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Drew Magary's Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo runs every Thursday during the NFL season. Buy Drew's new book, The Postmortal, through here. Find more of his stuff at his Twitter feed.
Holy holy holy holy holy holy holy SHIT, you guys! It's here! It's really here! I never thought it would be here, but it's HERE! The NFL! In the flesh! Every precious week, every lovely game left beautifully intact! Oh, how I've missed it so! I'm so happy I wanna break into your car and jerk off on your steering wheel, I'm so excited!
We were so close to not having this. We were so close to Jerry Richardson seeing all those tattooed thuggity thug players out there taking too much of his money and getting so pissed off with white rage that he was gonna shut the whole fucker down. We were this close to Roger Goodell fucking it all up because the only thing Roger Goodell knows how to do in the face of a crisis is suspend people. "What do I order for lunch today? DURRRRR I DUNNO I BETTER SUSPEND JAMES HARRISON FOR 2.3 GAMES." We were this close to having a fall completely devoid of NFL games. And that would be on top of a fall completely devoid of many NBA games that I would never ever watch, which would really leave a hole in my heart. We were this close to baseball reconnecting with the American public and experiencing a latter day renaissance, and thank Christ that didn't happen because baseball is gay.
We were this close to football going away and, without that distraction, realizing that our nation is slowly becoming a third world country, waking up from our NFL-induced slumber and revolting against the powers that be to make America a great country again, instead of a rancid oligarchy in which middle class success is too much of a profit burden upon the superrich. That nearly HAPPENED. And good thing it didn't, because my back issues prevent me from engaging in any overly vigorous revolutionary activities, not unlike Reg in Life of Brian.
The NFL is a necessary part of both my life and the lives of millions of Americans. Is it rational? No. Do many NFL games fail to live up to expectations? Yes. But in many ways, the end result doesn't matter. What matters is that we're given something to look forward to. A milestone. A life signpost that we can aim at, to know circumstances will change and fun things will happen.
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I'm 34 years old, and my life now more or less revolves around making sure I have things to look forward to. When I had a girlfriend, I looked forward to getting engaged. When I got engaged, I looked forward to getting married. When I got married, I looked forward to NOT having kids for a bit, and then finally giving in and having them. and now that I have kids, I get to look forward to them leaving the house so I can watch whatever I want and not have to clean up all their shit. You need those signposts. You need something that tells you today may suck, but that there's something on the horizon that may not. Like phone sex. I am essentially a 95-year-old grandpa waiting for his grandkids to visit for five minutes each year. I live perpetually a week or a month ahead of myself. If I know there's a rare night of going out and drinking with friends in my future (like tonight), that's what occupies the bulk of my thinking when I'm not obsessing over sex or food. I imagine the night in my head over and over for no reason at all. And even if the night is a letdown, I still make note of the NEXT time I get to go out, so I can wallow in the anticipation all over again.
The NFL works in much the same way. You get to look forward to your fantasy draft, then the season, then each week of the season, then the playoffs, then the Super Bowl, then free agency, then the draft, then training camp, then everything all over again. It's a set schedule of anticipation. You don't have to do anything for it to be there, the way you would in your normal life, scheduling dates or buying concert tickets or whatever. It's all there mapped out for you, five months of signposts to get you through the relentless monotony of your existence. Without those signposts in there, I would have had to devise my own, and I lack both the money and imagination to do that. I want my life laid out FOR ME, because I'm lazy and pathetic, and the NFL is more than happy to assist me.
They almost didn't oblige me this year, but thanks to a bit of good luck and De Smith's pimp hats, we avoided the end of this pronounced Era of American Complacency and are once more content to sit idly by while the rest of the world flies right past us. I wouldn't have it any other way. The NFL is back, and this is your Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo. CUE THE MUSIC:
YEEEEEAAAAAARGGGGGHHHHHHH OH FUCK YEAH! Now, before we get into everything, there are some changes to the NFL you need to be aware of, just in case you skipped the preseason:
• Kickoffs are now from the 35 yard line!
• Refs can now review any scoring play without the need for a challenge flag!
• The third QB can now play any time a team bloody well feels like it!
• No more nut-pinching!
• Peyton Manning DIED!
• Peter King has a podcast! Sort of!
Got all that? Let's dig in.
2011 NFL Predictions
I do this every year, because being horribly wrong about everything makes me feel ALIVE. Remember, I picked the Titans to make last year's Super Bowl, so I think I know what I'm talking about. AMIRITE?!
NFC North
Green Bay 13-3
Minnesota 8-8
Detroit 8-8
Chicago 6-10
NFC South
Tampa Bay 12-4
New Orleans 10-6*
Atlanta 8-8
Carolina 4-12
NFC East
Philadelphia 10-6
Dallas 10-6*
Washington 7-9
NY Giants 5-11
NFC West
Arizona 9-7
St. Louis 9-7
San Francisco 5-11
Seattle 4-12
Eagles over Saints
Cowboys over Cardinals
Bucs over Eagles
Packers over Cowboys
Bucs over Packers
AFC North
Baltimore 10-6
Pittsburgh 9-7
Cleveland 8-8
Cincinnati 5-11
AFC South
Houston 12-4
Tennessee 7-9
Indianapolis 7-9
Jacksonville 4-12
AFC East
NY Jets 13-3
New England 11-5*
Buffalo 7-9
Miami 3-13
AFC West
Denver 10-6
San Diego 9-7*
Kansas City 8-8
Oakland 5-11
Ravens over Chargers
Pats over Broncos
Jets over Pats
Texans over Ravens
Jets over Texans
Jets 17, Bucs 14
I totally picked the Bucs to win the NFC because picking the Packers and Eagles is so easy. LOOK AT MY BOLD CONTRARIANSHIP!
The Games
All games in the Jamboroo are evaluated for sheer watchability on a scale of 1 to 5 Throwgasms.
Five Throwgasms
Cowboys at Jets: Richard LongGermanName at Sports Illustrated pointed out that Andrea Kremer is no longer your SNF sideline reporter. From now on, you're going to get Michele Tafoya giving you unwanted anecdotes about players that inevitably run too long and seep into important game action. Sideline reporters get passed around as often as shitty NBA coaches. This was an actual quote from Deitsch's article:
The network replaced Kremer with Tafoya on the sideline. How will she impact the broadcast? "I don't know that it affects anything," (producer Fred) Gaudelli said.
That's so perfect. How does she impact the broadcast, Fred? "Uh, she's really just there to be useless." THANKS! Why don't you just replace Andrea Kremer with nothing? Would that have been so goddamn hard?
A couple more things from that article. Because of his duties calling college games, Gus Johnson is the #8 play-by-play guy for FOX this season and won't call any games from them until Week 4, which is sad. Also...
FOX will give its Transformersesque robot, Cleatus, more airtime — including its own Twitter account.
More airtime? Sweet. Awesome. I'm so happy I could drink lye. FUCK. Here is a link to that Twitter account, and it's precisely what you'd expect: tweet after tweet from a corporate robot designed specifically to sound like Guy Fieri. "Glad to be back!!!! Get some!!!" Oh, I'll get some. Believe you me, you piece of shit.
Saints at Packers: I have a friend with a vaporizer, which I've fellated from time to time. Vaporizers give you a different kind of high than smoking from a bowl. I would just like to take a moment to put myself in Team Bowl. I like the bowl high better. It makes me want to jack it into a pair of sweatpants. That's a solid high.
Steelers at Ravens: A year or so ago I had to buy new glasses. When you get your eyes checked out now, they also measure your head to see what size frame fits you best. So I got sized by the eye doctor, then took the prescription over to LensCrafters to buy the glasses. And the dude at LensCrafters was like, "Uh... we don't have any frames that size." Keep in mind that this is a store that has hundreds, if not thousands, of eyeglass frames in stock. And none of them fit my giant alien mutant head. So he directed me to a specialty store that sold specialty frames. In other words, I have such a big retard head that I had to go to the BIG FUCKING HEAD STORE in order to find a proper pair of glasses. If you need me, I'll be buttering my head to get it out of the car.
Four Throwgasms
Lions at Bucs: Every time you watch Ronde Barber play this season, it will serve as a constant reminder that no one would hire his asshole twin brother to play running back this offseason, despite Peter King's bestest efforts to get him on the Steelers roster. And man, that's delightful. By the way, is anyone else let down by fraternal twins? Anytime someone tells me they're a twin or that their kids are twins and they then tell me the kids are FRATERNAL, I feel oddly disappointed. Like, fraternal twins aren't REAL twins. They don't look alike. They don't have to be the same gender. They can't swap girlfriends or fool Hugh Jackman's character into thinking their teleportation magic act is real. They don't feel like REAL twins. I am an asshole.
Also, Josh Freeman needs to grow muttonchops.
Rams at Eagles: I was in the car with my mom last week when she blurted out that she hated fall. I was taken aback by this.
ME: How could you hate fall?
MOM: I just hate it. Because I know what comes next.
ME: So aren't you taking out your anger at winter on fall?
MOM: Oh, no! I like winter. At least you get to make a fire.
MOM: I don't know. I just hate fall. I hate the cool air. I hate the leaves turning colors.
ME: How can you hate foliage? YOU LIVE IN NEW ENGLAND.
MOM: Apples. Ugh. I just can't stand it. Gimme summer.
ME: If you love summer so much, why don't you move to FLORIDA, where everyone is old and retarded?
MOM: Oh no, I couldn't do that.
ME: Then no more trash-talking fall, you hear me? You're a Communist, you know that? A FILTHY COMMIE.
Who hates fall? Fall is fucking AWESOME. You can wear cool jackets again. You don't sweat out your ass. Thanksgiving! THANKSGIVING IS IN THE FALL! I swear don't even know this woman. If you don't like fall, you're drinking Crazy Horse.
Three Throwgasms
Colts at Texans: I mentioned it earlier this week, but this Peyton Manning situation sets the Colts up perfectly for a brutal 3-13 season followed by Andrew Luck falling into their laps, a Duncan-to-the-Spurs kind of thing. They'd have to draft him, wouldn't they? Although, the new rookie salary cap means that trading up in the draft is no longer the lousy proposition it once was. Now you can trade up and get a cheap player that won't destroy your cap and cripple your roster for the next five years. So if the Colts got that pick and Manning strong-armed them into NOT drafting Luck, then they could probably get 57 picks from the likes of Washington to trade up for the pick. Because Manning wouldn't like that pick at all, not when he wants to play football until he's 90 years old. It would be rancorous and so horribly awkward, I very much want it to happen. Also, it's fun to talk about the Colts as if their season is already over. We never get to do that!
Bears at Falcons: The wife to me: "I can't watch you eat a banana. It's repulsive." Apparently, I go down on bananas like Jasmine St. Claire. Do not be around me when I eat fruit.
Giants at Redskins: This is the big 9/11 game, and the NFL has announced that it will mark the occasion by celebrating the "spirit of America," which I hope will be tasteful but I know will end up with FOX blasting out an image of smoldering towers every three minutes during the game, set to an acoustic country version of "sad FOX NFL jingle." And then Cleatus will put on a fireman's outfit and rescue a baby. It can all go wrong so very easily.
Two Throwgasms
Raiders at Broncos: You have been spared Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic for the always-shitty second half of the annual ESPN MNF opening night doubleheader. Instead, you get Brad Nessler and Trent Dilfer, who are shockingly unobjectionable. It's almost as if ESPN cares about your needs as a viewer. By the way, I tuned into to "Mike & Mike" in the car the other day because I was lonely and listened long enough to hear Greenberg douche on about how he purposely didn't draft any Pats on his fantasy team and how Darius Rucker (Hootie) called into the show to chastise him for it, which is the most Mike & Mike thing that has ever happened. Did you know that ESPN's website streamed Staind's new album this week? In Bristol, it's always 1996.
Bills at Chiefs: I recently read "The Long Walk," a Stephen King book (under his Bachman pen name) that Leitch recommended, and with good reason: It's fucking awesome. The premise is that 100 boys start walking south from Northern Maine. Any time they fall below a pace of four miles an hour, they get a warning. After three warnings, they get a bullet in the head. Which is SWEET. No stopping for sleep. And shit breaks get you a warning. Anyway, they should do this in real life, minus the shooting part. You get three warnings, you get eliminated. Winner gets a million bucks. There'd be any number of nutjobs and ultramarathoners who would volunteer. It would be a blast to watch, until people started dying and you suddenly felt horrible about watching it. But until that moment? RIVETING.
Vikings at Chargers: I think Joe Webb might end up starting ten games for the Vikings this season. It's not gonna be fun. The last time the Vikings played the Chargers, Adrian Peterson set the NFL's single-game rookie rushing record. That was fun, especially when Marmalard got all pissy about it.
Dolphins at Patriots: Fuck you, Bill Barnwell.
The excellent Doug Drinen did a study at pro-football-reference.com that simulated a season in which we knew the actual true talent level of each team in the league 10,000 times. The best team in the league — remember, the actual team that we definitively knew was intrinsically the best team in football — won the Super Bowl only 24 percent of the time.
