Idiot of the Day

Well it's Opening Day in the MLB, and that means it's Mike's last post of crazy MLB meltdowns. Enjoy.

Idiot of the Day

Mike came through once again with a quality MLB meltdown. This time, it's Hall of Famer Goose Gossage. No, not Maverick's Goose. The Yankees' Goose. And he's a little cooked in this video.

Idiot of the Day

My pal Mike is stoked about the start of baseball season. Sure, you all know me as the Pinko Commie Bastard Who Loves Soccer and Doesn't Care About Baseball, but his excitement over the start of the season is nice. If nothing else, he's exposing me to some hilarious meltdowns in baseball. I'm sharing them with you all as a gift. Because I care.

Friday Funnies

In honor of my making bacon, I got to relive another great scene from the Muppets Take Manhattan, where Kermit gets into the ad game. If you don't like the Muppets, I don't know that we can be friends or be related to each other.

My Design

I've been trying to learn Adobe Illustrator in a more advanced way. I'm very comfortable with InDesign and Photoshop, but my skills with Illustrator are not bad but not where I'd like them to be, especially in the sense of being able to create things from scratch. I've been working on some tutorials by several websites, and this project is the result of one of them. It's just a basic mosaic, but with some added in textures to give it a stained glass look. Again, not trying to win awards here, nor is it the most complex design, but it's just a small project that definitely taught me a few new things, which is always a satisfying feeling. Click to biggie-size and get a crisper look at it.

Idiot of the Day

This one, sadly, goes to my former employer, SHNS. The first winner of the Scripps National Spelling Bee died, and of course, leave it to them to fudge the headline. In case they've already corrected it, here's a screenshot as proof.

Makin' Bacon

Before I left for Ireland, I did partake in a cool little cooking experiment. My mother-in-law, knowing my addiction to cooking, smoking and creating our own food instead of having to buy everything, bought me a cool book, called Jar It, Pickle It, Cure It. The book has all sorts of easy recipes on making things from scratch, which is right up my alley. Some of them are naturally things I won't really care for all that much (a lot of the pickled items, for instance, but one that jumped right out at me was making bacon from scratch.

I'm not a big bacon eater, since it's not good for the heart health, but as long as it's eaten in small amounts and in moderation (like, once every three months) then I don't think it's going to put me over the edge of unhealthiness. And when the wife and I discovered the glory of the H Mart (an all-Asian/Hispanic grocery store) that had raw pork belly, I knew I had to give it a shot.

You basically start with raw pork belly:


You make a mixture of curing salts, molasses, pepper and sugar, and rub that all over the belly like a paste. Throw it all in a ziplock bag and refrigerate it. Every day, you flip it over and massage the belly a little, helping the paste suck the moisture out and getting the molasses and pepper and sugar in. After seven-10 days of doing this, you fire up the smoker and smoke that stuff super-low for about 5 hours.


When that is finished, you cool it off, let it get a little firm, and then slice it however you see fit. Then cook that fine bacon.


The interesting part is tasting real homemade bacon for the first time. It's sweeter, smokier and lot richer in flavor. And at first I thought I had screwed it up until I realized that this is what real bacon actually SHOULD taste like, instead of something that's been processed half-a-dozen times somewhere in Nebraska and then shipped to my grocery store in plastic airtight packages. This was as fresh as it was going to get, and once I told myself to get past the store-bought perceptions fo what bacon should taste like, I found it delicious. Damn delicious. Had to stop myself from cooking up the second piece of belly delicious. I had two big portions left, so I have to use them soon since they only keeper for about six months. Knowing some of my friends, this shouldn't be a problem. As an added bonus, this has allowed the wife and I to laugh about one of our favorite scenes in Muppets history, when Kermit loses his memory.

What I've Watched: The League of Ordinary Gentlemen

Not long after my bowling outing with friends, I had a nagging feeling that out there, somewhere, was a documentary about this sport. And because of my psychotic love for documentaries about odd things (Darkon, Bingo, Trekkies), I found one that came out not too long ago called The League of Ordinary Gentlemen.

