducers of wussified hominids with religious pretensions.
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coozledad said on March 1, 2011 at 7:46 pm
This is one egg dish I’ve never tried, though I know a few Filipinos who swear by it. We used to give them all our “eggs of a certain age”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balut_(egg)
I remember reading somewhere that a lot of the Native American languages are similar to the Turkic languages. In fact “Susquehanna” means “Quiet Mother” in Seminole, and “Shut up, woman” in Turkic.
Correction: Probably Iroquois.
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deb said on March 1, 2011 at 7:48 pm
Cooze, I couldn’t even get past the picture of that balut egg. Ewww.
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coozledad said on March 1, 2011 at 8:13 pm
deb: I like that one of the balut eaters says “It’s a drinking food and a hangover cure.” He’s right. If you can get that past your uvula, it’s unlikely you’re going to hurl.
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Deborah said on March 1, 2011 at 8:35 pm
Ice is falling off of the high-rise buildings this evening. I took my life into my hands when I walked past the Hancock Tower on my way home from work. Chunks as big as softballs were on the street. Smaller ones were landing around me. Imagine how one of those would feel landing on your noggin from 90 some stories above. Ouch. I put my hood of my down coat up over my head as if that would save me. I made it home with no incident this time.
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Little Bird said on March 1, 2011 at 8:48 pm
The perils of falling ice.
http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/news/local/chibrknews-reports-of-falling-ice-from-looop-highrise-20110301,0,1934457.story
One of my neighbors clued me in to the story.
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brian stouder said on March 1, 2011 at 9:30 pm
So I went googling to see if the investors who own the glass towers are ever liable when their towers shed chunks of ice onto the people below, and then got entirely sidetracked by this story from another city with glass towers, Philadelphia:
http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/weird/Pizza-Shop-Owner-Dumps-Mice-in-Rival-Shops-Cops-117101518.html
an excerpt:
Two police officers smelled a rat Monday afternoon when they were eating lunch at an Upper Darby pizza place and watched the owner of a competing pizza restaurant walk into the shop carrying a suspicious bag into the restaurant’s bathroom. After the man left, the owner of Verona Pizza on West Chester Pike discovered footprints on the toilet in the bathroom and a bag tucked into the ceiling tiles, police say. Thinking the bag contained drugs, the owner turned the bag over to the officers who were in the restaurant at the time. They found something white — but it wasn’t drugs.
From there, it gets funnier.
Completely aside from that, this evening the young folks and I were tooling along through town, and since the rule is that whoever is in the front seat with me gets to run the radio, and since Shelby was up front, we were listening to Today’s Hottest Hits on Hot 107.9 (think of lots of auto-tuned techy-vocals, and a deejay who sounds like he’s about 15, and you’re there), and – a catchy tune by Rihanna called “What’s my name?” came on (I bet it makes Charlie Sheen mad when he gets that question from one of his “goddesses”, but we digress) –
and one of the lyrics that I’ve heard on there before wafted past again – only this time I actually “got” it.
And the lyric was “The square root of 69 is 8 somethin’, right?”; and whereas, before, I pondered the odd artistic decision to put a math problem into the song, and display a pretty good method for estimating the answer (it is ISTEP week, afterall, but we’re digressing again); THIS time, I actually “got” it.
(As Arsenio Hall used to say, this was one of those things that make you say “hmmmmmmm”)
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Deborah said on March 1, 2011 at 10:08 pm
Will you journalists herewith shed a light on what’s going on with the New York Times? Frank Rich, the Ethicist, Deborah Solomon, Bittman. Lots of people leaving or being reassigned. Is this just what’s happening to journalist everywhere or is something else happening?
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on March 1, 2011 at 10:41 pm
Easy to blame things on the state of news & newspapers, but Rich has had a very long run at the NYT, and probably has a well-vested pension; Solomon had run into a couple of controversies over her “reworking” of quotes in the last year, and Bittman hasn’t left at all, just shifted to Op-Ed, maybe replacing Rich. Didn’t know anything had happened to Randy Cohen, but I’d stopped reading his columns a while ago, which may or may not describe others, but if so, it would explain why a change or an end would be in order.
