a diner greek salad

This is a bit fancier than your typical Greek salad, but not much. I’m certainly not a stickler for accuracy or authenticity when it comes to this sort of thing, and am pretty much happy to chuck in whatever veggies I have lurking in the crisper drawer when I make it. So, obviously, this is not gospel.

If you don’t like chickpeas, leave them out. Same goes for the green pepper, which is decidedly non-canonical but adds a nice bite. I can’t bear raw onion, so the pepper adds that same crunchy-bright note without the excruciating stomachache afterward. You can add fennel, if aniseseed flavors don’t put you off, or croutons, or even some meaty protein. Grilled chicken would be perfect, but chunks of cold salmon or even shrimp would be quite nice as well.

So enjoy this blueprint, and tweak away.

Erin’s Diner Greek Salad

1 pint cherry or cocktail tomatoes, halved or quartered

1 cucumber, peeled, seeded, roughly chopped

1 green pepper, seeded and chopped

1 head of romaine lettuce, outer leaves removed, chopped

6 oz. GOOD feta cheese, cut into cubes

1 can chickpeas, drained and rinsed

2 green onions, minced

1 clove garlic, minced

small handful fresh parsley, chopped

small handful fresh mint, chopped

1 tsp. dried oregano

1 Tbsp. red wine vinegar

3 Tbsp. olive oil

salt

pepper

Put the tomatoes in a salad spinner or colander, sprinkle with salt. Let stand 10-20 minutes while you do the rest of the prep.

In a large bowl, mix together the vinegar, herbs, green onion, salt and pepper to taste. Whisk in olive oil. Add the drained chickpeas to steep in the dressing.

Spin tomatoes dry, squeeze to remove excess moisture. Taste to make sure they aren’t too salty. Rinse and spin again if that’s the case.

Chuck the tomatoes, pepper, cucumber, and lettuce in with the chickpeas. Toss everything together (I use my hands, but tongs are fine. Just be gentle.) Taste for seasoning. Add the feta. Toss again. Put in bowls. Drizzle over some more oil.

Eat. Be happy. Take some for lunch the next day.

overfuckingwhelming (warning:contains swearing!)

Tips that will usually appear in midrange style mags and in the onslaught of organizational mantras that rain down on us daily (the 21st century version of the Victorians’ fastidious obsession with “hygiene,” I suppose) tend to berate you by saying things like, “When you buy something new, you have to get rid of something old,” and variations on this theme, presented by Tim Gunn or those What Not to Wear people.

Buy new shoes from Aldo? Bequeath those old Keds to the Salvation Army in their place! New t-shirt with ironic witty writing on it? Lose that very similar t-shirt with not so  different ironic writing on it! What about your kitchen? No one needs three ice cream scoops!*

Presumably,  social media should follow this “One out, one in” rule. Start using Facebook, MySpace goes out the door. No one needs to be on Digg and Twitter and Tiw.DiggRedMaxxMixxMeme.ous or whatever the fuck it is now. THIS IS TOO MUCH CRAP. Pick one. One. Two.

That should be sufficient, right?

More comics here.

The same should probably, then, be true of television. How can one person humanly keep up with this streaming downpour of content? As Charlie Brooker says, in a way I could only hope to palely duplicate,

I’m fairly certain I recently passed a rather pathetic tipping point, and now own more unread books and unwatched DVDs than my remaining lifespan will be able to sustain. I can’t possibly read all these pages, watch all these movies, before the grim reaper comes knocking. The bastard things are going to outlive me. It’s not fair. They can’t even breathe.