You didn't definitively know SHIT. You know definitively what your model tells you is the best team in football, but that doesn't make it unquestionably so. You people are slowly turning me into Buzz Bissinger.
One Throwgasm
Titans at Jaguars: Since they cut David Garrard to save money just before the season started, shouldn't the Jaguars just pack up and move to California during the bye week? Then we could ignore the city of Jacksonville for the rest of eternity, which is really what we should all do. That city may as well be buried under lava.
Seahawks at 49ers: PUKE. Remember: Jed York is a penis.
Bengals at Browns
Panthers at Cardinals
Pregame Song That Makes Me Want To Run Through A Goddamn Brick Wall
"Black Tongue," by Mastodon. Every heavy metal song should include the lyric, "You can run to the forest..." There are a great many heavy metal things going on in forests.
Embarassing iTunes Library Track I Own That Will Not Fire You Up
"Once Upon A Dream," from the Sleeping Beauty soundtrack. They keep telling me little girls grow out of their princess phases, but I've yet to see any hard evidence of it from my kid. All I get week after week are demands to play this song, demands to buy more Disney Store princess dresses, and the crown fuckmother of them all: the demand to be taken to Disneyworld. These Disney people, I have to admire the scope of their evil. It's one thing for them to brainwash your kid into wanting a DVD. But for them to grab hold of your child so strongly that they can end up demanding to be flown in a fucking airplane to the asshole of Florida to pay an ungodly sum of money to go to a dilapidated amusement park? It's genius. It's a feat akin to building the Panama Canal. They taught ESPN everything ESPN knows. They are the original spawn of Satan, those people.
By the way, Sleeping Beauty is just a shitty version of Snow White. The story makes no goddamn sense. The evil fairy puts a curse on Princess Aurora, saying she'll die by midnight of her sixteenth birthday. So the good fairies take her away and hide her and then, just as that sixteenth birthday is about to roll around, they STOP hiding her, and they bring her back home and throw her a fucking party. They're stupider than every character in The Ring. What a load of shit.
Gregg Easterbrook Is A Haughty Dipshit
ESPN's condescending dipshit of a columnist, fresh off of expressing his dismay at what's become of the New York Times Arts page (what would Colleen Dewhurst say?), did his annual all-Haiku NFL preview this week, and it's filled with such hilarious verses as this:
"Must beat Steelers," says
the raven. Quoth him on that.
Bal-a-mer Ravens.
O ho ho ho! Such pith! Such whimsy! They had a good long guffaw over that one at the University Club, dearest peasantry! Now, let us retire to my parlor wherein we shall snack on After Eight mints and listen to an entire Offenbach libretto on the Victrola!
Suicide Pick Of The Week
Every week, we'll pick three potential teams for your suicide pool and something that makes you WANT to commit suicide. This week's picks? Arizona, Kansas City, and New England, and the smell of your beer piss as you get older. I don't know what it is about your body's chemistry when you age, but my beer pisses smell a hundred times worse now than when I was in college. I had a few beers the other night and went to take a piss and the smell practically held me down and choked me to death. It's like a horse died in my toilet. It's awful. Who knew there was a downside to drinking Old Chub?
Postmortal Book Tour News
There are two current readings/signings scheduled for The Postmortal. The next one is on Monday 9/19 at Book Court in Brooklyn at 7PM. The second one is on Thursday, 9/29, at 5PM at the Black Sheep Lodge in Austin, TX. Come on down and I'll read some shit and answer some questions and then we can all go out and get blackout drunk afterwards.
Nazi Shark's Vegas Lock Of The Week
Lots of sports sites, to demonstrate the arbitrary nature of gambling, like to have animals like monkeys pick games to see if they can outwit their human counterparts. There's no reason we at Deadspin can't also get in on the fun. So we've asked National Socialist German Workers' Party member Rolf, who also happens to be a shark, to pick one game a week. Take it away, Nazi shark.
"This week, I like the Redskins getting 3 points at home against the Giants. What a summer I had! I watched EVERY Lars von Trier movie, and those movies are way more tolerable once you know that Lars hates Jews. Also, I got an account with J-Date. My strategy was simple. I concocted a phony profile of myself. I gave myself the name Dr. Moishe Horozekowitzstein, put up a photo of some random dirty hipster Jew I saw walking around in Brooklyn, and said my interests were, 'buying women shoes, getting blown by a girl once and only once, complaining about movies while I'm watching them, and getting reservations to hip restaurants specifically so I can bitch about the food and the service.' And the Jewesses came RUNNING. They show up at my door and I eat them whole. It's like pizza delivery for me. I can't get enough of it."
2010 Nazi Shark Record: 14-6-1 (4-0 playoffs)
Great Moments In Poop History
Reader Sarasota Slim sends in this poop story from his ladyfriend that I call THE ENEMA WITHIN:
It all started because of graduate school. Graduate school had to be the most difficult 3 years of my life and the most stressful. Taking the advice of some close friends, I decided to get a prescription for a low dose of anti-anxiety medication. Not only did the medication not work, but I suffered from the worst constipation you can imagine. To try to get the ball (or shit) moving, I decided to take two over-the-counter stool softeners. About 8-10 hours later, after the ETA of crap had elapsed, I took yet a 3rd stool softener. The next day, with an enormous amount of shit backed up, I decided it was time to take the next step and take two laxatives. Within a half hour, I began to feel the warm sweats and cramping which is normally induced by such medication. Excited to finally crap, I grabbed my favorite book and skipped to the toilet. A small and rather disappointing turd slowly dropped into the toilet and I was left with another small after-nugget on the way. It started to slowly come out, only to than come to a complete halt. Thinking this was a little odd, I gave it a little push, than a little harder push.
The little nugget was very much stuck in my ass.
Horrified, I tried everything I could think of. Pushing…sucking it back up and then pushing again….walking around and coming back to the toilet. To my disbelief, none of these techniques worked. With the time that I needed to leave for work rapidly approaching, I did the unspeakable and took a third laxative. At this point, I had three stool softeners and three laxatives doing its job in my stomach but no luck in getting rid of my, as I like to refer to it, ass plug. Realizing that I was not going to be able to work, I made two calls. One to call out sick and one to my mother to see what magical mother remedies she had for shit stuck in your ass.
"You're going to have to give yourself an enema."
After trying a few more times on the toilet, I soon came to the horrifying realization that this enema was really going to happen. So, I got my keys and waddled down the steps of my apartment to my car. Since the turd was still slightly exposed, I could not sit down. This left me with no other choice but to push myself up off the seat by learning against the door. I did the balancing act for a few miles until I reached the nearest drug store. I quickly waddled thru the store and found the enema section. It was a BOGO sale... buy one enema get one free. I love a good BOGO sale but this time I just took one box and waddled back to the register. Horrified to have to buy this contraption, I quickly snatched up a candy bar in hopes that the candy would distract the cashier from the waddling girl with shit stuck in her ass buying an enema.
Another few miles of the balancing act and waddling up stairs, I was back in the bathroom, kneeling on the floor looking at the helpful "how-to" illustration on the enema package. Shaking my head in disbelief, I lubed up the long tip and put it in my ass. As I squeezed the large bottle of liquid up into my ass I felt as if I was going to explode. Quickly, I jumped onto the toilet excited that this horrible few hours was finally over. I squirt out a small amount of liquid only to feel the little fucker once again come to a halt in my asshole. I was enraged and never hated anything more than I hated that turd. Frustrated and in a serious amount of pain, I turned on the shower and made the water scorching hot. I let the water run down my body and onto to my stomach. All of a sudden I felt a cold chill, a cramp, and then it happened…
I can still hear the faint "POP" sound as the freaking turd popped out of my ass and into the shower. I breathed a sigh of relief and then was overcome by pure panic as I began to feel the tidal wave of 3 stool softeners, 3 laxatives, and a full bottle of enema juice begin to rush down my body. What happened next is unexplainable and I can feel my ass clenching as I write this story. I projectile shit all over my shower for what felt like an eternity.
And THAT is how you tell a good poopy butt plug story. Never take Prozac.
Fire This Asshole!
Is there anything more exciting than a coach losing his job? All year long, we'll keep track of which coaches will almost certainly get fired at year's end or sooner. And now, your potential 2011 chopping block:
• Jack Del Rio*
• Tom Coughlin
• Marvin Lewis
• Tony Sparano
• Chan Gailey
• Gary Kubiak
• Jim Caldwell
• Norv Turner
• Hue Jackson
• Mike Shanahan
• Lovie Smith
• Pete Carroll
* - potential midseason firing
Del Rio practically feels like a lock at this point. I bet his wife is already scouting for real estate brokers.
Gametime Snack Of The Week
Veggie sticks, which look like they're good for you but are really just potato chips shaped like pool noodles. Don't eat the green ones. They're not good. We have these things around because they're the kind of snacks you can delude yourself into thinking are okay for your kids to eat. So I often end up standing there, eating fistfuls out of the bag before wondering to myself, "Hey, why I am eating this shit?" It's a cute moment. You can really tell by the look in my eyes that I want a Frito when that happens.
Gametime Cheap Beer Of The Week
Steel Kettle Light! Reader Steve found this while shopping for beer in San Diego:
The store I saw this at is called "Fresh and Easy", which is a fairly new grocery store chain out here on the West Coast. Imagine a Trader Joe's sterilized of all its kooky charm. It's also not the cheapest store in the world, so $4.99 for a 12-pack of beer is actually pretty cheap for them. Like most grocery stores, they have a home brand of products, and apparently this is their home brand of beer, so you can only get it at F & E.
They also have just "Steel Kettle" Lager, which is their "normal" variety and looks questionable enough, but the Light brand really takes the cake. According to Beeradvocate.com it gets a D+ rating.
Man, does that look like one shittyass beer. I MUST HAVE IT. I love that the package says, "The Famous Steel Kettle Whistle Brewery." That's just an outright lie. That brewery isn't famous at all. I bet it doesn't even exist. I bet the beer is made in a Vietnamese sewage treatment facility. Note the SKW logo. It looks like the kind of logo you'd find on a minor league team's hat.
Robert Evans' MVP Watch!
Time to start thinking about who the leaders are for the NFL's MVP award. So every week, legendary Hollywood producer Robert Evans will join us to give us his assessment. Take it away, Mr. Evans.
"Baby, my favorite for the NFL's MVP this year is Aaron Rodgers of the Packers! Another Evans summer in the books! Paddle surfing in Bali? YOU BET! Romancing call girls in Belgium? DON'T YOU KNOW IT! I went on a weekend jaunt to Brussels with Nicholson in May, and we procured the services of two lovely 16-year-old girls who were wise beyond their years. And as we're taking them back to the Royal Windsor Hotel And Day Bath, Nicholson spies a waffle shop. He turns to the ladies and says, 'Jesus Christ! What's with you fucking people and the waffles? There's nothing to do here except fuck and eat waffles!'
"Now, this gets both girls giggling, probably because neither of them spoke English. So this gives Nicholson a mad idea. He does a bump outside the little shoppe and strolls on in, demanding every last waffle in the joint. Well, the little baker and his wife can't believe their good fortune! Jake Gittes in the flesh, buying out their inventory! They load up this giant pallet of fresh hot waffles and then have it sent over to the Windsor. And we're riding with the girls up in the freight elevator with the waffles and Nicholson turns to me and says, 'I'm gonna fuck these girls right on all these waffles. I'm gonna fuck 'em until they look like they've been lying on patio furniture for a month.' And what can I do but laugh? So we get in the suite. Caviar? YOU BET! Champagne? OF COURSE! And a stack of 1,000 hot waffles! So Nicholson spread them out on the bed, tells the girls to disrobe, lays them down, covers them with the complimentary apricot preserves provided graciously by the Royal Windsor, and fucks them until, and I swear this is true, they really DID look like they'd been lying on patio furniture for month! THE OLD DOG! It's nice to be back in the game!"
Sunday Afternoon Movie Of The Week For Bengals Fans
The Lincoln Lawyer, which is a perfectly acceptable average movie. The shittiest Hollywood movie could at least have the common courtesy to be as good as this movie. I don't think that's too much to ask. Also, any time you need someone to play a rich spoiled asshole, you bring in Ryan Phillippe and his duck lips. Works every time.
Gratuitous Simpsons Quote
"It has three shots of rum, a jigger of bourbon, and just a little daberilla of creme de cassis for flavor!"
Halftime Masturbation Kit
• For the guys: It's a whole gallery of Hot Italian women. And only 80% of them have been sexually harassed by the Prime Minister!
• For the gals: This incredibly spacious Penthouse apartment! Take in the views! Marvel at the architecture! What must this cost? One look is enough to soak the pants of any American lady!
Enjoy the games, everyone. The NFL is back! YAY.