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moe99 said on March 1, 2011 at 11:00 pm
http://templesmith.tumblr.com/post/3183270492/new-speak-oh-my-sweet-sweet-baby-jesus
squid tattoo
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MichaelG said on March 2, 2011 at 12:05 am
I had a balut egg in Vietnam a few years ago. More like ten years, I guess. It took a whole can of beer to wash it down. Thing is, that stuff is all in the mind. Lots of people love balut eggs and eat them every day. Nothing to it. It’s a delicacy. At least that’s what I told myself. I’ll never do it again. I didn’t gag but maybe I was sweating a little bit.
Lovely picture, Moe. I’m not a fan of tattoos on women or much of a tattoo fan at all. Most are muddy and poorly done. Multiples look like graffiti on a subway station wall. One day, however, I was having lunch at a cafe in Little Saigon on Bolsa in Westminster when a Vietnamese woman sat down with a friend at the next table. She had on a loose white, sleeveless blouse over a dark skirt and an incredible tattoo. She was a lovely and classy looking young woman with long black hair that flowed down her back. From under her blouse, covering her shoulder and down her right arm flowed the most incredible tattoo. I wasn’t close enough to see the details; much was covered by her blouse and her arm moved in her animated conversation with her companion but I was able to discern scales and shapes of an incredible delicacy and in a series of brilliant and subtle shades of reds and pinks and greens and blues. It was an astounding, erotic and captivating vision and I wished I could have seen her nude to partake of what was truly a work of art that had been applied to her skin. From what I could see it looked to have covered much of her back. She and her adornment were gorgeous. What will they look like in thirty years? Sadly not all art endures.
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Jakash said on March 2, 2011 at 12:52 am
Re: Jeff’s comment about Deborah Solomon’s controversies. This is pretty long, but, through a series of links starting from Andrew Sullivan’s blog, I ended up at this article earlier tonight, and it details the issue rather thoroughly:
http://www.nypress.com/article-17317-questions-for-the-questioner.html
I usually enjoyed those interviews, alas.
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Dexter said on March 2, 2011 at 1:16 am
I have chicken eggs frequently, today’s hurried breakfast was two broken yoke eggs , plain omelet style, black pepper and salt, a few shots of Tobasco, some yellow cheese and an ultra-thin slice of ham, all on two slices of white bread. To go.
I had to hurry as I had to drive my brother to a dealership to get his new used car, a Dodge. We had to kill an hour later in the day and had lunch at McD’s.
I had my first chicken wrap. It was only a buck and a half and it was good.
It was my suggestion to my brother to check this dealer out because he runs a repair shop and only sells used cars one at a time, meaning when he comes across a car that needs sold, he goes through it and replaces all the worn stuff before it breaks. Hell, I mean stuff like the timing chain, a leaky head gasket, a rear wheel cylinder, he installed new plugs , even more stuff…and also detailed it so it was squeaky-clean.
This is the place I posted about two weeks ago, in Bryan, Ohio. They specialize in foreign car repair but work on any cars, and makes and models.
He said VW dealerships are getting from $90 to $100 shop labor. He said it would be wise for any VW owners to drive to Bryan from great distances…he charges much less.
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Deborah said on March 2, 2011 at 2:35 am
Jeff (tmmo) I did know that Bittman hasn’t gone anywhere that’s what I was referring to when I said “or reassigned”. How could I not know that about Bittman with all of the discussion there has been at nn.c about him lately? It just seems odd to me that there are a number of writers at the NYT either leaving or doing something different all at about the same time.
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Deborah said on March 2, 2011 at 3:06 am
I forgot to mention this earlier, the guy who wrote the Twitter feed @mayoremanuel is a friend of a guy in my department who sits next to me at work. He said he had no idea it was written by his friend until he read about it on the Internet yesterday.
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on March 2, 2011 at 6:38 am
Deborah – I probably just should have said “it looks like a cluster from one angle, but from another angle, just normal shifting & leaving.” Having said that, and having read Jack Shafer’s article at Slate.com, I can’t help but wonder if some of this change is rearranging of deck chairs on the deck of the SSNY Titanic before the grand experiment of paywall 2.0. And I’m not saying they shouldn’t, or that more money ought to be paid for quality content (sniff), but that I wonder how the still-shifting-outline of how this is going to be deployed will work out.