This is pure gold for people who grew up in the Midwest, where bowling was something we may not have done every weekend as a kid in the '80s, but it was something we did often enough that even our schools had bowling outings because it was cheap, it kept everyone engaged, and everyone was contained in a large room with little chance of escape.

This movie has it all. Drama? You bet. Well, drama if you consider watching washed-up bowlers in the 40s try to reclaim their glory. On a bowling alley of all places, and when it fails they walk 20 feet and start setting up their karaoke machines for the side business they're running (yes, this happens). Comedy? Absolutely. Especially when the wife of one of the bowlers gives probably the moneyshot line of the whole flick, but I'm not going to spoil it for you (just wait until she's wearing the nearly hand-stitched American flag sweater ... then you know priceless material is coming up.

One of the good parts early on is when the new marketer/president of the PBA gives a pep talk to the bowlers in a preseason meeting. Pretty sure Lombardi and William Wallace would have taken notes from this guy.

Back in America

After a week in Ireland, I have returned home. I will miss the Emerald Isle but being back home is a nice feeling, even if I was kicking ass with the whole driving on the left side of the road thing. What better way to honor my return from Europe than with the classic video from the end of National Lampoon's European Vacation.

Game On: Week of March 11

Here is my column from last week. I reviewed Fight Night Champion and Knights Contract. Thanks to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for publishing.

Friday Funnies

As I venture over to the Emerald Isle, I was thinking this morning of movies that made me laugh that had adventure and travel in them. Oddly, I came up with Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou. I honestly may be one of only 11 fans of this movie, but dammit if it doesn't make me laugh and happy. Plus, Seu Jorge is a damn good musician.

Man Card Member, No. 404431

So often when talking about work, I've responded, "Man, it was a ton of work this week." But last weekend, the wife and I did a ton of work ... literally.

We've been wanting to make a pizza oven for the backyard, but not a massive permanent installation. Something smaller as a test run to see how it goes and then maybe next year make something more substantial. But our backyard slopes toward the back and the small patio we have at the bottom of our deck stairs is too small and too close to the neighbor's garage, which burning it down would be a bad way to maintain neighborly relations.

We decided to extend the patio by making one that mimics the original in appearance. This turned out to be a little harder than we thought. You'd think it's just a matter of ordering some materials, moving everything into place and BAM a beautiful new patio. Just know that the "moving everything into place" part is just a wee more strenuous than you'd imagine.

How much more strenuous? The railroad ties weigh 250 lbs each. We ordered 10 of em. The fill dirt was 4.5 cubic yards. Looked like an innocent mound in the driveway until we had to shovel and tamp each 2-inch layer of it using manual tampers. And just in case you were wondering, a cubic yard of dirt (according to several sources on the interwebs, so you know it's at least 80% true) weighs between 1,800-2,100 pounds.

Saturday was moving the ties into place one by one and securing them in there as best we could with metal poles driven into the ground. We packed a couple inches of dirt in there, and called it quits for the day when neither of us could barely make it up the deck stairs. Sunday morning we sucked it up, in the pain we were in, and went to Home Depot to rent a powered tamper. In all their classiness, of course, it was broken and couldn't be rented out. Heads lowered in defeat, we headed back home, each downed 5 Advils and went back to shoveling and tamping. By the time we layered all of it in there and made it as waterproof and packed as possible, the two of us had physically moved more than five tons (TONS!) of material. Two people! And one of them was a girl! (yes, I'm throwing that in there just to see if she notices). Without it sounding weird, she definitely gets an honorary Man Card for kicking ass on all that dirt and moving those ties as well.

You can see the progress in the short slideshow below. In a couple weeks we should have the pizza oven made and there's no telling how that building process will go.

Mad Men Has It Figured Out

Even Pete, whom I loathe, knows a good investment when he sees one.

Game On: Week of March 4

Here is my column from last week. I reviewed Bulletstorm and de Blob 2. Although the Treasure Coast papers publish my column every week in print, it's finally returned online as well, which is great to see.

