The Dude's Abode

Bulldog Realtors (Venice, CA) listed The Dude's Big Lebowski house for sale this week.  All you need is $2.3 million and a rug to tie the room together.  Click here for the listing and a virtual tour of the renovated compound.

Family Circus v2.0

As if The Family Circus comics weren't hilarious enough, Cracked.com has taken artistic license to create "6 Family Circus Cartoons Improved With Offensive Jokes".  Click here and be amused, but take heed - this isn't exactly your grandmother's Family Circus.

It's Gotta Be The Shoes

I wonder which pair of shoes is as good as advertised? Skechers Shape-Ups or Reebok Easytones.  So goes the internal dialogue among countless easy marks these days, who are surely browsing chat rooms to seek out that a-ha! moment that seals the deal.   I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but they'd be better served using their shoes as a delivery device for three square meals of SlimFast.  And I oughta know.  I had a pair of Reebok Pumps when I was 13... trust me when I tell you the footwear gimmicks are 99.9% of the time just that. 

The Reebok Pump, as you may recall, had a pump on the tongue that would inflate the shoe to fit tighter around the ankle.  It was my teenage boy's understanding that the benefits of said shoes would assuredly be twofold:
a) I would finally have a sound, technology-based reason for my mother to agree I needed these new shoes, so that I could finally get rid of my Voits.  The Voit brand was like a scarlet letter announcing to all of North Davie Junior High School that the unlucky wearer (me) had parents on a budget. The Voits really wreaked havoc with my cool status in junior high.  I believe they were only available at Roses department stores. Enough said.
b) I would gain no less than three feet on my vertical jump.  NBA all-star and slam-dunk champion Dominique Wilkins wore them with much success.  My experience would surely be identical.

Spoiler alert: turns out those results weren't typical.   I was too naive to grasp the mythical notion that along with the shoes, I would also need practice, dedication, willpower, and some semblance of innate athletic ability. As it turns out, my world revolved around more attainable goals like playing Super Mario Bros. 2 and watching RollerGames while wearing my Reebok Pumps.

Considering I weighed more at age 13 than Dominique Wilkins (and most likely the collective starting 5 of the Atlanta Hawks) did in his prime, the theory of gravity also escaped me.  Simple physics weren't going to permit me any vertical jump, much less an improved vertical jump.  I had to return my Pumps within a week because, immediately after inflation, they would begin to leak air. All of the air.  That's right.  I blew out a Reebok Pump at a casual amble.  Pump! Pump! Pump! Sssssssss!  That's a real boost to the self-esteem of a young male... to have to ask for his money back because the engineers at Reebok hadn't properly accounted for the immense pressure his average gait would place on their product.

Be forewarned.  It won't really make a difference whether the Shape-Ups or the Easytones are the purchase of choice.   For that matter, the equally as God-awful and unexplainably trendy Crocs or foot gloves would also be a fine alternative.  Regardless, the shoes aren't going to do the work.  As I learned from my Reebok Pumps, there's a lot more to self improvement than footwear.

Happy Saturday!

Rock & Roll March Madness

Earlier this month, Colin Cowherd, host of ESPN Radio's The Herd revealed "The Herd Rock Band Bracket", a single-elimation tournament featuring 64 of the (arguably) best rock and roll bands of all-time.  The early rounds really are no-brainers (The Beatles vs. Creed?!), much like the match-ups in the NCAA tournament, but it can make for some interesting discussion.  The winning bands are decided by popular vote, so click here to weigh in.  Although the Final Four has already been decided, you can still print out an original bracket below and start a lively debate with your friends.  Let the games begin.

What Is Internet?

A Taste Of The Carolinas: Part Deux

Where was I? Oh yeah - the Cheerwine kreme-filled Krispy Kreme doughnut that I was supposed to have reviewed 2 months ago...  True to form, I procrastinated and finally got a box of these on July 31, the last day they were available (until 2011 anyway, maybe forever). Essentially, the doughnut was pretty much what I expected.  But I was surprised at how true to the taste of Cheerwine the "kreme" filling was; otherwise there were no big taste explosions or revelations to relate here.