text: The earliest Walt Disney Studios animated shorts packed as much barnyard humor and crude slapstick as Disney's gagmen could shoehorn into eight minutes. After a few years of production, though, Disney began to position himself as a populist with good taste, and by the time the studio started experimenting with color and multiplane animation in the mid-'30s, his artists had developed a level of visual sophistication that didn't prove conducive to scabrous, gut-busting laughs. While rivals at MGM and Warner Bros. made low art out of cruelty and irreverence, the wildest product Disney had to offer was its Goofy shorts, which showcased the dippy man-dog in a series of zany illustrations of life's dos and don'ts. The entire 1939-62, 46-episode run of Goofy shorts has been collected on two DVDs as The Complete Goofy, part of the second wave of "Walt Disney Treasures"—an imprint through which the studio intends to make its massive archive of live-action and animated short subjects available to collectors. The series still has a relaxed charm, particularly in the "Sport Goofy" cartoons of the '40s ("The Art Of Skiing," "How To Play Baseball," "Double Dribble," and so on), in which a stuffy narrator explains proper athletic technique while a proud, confident Goofy does it wrong. At least once per installment, the narrator asks viewers to take a closer look at the Goof in motion, and the animation becomes molasses-slow, in what amounts to an impressive demonstration of the Disney crew's command of detail. Later shorts find Goofy domesticated, playing a '50s sitcom dad and schoolteacher. The same shift toward genteel suburban humor (sprinkled with pratfalls) also affected the Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse series, though only Goofy was given an actual son, which might make aficionados wonder what happened to the "How To Conceive A Child" cartoon. Along with The Complete Goofy, the second wave of Walt Disney Treasures includes Mickey Mouse In Black & White, which collects all of the Mickey Mouse shorts from 1928's landmark "Steamboat Willie" (the first sound cartoon) to 1935's "Mickey's Service Station." "Steamboat Willie" has been seen often enough to become the subject of parody, but the other early Mickeys haven't gotten as much play in recent years, which is too bad, because even Disneyphiles might be amazed by the bizarreness of the mouse's early adventures. Mickey's body was much more malleable in the late '20s: He pulls off his ears and scalp, tipping the top of his head like a cap; his tail converts into rope, fishing line, and cable, all of which crank back into his body on command. Mickey was more mischievous in those early shorts, too, stirring up trouble on a chain gang and at a carnival, where he sells anthropomorphic hot dogs. Moving into the '30s, Mickey interacts with movie stars as a peer and tells fairy stories to his nephews. The look changes with the times, too, losing the scratchy handmade feel of "Plane Crazy" and gaining the lush shading and smooth motion of "Giantland." At that point, the Disney mood changes from puckish to sweet. Walt Disney's output remains the height of American animation art, but early on, for better and worse, the studio traded comedy for nicety.