Confession: all this British comedy watching is putting me excruciatingly behind with my American reality television shows. I haven’t seen the last six episodes of The City. And lord knows I love Kelly Cutrone. Not to mention everything Olivia Palermo has worn, ever.*

I am similarly crazy behind on my American reality-cum-competition-type shows. Didn’t even finish Top Chef Masters, not watching Work of Art, haven’t touched the new season of Top Chef, sort of dreading the return of Project Runway because my backlog of current television –– The Wire! Rewatching Mad Men with the commentary! Every episode! Maybe annotating them! Probably need to see what Modern Family is all about, right? And Deadwood! — and then this comedic education I’m forcing my partner to undergo — Black Adder! TheYoung Ones! Monty Python! Fawlty Towers! Maybe we should watch Arrested Development again from the beginning, right? What’s The Fast Show like? Should I give Spaced a second chance?– it’s just all…too…much.

There are downloads aplenty on my external hard drive, shows — shows which I LIKE– that have been unceremoniously  dumped like a pair of jeans that make your ass look fantastic but whose zipper always seems to be creeping down enough to make wearing them an endless struggle to keep from flashing strangers inadvertently. What is the appropriate response? Pack them off to Goodwill? Try to take them to the dry cleaner in the hopes they can salvage them? Keep them in this Trader Joe’s bag for two years and then pull them out again when they no longer fit you and now you decide to keep them for purposes of inducing guilt and being held up periodically as a painful reminder of a-time-when-you-were-marginally-thinner?

This is the problem with digital technology, it’s tinytinytiny. You could have acres of  prOn and downloaded music and screencaps of every episode of The Muppet Show and 14,000 icons for your LiveJournal and still, still, STILL not even come close to taking up the space of one small closet, which everyone knows you should have organized by season and color and frequency of use and OH MY GOD IS THIS WHAT IS NEXT? It’s like Hoarders, but for a digital age. If TV Go Home still existed, you can bet yer ass I would have fictionally pitched that shit.

So the last ten episodes of America’s Next Top Model are just sitting there, forlorn and unwatched, despite the fact that Tyra looks fantastic and Andre Leon Talley was sort of hilarious. Same deal for Big Love, which, despite the very real pull of Anne Dudek, Harry Dean Stanton, and a staggering perfomance by Chloe Sevigny has at least a third remaining. I managed to stick with Six Feet Under despite how yelly and shouty and soapy and unsexy it all got, but the same can’t be said for Queer as Folk in either its US or UK incarnations.

No wonder we’re all staggering under the weight of these endless ones and zeroes. I’m off to read a book.

*I have three ice cream scoops. I could make excuses as to how they are all very slightly different and at least two of them may have sentimental value, but why should you listen to me? I have three ice cream scoops.

**She’s a bitch with an epic underbite, but that hair! Those clothes! She was undoubtedly the inspiration for Blair Waldorf, make no mistake. Boring as hell, but still. Shiny!

continued fun with excel

forget 2012

The end of the world is nigh, motherfuckers.

As if things weren’t bad enough, Russian professor predicts the end of U.S.

The Russians are known for producing brilliant theories (Eisenstein, Bakunin, Jakobson) as well as crackpot ones (Marr, Lysenko, Lushkov). This definitely falls into the latter category.

A polite and cheerful man with a buzz cut, Mr. Panarin insists he does not dislike Americans. But he warns that the outlook for them is dire.

“There’s a 55-45% chance right now that disintegration will occur,” he says. “One could rejoice in that process,” he adds, poker-faced. “But if we’re talking reasonably, it’s not the best scenario — for Russia.” Though Russia would become more powerful on the global stage, he says, its economy would suffer because it currently depends heavily on the dollar and on trade with the U.S.

Mr. Panarin posits, in brief, that mass immigration, economic decline, and moral degradation will trigger a civil war next fall and the collapse of the dollar. Around the end of June 2010, or early July, he says, the U.S. will break into six pieces — with Alaska reverting to Russian control.