In hindsight, the idea of this doughnut is sort of like a french tickler in a truckstop vending machine - the novelty creates a desire to have one, but what are you really going to do with it?  I know I'm an easy mark (I also want a Shark steam mop based on an infomercial I saw while walking on a treadmill), and I will admit I got ahead of myself with North Carolina pride on this one, because the doughnut itself breaks my entire short list of unwritten doughnut commandments right out of the box: 1) doughnuts shall have holes  2) doughnuts shall not have gooey cream filling, and  3) doughnuts shall not possess an outer layer of frosting and/or sprinkles.

So, to sum it up, the Cheerwine kreme-filled Kripsy Kreme doughnut -- Novel, yes. Edible, quite. A marriage of two NC institutions that make me swell with pride, absolutely. BUT... Krispy Kreme's best offering? Hardly. I'll stick with the original glazed from here on out, and so should you.

AAAACK!

It was announced in late August that the Cathy comic strip would be ending in October. I was floored. Dumbfounded.  Aghast that Cathy was still published.  No one outside of Cathy's target market (which I assume consists primarily of single women of questionable sexual orientation, much like the title character) will notice or care.  Nothing against Cathy specifically, but comic strips are just another dying art form that can't seem to find a place in our modern age.

When's the last time you really read and laughed out loud over a comic strip?  I haven't had an ounce of interest in the "funny papers" since Gary Larson retired The Far Side in 1995. (Moment of silence...)  There's no way to pinpoint exactly what set the Far Side apart from the other frames that cluttered up the comics page, but it was inarguably the Seinfeld of comic strips - absurd, ironic, polarizing, about nothing at all, yet hilariously relatable and memorable.  As required reading, I strongly encourage that you spend your hard-earned dough for the hardbound edition of The Complete Far Side, a two-volume set that contains the whole shebang of over 4,000 Far Side cartoons.

On a side semi-related note, here's Exhibit Z illustrating what an odd-ball kid I was... Long before I realized that a person could exchange money for goods like Far Side calendars and comic strip compilations, I would hoard the funnies from the Winston-Salem Journal in a yellow cloth suitcase, clip out the Far Side cartoons on rainy days, and then glue them into my very own Far Side scrapbook.  Aaaack, indeed.

I've Seen It All In A Small Town VI

A Taste Of The Carolinas

Sorry, 48 other states and District of Columbia, but you can't have one.  Cheerwine Kreme Filled Krispy Kreme doughnuts are hitting the shelves today in approximately 1,000 grocery stores across North and South Carolina.  The only way that this doughnut could be any more North Carolinian would be if two of them were sandwiched around a hunk of barbecue, and a Camel cigarette was placed in the center, birthday-candle style.  These are only going to be available in July.  My wife has balked at the concept, but I will administer a taste test before these disappear from the shelves.  Stay tuned.....

Hillbilly vs. Bigfoot

This will be the grudge match of the century.  I wonder who will win - the hairy beast that lives in the woods or Bigfoot?

I Pity The Fool

The A-Team was once the highlight of my Tuesday evenings.  In elementary school, three of my friends and I formed an authentic schoolyard re-creation of the A-Team.  Our group never fought as soldiers of fortune, though.  We existed really for no other reason than to call one another by our character names: Hannibal, Face, Murdock, and B.A.  The square-jawed blonde kid was Hannibal, because blonde was as close as you could get to gray at age 8. Face was in constant rotation, depending on who was in our good graces at the time, because even as boys, men won't dare admit that one of their own is handsome. By default, the lone black kid in the class was B.A., and yours truly was Murdock, primarily because there wasn't a true-to-life A-Team character that ate too much macaroni & cheese and wore husky jeans.
 
I was a marketer's dream, falling hook, line, and sinker for anything and everything emblazoned with an A-Team logo.  I even had an official A-Team Action Activity Book that consisted mostly of word puzzles.  It seemed a wise purchase for $ 1.95 at the Pinebrook Elementary School book fair, but turned out to be a dud, with puzzles like the one that  instructed me to unscramble the following letters to find the name of an A-Team member - DURMOCK. The book had a picture of the cast on the back of the cheap cardboard cover, and one Saturday, I cut the picture out and took it to the little league baseball field, hoping to convince the younger, more gullible kids that I was indeed a close, personal friend of the A-Team.  Faced with any doubt, I'd simply whip out the picture as proof of this solid relationship.  Certainly the A-Team wouldn't hand out flimsy cardboard headshots to just anyone.  Turns out my gig was up pretty much before it started. A quick-thinking kindergartner called my bluff, noting that my photographic evidence had been snipped a little too crudely around the edges.  Apparently, my wife is right--even then, I lacked attention to detail. I could have gnawed the picture out with my teeth and gotten a cleaner cut.

