Your Spelling is Perfect

You got 10/10 correct. Your spelling is excellent. You also have a great memory and eye for detail.

How's Your Spelling?

Who You Should Vote For

Barack Obama: 80% Hillary Clinton: 60% Ron Paul: 33% John McCain: 27% Mike Huckabee: 13% Who you agree with on the war in Iraq: Ron Paul Who you agree with on the economy: Barack Obama Who you agree with on health care: Hillary Clinton Who you agree with on taxes: Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton Who you agree with on abortion: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama Who you agree with on gay rights: Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama

Who Should You Vote For?

You Are Wintergreen Flavored Gum

You are laid back, low maintenance, and super cool. You go with the flow, and you never cause too much of a fuss. You are very in touch with nature and the world around you. You prefer to keep things simple. Complexity stresses you out. You are a very real person. Openness and honesty are important to you. You can be friends with almost anyone, as long as they tell it like it is.

What Flavor Gum Are You?

You Are a Crossword Puzzle

You are well read, and you have a good head for remembering facts. You are a wordsmith. You have a way with words, and you're very literate. You are a mysterious person who enjoys dropping little clues every now and then.

What Kind of Puzzle Are You?

You Are Basil

You are quite popular and loved by post people. You have a mild temperament, but your style is definitely distinctive. You are sweet, attractive, and you often smell good.

What Spice Are You?

You Are a Banana

You are mellow, easy going, and a total softie on the inside. People find it really easy to get along with you. You suit most tastes. And while you're very sweet, you're not boring or ordinary. You have an attraction to the exotic, and you could show up anywhere... doing almost anything! You are spirited, energetic, and a total kick to be around. You're also quite funny. Your sense of humor is on the goofy side, and it fits you well.

What Type of Fruit Are You?

The Kiwi Rocks the Marmite Pizza!

Hey kids!

It's been a long time. I've basically been too apathetic or too tired to post late at night. I'd thought of posting stuff several times, but alas. I'm a lazy bum. I could have posted on Dumbya, Chuck Norris and Huckabee, Hillary, Barack, Kwame, snow, cold, wine, music...all sorts of stuff. Rather than try to hack into the misfiring synapses in my feeble brain and post a shitload of stuff I'll just start from scratch and start lightly.

Did you see No Reservations on Monday? The season finale was at Les Halles in New York and Anthony actually worked a double shift on the saute station after an 8 year hiatus of cooking at the restaurant. It was hilarious! The kicker was that he got Eric Ripert to come in and work the broiler station for the dinner shift. Anthony got his ass handed to him, but he did a good job overall. Eric Ripert, one of the top chefs in the world (Les Bernardin) and a seafood expert, kicked ass on broiler. Especially for someone who's never worked in a turn-and-burn restaurant. I ate at Les Halles a few years ago for lunch and had an awesome Onglet steak. Great episode!

Tonight's season premiere of Top Chef is what actually prompted me to post. My favorite for the season is going to be Mark. I don't know if he'll win, but he's my fave. He's a Kiwi and he's actually sous chef at Public in New York. I've actually eaten at Public twice. It's a great high-end Australian restaurant in the Nolita district of Manhattan. The food there is incredible. He also had the balls to whip out the Marmite (one of his secret ingredients) and use it in the first Quickfire Challenge. I know that Vegemite has been banned in the US and I thought that Marmite was too. This season should be pretty good. There are a lot of personalities and attitudes and already a lot of fucking swearing. This season is also taking place in Chicago. I love Chicago! It's also a great food city. I've had two of the best meals of my life in that fine town (Blackbird and Trio). It has the makings of a great season. I look forward to watching it every Wednesday.

In more TV food news...
I'm also really enjoying the new season of Bizarre Foods. I really need to get to Beijing to try some donkey. No joke!

That's all for now. I've got to work my way back slowly.

ITMFA!

Random poll- What's your favorite food city?

Random poll #2- What's the craziest thing you've ever eaten?

Cheers,
Jason

Happy flippin' 2008! At least it's an election year...

...and we get to vote Supertard Dubya out of office!

Happy New Year kids! Every year I say that the new year can't be as bad as the last. Each year I seem to be proven wrong. Although my own life is not necessarily better or worse, the whole situation here in Dubya's America has turned to a deeper shade of shit. Everyone knows that Michigan's economy is in the shitter and I really don't need to expound on that. I'm just bringing up because it's still crap and only getting worse. I also recently read somewhere that Michigan is in 51st place for public art funding in the nation (I think I read it in the latest Metro Times in a great article by the always thought-provoking Jack Lessenberry). (Click here for a link to an eye-opening article on Michigan's "Dubious Achievers" in 2007.) A few years ago Michigan was in 4th place. How amazingly embarrassing! This state is in a sad state of affairs. It's a little sad, really, that we're currently more backward and behind than Mississippi in many matters. No offense to Mississippians or other backwards, backwoods red-staters or anything... I think the that the film Idiocracy is coming true...