Along with the accusation of moral degradation, several points are funny here:

a) Russia gets Alaska back. They can fucking take Palin, as far as I’m concerned.

b) States, such as Michigan and Montana — that have notoriously been known for supporting militias who love to wave their second amendment rights around in compounds which should by all rights be called Crazy Batshit Delusion Land, who plan to rise up against the invading Canadian-UN armed forces — will, in this scenario, be taken over by Canada. I find this amusing, not in the least because CANADA IS NEVER GOING TO INVADE THE UNITED STATES IN A MILLION YEARS. Didn’t we get over this shit during the War of 1812?

c) Texas will never, ever, ever cede anything to Mexico. I could actually see Texas’s sphere of influence spreading very far into northern Mexico, because they are just like that, with the eminent domain and the manifest destiny and the barbecued brisket and white bread on the side instead of buns and all-beef chili…oh. That’s not really political, is it? Ignore that.

4) My home state, along with a fairly large chunk of the mid-South and all the mid-Atlantic states, will apparently become part of the EU. Now, while this would make getting a work visa to the UK substantially easier for me, out of all possible scenarios, this one is just too implausible. Because I guarantee you that people from the EU would take one look at the likes of the Jersey Shore kids* and run screaming and flailing wildly, like they had fire ants running up their collective pant legs, in the opposite direction. So, no.

Not that this guy is right, or anything, but if he is…national splintering in….5….4…3…

* In news no less important than the Wikileaks fiasco,  J Wowwwwwwwwwwwwwwww’s high-end skank clothing line, Filthy Couture is now available for pre-order! It takes the hot mess of Heidwood to a WHOLE NEW LEVEL.Plus, the ho shizz don’t come cheap.

This hot mess goes by the name “Violet Desire” — which sounds to me like one of those aerosol imitations of mid-priced perfume, decorated with barbershop swirls with copy that reads “Do you like Paris Hilton’s Fairy Dust? Then you’ll love Violet Desire, only $2.29 at participating retailers!” One of its selling points, along with “European stretch lace” and “genuine Swarovksi crystals” is, brace yourself, “Ties in back.”

For the bargain price of $319!

Guess I know what to get along with the fake boobs and belly piercing I’m planning on getting, stat. God, no wonder the rest of the world hates us.

Warning: Food Rants

A guest post from another Southerner in exile….

*********************************************

This is apropos of nothing.  Just bubbled out of nowhere–as rants are wont to do.

I’ve been put off some of my usual programming on the TV so I’ve been watching a lot of the cooking and if I hear/read another foodie say in a public context, “bacon makes everything better,” I’m going to hit someone.  It’s not that I disagree, it’s just that it’s become such a tried, appropriated, bent out of shape, crap, food trope that it’s somehow moved beyond cliche into irritating catch-phrase like something an over the hill sportscaster uses to retain his 40 something audience.  If you use it among friends, fine.  Like all cliches, they’re usually right and can be wielded effectively.

But Bacon fest? Sure, I’ll go, but it doesn’t mean I’ll feel good about it.  It makes me angry in the same way that the PBR thing makes/made me angry (it’s no longer as prominent so less opportunity, I guess).  This is like discovering gravity as far as I’m concerned.

Adding bacon to potatoes makes things taste better? Adding a salty meat that can be fried and cut into little pieces like a spice makes things taste better?!?!!! As my favorite drill sergeant says, “HOL-Y FUCK-ING DOGSHIT!!” (go here and hit the appropriate button–as well as every other one for that matter).  Every culture has known this for centuries.  Hell, even friggin’ Applebees, TGI-Friday’s, and every other pub/chain in America that has a potatoes/cheese/bacon combination or any salad bar that offers bacon bits have known this since before there were food channels, the internets, and our bloated food/entertainment culture.

Caveat nummer eins:  I 100% agree bacon makes everything taste better.  I even saw bacon fat infused bourbon on a cooking show, *watched how it was made* (and it’s just as bleak as it sounds-recipe shortly), and am willing to try it at home, *even it fails*.  Given that an entire episode of Friends (or subplot at least) was based around “drinking the fat” to prove one’s love for another–yes, I’m embarrassed I know it and so are you, but it was the most popular sitcom outside of Seinfeld for a long time and that was my choice given my general disregard for Yankee accents and blind loyalty to all things New York–oh and the women were kind of pretty–the risk of being wrong and getting a mouthful of bacon grease is reason enough not to try it at home.  But I would.  Long way of saying, I agree, but it doesn’t negate my original point.