This weekend, the television series I recall with such nostalgia is being released (2000s style) on the big screen.  I won't be seeing it. Hollywood's penchant for remaking television shows is long standing but never affected me personally until they began tinkering with shows from my generation (i.e., rewriting history and pissing on my childhood memories). 2005's The Dukes Of Hazzard is outright sacrilege.  The real Uncle Jesse has been dead for a while, and I'm sure he was rolling over in his grave when that piece of garbage hit the theaters.  Similarly, I cannot and will not accept that Rampage Jackson, an ultimate fighting goon, is now playing B.A. Baracus. There has always been and will forever be only one B.A. Baracus (rumor has it that the real Mr. T has seen and is not too fond of the remake), just as there is one Luke Duke, and even one Karate Kid.

With precious few exceptions, they got it right the first time.

Now Hear This

Record companies tend to spoonfeed us the overproduced music that they want to market (and that a handful of their "target listeners" have told them they want to hear in so-called market research), as opposed to the music we might actually want to hear.  This mass-market approach to music will eventually become the death knell for commercial radi0--maybe not in the near future, but at some point. Trust me. 

But take heart, music lovers -- really good, original music is still out there; it just needs to be sought out.  Thankfully, the finding has become a whole lot easier with the introduction and evolution of iTunes, XM satellite radio, Pandora, etc.

I suppose that the evolutionary accessibility of wide ranges and styles of music via the aforementioned internet phemnomena could also put the final nail in the coffin of the great American jukebox, as well.  And the fact that it now takes paper money to feed a jukebox doesn't help--remeber quarter songs?!  My cousin and I used to mess around with old 45s that had been in an old jukebox that my granddad used to own, so I've always had an affinity for and a desire to have an old jukebox of my own.  I told a friend about this a few years back, and he held up his Dell DJ and said, "That's essentially what this is - a jukebox."  Shortly thereafter, I got a Dell DJ of my own.  I endured a lot of good-natured ribbing from friends for having an MP3 player without an Apple logo seared onto the backside, but I later upgraded to the iPod when my DJ crashed (surprise, surprise...).  And having had a genuine iPod for more than 3 years now, I am still amazed that I can have 28,288 songs on a single device that's not that much larger than the pack of More cigarettes that my mom used to buy at Food Fair. In essence, I have that jukebox I always wanted, and then some...

Submitted below, for your review and feedback, are some of the more recent albums and tracks (among the 28,288) that have been in rotation on my iPod.  My musical taste changes pretty frequently, and I really believe that music is more subjective than any other form of entertainment, so I won't bother with assigning grades to the tunes.  Just give them a listen and judge for yourself.  Allow me to spoonfeed you for a change (instead of those dull, canned, banal radio stations you have programmed into numbers 1-6 on your car radio):

• The Meters - Funkify Your Life
• Citay - Dream Get Together
• Drive By Truckers - The Big To-Do
• Rocketface - Rocketface
• Dangermuffin - Beermuda
• The Gourds - Haymaker
• Them Crooked Vultures - Them Crooked Vultures
• Cold War Kids - Behave Yourself EP
• Alberta Cross - Broken Side Of Time
• One Eskimo - "Kandi"
• Zeus - "The Renegade"
• Locksley - "The Whip"
• Hooded Fang - "Land of Giants"

I've Seen It All In A Small Town V

Breakfast Meat Bonus Track

It's been established that I love bacon, but not as much as Randy Taylor enjoys sausage.

Best....Bacon....Ever

If you've never been to New Jersey, then you likely envision some stereotypically negative scenes at the mere mention of said state - hypodermic needles littering the shore, corrupt politicians, big hair, bad drivers, and Snooki.  My wife and I visited our friends Mike, Michelle, and Milo in Princeton, NJ, several weeks ago, and thankfully we got to experience a side of Jersey that few really know exists -- wildlife, picturesque farmland, colonial history, and bacon.  Delicious, succulent, out-of-this-world bacon. 