subset: commoncrawl


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text:
Next: Tool Bars, Previous: Drag and Drop, Up: Frames
You can toggle the use of menu bars with M-x menu-bar-mode.
With no argument, this command toggles Menu Bar mode, a global minor
mode. With an argument, the command turns Menu Bar mode on if the
argument is positive, off if the argument is not positive. To control
the use of menu bars at startup, customize the variable
Expert users often turn off the menu bar, especially on text terminals, where this makes one additional line available for text. If the menu bar is off, you can still pop up a menu of its contents with C-mouse-3 on a display which supports pop-up menus. See Menu Mouse Clicks.
See Menu Bar, for information on how to invoke commands with the menu bar. See X Resources, for how to customize the menu bar menus' visual appearance.


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Buy Together, Save Together
Let's choose the perfect gift for you and your loved ones.
$41.99 after inviting a friend, $18 savings
Nooie wants to help be the love connection between you and your loved ones and we have a gift for you both.
1. Invite a loved one to join in our promotion - and they will receive 30% off on their next purchase.
2. Then you will get 30% off on your order. Easy as 1, 2, 3!


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Clear afternoon skies broke to grey clouds and consistent rain as the elite cylcocross racers warmed up on their Jonathon Page inspired Blue Norcross bikes and Rolf Prima wheels for the final elite event of StarCrossed in Redmond, Washington. CyclocrossRacing.com elite racers Craig Richey, Nathan Bannerman, Eric Emsky, and Michael Gallagher would fight the rain-soaked course and darkness during the final event that would punish racers lungs, legs and equipment.
Battling course conditions, the final lap and win was contested between the French Champion and ProTour rider, Francis Mourey, and the 6-5", 2009 USPG series winner and former national champion, Ryan Trebon. A slip of the wheel rounding the final corner decided the outcome of the race and separated the winner, Mourey, from the hard charging Trebon, by a mere two seconds.
Jonathon Page, racing on a Blue Norcross he helped design, would finish 5th and CycloCrossRacing.com elite racers Richey, Gallagher, Bannerman, and Emsky, would finish 10th, 24th, 28th and 31st respectively.
CXMagazine.coms report. If you do play the video, I'm the one in the blue jacket on the other side of the course. Hey, hey, I made a video.


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Kovalevsky, Sonya
Kovalevsky, Sonya
or Sophie kō˝vəlĕf´skē [key], 1850–91, Russian mathematician. She studied at the universities of Heidelberg and Berlin (under K. T. Weierstrass) and in 1874 received a Ph.D. in absentia from the Univ. of Göttingen for her remarkable thesis on partial differential equations. From 1884 she taught at the Univ. of Stockholm. In 1888 she won the Bordin Prize of the French Academy of Sciences for a memoir on the rotation of a solid body about a fixed point. Her childhood reminiscences, published in 1890, were translated as Sonya Kovalevsky: Her Recollections of Childhood (1895), with a biographical study by Anna Leffler Edgren.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2023, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Mathematics: Biographies


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Applications Invited for CSA Trust Grants for 2023
The Chemical Structure Association (CSA) Trust is an internationally recognized organization established to promote the critical importance of chemical information to advances in chemical research. In support of its charter, the Trust has created a unique Grant Program and is now inviting the submission of grant applications for 2023.
Purpose of the Grants:
The Grant Program has been created to provide funding for the career development of young researchers who have demonstrated excellence in their education, research or development activities that are related to the systems and methods used to store, process and retrieve information about chemical structures, reactions and compounds. One or more Grants will be awarded annually up to a total combined maximum of ten thousand U.S. dollars ($10,000). Grantees have the option of payments being made in U.S. dollars or in British Pounds equivalent to the U.S. dollar amount. Grants are awarded for specific purposes, and within one year each grantee is required to submit a brief written report detailing how the grant funds were allocated. Grantees are also requested to recognize the support of the Trust in any paper or presentation that is given because of that support.
Who is Eligible?
Applicant(s) in the early stages of their career who have demonstrated excellence in their chemical information related research and who are developing careers that have the potential to have a positive impact on the utility of chemical information relevant to chemical structures, reactions, and compounds, are invited to submit applications. Applicants must be within five years of obtaining their PhD. Note that proposals from those who have not received a Grant in the past will be given preference. While the primary focus of the Grant Program is the career development of young researchers, additional bursaries may be made available at the discretion of the Trust. All requests must follow the application procedures noted below and will be weighed against the same criteria.
Which Activities are Eligible?
Grants may be awarded to acquire the experience and education necessary to support research activities, e.g., for travel to collaborate with research groups, to attend a conference relevant to one's area of research (including the presentation of an already-accepted research paper), to gain access to special computational facilities, or to acquire unique research techniques in support of one's research. Grants will not be given for activities completed prior to the grant award date. Funding for 2023 will not be extended past December 31, 2023.
Application Requirements:
Applications must include the following documentation:
- A letter that details the work upon which the Grant application is to be evaluated as well as details on research recently completed by the applicant.
- The amount of Grant funds being requested and the details regarding the purpose for which the Grant will be used (e.g., cost of equipment, travel expenses if the request is for financial support of meeting attendance, etc.). The relevance of the above-stated purpose to the Trust's objectives and the clarity of this statement are essential in the evaluation of the application).
- A brief biographical sketch, including a statement of academic qualifications and a recent photograph.
- Two reference letters in support of the application. Additional materials may be supplied at the discretion of the applicant only if relevant to the application and if such materials provide information not already included in items 1-4. A copy of the completed application document must be supplied for distribution to the Grants Committee and can be submitted via regular mail or e-mail to the Committee Chair (see contact information below).
Deadline for Applications:
Application deadline for 2023 Grant applications is April 14, 2023. Successful applicants will be notified no later than May 22, 2023.
Address for Submission of Applications:
The application documentation can be mailed via post or emailed to: Bonnie Lawlor, CSA Trust Grant Committee Chair, 276 Upper Gulph Road, Radnor, PA 19087, USA. If you wish to enter your application by e-mail, please contact Bonnie Lawlor at email@example.com prior to submission so that she can contact you if the e-mail does not arrive.
Also see: CSA Trust Grant: Recent Awardees


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Reminiscent of a time when music expressed raw emotion and exposed the soul, Patrick Cooper's The Way It Used To Be is a treat not to be missed. The album, released on July 12, boasts eight cuts of smooth jazz and funk that at times playfully intertwine, mesmerizing listeners to the very last note.
"The '70s really influenced me …George Duke, Bobby Lyle, Earth, Wind and Fire…I wanted to go back," Cooper said in a phone interview. "It is definitely a throwback."
The title track "The Way It Used To Be," coupled with the opening number "Struttin'" are key to the Cooper sound that is too infectious to simply sit through – regardless of age or musical preference. "There are complex rhythms, but the album is an easy listen with R&B that brings you into the fold," said Cooper for younger audiences who are cautious about stepping into the jazz genre.
Hailing from Portland, Ore., the master musician was first exposed to music from the pews of his local church. Cooper's talent didn't go unnoticed for long. Before the young artiste could break out of his late teens he was the official music director, mastering the keys as head organist and pianist. By the age of 21, Cooper was the co-founder of the popular Portland jazz band, N-Touch, and in 2000 he made the bold move to Washington, D.C., which would have a major impact on his style and approach to writing and producing music.
"There is a drastic difference between East and West . West is a little more laid back; East coast is in your face. Combining the two creates the perfect combination," said Cooper, who finds the faultless balance between the two techniques.
As writer, producer and lead musician of the album, Cooper has the kind of creative control over his projects that other musicians can only dream about. And while the musical genius may not be able to pick a favorite area of his many talents, they all show through equally while allowing audiences to truly experience The Way It Used to Be.


