Nil by mouth - Roger Ebert's Journal

Nil by mouth - Roger Ebert's Journal: "starts"

If It's Mangino, Expect This Blog to Resume in Force

So Fucking Fired

No Comment

Things Georgia Gubernatorial Candidates Have Stuck Their Penises In For $500, Alex

Georgia gubernatorial candidate Neil Horsley is running on The Creator's Rights Party ticket. He's anti-abortion and gay sex, except for when it's experimental, and is extremely in favor of killing abortion doctors -- even going so far as to publish Old West-style wanted posters (the U.S. government asked him to stop doing this, characterizing it as "too subtle"). He's also admittedly anti-American, pro-secession, and is generally in favor of terrorism.

Oh, and he's fucked a mule. And a watermelon. And "just about everything it's physically possible to have sex with, and some that isn't." Say what you will, but at least an anti-abortion/pro-bestiality philosophy offers those kids a plausible alternative to doin' the nasty.

Anyway, to our Georgia readers, you know what to do. Palin/Horsley 2012, baby!

Best Swine Flu Cartoons

It's Like He's Speaking My Soul

Matt Taibbi has a sports column at Men's Journal. It's the perfect combination of vitriol, snappy prose, and bald sensibility that fans of his know and love.

Brett Favre: Honestly, if I hear that fucker’s name one more time, I swear I’m going to drive a bus full of kids off a cliff. There must be numbers from some marketing genius somewhere that show that every time his face appears on TV, two more hicks in Arkansas buy bags of Cheetos and five more pill-popping trailer housewives decide to blow off making home lunches and spend their welfare checks feeding their kids at Applebee’s. I guess I understand it. Football skills aside, Favre is, wrapped in one package, everything that attracts the attention of the superfluous sports hack: an emotional story line about a deceased “hero” dad; an activist, cancer-surviving wife who likes the camera and who never hesitates to go on at length about her and her husband’s “awesome” relationship; an inspirational recovery from pill addiction; a willingness to go on air with Greta Van Susteren; and a seemingly endless, once-a-year, will-he-or-won’t-he retirement controversy. Favre is also a half-literate white southerner who played in the northern Midwest (from a marketing point of view, he’s like both halves of a presidential ticket), giving him natural appeal to all the key demographics. As much as I can’t stand Favre, I’m hoping he outlives me, because the Tim Russert effect after his death would be overwhelming.

Offered Without Comment

Oh, wow.

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas (AP) - Seven employees at a state-run home for the mentally disabled have been suspended for allegedly staging a "fight club" among residents.

TGRWT #15: Smoked Salmon & Dark Chocolate

One of our favorite food blogs, Khymos, runs a monthly event called "They Go Really Well Together." They pick two ingredients that aren't commonly used together -- but scientifically should be compatible -- and challenge bloggers to create a recipe featuring the pair. Here is our first foray into the unknown, featuring this month's pair: smoked salmon and dark chocolate.

Smoked Salmon Cigars with Dark Chocolate Mole

Cigars
(2) 4.5oz packages Smoked Salmon
8oz whipped Cream Cheese
Lemon, with zest
Salt & Pepper
Phyllo dough
Butter, melted
Dark Chocolate Cocoa Powder

Combine cream cheese, lemon and zest. Salt and pepper to taste. Fill half sheets of phyllo dough with a strip of salmon and the cream cheese mixture, rolling dough into a cigar shape. Brush top of cigars with melted butter. Bake at 350 for 10-12 minutes, or until tops are lightly browned. Dust with cocoa powder.

Mole
Sesame Oil
Onion, diced
(6) cloves Garlic
3.5oz bar Dark Chocolate
28oz can Tomatoes
(6) dried Guajillo chiles
2tbs Pasilla chile powder
(10) Black Peppercorns
Mexican Oregano
Cinnamon
Cloves
Allspice
Fresh Thyme
Fennel Seeds
Tortilla, shredded.

Saute onion in sesame oil. When translucent, add all other ingredients to taste. Simmer for at least 45 minutes. Strain if desired.