Rich, Shafer says bemusedly, is going from a 43 m page view platform to an 8 m page view location, and he asks if they’re paying him enough more to be worth it. I’m reading the same data and thinking “Rich doesn’t need the money at this point, but he may have reason to strongly suspect that his access to eyeballs will be greatly restricted in the near future.” If the NYT OpEd page views go to 12 m and NYMag to 10 (and he got a pay raise, or just evened out), this won’t look dumb at all.
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coozledad said on March 2, 2011 at 8:50 am
Didn’t the NYT also give space to Anne Althouse? That’s reason enough for anyone to leave. I love this footage of her web-order husband trying to crash the capitol building. It reminds me of a Christopher Guest character in one of his mockumentaries. I keep waiting for him to call one of the cops “ass-face” before bursting into tears.
Can you imagine Anne and this guy out to dinner? Demanding to see the chef, sending the steak back, berating the wait staff?
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on March 2, 2011 at 9:15 am
Cooze, I’ll bet they don’t tip well — unless someone is watching. Or they’re going to blog about what great tippers they are.
Re: NYT paywall pending — Forbes seems to think this is going to work out just fine:
http://blogs.forbes.com/greatspeculations/2011/02/21/nyts-online-paywall-has-more-ups-than-downs-for-stock/
What I don’t see taken into consideration is that this 15% “heavy users” may generate 95% (or more) of the links that generate the 30+ million page views. Times of London is being very cagey about releasing current info, and is just talking about the new subscribers, but those numbers aren’t in and of themselves going to support the ad dollars currently incoming.
Again, I’m not saying it all should be free, I just can’t see how the model can be yanked on over here and everyone say “oh, it won’t show any impact over there.” It’s all coming down, and needs a fundamental rebuilding.
Went to a talk at Denison about a new medieval manuscript in the collections donated by an alum, and Fred talked about how most incunabula were sold unbound – you paid more for bound, it was an extra, not something guys who ran those new Gutenberg deals wanted to mess with, their hands covered with ink and all. Go bind it yourself, OK?
What “everybody does” is rarely “always,” let alone “everyone.”
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Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on March 2, 2011 at 9:17 am
also whistling past the graveyard on a moonless night — http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=105317&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1534925&highlight=
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prospero said on March 2, 2011 at 9:20 am
Brian,
The great glass crescendo building of all time was the new IM Pei Prudentialtower in Boston, back in the day. Gigantic panes of glass just dematerialized from the side of that building and hit the sidewalk as shards. They ended up with some bizarre vacuum effect HVAC and temperature control system that caused the sheets of glass to implode rather than explode, so, presumably, only people inside with good health plans got showered with glass, instead of random passersby going to the Mother Church of Christian Science, right around the corner, who I expect, don’t buy insurance. After all Jesus Christ is their physician.
And Frank Rich was a culture vulture for years, and wrote reviews. Somewhere along the line he got pissed off about the state of American political existance. Barracudas vs. herring doesn’t serve the people. If he’s moving to magazines, he better go long form. And that could be a mighty thing to see and read. Guy knows what he’s talking about, and he’s an elegant writer. Anyway, when I no longer have the NYT on paper on Sunday, I won’t get up and put on the Koln concerts and make brilliant breakfasts with major league pork products and lots of butter. My world will diminish. I’ll still get back into bed to fool around, but it will not be as much fun anymore.
My favorite thing about JSchool, besides having real newspaper people for faculty, was the “liberry”. We had every good paper known to mankind. It was an island in the sea of tranquility that college is. Everything is available.
My dad frequently used the trope (that was a meme before somebody thought they had to embellish) about the world is your oyster. I know what he meant, and I cherish his intentions. He was absurdly brilliant. He was a brilliant pediatrician. He left that specialty late in life and became a board certified ER doc, at which he was also brilliant. Then he got bored with the ER firefighters hours and took up law school. At which he also excelled. AT 60 something my dad scored better on the LSAT than my brother that was saluditorian of his law school class at UVA. I’ve always thought this was hilarious.
Never took the law exam. I did take the Miller Analogies and came up with a 149/150 and I’d defy those aholes to tell me what I might have gotten wrong. To this day, my 790 on the verbal SAT is obvious bullshit to me, and undoubtedly a failure on the administrative side. On the math, if you don’t have a clue, you pick the answer that might be reasonable, you prove it back through the problem. This was my method. got a 680.
I’ve always wondered if there was a way to earn money taking standardized tests for other people.