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I have spent most of the past 10 years traversing public transit every single day. I've seen things that made me want to smack someone, but never have I ever actually been assaulted – until this week. The other day, I was coming home from work on the trolley (after having successfully navigated the bus). I was carrying my purse on my right arm, my (empty, soft, cloth lunch bag) on my left, and was gripping several flattened cardboard boxes that I had found in the office, as I am moving soon. I was making my way down the narrow trolley aisle after ringing for my stop, carefully trying to peek around my boxes and avoid feet and knees and heads leaning into the aisle, all while keeping my balance precariously. I was nearly to the front of the car when I felt a harsh smack on my back – I turned around to my left to find an enraged old man who shouted "You hit me with that thing! You hit me and you kept going! You could have said something!"
Truthfully, I did not feel a thing, and had I, I would have apologized, and I did in fact apologize to this man sincerely, although what I wish I had said was "What I did was an accident. What you did was aggravated assault. Which of us is rude here?" The entire trolley car was staring at him, and I notified the driver on my way off the car. What more could I have done? When did it become appropriate to react to an accident causing no injury by assaulting a young woman? And he did not merely tap me, he hit me quite hard. I am still in shock from this experience. 1024-13
Comments on this entry are closed.
October 29, 2013, 11:34 amLauren,
I also remember my days of taking public transportation. I took an express bus from the suburbs into a downtown are for over a decade to get to work, and a city bus through residential areas, business districts and ghetto to get to my school for five years before that.
While I have seen people with no regard for anyone else, that was the exception. I have seen many people give up their seats for others with physical issues. In winter, I've seen teenagers stand by the door of the bus and offer their hand to help every person over the icebank and onto the bus before boarding themselves. Upon approaching the last empty seat, I've seen people check behind them to see if someone else needed it more. I've seen people offer their seat to couples or parent&child so they could sit together. I've seen many friendly conversations started among groups of strangers as we ride. These are not things I saw just once or twice, but so frequently that if I didn't see it I'd wonder what had gone wrong.
After a long day at work when someone gets on with a big box full of stuff, I've also seen the looks on people's faces. That look usually said 'I'm glad that's not me today!'
I've never seen anyone get "the hell beat out of them" by a box full of junk when the train stops. I did see a box of stuff fall to the floor once. Five people got down on the floor to help pick up the contents.
Public transportation is not loathed in my community, as it apparantly is in yours. Perhaps my community as a whole has found a way to make it a better experience.
October 29, 2013, 4:46 pm@Lauren in regards to finding a box at your local store….we're in the process of moving and most stores now use reusable plastic totes. Cardboard boxes are immediately crushed. I've called stores to have some held and I am told that they can't do that, they have to be immediately crushed upon being emptied. Not that easy.
October 30, 2013, 7:05 amI've used public transportations since I was 10. Public transportation is for people, not for objects. There is postal service for that. Or car rent. Wheelchairs and strollers are devices for people, they are different from shopping carts or backpacks.
Cardboard boxes can be bought, btw. Of course, it's more expensive than taking them free from work but still cheaper than having a driving license and a car.
Why large people should pay two tickets on airplanes but everyone can bring bulky objects on the subway? It is an inconvenience for everyone else, just like the large person on the plane seat.
October 30, 2013, 10:10 amBashful, because you buy a *seat* on an airplane and a *ride* on the subway. There's a difference.
July 10, 2018, 1:53 amActually you do not "buy" a seat on an airplane; you purchase transportation from point A to point B.
October 30, 2013, 6:44 pmObviously the old man should have been reported to the police. His behavior was illegal and dangerous.
October 30, 2013, 8:35 pmNo matter what it is NEVER okay to put your hands on someone deliberately. If the OP did bump the man with her boxes it was an ACCIDENT. The man completely overreacted IMO.
Yes it is a little inconvenient when someone brings cumbersome objects on public transport, but that's part of taking public transport. If you have to take public transport it's usually because buying a car is not economically possible, or maybe because driving in your city is far worse than taking public transport. And parking can be expensive. So for most people the only option is taking public transport. If you have bulky stuff you just try your best not to hit people with it or block someone's way. It sounds as though this is what the OP was trying to do.
I just can't envision a scenario where what this guy did was even remotely ok.
Even if he was aggravated. If a cop had been there and witnessed what he did, he would have been arrested.
October 31, 2013, 10:02 amWhy didn't anybody on the bus offer to help?
November 4, 2013, 10:39 pmThis post reminds me of an incident I had at an outdoor concert or fireworks display several years ago. The blankets were so thick on the ground it was hard to see the grass. As I was trying to pick my way through the crowd, I unknowingly stepped on a man's hand, so he hit me, saying "That was my hand!". I apologized, but it left me feeling shaken.
November 5, 2013, 1:04 pmJust getting to read this now, as I was moving all last week – I didn't expect there to be such a hubbub about whether it was ok to bring boxes on the trolley! Trust me, the boxes themselves were not at issue here. I've fallen/tripped/been injured just trying to navigate the very narrow trolley aisle with nothing in my hands – there isn't enough time to get to the door when the trolley isn't moving, and when it is, it sways from side to side. And as others have said, people tend to keep their arms, legs, bags, heads, and whatever else in the aisle. And I very respectfully took a seat all the way in the back where my (not especially large, flattened) boxes wouldn't be in anyone's way (there's really no where to do that in the front of the trolley).
And for those saying I should have taken another way home, the next day I did – I took a cab, and it cost $52, which pretty much negated my having gathered boxes at work to save money. Public transit is for everyone to use, and if you're not taking up another seat, I have no issue with it – should people not be allowed to bring suitcases on the train to get to the airport? Let's not be ridiculous. I was being careful and cautious, and this man was rude. I've taken public transit my entire life and never encountered anything like this.
November 29, 2013, 12:43 pmWow that man was rude. He was lucky no police officer saw it or no one decided to take it futher by starting a fight.
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Alex Druce
(Australian Associated Press)
A surprising dip in retail spending during April has stoked concerns about the extent to which consumers are feeling the pinch of wage stagnation.
Seasonally adjusted retail spending dropped by 0.1 per cent to $27.33 billion last month after a rise of 0.3 per cent in March and a 0.8 per cent lift in February, according to seasonally adjusted data released on Tuesday Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The result missed the consensus forecast of a 0.2 per cent rise but did not make a meaningful dent in the Australian dollar ahead of the Reserve Bank's monthly board meeting on interest rates.
The dollar was worth 69.72 US cents at 1300 AEST.
NAB economist Kaixin Owyong said the April decline was a concerning development for an already stagnant economy.
"Following three quarters of consecutive weakness in retail volumes, these data are a worrying sign that the consumer remains in poor shape," Ms Owyong said.
Spending on household goods fell by 0.9 per cent; cafes, restaurant and takeaway food services fell 0.7 per cent; and clothing, footwear and personal accessory retailing dropped by 1.2 per cent for the month.
This was offset slightly by a 0.8 per cent lift in other retailing, a 0.2 per cent rise in food retail, and a 1.8 per cent lift in department store spending.
The Australian Council of Trade Unions said consumer spending had been dulled by poor wage growth.
The sentiment was echoed by BIS Oxford economist Sarah Hunter, who added that a housing market downturn continued to take its toll, while competition from online sales had squeezed bricks-and-mortar-retailers.
"Although conditions are improving in the mining sector the housing market continues to trend down, which is putting a drag on households' wealth and spending patterns at the margin," Ms Hunter said.
Retail spending in April fell by 0.4 per cent in both NSW and Victoria, by 0.5 per cent in the Northern Territory, and by 0.2 per cent in the ACT.
There were rises in Queensland (0.7 per cent), South Australia (0.6 per cent), Western Australia (0.1 per cent) and Tasmania (0.3 per cent).
Ms Owyong said the retail figures for May would also likely come under pressure given anecdotes of weakness in the lead-up to the federal election.
"(This) means June sales will be important to see if there was a post-election bounce," Ms Owyong said.


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Unexpected Hope: The Vocation of the Church
Editor's Note: Sojourners' CEO, the Rev. Jim Wallis, delivered the following commencement address Thursday morning (May 17, 2012) at Virginia Theological Seminary.
I feel very honored to be invited by this class to give this commencement address, and I asked about the make-up of your class. Most of you, I am told, are going right into the church, or are already there— to ordained ministry and other missions of the church.
So I want to speak directly to you about the vocation of the church in the world. Let me start with a baseball story. I have been a little league baseball coach for both my sons' teams over many years. And I've learned that baseball teaches us "lessons of life."
Just a few weeks ago, our 9-year-old's team was down 5-0, and we had already lost our opening couple of games. It didn't look good. But all of a sudden, our bats and our team came alive; and all the practice and preparation we had done suddenly showed itself. Best of all, our rally started in the bottom half of the order with our weakest hitters. Two kids got on with walks and our least experienced player went up to the plate. With international parents, Stefan had never played baseball before and you can tell he doesn't have a clue. But somehow he hit the ball; it went into the outfield. Our first two runs scored and he ended up on second base. Being from a British Commonwealth culture, he began to walk over to the short stop and second baseman and shake their hands! "Stefan," I shouted, "You have to stay on the base!" "Oh," he said, "I've never been here before."
Inspired, other kids who had never got hits before either also got them now, then the best hitters started to hit, and we came back to win 11-6. In a long team meeting afterwards, the kids couldn't stop telling each other what they had learned. "We didn't give up and came back!" "Our rally started with the bottom of the order." "Sometimes you get what you need from unexpected places." "We all just kept cheering for each other." "Everybody helped us win today." Finally, our star player said, "This just goes to show you, you can't ever give up on hope. We always have to keep on hoping no matter what." Lessons of life. Most importantly on that day, we became a team; and have won our games since.
I think this is central to our vocation in the churches: to offer unexpected hope.
Because our mission is to the kingdom of God—"thy kingdom come, they will be done, on earth as it is in heaven." That is what we pray. And while the kingdom of God was the central message of Jesus, and the New Testament, it has faded as ours. Finding salvation to heaven is part of the message, getting closer to God is part of the message, but the heart of the message of Jesus was a new order breaking into history—to change everything about the world, including us.
And that's why we can offer such hope to the world. The church is supposed to be saying, and the church is supposed to be showing, that our life together can be better. In our shallow, superficial, and selfish age, Jesus is calling us to a completely different way of life. He called it the kingdom of God—as very different from all the political kingdoms of this world. But that better way of living wasn't just meant to benefit the Christians, but everybody else too. And that is the point of it.
Christianity is not just a religion that gives some people a ticket to heaven and makes them judgmental of everybody else. Rather, it is a call to a relationship; and one that changes all our other relationships. Jesus calls us into a new relationship to God; and he says that also brings us into a new relationship with our neighbor, especially with the most vulnerable of this world, and even with our enemies. You don't always hear that from the churches. But that transformation of all our relationships, when lived out, has always been the best thing for what we now call the common good.
Since we have lost the common good in our community and public life, and especially in our politics—on both sides of the aisle—it's time to listen again to an old but always new vision which could, and is supposed to, change our selfish behavior—and make us happier too. "Happy are those," Jesus said, who live by the beatitudes of his kingdom.
The summary of ethics and the religious law, said Jesus, was to "love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself." And that most fundamental teaching of faith flies right in the face of all the personal and political ethics which put myself always before all others; my rights first, my freedoms first, my interests first, my tribe first, and even my country first—ahead of everybody else. In other words, selfishness is the personal and political ethic that dominates our world today; but the kingdom of God says that your neighbor's concerns, rights, interests, freedoms, and well-being are as important as yours are.
That is not only radical, it is transformational; and it is essential if we are going to create a public life not completely dominated by conflict, but one that actually can articulate what might be in the interest of the common good and even some common ground between us all. Win/win and not just win/lose. It is also essential to religion finding any credibility again. Otherwise, the next generation is just going to move on from religion. The "none of the aboves" are now the fastest growing group on religious survey's.
But when people see that kingdom of God being actually lived out, they are first surprised by it, and then attracted to it.
Like when a huge and successful church in a midwestern state's suburbs decides to take on the renovation of dilapidated and failing public schools in their neighboring urban area. Or like when a church in the Southern Bible Belt puts up a sign welcoming the Muslim cultural center that had just moved into their neighborhood and befriends those who were afraid of being attacked; and when that story of Christian/Muslim friendship on CNN changes the hearts of angry men in Pakistan. Or when a graduating seminarian, like many of you today, decides to start a church made up of homeless people and, after ten years, most all of their congregation's leaders literally came from off of the streets.
When a Christian family farm business builds day care centers and houses for their migrant workers, provides college scholarships for their employees' children, gives millions of dollars to Africa and Haiti, and still has the most successful orchard in their region, it attracts attention. When conservative southern California Anglo churches get deeply connected to Hispanic churches in their own communities, come to know each other's faith and families, and then seek to fix a broken immigration system, it gets the attention of policy makers in Washington. When a famous evangelical mega-church in Chicago sends its people to the Middle East and starts speaking up for beleaguered Palestinian Christians, it challenges foreign policy. When another one in Ohio doesn't just righteously proclaim itself to be "pro-life" but quietly takes in hundreds of low-income pregnant women every year to help them carry their child to term and settle into a better life, people feel helped and not just judged. And when faith-based organizations and denominations who might vote differently in elections make it clear to both Republicans and Democrats that they must not balance their budgets and reduce their deficits by increasing poverty and must draw a circle of protection around the poorest and most vulnerable, it breaks through the self-interest politics of both parties.
All these are true stories. And they are all about the unexpected and about bringing hope to hopeless times.
So my advice to you, going into the church, is to never be content with what is predictable, to never become cynical about change. Don't be satisfied with a church whose lifestyle and behavior you can predict by just looking at everybody living around them. Your job is to pastor and lead faith communities whose vocation is to be unpredictable and to be able to offer hope where nobody else does.
That's because you leave today, not committed to the kingdom of any culture, class, or racial group, or the kingdom of America or any other nation state, or even to the kingdom of any church, even the kingdom of the Episcopal church; but rather to the kingdom of God, which is meant to turn all the other kingdoms on the head, to break open the unpredictable, and bring new hope to lives, neighborhoods, nations, and even the world. So God bless you in that wholly unpredictable and so needed ministry of hope. And as we should all say at the end of every commencement: "Play Ball!"
And may the Lord be with you.
Jim Wallis is the author of Rediscovering Values: A Guide for Economic and Moral Recovery, and CEO of Sojourners www.sojo.net. Follow Jim on Twitter @JimWallis.