Idiot of the Day

As you read recently, I visited the bowling alley for the first time in several years, and amongst the strikes, spares, copious amounts of fried food offerings and beer, you knew there had to be an idiot in the house. You just knew it.

This crazy lady brought her kid to the lanes for a little family entertainment. You know, because nothing says quality family time like bringing your 6-year-old to the bowling alley on a Sunday at 10 p.m. Nothing.

And you know when good parenting is taking place when she does a number of first-class mother moves. Like, for instance, letting him chuck 8 balls down the lane with no bumpers at a speed a slug could outpace. Or maybe it was letting him down the 64-ounce soft drink at 10 at night when the kid should be, oh I dunno, sleeping. Or, and this was the best, standing there watching the kid while he stuck he head into the ball return chute. You know, the one the flings the ball from under the floor at a steady 25 mph. Yeah, bitch stood there and laughed as her kid jammed his head down the thing begging to have his face crushed. Douglass, Kelly and I were in abject fear we'd see our first face removal. What an idiot.

Trailer Love

Putting the Rubber trailer in my Friday Funnies inspired me to check out some other newly released trailers. This one, for Super, looks promising as well. It's like a stripped-down version of Kick-Ass, only with (from what I've read) more humor, more cursing and Ellen Page just being a hilarious bitch and murderer. Sounds like a winner to me.

Friday Funnies

This is a hybrid Friday Funnies. I wanted to put this under it's normal home of Trailer Love, but instead I ended up laughing through the trailer enough that I thought it warranted double-duty, and so now it's living under Friday Funnies this time. It's a trailer for Rubber, a comedy/horror movie that looks crazy and yet fun and gory all at once. It's pretty much the story of a rubber tire named Robert. Robert has been abandoned and discovers he has telepathic powers. You'll understand more when you watch the trailer, but it looks like the movie has an inventive take on the horror/comedy genre, and I have to say I'm intrigued by it. Plus, the idea of the tire stalking someone in the shower is pretty damn funny.

My Return to the Lanes

At the tail end of the President's Day weekend, some friends invited me to return to the lanes. The bowling lanes. This was my first trip to a bowling alley in probably 3 years. It's not something I do all that often, and when I do I admit to being pretty bad at it. Not sure why, though, since everyone throughout time (and again this night) remarked about how good my form and follow-through is (if only my picture-perfect form was followed up with some strikes).

In any event, I still enjoy bowling a good deal. It's cheap, it's fun and it's one of those sports that both guys and gals can play together without anyone feeling like they were mercy-picked for a team. Hell, one girl brought her own ball with hearts and shit all over it, and she whipped a lot of us so there you go.

I was group with Kelly and his girl Mel B. I clearly should have stopped after my first game, because for some reason I was feeling it and scored probably my best game of bowling ever. According to the wife apparently I've bested this score before several times (including a 160-something once that included some rather annoying self-congratulations). Either way, I was surprised by my opening stanza.


Hell yeah, and I even scored an early victory over Kelly. That wasn't going to last, though. Because soon enough, he was throwing strikes. Lots of 'em.



By the end of the night, Kelly was pulling away. I hung around most of the time, but in 5 total games he won the matchup 3-2. Pulling up the rear was Mel B in most of the contests, but damn she turned it on in the last game, and was in a fierce battle with him until the end. He even went so far as to break the boyfriend code and started cheering in front of everyone when she screwed up and messed up a frame. Cold stares from Mel B, believe me. Overall he was good, though, and if you listen closely you can hear his "looks good!" before she gets robbed of a strike.




In the end, she came up just short of beating him. I hope I'm there when she does; that will be good times. The rest of the night was filled with listening to bad music (I think they had a Journey-techno remix on shuffle all night) and laughing about the bowling alley's assortment of food offerings, like fried clams, fried cheese, more fried cheese, friend oysters and french fries. There was no lettuce or vegetables in sight, believe me. Classic bowling alley.

Game On: Week of Feb. 25

Here is my column from last week. I reviewed Killzone 3 and Mario Sports Mix. Thanks to the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the Seattle Times for publishing.