Michelle snagged some honey-maple bacon at Smoker's Deli, a vendor at a Pennsylvania Dutch farmer's market in Princeton (they were either Amish or Mennonite -- either way, they had no trouble plugging the cash register in and making it sing, so they're pretty progressive) and cooked it up for breakfast. Now, Mike & Michelle had raved about this bacon, to the point that my expectations were so high that they couldn't possibly be met....or could they? 

First of all, this bacon was thick and meaty, as any good breakfast meat should be.  If you have bacon that's tissue-paper thin, what little goodness that's there will melt away as grease.  When this happens, all you've done is dirtied a pan and insulted your tastebuds.  On presentation alone, this bacon had already scored higher marks than what I'd give most restaurant bacon.  Next, it was time to dine on swine.  Five hundred miles I'd flown, so this better be good.

The bite started out with a slight saltiness.  It was just enough to remind me that I'd have to heed Larry King's advice to pop a tablet of Garlique later in the day.  BUT the sweetness that followed was more than unique -- it was incredible.  Each bite was better than the last.  It was a carnival of sweet-salty flavor blanketed by a tent of deliciousness.  Truly perfection.  This was seriously the best bacon ever.  My mind draws a blank when I try to think of the right adjective(s) for this, the most awesome breakfast meat that I have ever eaten.  The tag team of sweet and salty had never been so perfectly in sync as it was at the table that morning.  The "ooh"-ing and "aah"-ing over this bacon rang like a chorus that was equal parts religious, sexual, and psychedelic, and it was the only true testament to a taste that can't be summed up in writing.  It's a shame it didn't last longer.  There was no self control, and soon, there was no bacon. 

Needless to say, the trip was worth it - if not for the company of old friends, then definitely for that bacon.  It bums me out, though, that this deliciousness is found so far north.  North Carolina has a person-to-pig ratio of 1.03 to 1! We can't get enough pork down here -- as country ham, barbeque (chopped, pulled and whole hog), sausage, chops, and the list goes on. But do we really know the pig like we think we do?! Not if we can't crack this elusive, top-secret, Princeton, New Jersey Pennsylvania-Dutch honey-maple bacon recipe. Even if it's terribly complicated, we've got plenty of pigs to spare for trial and error, so let's get on the ball.  Or it could it be that it's so painfully simple and right under our noses.  Those damn yankees have never been more maddening.

Bug Flies Into Reporter's Mouth

It may take several viewings, but see if you can pinpoint the exact moment when this reporter throws professionalism out the window.  Parental Advisory: Salty Language

Movie Purge: March

Gran Torino was the first DVD that I got when I joined Netflix in December, and it only took me 3 months to watch it.  Lest you think I'm wasteful, I've been taking greater advantage of their streaming service through my Xbox.  This movie is Clint Eastwood to the core, with the nearly 80-year-old actor serving as director, producer, star, and even getting credit for writing music for the film.  It's also vintage Eastwood, playing the type of hard-nosed, no B.S. character that's made him a Hollywood legend.  This time, Eastwood stars as Walt Kowalski, a prejudiced blue collar Michigan veteran who's living in a neighborhood with a growing Hmong population that many, including Kowlaski, aren't thrilled to see moving in.  Kowalski hesitantly bonds with the Hmong family next door and sets out to reform a wayward youth while taking a stand against gang violence.  B

For All Mankind chronicles Apollo 11 and the first manned flight to the moon.  This doc consists entirely of original NASA footage that made the cut from over 6,000,000 feet of film.  There is no voiceover - the only voices throughout the film, aside from a small clip of JFK's 1962 speech declaring that we'd go to the moon by the end of the decade,  are of the astronauts and mission control.  The visual element is awesome.  There's great footage of blastoff, orbit, and landing, as well as clips of the astronauts on the moon.  What struck me most was a shot of the Earth, as seen from Apollo 11, growing more distant -- I wondered at how alternately exhilirating and terrifying it must be to be a pioneer in infinite blackness.  B-

Shakes The Clown is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Long and short, it stars Bobcat Goldthwait as a clown and follows his misadventures living in Palookaville, a community of... clowns. I'd heard that it's got a huge cult following, but I'm not drinking the Kool-Aid.  The only redeeming value is a few very bawdy lines from LaWanda Page (Aunt Esther from Sanford & Son).  That still won't raise the grade from an F.