Christmas was...a day off. New Year's Day was...a day off. Today was my first day off from both jobs (not including Christmas and New Year's Day) in about a month. I'm actually off tomorrow to because someone needed to switch with me next Sunday. I'll take two days off in a row any day! Today I went to Mexican Fiesta for dinner to meet up with a bunch of friends for a birthday. Fun! Tomorrow I've got a leg of lamb to roast (it was on sale at Meijer). I think I'll rub it with some pomegranate molasses, basil, oregano, and an assload of garlic. I also bought some parsnips and Yukon Gold potatoes to mash. Not to sound like that giggly asshat waste of oxygen Rachel Ray or anything but, "Yummo!". I'll also go to Stormy Records tomorrow and do a little shopping as I have a gift certificate to use. Yay!

Christmas was nice...thanks for asking. The Christmas season at the wine store was crazy and challenging, but I won't go into that. It's all over for now, thankfully. I drove up to my parents after work on Christmas Eve to spend it with them and spent Christmas Day with them as well. That was nice. It was also a day off which made it especially nice. The Saturday night before New Year's (after work) was spent at a lovely party at BST's. I venture to say that a good time was had by all, especially those schnookered on BST's famous ChiChis coupled with "Bacony Goodness".

New Year's Eve was really nice this year. This is the first time in years that I wasn't home alone, so that was especially cool. Perl and Amy (Great catch Perl! She's awesome and I think we all really like her. Scarily, she fits in to our eclectic, exclusive group. Welcome to the dysfunctional family Amy!) had about 20 people over for dinner. They were great hosts and Perl even through some friggin' awesome tenderloins on the grill. I brought a big pot of homemade cream of wild mushroom soup (made with lots of Oloroso sherry). It was really nice just getting to spend time with good friends laughing and talking. I really relish those moments as I've got some of the greatest friends in the world! I watch the snowflakes as big as Buicks falling that night. Holy crap! Those were the biggest snowflakes I've ever seen in my life!

The next day (New Year's Day for those of you not keeping track) was spent at Julie and Glen's for our Secret Santa/Elfster exchange. Way too much food and lots of fun! I brought my triple-chocolate fudge "Skullf**k" brownies and everybody else brought stuff plus pizza AND leftovers from the party the night before. Dang! We had a true WUMD trifecta last week with three events in four days. If you toss in tonight's gathering I guess we could call it a fourfecta??? "Ba dum bum!" Sorry. Anyway, it was really great being able to spend so much time with my friends as I don't get to see some of them as often as I'd like. It was nice to ring in the new year with such great souls...

I hope you kids got everything you wanted for Christmas. I got some seriously cool stuff! (Thanks Amazon wishlist! You rule!)

I got lots of things but some highlights include the Twin Peaks boxset (the whole series), The Decalogue, and the greatest book in the world! I may have to do a mega-marathon of Twin Peaks the next time I have some serious time off. The ultra-hip, mega-cool, fashionable as always landlords got me The Decalogue DVD boxset. The Decalogue was a Polish mini-series directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski (Director of The Double Life of Veronique and the Blue, White, Red trilogy and one of my absolute faves).

The IMDB plot summary says
"This is a series of ten shorts created for Polish Television, with plots loosely based upon the Ten Commandments, directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski. Two of these, Dekalog 5 and 6, are shorter cuts from the feature-length films--Krotki film o zabijaniu (A Short Film About Killing) and Krotki film o milosci (A Short Film About Love), respectively. They deal with the emotional turmoil suffered by humanity, when instinctual acts and societal morality conflict."

I can't wait to drown myself in a depressing Kieslowski marathon. Apparently Stanley Kubrick described The Decalogue as the only masterpiece he could name in his lifetime.

I also got two copies of the greatest book ever! (I gave one to deserving and appreciative individual.) I got a book called My Last Supper: 50 Great Chefs and Their Final Meals / Portraits, Interviews, and Recipes. The copy I got from my parents is a signed first-edition! How cool is that? For a foodie dork like me there is nothing better than this book. 50 top respected chefs from around the world are asked...
"What would be your last meal on earth?"
"What would be the setting for the meal?"
"What would you drink with your meal?"
"Would there be music?"
"Who would be your dining companions?"
"Who would prepare the meal?"