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The SLT T-Shirt
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Venus & Mars is a small business located in the heart of Vancouver, BC. We moved from Gastown to our new home at 105-223 West Broadway in November 2020. We have been providing quality, handmade, alternative clothing since 1993. Everything with the Venus & Mars label is designed by shop owner, Sanne Lambert, and made in Vancouver. We started out making Goth and Victorian alternative formal wear but over the past decade, we have morphed into including pieces for steampunk, cosplay, festival costumes, and LARP gear. Now, we provide awesome people with clothing for weddings, grad, Burning Man, conventions, and everyday life. We have also been featured in some film and television.
Add the T-Shirt to your cart and we'll do our best to get it in the mail in the next 48 hours. The faster we send it, the faster you get to wear it! Want to stay up to date on what we're up to? Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.


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Here's something that sounds incredibly scary but in reality is probably just slightly scary and overblown: Bloomberg says Facebook is working on a new app that will follow you around via smartphone, reporting your moves to friends. Creepy? Convenient? Both? Neither?
From the "two people with knowledge of the matter" who spoke to Bloomberg, the rumored app sounds a lot like Foursquare's "radar" feature, which tracks your location in the background, tipping you off when you're near a friend. And then... the two of you use Facebook Messenger to meet up, Facebook Camera to document it, and then Instagram to reminisce about it the day after? Maybe the app will even tell you when you're near a friend-patronized restaurant or bar, giving you reason to dump your life into Graph Search results. As Bloomberg points out, Facebook already reserves the right to do exactly that:
We may put together your current city with GPS and other location information we have about you to, for example, tell you and your friends about people or events nearby, or offer deals to you that you might be interested in. We may also put together data about you to serve you ads that might be more relevant to you.
When we get your GPS location, we put it together with other location information we have about you (like your current city). But we only keep it until it is no longer useful to provide you services, like keeping your last GPS coordinates to send you relevant notifications.
Emphasis added—that bold bit gives Facebook wiggle room to keep your location information forever. Because who gets to decide when it's no longer useful? Who knows! We don't know. We can only hope that the recent monetary slap the FCC handed Path over privacy brow-raising will give Facebook pause. We can also hope this app is actually cool—if it does exist. Find My Friends in iOS has never even come close to taking off, and Foursquare is still a long way from Facebook's social ubiquity. But given that the majority of Facebook's billion-plus users are using the service with a phone, this has major implications—if it's real. I doubt many of those billion people are cool with perma-tracking.
Apple MacBook Air Laptop
Powerful performance
The M1 chip delivers 3.5x faster performance than the previous generation all while using way less power. Get up to 18 hours of battery life.
But just imagine the Facebook search possibilities: SINGLE FRIENDS OF FRIENDS who are WITHIN ONE HALF-MILE OF ME and LIKE STAR WARS. I'm blushing in advance.


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Cancer-related pain can be physically and emotionally exhausting, but there are many ways to manage this side effect. The first step is to tell your doctor or nurse how you feel. He or she may ask you to rate your pain – for example, on a scale of zero to 10, in which zero equals no pain and 10 is the worst pain possible. Rating your pain helps your health care team get a better sense of how you feel so they can select the best way to provide you with relief.
Here are some helpful hints for managing cancer-related pain:
Recognize pain as a message that your body needs help. Pain medicines and pain-relieving techniques are available to give you relief and improve your quality of life during cancer treatment.
Talk to your health care team about your pain. Assessing pain and treating it are just as important as checking your blood pressure or listening to your heartbeat. Pain needs to be reassessed during each medical appointment.
Continue Reading
Bring a family member or friend to medical appointments. He or she may remember details about your pain that you have forgotten. This will help your doctors have a more accurate picture of your pain.
Keep a "pain journal." Keeping a journal gives you a record of how your pain medication is working, any side effects you are experiencing, and your emotions throughout the day.
Some of the things you may want to write down include:
- Where and when the pain occurs
- How long the pain lasts
- What makes the pain worse
- Whether anything, such as heat, ice or medicine, eases the pain
- How long your pain-relieving technique works and how much relief it provides
- Any side effects you experience when taking pain medication
- How the pain is affecting your quality of life – for example, is it
- Keeping you from sleeping, eating, walking, working or exercising?
Explore non-medical pain management techniques. These can include such practices as meditation, yoga, guided imagery techniques, and relaxation exercises. Some cancer centers have programs to teach patients the basics of these techniques. There are also a number of "how-to" books and recordings available in stores and through online booksellers.
If a pain medication is not working, let your doctor know. He or she may increase the dosage or frequency of your medication, or try a new medication or pain relief technique.
Don't be alarmed if your doctor increases the dosage of your pain medicine. At times, the amount of pain medicine your body needs may increase. This can happen because your body has built up a tolerance to the medication. Tolerance means that your body is no longer responding to the drug. Experiencing tolerance does not mean that you are addicted to your pain medication. Your pain medication is a medical treatment; it is not a form of emotional dependence on the drug.
Remember that you are the expert on your pain, and your health care team is there to help you manage it. With so many advances in the field of pain management, there is no need for anyone to be in constant pain. Effective pain management improves a person's quality of life and is a basic human right. So get involved and be an active participant with your doctor in managing your pain.


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There's still time to finish your cap(s) for Craft Like a Champion and get them mailed before the February 28 deadline — and don't forget many of you have a three day weekend coming up. (Click here if you have no idea what I'm talking about.)
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to do a full roundup post this week, in large part because of computer problems (I can not WAIT until my new laptop comes in) but also because I'm stuck in a feedback loop of feelings about my beloved Albert Pujols (click to enlarge).
Nerdy, I know, but it made me feel better than that stupid countdown clock.
The regular Craft Like a Champion roundup will resume next week — don't forget to email us your cap photos!