Garnishes
Chives
Shaved Dark Chocolate
Lemon Zest
Sesame Seeds
Sesame Oil infused with Chiles

Serve cigar in a pool of mole, and garnish as desired.

RESULTS

Surprisingly, this worked exceptionally well from a flavor standpoint, and looked terrific (despite photographic evidence to the contrary). I wanted to make sure that the two featured ingredients were, well, featured. While the dark chocolate was assertive but not overpowering in the fairly simple mole, I thought I needed to up the chocolate factor a bit. The the shavings provided little bursts of chocolaty flavor, but weren't a distraction. The salmon/cream cheese cigars had a fantastic taste and consistency. Note that the lemon adds a needed hit of acid and lightness, and the sesame/chile oil helped tie everything together.

The only knock on the dish was that the phyllo wrappers weren't quite crisp enough. Were I to make these again, I'd probably use a slightly higher temp on the cigars, crisp them in a skillet, or substitute egg roll wrappers or puff pastry. A crunchy wrapper would make this a real winner.

Oops, I Crapped My Pants

(click pic for hi-res)

For those of you who are not up to date on this story, it appears that at a tailgate for the BCS National Championship game, an AOPi from the University of Florida ... weeeelll:

Received via third-hand email: "My friend saw this girl squatting near his tailgate for the [national championship] game [Thursday] night and thought she was just pissing until she stood up and came over to talk to them. That's when they noticed..." [ed. note: doody]

For reasons of common decency, Georgia Sports Blog later took down the pictures, which were printed in redacted format at Every Day Should Be Saturday and Deadspin (wow, this girl's life is toast). Fortunately, this blog suffers from no such constraints, but we have yet to get our hands on an unedited picture (hint, hint).

Now comes the investigation. Who is she? Where are her sketchy Facebook pics? Only you, dear readers, can help. We'll get you started with the UF AOPi website. Onward!

(does a bear shit in the parking lot?)

We're pretty sure the only thing that can save this chick now is a face transplant, and she'll doubtless be getting the boot from her chapter. Regardless, the girls are going to have to suffer through years of "Alpha Omicron Pi is such a shitty sorority" jokes.

Dripping Kuntz Ready For Action

This afternoon's Notre Dame -Syracuse tilt descended into a one-sided snowball fight as Irish fans justifiably pelted their own sorry-ass excuse for a football team:

When the Irish defense held a meeting on the sideline, injured linebacker Brian Smith stood on a bench to try to shield his teammates. But when a snowball hit defensive tackle Pat Kuntz, he stood and faced the crowd and appeared to challenge whoever threw it to come down on the field.

Quarterback Jimmy Claussen threw a wobbly snowball in the culprit's general direction, but his attempt was intercepted and eaten by Charlie Weis.

Palin In Uneasy Embrace With Gay Community

Tha Carter Loves the Green Wave

Lil' Weezy is a Tulane fan...but keep it on the low.

Some people were also asking if I like college sports, and the answer is yes, I do. For college football, my favorite team is LSU, of course. On the low, I'm a little bit of a Tulane fan as well. My assistant, she's a Tulane graduate. We almost had East Carolina this year but I ain't gonna say nothing about that.

Georgia - Alabama

I blame Larry Munson.

Shanespotting

Learn it. Live it. Love it.

Shanespotting

Charlie Weis never recruits shanes. Never.

What The Hell?

Via UmpBump:

In a bizarre drama, Hideki Matsui announced on Thursday that he has secretly gotten married, but he refuses to divulge the identity of his wife, showing only sketches of her drawn by himself and his brother.

What made the whole situation even more bizarre is that Matsui may have married her in order to win a bet he made with teammates Derek Jeter and Bobby Abreu.

Offered without comment. This is all very confusing.