Caveat nummer zwei: Bacon tastes good.

2. The real reason it gets my, um, screw it–as a Southerner this especially annoys me in the context of American cooking.  The indie/hipster move (that happened about a year ago I realize, but bear with me) regarding bacon is roughly akin to looking at a Native American and saying “Wow, isn’t it great that we discovered corn? There are so many uses for it! And it’s so good!”  Not pretty, but raising hogs and pigs is a big part of Southern culture.

Southern food also reflects the food of the poor and the food of the plantation owners (in the deep South where I’m from).  The pig is a *perfect example*.  Every single part of the pig gets eaten except the tail–hell, even the skull’s used as a pot in uber-traditional cooking methods of making Brunswick stew and given how much of that I’ve consumed who knows whether I’ve experienced that or not.  And it’s not just the poor, if you lived on a plantation, when you slaughtered the pig, you had to make the damned thing last.

Long story short, the multiplicity of uses of pork isn’t exactly a new thing.  Declaring it makes everything taste better is a bit like saying “fried” makes everything taste better or “sugar” makes everything taste better.  It’s like when I was in a restaurant and I asked a waitperson about their opinion and they said innocently, “have the pork, really, how often do you have pork?”.  I was with a friend from Arkansas I went to UGA with and we both started laughing and immediately felt like asses, even though it’s true, pork and beef are probably pretty close in terms of our relative consumption.

3. I tried this recipe, because it was late night, I wanted a drink and some sugar and I’m an adult so I didn’t have to ask.

Embarrassing Dirty Martini (because it’s neither a martini nor dirty and drinking it is messy)

Cinnamon Ice Cream

2 Tbsp Cocoa powder
2 Tbsp Cinnamon
(Enough of each to coat balls)
1.5 oz Vodka (or as much as you can handle)
Melon baller
Wooden skewer cut in half
Chilled glass

Place glass and melon baller in the freezer for 15-30 minutes until cold as possible
Pour Vodka
Make 2 ice cream balls
Roll in Cinnamon and Cocoa
Place back in baller
Pierce with skewer leaving enough room for second ball to go on top and enough room on bottom so that bottom half of ball is submerged

Place glass in front of drinker and add skewer.  If done right, balled ice cream are your stuffed olives and as soon as you place the “toothpick” in the martini, the vodka will get cloudy and the cinnamon will float.

Let me know what you think.  I liked it, but was desperate.  If I was a molecular gastronomist this would be child’s play involving some sort of dry ice/frozen nitrogen concoction. Suggestions? Critiques? (short of raiding a crystal meth lab for equipment)

*Bacon-infused bourbon

3 oz shot of bacon grease
About a bottle of bourbon–don’t skimp on quality once you get it right since you probably don’t want to mix it so people can get the flavor

Pour liquified bacon into bourbon.  Wait about 6-8 hours. Skim remaining bacon fat off the top.  Cool to room temperature slowly, if it isn’t already.
Strain if you’re paranoid.

Strain again through a coffee filter.

If you do it again through a Brita you have a problem.
Drink over ice.
I haven’t tried it, but it sounds fantastic (although where I’m going to get 3 oz of bacon grease I have no idea)

***************

Much thanks to Chris M!

what i wish i'd known

http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=11414505&server=vimeo.com&show_title=1&show_byline=1&show_portrait=0&color=&fullscreen=1

This is just a delight to watch, like pretty much everything with the Stephen Fry brand embossed on it like a box of fancy delicious chocolates from a swank bougie store. Perhaps not the most apt metaphor, but you get my point.

