Hunger Games Trailer
BooksMovies
Hey! I think I know some people who might be interested in this.
Julian in Ancient Garb
FamilyMusic
Here’s my grandson Julian wearing one of my brother Gary’s old “Desserts” t-shirts. Desserts was the name of Gary’s band back in the early ’70s. So that would be like me wearing a medieval jerkin…or something. So old…so old…
Anyway, it fits Julian to a “T” – heh.
Speaking of Desserts, look what the google found: an ancient recording of “Bernadette” performed by Desserts several thousand years ago at the Royal Oak Music Theater (I think). “Bernadette” was one of my favorite Desserts songs back then. I’s a clever and catchy song about Motown Records leaving Detroit, using snippets of other Motown songs. It was written by local guy Stuart Mitchell, and in this version, Gary Rosenberg is singing. I believe Motown songwriter/artist Eddie Kendricks also recorded it in the early ’80s.
Give it a listen:
Mike Tyson does Herman Cain
Bawndo! It's what plants craveClown shoesLaugh dammit, it's funny!
Who knew that Mike Tyson was funny?
“Because The Tea Party loves Crazy more than they hate Blacks.” Now that’s pretty funny.
It is election day after all, albeit an off, off year election. But on the day that the “Screw the Middle Class Act” was defeated in Ohio, and the “Every Sperm is Sacred Act” was defeated in Mississippi, what could be better than a Mike Tyson video?
Cain!
Julian Turns One Year Old!
Family
Julian had his first birthday yesterday. Erin and Gabe had a party for him at our house. It was a great time, especially for the birthday boy. Lots of presents, lots of great food, lots of friends. Here are a few pictures and a video.
El Az Chicken Enchiladas!
EatingHeart AttacksRecipes
I made one of my favorite things tonight: Chicken Enchiladas a la El Azteco. El Azteco, or “El Az” as it reverently called, is a tex-mex restaurant in East Lansing, Michigan, home of Michigan State University. When I attended MSU back in the stone age, El Az was a dingy basement restaurant on M.A.C. St., which is off of Grand River Ave., right across from the Student Union. Now, El Az is a full-fledged 2 story restaurant about a half a block from its old location that features rooftop dining and pretty much the same wonderful food that I enjoyed 30 something years ago.
They had 2 kinds of chicken enchilada. One had a red sauce, and it was okay. The other was called “chili verde” and a green and white sauce (get it? green and white? MSU?) that was hotter. That’s the one I liked. I found a recipe on the internet that is allegedly from an ex-employee of El Az. It sounded completely crazy, but when I made it, well, that was it! Here’s the recipe. It makes way too much food, so you can cut the recipe in half, or better, just freeze half of the sauce and chicken for future eating.
1. Chicken. You need a mess of chicken, like 4-5 pounds. So I used thighs because of, you know, the cheapness, and they have a lot of flavor. Boil the chicken until tender. It’s best to boil with some celery, carrots, onions, and tomato paste, but you don’t have to. When it’s done, shred it with 2 forks and put it in a bowl.
2. The sauce. Chop off the stems from 10-12 jalapenos. You can remove the seeds and pith from the peppers if you want a milder sauce, or leave them in for a hotter sauce, or remove half of them for a medium sauce. Put the peppers in a food processor and process. You need 2 cans of cream of mushroom soup. No, wait! Don’t go away. I know It sounds nuts, but work with me here. Add the 2 cans of soup to the peppers, then add a 16 ounce container of sour cream. Add 2 or 3 tablespoons or so of cumin depending on your level of cumin love, and a 1/2 cup of water. Stir.
Heat a corn tortilla in pan & flip it over so it’s soft. put in a little chicken and some shredded cheese and roll it up like a fat cigar. Put it in a baking dish. Do this many times until the pan is full. Spoon the sauce over the enchiladas and cover with grated cheese. You can put some scallions on top if you want. Then bake at 350 until the cheese starts to brown. Eat the enchiladas. Yum!
The Kings of October!
Heart AttacksSportsYelling at my TeeVee
Wow! Just wow! A blocked field goal, a safety by rule, going for and getting 2 points after TD, then with game tied 31-31, a Hail Mary with 4 seconds left, and “upon further review…” I was just sitting in a chair watching the game drinking a Belgian ale, and I was exhausted! And I probably had several heart attacks.