Random Bitching About CBS' NCAA Coverage

As a casual college basketball non-fan, I freely admit that I know nothing about the game and only watch it while gambling. Perhaps some of you hoops diehards can clue me in on a couple of things:

1. Why the hell does CBS (or the NCAA, if that's who is making the decisions) run multiple games at the same time? I get the fact that they don't want their viewers stuck watching a blowout, but it sort of sucks that 75% of the country didn't get to watch one second of O.J. Mayo in the tournament. And don't give me some crap about how spacing out the games (even to the extent of adding extra days) would hurt revenue at the arenas, cause travel problems, or hurt the "students'" academics -- ticket sales are chump change, logistic problems are solvable, and basketball players don't go to class. Assuming the games are valuable ratings-grabbers ... wouldn't you want to show more of them?
   
2. Who is the midget playing for Xavier?
   

Mr. McFadden's No Good, Very Bad Day

MSNBC:

Reid, Turley and Lieb are among more than 800 customers who responded to the first wave of marketing for do-it-yourself DNA paternity tests sold as Identigene by Sorenson Genomics of Salt Lake City.

...

Results are reported online, by phone or by mail in three to five business days. They come back as a probability figure that verifies paternity with 98 percent to 99 percent accuracy, Watson said.

What?!?! Oh, shit.

Atonement, Part 2

All good things come to an end, and the greatest thing we've seen in a while is Can The Cubs Mend My Heart?

The author was a recently dumped Chicago fan who dreamed of a Cubs championship ... and his girlfriend coming back to him. Unfortunately, well, people on the internets are big meanies, especially to soul-baring douchebaggery. The site has now been taken down, but you can go here to see some of the best parts.

Tulane Baseball Update: The Hitters: March 25

Week in Review:

Mar 23, 2008	Tulane Green Wave 12, Sacred Heart 0	Box score
Mar 22, 2008	Tulane Green Wave 5, Sacred Heart 2	Box score
Mar 21, 2008	Tulane Green Wave 8, Sacred Heart 0	Box score
Mar 19, 2008	LSU Tigers 7, Tulane Green Wave 5	Box score

Well, the cannon fodder scored on us this weekend, but the story was much the same. By Game 3, Sacred Heart's depth was more or less shot to hell -- the umps could have called mercy sometime in the third inning and everyone would have been happier. Again, I think pulling any conclusions from the weekend slate of games is silly, and WE SHALL NOT SPEAK OF THE MIDWEEK GAME.

HITTERS:

	AVG	SLG%	OB%	EqA
Jared Dyer	0.375	0.556	0.413	0.308
W. McFadden	0.349	0.476	0.468	0.318
Aja Barto	0.333	0.500	0.418	0.308
Rob Segedin	0.329	0.468	0.391	0.284
A. Scelfo	0.301	0.534	0.463	0.322
Seth Henry	0.296	0.507	0.359	0.290
A. Rodgers	0.273	0.527	0.403	0.294
Drew Allain	0.237	0.322	0.338	0.226
Sam Honeck	0.237	0.342	0.341	0.217
Josh Prince	0.164	0.164	0.246	0.113
Marc Robert	0.500	0.750	0.500	0.428
R. Rebowe	0.500	0.750	0.400	0.378
Steve Moritz	0.385	0.385	0.500	0.292
Scott Powell	0.300	0.433	0.382	0.276
N. Boullosa	0.154	0.154	0.214	0.090
G. Griener	0.000	0.000	0.400	0.149

Go here for complete stats.

Observations:

1. Scelfo is quietly having the best season on the team. Even during his early-season "slump," he still showed enough plate patience to be a valuable cog in the lineup. Now that his "traditional" stats (AVG, power numbers, etc.) are coming around, he's headed towards a monster season.
   
2. WoMac Revival, baby! We're still hearing rumors about hitches in swings and bad approaches at bat, but they're easy to dismiss with the numbers he's been putting up. Watch closely when we start to see some decent pitching, though -- if the numbers bottom out, the problems aren't fixed.
   
3. Prince. Let's be clear -- he's in the lineup because he plays good defense and he hit .371/.448/.449. in 89 ABs with Texas last year. At what point, though, does past performance have to be disqualified as a fluke? I'm not saying we should give up on him yet -- the sample size of ABs is still a bit low -- but RJ better be working on a backup plan, because Tulane's lineup doesn't have enough pop to hide a gaping black hole.
4. Again, I'll believe that we're a good offensive club when we hit against a team with a pulse.