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Important Note
The following information is intended to supplement, not substitute for, the expertise and judgment of your physician, pharmacist or other healthcare professional. It should not be construed to indicate that use of the drug is safe, appropriate, or effective for you. Consult your healthcare professional before using this drug.
COMMON BRAND NAME(S): Wellbutrin
This medication is used to treat depression. This medication works by helping to restore the balance of natural chemicals in the brain.
How To Use
Take this medication by mouth, usually twice daily with or without food. If nausea occurs, you may take this drug with food. Important to take your doses at least 8 hours apart to decrease your risk of having a seizure. Do not crush, chew or break the tablets. Swallow tablets whole. Since this drug may cause sleeplessness at first, it is best not to take near bedtime. The dosage is based on your medical condition and response to therapy. Your dose should be slowly increased to the most effective dose. Do not take more or less medication than prescribed. Taking more than the recommended dose of bupropion will increase your risk of having a seizure. Do not stop taking this medication without notifying your doctor. Use this medication regularly in order to get the most benefit from it. To help you remember, use it at the same time each day. It may take 4 weeks or more before the full effects of this medication are noticed. Read the patient information leaflet provided by your pharmacist.
Side Effects
Dry mouth, nausea, vomiting, stomach/abdominal pain, flushing, headache/migraine, loss of appetite, trouble sleeping, increased sweating, strange taste in mouth, weakness, drowsiness, or blurred vision may occur. If any of these effects persist or worsen, notify your doctor or pharmacist promptly. Tell your doctor immediately if any of these unlikely but serious side effects occur: dizziness, fainting, chest pain, fast heartbeat, tremor, unusual weight loss or gain, ringing in the ears, mental/mood changes (e.g., hallucinations, anxiety, nervousness, agitation, confusion, restlessness), decreased sex drive, difficulty urinating. Seek immediate medical attention if any of these highly unlikely but very serious side effects occur: seizures. An allergic reaction to this drug is unlikely, but seek immediate medical attention if it occurs. Symptoms of an allergic reaction include: rash, itching, swelling, severe dizziness, trouble breathing, muscle aches, joint pain, fever. An empty tablet shell may appear in your stool. This is harmless. If you notice other effects not listed above, contact your doctor or pharmacist.
This medication should not be used if you have certain medical conditions. Before using this medicine, consult your doctor or pharmacist if you have: seizures, head injury, brain tumor, eating disorders. Before using this medication, tell your doctor or pharmacist your medical history, especially of: liver problems, heart problems, kidney problems, mental or emotional conditions, diabetes, alcohol or drug dependence, intention to quit smoking, any allergies. This drug may make you dizzy or drowsy; use caution engaging in activities requiring alertness such as driving or using machinery. Limit or avoid consumption of alcoholic beverages. Alcohol can increase your risk of seizures. Chronic alcohol users who suddenly stop the intake of alcohol while taking bupropion may increase the risk of having seizures. Consult your doctor or pharmacist for more details. Suddenly stopping certain tranquilizers (e.g., diazepam, lorazepam) is not recommended because doing so may increase the risk of having seizures. Your dose may need to be gradually decreased. This medication should be used only when clearly needed during pregnancy. Discuss the risks and benefits with your doctor. Bupropion passes into breast milk. Because of the potential risk to the infant, breast-feeding is not recommended while using this drug.
Drug Interactions
This drug should not be used with the following medications because very serious interactions may occur: MAO inhibitors (e.g., furazolidone, linezolid, moclobemide, phenelzine, procarbazine, selegiline, isocarboxazid, tranylcypromine). If you are currently using or have recently stopped taking an MAO inhibitor within the last 14 days, tell your doctor or pharmacist before starting bupropion. Before using this medication, tell your doctor or pharmacist of all prescription and nonprescription products you may use, especially of: warfarin, levodopa, amantadine, adrenaline-like stimulants (e.g., ephedrine), products containing nicotine (e.g., patches, gum, or spray). Also tell your doctor if you are taking any drugs which are affected by certain liver enzymes (CYP 2D6 or CYP 2B6 substrates, inhibitors, or inducers), such as: certain SSRI antidepressants (e.g., paroxetine, fluoxetine, sertraline), beta-blockers (e.g., metoprolol), antiarrhythmics (e.g., propafenone, flecainide), orphenadrine, thiotepa, cyclophosphamide, carbamazepine, phenobarbital, phenytoin, valproic acid. Also report the use of drugs which might increase seizure risk (decrease seizure threshold) when combined with bupropion such as phenothiazines (e.g., thioridazine), tricyclic antidepressants (e.g., amitriptyline), isoniazid (INH), or theophylline among others. Consult your doctor or pharmacist for details. Excess caffeine intake can increase the chance of seizures with this drug. Check all nonprescription/prescription drug labels for caffeine. Consult your doctor or pharmacist. Do not take this medicine with any other product containing bupropion (e.g., drugs to help quit smoking). Do not start or stop any medicine without doctor or pharmacist approval.
If overdose is suspected, contact your local poison control center or emergency room immediately. Symptoms of overdose may include seizures, severe confusion, hallucinations, rapid heart rate, and loss of consciousness.
Do not share this medication with others. Laboratory and/or medical tests (e.g., blood pressure monitoring) should be performed periodically to monitor your progress or check for side effects. Consult your doctor for more details.
Missed Dose
If you miss a dose, skip the missed dose and resume your usual dosing schedule. Do not double the dose to catch up. Taking too much of this medication can increase your chance of having a seizure.
Store at room temperature between 68 and 77 degrees F (20-25 degrees C) away from light and moisture. Do not store in the bathroom. Keep all medicines away from children and pets.
Medical Alert
Your condition can cause complications in a medical emergency. For enrollment information call MedicAlert at 1-800-854- 1166 (USA) or 1-800-668-1507 (Canada).


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If you want to go on a quest for solving the mysteries of deafness, discovering the genetic machinery in the inner ear that responds to sound waves and converts them into electrical impulses, the language of the brain, is your holy grail.
Scientists at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) say have identified just such a chalice; a critical component of this ear-to-brain conversion is the protein called TMHS. This protein is a component of the mechanotransduction channels in the ear, which convert the signals from mechanical sound waves into electrical impulses transmitted to the nervous system.
The key protein they found suggests a promising new approach toward gene therapy. In the laboratory, the scientists were able to place functional TMHS into the sensory cells for sound perception of newborn deaf mice, restoring their function.
"In some forms of human deafness, there may be a way to stick these genes back in and fix the cells after birth," said Ulrich Mueller, PhD, a professor in the Department of Cell Biology and leader of the study.
TMHS appears to be the direct link between the spring-like mechanism in the inner ear that responds to sound and the machinery that shoots electrical signals to the brain. When the protein is missing in mice, these signals are not sent to their brains and they cannot perceive sound.
Specific genetic forms of this protein have previously been found in people with common inherited forms of deafness, and this discovery would seem to be the first explanation for how these genetic variations account for hearing loss.
Many Different Structures
The physical basis for hearing and mechanotransduction involves receptor cells deep in the ear that collect vibrations and convert them into electrical signals that run along nerve fibers to areas in the brain where they are interpreted as sound.
This basic mechanism evolved far back in time, and structures nearly identical to the modern human inner ear have been found in the fossilized remains of dinosaurs that died 120 million years ago. Essentially all mammals today share the same form of inner ear.
What happens in hearing is that mechanical vibration waves traveling from a sound source hit the outer ear, propagate down the ear canal into the middle ear and strike the eardrum. The vibrating eardrum moves a set of delicate bones that communicate the vibrations to a fluid-filled spiral in the inner ear known as the cochlea. When the bones move, they compress a membrane on one side of the cochlea and cause the fluid inside to move.
Inside the cochlea are specialized "hair" cells that have symmetric arrays of extensions known as stereocilia protruding out from their surface. The movement of the fluid inside the cochlea causes the stereocilia to move, and this movement causes proteins known as ion channels to open. The opening of these channels is a signal monitored by sensory neurons surrounding the hair cells, and when those neurons sense some threshold level of stimulation, they fire, communicating electrical signals to the auditory cortex of the brain.
Because hearing involves so many different structures, there are hundreds and hundreds of underlying genes involved—and many ways in which it can be disrupted.
Hair cells form in the inner ear canal long before birth, and people must live with a limited number of them. They never propagate throughout life, and many if not most forms of deafness are associated with defects in hair cells that ultimately lead to their loss. Many genetic forms of deafness emerge when hair cells lack the ability to transduce sound waves into electric signals.
Over the years, Mueller and other scientists have identified dozens of genes linked to hearing loss—some from genetic studies involving deaf people and others from studies in mice, which have inner ears that are remarkably similar to humans.
A Clearer Picture
What has been lacking, however, is a complete mechanistic picture. Scientists have known many of the genes implicated in deafness, but not how they account for the various forms of hearing loss. With the discovery of the relevance of TMHS, however, the picture is becoming clearer.
TMHS turns out to play a role in a molecular complex called the tip link, which several years ago was discovered to cap the stereocilia protruding out of hair cells. These tip links connect the tops of neighboring stereocilia, bundling them together, and when they are missing the hair cells become splayed apart.
But the tip links do more than just maintain the structure of these bundles. They also house some of the machinery crucial for hearing—the proteins that physically receive the force of a sound wave and transduce it into electrical impulses by regulating the activity of ion channels. Previously, Mueller's laboratory identified the molecules that form the tip links, but the ion channels and the molecules that connect the tip link to the ion channels remained elusive. For years, scientists have eagerly sought the exact identity of the proteins responsible for this process, said Mueller.
In their new study, Mueller and his colleagues showed that TMHS is one of the linchpins of this process, where it is a subunit of the ion channel that directly binds to the tip link. When the TMHS protein is missing, otherwise completely normal hair cells lose their ability to send electrical signals.
The scientists demonstrated this using a laboratory technique that emulates hearing with cells in the test tube. Vibrations deflected off the cells mimic sound, and the cells can be probed to see if they can transduce the vibrations in electrical signals—as they would in the body if the cells were then trying to send signals to the brain. What they showed is that without TMHS, this ability disappears.
"We can now start to understand how organisms convert mechanical signals to electrical signals, which are the language of the brain," said Mueller.
Published in Cell


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BEACH BUM IN THE BIG APPLE PART 7: When Life's Lemons are Sweet
Dammnnnn. I haven't posted anything in a year, exactly, one year and some days. Well, I'm back… literally and figuratively, where I left off. Sort of. Like in my last post, I'm fishing for a job again. But! this time it's much better. So after I graduated from grad school (I can't believe it's been … Continue reading
Beach Bum in the Big Apple Part 6: Post-post grad
Here we go again. I'm sticking a fishing pole back into the workforce hoping to get a bite. And, I feel like a goddamn loser again. I feel like a bum, minus the beach, because it's freezing in NYC right now. Waaah, I know. Who cares. I got my master's in journalism like I wanted … Continue reading
Fashionisto Christopher Charles George, an interview
***This is a web video I did for the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism when I was a student (November)***
Fashionisto Christopher Charles George by Vanesa Vennard from VSW Fall 2012 on Vimeo.
 Christopher Charles George is a clothing designer who specializes in women's fashion. He started with his line titled Harp … Continue reading
Buried in Style
***This is a video I did while at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism for a web video class.***
Buried in Style – Vanesa Vennard from VSW Fall 2012 on Vimeo.
 Produced and edited by Vanesa Vennard Shot by Terry Chao and Vanesa Vennard To say that Edwin "Ninjahood," 29, likes shoes … Continue reading
Turn it up: Songs that make you say "HELL YEAH!"
*Opinion* Imagine you're driving, at a club/bar, hanging out with friends or pretending to study/work when all of a sudden…that song starts. That song that makes you smile and yell "HELL YEAH!" You either immediately start belting out the lyrics, or tell everyone to shut the hell up so your ears can soak up the … Continue reading
Beach Bum in the Big Apple Part 5: One year later
My parents and I landed in New York City on August 1, 2011, checked in a hotel in Manhattan, then took a cab up to East Harlem to get my new apartment keys. We took a trip to Target to buy things that would make my bedroom look like home, but the starch walls and … Continue reading
Super Prime parties like it's the 1990s
Who would have thought a drum set, a bass, a guitar and two mics could serve as a time machine. There they were, Adam Newall (vocals, guitar), Austin Bond (vocals, bass) and Marcus James (drums), rocking out reminiscent of 1990s pop-punk-rock. They go by Super Prime, a name that encompasses their work ethic and their … Continue reading
Beach Bum in the Big Apple Part 4: Looks like we made it!
*** I just want to write that I am SO proud of all my fellow J-schoolers, we're almost there! And I hope that 2012 will be a great year for everyone. 🙂 *** I'm so anxious right now. I just keep looking forward. I'm excited about school starting back up soon and I don't … Continue reading
Jaylene and the Killer Whale
***This is an assignment I did for my interactive class*** Jaylene Clark was the mastermind behind the spoken word performance "Renaissance in the Belly of a Killer Whale." The play stemmed from a random Facebook status she wrote before she was on her way to a poetry reading, and wrote: "It's time to stop dipping … Continue reading