These are some of the coolest, most exciting chefs around that I absolutely admire. The likes of which include Anthony Bourdain, Fergus Henderson, Gabrielle Hamilton, Eric Ripert, April Bloomfield, Ferran Adria, Jacques Pepin, Lida Bastianich, Mario Batali, Marcus Samuelsson, Wylie DuFresne, Tetsuya Wakuda, Neil Perry, Martin Picard, Rick Bayless, and many more. Each chef has an accompanying and unique photo. Great, imaginative photography and some really cool answers. The answers range from the simplest comfort food (Gordon Ramsay) to the sublimely decadent (Gary Danko). GREATEST...BOOK...EVER!!!


A picture of Anthony Bourdain's last meal (above). Bone marrow with parsley salad as prepared by Fergus Henderson at St. John in London. Looks damn good to me! Bone marrow is one of my favorite things on the planet. I hope this doesn't make my vegetarian friends like Kathleen puke. ;)

Special thanks to BST also for being my "way overly generous" Secret Santa! Kurosawa is always a wondrous gift!

I'm super-excited about the new season of No Reservations which starts tomorrow! GREATEST...SHOW...EVER! Does Anthony Bourdain need a bitch? 'Cuz I'll be his bitch any time. All I ask for is transportation, livable wages, and an occasional table scrap. BTW, there's a great picture of him in that book. MEF from the store keeps saying that her "ovaries would be twitching if I had any" every time she sees Anthony Bourdain (and Robert Irvine). I think that picture put her over the top.

A new season of Reno 911! starts soon too!

This writers' strike sucks! Give them what they want! They deserve it! I deserve more Battlestar Galactica and Lost!

I'm also super-excited to hear that Tom Hanks will be producing a "Pacific Theater" follow-up to Band of Brothers, the single greatest piece about war ever put to film. I've mentioned several times that Band of Brothers, an HBO mini-series about Easy Company (E Company) in World War II, is one of the greatest things ever committed to film. I will always stand by that. The fact that Mr. Hanks plans on producing another mini-series focusing on the Pacific Theater of World War II is very exciting. I really can't wait!

The Iowa Caucus results were pretty surprising. I'm not 100% sure where I stand yet, but I do like Barack Obama. Huckabee scares the beejeezus out of me! But then again so does Romney and Paul. They're all scary! I just saw on a TV ticker tonight that the Detroit Free Press has officially endorsed John McCain. Interesting... It'll be very intersesting to see what happens in New Hampshire. I'd like to thank the dickheads in Lansing for f'ing up the Michigan primary. Thanks a lot assbags! F*ck up a moderately respectable primary just so you can get voter info??? You douchenozzles deserve super-wedgies!

I haven't put a lot of thought into my "Best of 2008" picks. Not much excited me this year. I didn't see many movies, buy many albums, read many books, or watch much TV of great note. Drank a few good wines. Maybe I'll come out with a better list later. Maybe not.

My best films of the year are...
No Country for Old Men (Great frickin' movie with one of my favorite actors, Javier Bardem. The ending pissed off a lot of people including Davo.)
Control (Amazing film about Ian Curtis and Joy Division! Can't wait for the DVD to come out. Great soundtrack too! Uncanny portrayal of Ian Curtis.)
Knocked Up (Just damn funny!)
Superbad (Just really damn funny! I just watched this for the first time last week on DVD.)
My list would be longer, but I don't remember any other films from 2007. I watched quite a few things on Netflix, but I don't remember if there was anything groundbreaking from 2007. I only recall seing 3 or 4 films in the theater last year. I'm sure it was more...

My album of the year is...
Grinderman - eponymous
An awesome, incendiary project by Nick Cave, Warren Ellis, and others. Powerful shit!
The Joy Division re-issues on vinyl and CD are pretty f'ing amazing too!

TV shows of the year...
Battlestar Galactica (Just bloody brilliant! Really! I'm not kidding! The critics even strongly agree! Really! Really!! REALLY!!!)
No Reservations (Duh!)
Bizarre Foods (Love this show! I really look forward to Monday nights.)
Globe Trekker (I absolutely love this show even though I never know when or if it's on anymore. I eat up every morsel of any re-run or new episode. If I'm flicking channels and come across this I'm in heaven, especially if it's a Megan McCormick episode. Ian Wright is fine too, but he's just not as cute.)