People will follow Frank Rich. His opinion means something. He called out that hillbilly cheroot of the moron Bush better than anybody. Did somebody think that shithole actually put the costs of thee invasion in the bufget? Whoops? We acted like that didn’t happen and we put it on the darkie.
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prospero said on March 2, 2011 at 9:51 am
What I think about Frank Rich is that he’s a superb writer. I mean, really good. William Buckley good. I believe William Buckley is the single most despicable sophist shithead that ever lived. He never believed in anything he supported in print. It’s my belief that Buckley believed in social justice. I’m sure he did. Buckleys great moment was his confrontation with Gore Vidal. “If you call me a neo-Nazi” again, I’ll Punch you in the face. Or Howard K. Smith on Bobby. He wasn’t having any. What an asshole. Could anybody claim it wouldn’t be a better country if Bobby had been the President?
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prospero said on March 2, 2011 at 9:59 am
It does seem obvious that everything would be way better if Bobby Kennedy wouldn’t have been murdered and would have been the president. Instead of Nixon. All this corporate shit woulld not have taken place. It’s sort of strange. The Kennedy’s had their own cash. They would never have felt obliged to the Kochs. So we end up with assholes like Wanker? This is ridiculous.
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brian stouder said on March 2, 2011 at 12:28 pm
Prospero, what happened to Bobby almost makes me a believer in conspiracies. I say “almost” because crazy runs deep in our country, and in 1968 things were a lot crazier than usual.
There’s a sort of symmetry between the link to the excellent civil war series Nance linked to, and this discussion of the right man at the right time in 1968; or at least I think there would have been, if Bobby could have lived even a little longer
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prospero said on March 2, 2011 at 1:00 pm
Do you really think
winter’s Bone is a better movie than Frozen River? it isn’t. The lost baby regained. Awesome. And better movie. It was a better movie. Why’s they call them movie. That’s a much better ending. In the long run, the sean penn movie is better too.
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prospero said on March 2, 2011 at 5:06 pm
Really Nancy, do you think that was a better movie than Frozen River? Or whatever. It was not. Now what about? Eggs and bacon. A breakfast without pork products is an opportnuity wasted. And we In’t no Cholly Sheen Is this guy seriously such an ahole that even his apparently righteous brother won’t try to help him. . Real bacon andreal sausage, that be breakfast. when you can afford the time. It tastes best, and if we aren’t fatasses yet, we find it delicious on our biscuits. Bacon isn’t fattening we do it once a week , we commute by bikes. we’re still pretty skinny. f this is supposedly not healthy eating, so sorry. nothing is better than a sausage biscuit with hot mustard and a brewski for breakfast. Breakfast of hampions.
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prospero said on March 2, 2011 at 6:25 pm
It was a very good movie and decidedly derivative. It robbed off Frozen river like it was going out of style. . Movies steal from movies. Just watch Leon. , a wonderful movie. It was the sensible version of Taxi Driver, and, Sense in bloodshed instead of wholly senseless bloodshed.I think. a better movie. Better movie, for sure. And Raging Bull sucked. I mean, it was an atrociouss improvised piece of shit. Fuck as every part of speach for an hour and a half. Bag it Bobby Deniro. try hiring writers. That was bullshit. I know everybody else thinks that was brilliant, sorry, I thought it was crap, and there is no way I believe the actual fighter is that much of a moron. Maybe he is. The portrayal made him out to be subhuman. Raging Bull was a piece of shit movie. Moronic. and terminally abusive. I’d question the sanity of anybody that claims to have enjoyed that POS movie. The great Robert DiNiro movie was unquestionably the one where he played the bounty hunter after the Duke. And Deerhunter was astounding. , Hasn’t Robert DiNiro been making bullshit for cash for a long time. Michael Caine threw in the excellent occasionally, like Old Lions, a seriously good movie, and Robert Duvall was in that too. Robert DeNiro continues to make awful movies. Fokkers? Is he Focking kidding? For the cash? Because these are not even remotely funny movies. And drags Dustin Hoffman into this shit? What is wrong with these two guys? Not enough cash? It sucks when great actors make dogass movies.
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prospero said on March 2, 2011 at 6:31 pm
Seriousy, if somebody finds it clever to call a movie Little Fokkers please ‘splain it to me, I did’t get it, you idjits. What sort of stupidity? Who needs this crass crap?
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