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The competition for mens suiting was fierce throughout the 1960s – an absolute essential piece of every working man's wardrobe, while also a time that signalled the decline of this timely tradition.
More than ever, ad men and women were looking for new and exciting ways to capture the attention of dapper gentlemen around the world.
This 1967 Ad Campaign for Cosak by classic French textile company Dormeuil displays the fun they had doing just that!
Obviously inspired by James Bond or any of the other number of mens genre media / plus the overall futurist movement of the 60s; the campaign features a well-dressed man in several of the classic suit designs alongside a bombshell blonde, and it appears they are prepping to go to space…or are in space already? Not quite sure all the exact subtleties of the scenario…its all very entertaining and more than that – stylish as ever!
These images appeared in Tailor & Cutter magazine, and were found courtesy of Voices of East Anglia.
We were drawn to these images while doing some research finding we were lucky enough to have a Dormeuil cloth suit of our own. We recently uploaded it into the {SHOP} so click here to check out the listing, or scroll below for a quick look!
Classic 1960s Mens Vintage Graphic Stripe Ivy Style Secret Society Playboy Blazer
Super rad find, in our eyes! Hope you, or someone deservingly discerning you know, thinks so too! Share it, or comment below to tell us what you think!
Really cool to find out that this piece comes from a certified lineage of cool!
Remember XIXIXI gets you 25% off in the {SHOP}
So, check it out now!
Until next time,


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Last Friday I posted Storm Clouds Brewing and talked about lightning and wildfire. Then Friday afternoon an aggressive wildfire broke out west of town. However, this fire wasn't caused by lightning, it was caused because of an illegal marijuana grow.
The thing is, Mary and I were planning a weekend away camping in our trailer at our favorite spot. The problem was, the fire was less then five miles from our camp where we had already staged our trailer. We made the decision to retrieve our trail while the fire was relatively small, only 300 acres.
We got the trailer safely home and by the time we went to bed the fire had grown to 2,800 acres.
Saturday was a new day and the fire had not advance too much over night. It was reported at 2,930 acres. We decided to head back up to camp to pick the last of our equipment. Sailor and Kinta came with us this time.
By the time we returned home the fire was still at 2,930 acres. Unfortunately, high winds hit Saturday night/Sunday morning and by Sunday morning it was up to 3,700 acres. The terrain is very steep and it is extremely brushy. Spot fires have been tormenting the firefighters. Just when they seem to getting a handle on it, another slop over occurs. It is now Tuesday night and the fire is reported at 8,100 acres. Today was overcast and calm. Hopefully, they made good progress containing it. The fire is now 1 3/4 miles from camp. We shall see what tomorrow brings.


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Another May and already it seems like the relatively cool weather we had to begin the year is a distant memory. In more northerly latitudes there's a thing called Seasonal Affective Disorder; sufferers feel lethargic and moody as the temperature drops and the nights grow longer. I am self-diagnosing myself with an analogue to Seasonal Affective Disorder. Mine is Moist-heat Affective Disorder, because while we're not there yet, in a month or two I'm going to be lethargic and moody about my energy bill, having to wear a suit and sweating while motionless.
The Sammich started as a pop-up in Chickie Wah Wah, the bar and music venue at 2828 Canal St. Early this year Michael Brewer opened a more permanent operation at 7708 Maple St., which was most recently a location of Singha Thai restaurant.
The sandwiches here aren't what you'd get if you visit a typical poor boy restaurant, though there are some common touches. There is a braised rabbit sandwich that reminded me in texture of a sloppy roast beef poor boy but with a much lighter flavor from green tomatoes, remoulade and a grapefruit-horseradish gastrique. Even a standard, like fried shrimp, are done a little differently here; the shrimp are coated in a Crystal hot sauce beurre blanc with tasso, pickled okra and pepper jelly. The tempura lobster sandwich comes with a spicy mango cream, and can be ordered as a half-sized portion from the small plates half of the menu. Those small plates are what set The Sammich apart from other "upscale" sandwich joints.
French fries are cooked in duck fat and served with grated parmesan and aioli. Duck fat comes in again as the cooking medium for quartered red beets that come with a similar aioli spiked with jalapeño. Deviled eggs are stuffed with crab, capers and cornichons for a very local take on a very French dish.
The Sammich has a casual vibe, with a full bar dominating one-half of the dining room and seating options comprised partly of large wooden picnic-style tables. You place your order at the bar, and it's then attached to a zip line that carries it directly (and ostentatiously) into the open kitchen at the rear. The Sammich has a tongue-in-cheek name, but the cooking here is very serious.
The Sammich is located at 7708 Maple St., is open seven days a week from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m., and you can find out what's on the menu by visiting TheSammich.com or by calling (844) 726-6424.
I heard Miles Prescott's name when he took over the kitchen at the Country Club in the Bywater. It was his first executive chef job and he was only there a year, but his cooking impressed a lot of people. These days he's the executive chef at Rio Mar as well as a co-owner with local restaurateur Nick Bazan. If you haven't been to Rio Mar in a while, you owe it to yourself to pay a visit, because Prescott and his team are doing some outstanding things.
Much of what made Rio Mar distinctive under local legend Adolfo Garcia is still on the menu. The grilled octopus, the Manchego with eggplant, the Serrano ham and the ceviches are all still available. But Prescott is moving things more towards nuevo latino cuisine.
A recent scallop tiradito featured a sauce made with the Peruvian chiles, aji panca and aji amarillo, for example. A piquillo pepper stuffed with mushrooms is topped by a béchamel sauce with ancho chiles and tarragon, is another. His signature dish is a fillet of fish (black drum when I was there) over roasted plantains (maduros) stuffed with Gulf shrimp and topped with a chayote (mirliton) and coconut slaw and a sauce made with soy, Dijon mustard and lime.
This isn't "fusion" food in the bad old sense of that term; this is a chef with a deep grounding and respect for tradition doing innovative things.
Rio Mar is located at 800 S. Peters St., and is open for lunch Mondays through Fridays from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., and for dinner 5:30 to 10 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays. There is a happy hour featuring small plates (the restaurant is still the standout for tapas) from 5 to 7 p.m., Mondays through Fridays. Call 525-3474 to make a reservation or find out more.
When I went to check out The Sammich, I happened on a place right next door that I'd never heard of. It is called Waffles on Maple, and in addition to the fact that it has a menu focused almost exclusively on Belgian waffles, it's also notable for being kosher.
Chef Zev Attias is a graduate of the culinary program at Delgado, and has worked in restaurants both here and in New York. The menu features sweet offerings such as The Allman Brothers, which is topped with hot peach cobbler and whipped cream, and the Monkey Madness, which comes with bananas, chocolate sauce, whipped cream and sliced almonds. There are also savory waffles, with toppings like cheddar, jalapeño and sour cream and caramelized onions, mushrooms, Muenster cheese and black pepper.
You can also build your own waffle.
Waffles on Maple is a small place, with maybe 10 to 12 spots to eat inside. The restaurant is located at 7712 Maple St. and it's open Mondays through Thursdays from 6 to 8 p.m., on Fridays from 6 p.m. to 3 a.m. and on Sunday from 10 a.m. until 6 p.m.


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Wary of integrating unwieldy product lines and incompatible corporate cultures, Cisco has chosen to either buy startups or partner with existing players rather than make large acquisitions.
But the San Jose, Calif., network equipment giant broke that pattern today, plunking down $6.9 billion cash for set-top box maker Scientific-Atlanta .
Cisco CEO John Chambers said video is "too important" to be handled through a partnership.
"We think it is a huge move for us in the service provider and consumer space," Chambers said during a conference call with reporters and analysts. "Looking four or five years out, we think we will also expand it into our enterprise business."
Offering Cisco routers and switches with Scientific-Atlanta set-top boxes and video distribution products will give service providers one-stop shopping for triple-play (voice, video and data) infrastructure, the companies said.
This is especially true in overseas markets, where Cisco's relationships can open the door for Scientific-Atlanta, Chambers said.
On the consumer side, Chambers said he also sees the tight synergies between Scientific-Atlanta and Cisco's Linksys division, which makes wireless routers and other home-networking gear.
Prior to the close, Cisco and Scientific-Atlanta will operate as separate businesses and will continue to work with their existing partners.
Scientific-Atlanta CEO Jim McDonald said the company would be reaching out to customers and partners in the next two days to discuss the transition.
Scientific Atlanta, which has 2,000 engineers, will join Cisco as an independent division once the deal closes. The transaction still requires regulatory and shareholder approval.
Article courtesy of internetnews.com


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If you are in need of travertine cleaning services near Hudson, Florida, Integrity Tile and Grout Cleaning can help you.
Travertine tile floors tend to hold dirt and grime more than marble and non-textured ceramic tile.
Also, because small holes open up in high traffic areas of your travertine floor, it's a good idea to have those holes filled to eliminate more places for dirt to be deposited.
Maintaining your travertine floor not only requires periodically mopping, but also includes deep cleaning or a more aggressive scrubbing of the stone floor.
Our travertine, marble and limestone cleaning services uses marble safe cleaning products with soft brush scrubbing and high pressure rinsing/vacuuming machines for large square footage floors.
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