Some of my favorite wines that I tasted in 2007 are...
2003 Egelhoff Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon
2002 Veraison Stagecoach Vineyard Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon
2005 Bouza Tannat A8 Parcela Única Montevideo (Uruguay)
2006 Atteca Old Vines Calatayud Garnacha (Spain)
2005 Frey-Sohler Muscat d'Alsace
Chateau d'Orignac Pineau des Charentes
2005 R Wines First Class Shiraz (Australia)
2005 Pierre Andre Ladoix (Burgundy)
2005 Dashe Dry Creek Zinfandel
2005 Tir Na N'og Old Vines McLaren Vale Grenache (Australia)

And to finish things off...
I went to Meijer last night to do some grocery shopping. I wanted to braise some short ribs, beef, or lamb shanks but they didn't have any. They did have some oxtails, but I opted against them. I picked up a leg of lamb instead. I was walking by the dairy/egg/cookie cooler and something caught my eye. I found a product on the shelf that made me laugh out loud. It's so wrong on two different levels that I had to buy it. First of all, it's pancake/waffle batter in a spray nozzle bottle not unlike a canister of whipping cream. Just spray it onto your hot skillet and you're done. Very wrong! Even wronger??? It's called "Organic Batter Blaster". I'll refrain from comment and let you use your own noggin. I'm embarrassed to say that I bought one and even tried it today. Actually, it wasn't too bad. It is organic, after all. The ingredients are actually recognizable and the end result was a respectable pancake. Here's a pic...



On that note...
Happy New Year! May 2008 be a great year for everybody! Dickbag Dubya will soon (not soon enough) be gone. Wishing you health, happiness, peace, and prosperity in 2008! I'll try to post more often. The holidays kicked my ass!

Random poll- What are you most looking forward to this year?
Random poll #2- What are some of your faves from '07?
Random poll #3- What New Year's resolution will you break first?

Cheers!
Jason

The Dubya Prezidenshool Libary

I had a thought. I get one occasionally. I was thinking that Dubya would eventually have his own Presidential library. I imagine that it will house the world's largest collection of pop-up books and comics as well as a special section devoted to douchebaggery. I wonder who'll get the construction bid?

Another great piece from Jack Lessenberry this week on the Michigan primary.

ITMFA!

Cheers,
Jason

I wanna be a scab...

Hey kids,

I've been lackadaisical in posting lately. Sorry. Some of the things I post about may be old news, but it's been a while. Be patient with me.

How about that FEMA? This is already old news, but that fake press conference was something else. Even I wasn't expecting something like that because they'd get caught. Guess what! They got caught!

Can you believe that the Presidential election is less than a year away? Holy crap!

I picked up the Joy Division re-issue CDs from Stormy Records. They're frickin' great! The new live stuff is pretty cool. The vinyl is too cool for school!

Michael Symon is the new Iron Chef. I wanted him from the beginning, but I would have been happy with John Besh. I've been a fan of Michael Symon since he made odd appearances on the Food Network probably about 10 years ago or so (along with Aaron Sanchez). I've been wanting to eat at Lola in Cleveland for a long time and still haven't made it there yet. The guy cures his own damn meat! That's what I'm talkin' about! Congratulations Michael Symon!

I'm not so happy with this Michael Mukasey as Attorney General. Both sides seemed to say he was the least offensive candidate and even slightly qualified, but his denial to admit that waterboarding is torture is utter bullshit! I guess he doesn't believe in the Geneva Convention. Nobody in our administration does, apparently. Waterboarding is not wakeboarding! Send him to Gitmo for a while!

Prior to Sunday I was going to praise the Lions. I still will. Go Lions!

So, I have a proposal... With the current Writers Guild strike going on shows have gone into re-runs, movies are behind, etc. I would like to offer my services as a writer to the folks in Hollywood. Although I don't really want to be looked at as a scab I could use the money. I'm sure that scale is more than I'm making. All I ask if for travel, hotel, and scale wages as long as the strike goes on. I could write for Leno. I bet anything I come up with would be funnier than the stuff his writers come up with. I could pen a screenplay or something. I could write some episodes of Desperate Housewive...never you mind that I've never seen a single episode. Hollywood! I'm offering my services as your writer bitch. What I write may suck, but what you have to offer lately ain't exactly the mutt's nuts. Give me a chance. That's all I ask. We need to get rid of reality TV! Let's write something great!

But seriously, I hope the writers get everything they want. Good luck!

This post doesn't make any sense. It may have made more sense when I originally planned to write something a couple weeks ago but then got too lazy. Yeah. I suck!

Oh yeah! I just watched a great flick yesterday... The Oh in Ohio is hilarious! Parker Posey, Paul Rudd, Liza Minelli, Danny Davito, Keith David, Heather Graham, and Mischa Barton star. It takes place in Cleveland and Parker Posey's character has never had an orgasm in her life and never masturbated. She's been married to Paul Rudd for 10 years and he's never been able to please her sexually. It just explodes from there! Very, very funny! I'd watch Parker Posey in anything. She's the ginchiest!

Random Poll #1- Soft shell or hard shell taco?

Random Poll #2- What dish/course are you looking forward to most this Thanksgiving?

ITMFA!

Cheers,
Jason