So MSU upsets #6 Wisconsin! Last week MSU upsets Michigan. Week before that MSU upsets Ohio State. I know, next week is Nebraska, but for the Kings of October…who knows? They might just pull out another one – any given Saturday. Here are some highlights.
UPDATE: Highlights gone.
The Corporation
Class WarfareOur Failed Media ExperimentSociopaths
I was looking for something to watch on Netflix last night. It’s getting harder and harder. I started a couple movies, but after about 10 minutes I had to bail. They were bad. Netflix bad – a new genre of bad.
In the “New Cult Films” section, they had this documentary “The Corporation.” It had 5 stars – unheard of for anything on Netflix, it won a bunch of international awards, so I started watching. Turns out “new” means 9 years old in Netflix-speak. It was about 75 hours long, but I watched the whole thing.
The film examines and criticizes corporate business practices. It compares the way corporations are systematically compelled to behave with the American Psychiatric Association’s symptoms of psychopathy right out of the “Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.”
It also addresses some things you very rarely hear about in America, the “Business Plot of 1933” where General Smedley Butler exposed a plot by several large corporations against then U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt to take over the government & set up a fascist state; Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warning people to beware of the rising military-industrial complex; suppression of an investigative news story about Monsanto’s Bovine Growth Hormone on a Fox News Channel affiliate television station (note to self: never, EVER drink milk unless organic); the Cochabamba protests of 2000 brought on by the privatization of Bolivia’s municipal water supply (that’s right, WATER!) by the Bechtel Corporation; and other corporate devilry. [UPDATE: turns out in the last couple years, most milk producers have stopped using rBGH b/c of consumer complaints, but not all, so consult the Google before purchase.]
The film features interviews with lefties such as Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein (who I’ve read, but never realizedhow much she looks like Meg Griffin), Michael Moore, and a few corporate CEOs who have either turned against their masters, or are in the film as foils. And lots of other people I’ve read but never seen.
It’s worth watching during one of those times when you want to feel depressed and crappy for a while. Here’s a trailer:
Detroit Coney Wars
Eating
I was watching the Michigan-Michigan State game yesterday (28-14 MSU – heh) and during halftime was flipping though the channels and stumbled upon the Travel Channel’s “Food Wars.” The episode was “Detroit Coney Wars – American v. Lafayette.”
Although I was a big Athens fan during my misspent youth, that was simply because it was the closest. I’d be eating sooner. You understand. But American and Lafayette are the originals – a kind of Mecca for coney connoisseurs. Plus, they sell beer.
American Coney Island opened in downtown Detroit in 1917, by Greek immigrant Gust Keros. Keros and his brother got into an argument quite soon after and split their restaurant into two parts–the present day Lafayette and American Coney Islands, which are next door to each other. Both restaurants are still owned by the descendants of the two Keros brothers.
In the Food Wars episode, they had fans from each restaurant voting based on a blind taste test. To the credit of the fans, they all chose their preferred restaurant in the blind taste test, even though the coneys each restaurant serves are almost identical. The tie was broken by a food writer from one of the newspapers who voted for American.
NEW LOOK SPARTANS!!
Sports
WOW! The new Nike Combat Uniform is unveiled in East Lansing, MI today at Spartan Stadium as the MSU Spartans take on the Michigan Wolverines for the 104th time (67-31-5 U of M). I don’t know how I feel about this look? I’m more of a traditional kinda guy. In fact I’m so traditional that I think they should bring back the leather helmets of the 1930’s and 40’s…..OK U of M just ran a fake field goal for a first down. I’ve got to go, MSU needs me to watch this game and to make nachos while having a beer in my new “Go Fish” beer stein. I’m sure you all understand.
P.S. Tigers V. Texas tonight at 8:05pm from Arlington, TX. Go TIGERS!!!!!!
Rangers just went up 3-2
Sports
I hate them and I must stop watching. Let’s talk about something else.
I don’t know if you noticed the amazing awesomeness of my weather widget on the News page or not, but you should. The cool thing about it is that it figures out where you are based on your IP address, and displays the weather for that city. I know! I’ll give you a minute to let the awesomeness of that sink in. If it can’t figure out where you are, it displays the weather for Rehoboth Beach. Why not?
Tigers just retired the inning. I’ll watch them bat, I guess.