You're Gonna Miss Me is an excellent documentary that profiles Roky Erickson, the lead singer of the 13th Floor Elevators, an underrated 1960's band that was a pioneer in psychedelic rock.  Erickson hovered somewhere around the corner of Genius and Lunatic, and took the 'psychedelic' term too literally.  After battling through LSD binges, schizophrenia, shock therapy, and a stint in which he thought aliens were coming after him, he still hasn't received care enough to fully come back to Earth.  A

Born To Be Mild

I thumped a pit bull in the testicles once.  I was young, innocent, and hadn't yet learned about the equal and opposite reaction caused by pressurized contact to the testes.  Blue was the name of my grandmother's pit bulldog, and why he didn't rip my throat out after I did that, I'll never know.  He was enjoying a nice summertime snooze, lying on his side on the linoleum floor with his back legs crossed.  I wondered to myself - what's that dangling between Blue's crossed legs?  I calculated my aim precisely, followed through with the fiercest thump I could muster, and heard three distinct sounds - the "whoosh" of my finger whizzing through the air, the "fwap!" of impact, and a cartoonish series of "yelps" as Blue ran from one corner of the house to another exhibiting that mixture of pain, shock, and fury that males of all species can appreciate.  It was the closest I'd ever come to a potential mauling.

That lone incident aside, I'm not a dangerous person and have never taken to rough-housing or staring death in the face, but lately I've been considering turning over a new, harder-nosed leaf.  Gangland, a documentary-style series on the History Channel, has given me this new inspiration, and each weekly episode plays as a de facto recruiting tool.  The burning question, though, is how do I, with no "bad boy" experience, find the gang that's right for me?

Ethnically, I'm barred from the obvious gangs - Crips, Bloods, MS13, etc. - and am too much of a pansy for the streets.  I'd probably gravitate toward the gangs that offer incentives, such as motorcycles and cool leather vests.  The list quickly dwindles here.  The Mongols almost always require at least some fraction of Hispanic background.  The Hell's Angels are too chic and trendy at this point.  They're like the department store of motorcycle gangs, when what I really want is to be a part of a mom-and-pop club.  I thought I'd finally hit paydirt when I saw an episode of Gangland featuring the lesser-known, homegrown motorcycle gang the Devil's Diciples.  Everything sounded great - Harleys, chicanery, ol' ladies - but then I looked a little closer.  They spell their name wrong.  It is literally D-i-c-i-p-l-e-s, and everyone knows it should be D-i-s-c-i-p-l-e-s. 

As the 1986 Spelling Bee champion in Mrs. Simmons' 4th grade class, it's really my obligation to be troubled by the fact that they've left the "s" out of 'diciples,'  More importantly, shouldn't it bother the 'diciples' themselves? Has none of them noticed such an obvious grammatical faux pas?  As polarizing as their morals (or lack thereof) might be, there's still somebody somewhere that's responsible for at least a tiny bit of PR work.  Is the guy at Kinko's too intimidated to call their spelling into question when they drop their pamphlets off?  Does the sweet old lady that sews the patches onto their vests not have the courage to point out such an egregious error?  Allegedly, the 'diciples' misspell the name intentionally, but when I tried to copy an image from one of their affiliated websites, the warning window below popped up, proving that they're not only habitually poor spellers (carefull?), but they don't know their contractions.

And so, the Diciples  represent yet another gang of which I can never be a part. In the end, maybe it's a safer option to be a one-man gang, bound by both the laws of man and the King's English.  I hereby proclaim the inception of the Grammatics. Grrrrrrrr.

Go Ahead, Bite The Big Apple

If you've never taken a moment to peruse the FDA's Defect Levels Handbook, then you'll probably never want to.  The Defect Levels Handbook is a government publication that lists levels of contamination (mold, insect parts, filth, hair, etc.) in food that are acceptable and pose no health hazard.  For example, pizza sauce may safely contain either 30 fly eggs or 2 maggots per hundred grams (just not both, which is nice).  If you'd rather remain oblivious to what you might be ingesting, then steer clear of this link that contains a complete list of incidental contaminants.