My admiration for Mr. Fry knows no bounds: his humor in the face of ego-obliterating depression, the television he’s acted in, written, or made (QI, Black Adder, Fry& Laurie, Jeeves& Wooster, etc.) his books* — whether read in print format or listened to on audio while taking long walks along the lakefront and trying to come to grips with your own fucked up dishrag take on life– his podcasts, his lectures, his proud and unapologetic atheism, his evident glee in science and technology and human fucking progress, his facial tics, his charity work….

Watch this. It makes my heart sing. Even though I think he has gotten too skinny and I don’t fully understand why he’s sporting James May’s hair–

–still. Amazing. Wonderful. Genuinely happy-making.

*Moab is My Washpot, his early autobiography, is staggering in its scope, its humanity, and its sadness. But for class-A fiction that makes you ponder modern history, human cruelty, science, morality, nationalism, queerness, love, insecurity, and alternative teleologies, it doesn’t get much better than Making History It’s maybe not a lighthearted beach read, but it is a tremendous book.

http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=upbynoon-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=1569471509&fc1=000000&IS2=1&lt1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr

ummmmmmmmmmm

So, Katie “Jordan” Price, besides being the exact color of Mixtecan pottery, is also a published author and horse enthusiast.

She is also promoting her book while wearing a swimsuit with the cover of her book Bedazzled on to it. That is dedication.*

However — and this may be the fact that it’s a heat index of a hundred and there is NO POINT in putting on makeup when it’s just going to slide right off your face in a minute and a half making you look like Brittany Murphy in 8 Mile — except for those hairyspiderleglashes (Coming soon from Cover Girl!) , her eye makeup is sort of spectacular.

*Bet Susan Orlean doesn’t have to do this.

continued fun with excel

why we love heathers (found item)

A repost from my lovely friends over at Found Item Clothing. Be a pal. Buy a shirt!

Oh, the fucking humanity.

Jawbreaker. Mean Girls. The Sleepover. The Craft. Every bad girl subplot on Gossip Girl. None even come close to the dark surreality of Heathers, a movie that, to this day, no one will watch with me. Because at one point in my life — let’s say 1992 for convenience — I seriously watched this movie at least twice a week. It was in constant rotation for a while, along with Grease, Rock n’ Roll High School, and Barton Fink. Make of that what you will, and join me as I revisit a film that deserves a revival. (But, please, sweet baby Jesus, not a wretched remake.) Here then are 33 reasons why we love said film (arranged, conveniently enough, in the order they appear on screen, with one exception…).

1. SCRUNCHIES!!!! Nuff’ said.

2. Serious contouring blush. Look at Shannen Doherty in that opening croquet scene.

3. Why did “you’re beautiful” as an insult never catch on? It’s sort of spectacular (at 3:25).

4. Winona Ryder can’t act for shit, but her eye rolling is pretty epic. See clip above. Or this montage below, which demonstrates that she carries this proclivity with, from role to role.

5. This great slogan tee, which is glimpsed oh so fleetingly. Feeling inadequate? (Click to enlarge)

Sighted at :13 in.

6. Remington University (calling to mind Reynholm Industries of the IT Crowd, and also sounding like an off-brand razor blade).

7. “Greetings and salutations” as an introduction in Christian Slater’s mouth turns that whole E.B. White Charlotte’s Web thing into something wonderfully filthy. Yeowch.

8. “Keggers with kids”– if that hasn’t been a band name yet, it needs to be now (editor’s note: agreed, wholeheartedly!).

Skip forward to 5:55.

9. Cornnuts. Remember the ranch ones? Amazing. And yet terrifying.

10. “You were a bluebird. You were a brownie. You were a Girl Scout cookie.” Burn, baby, burn.

Watch it at 3:48.

11. The bizarre twangy music that plays whenever CS goes into ‘bad boy mode.’

Editor’s note: not to be confused with:

12. Oh, a teachers’ meeting where everyone is smoking? Awesome. (Skip ahead to the 6:35 marker.)

13. Swatches. Like that would help you accessorize for shit? Right.

14. Dougherty is just reveling in getting to play the head bitch. I mean, she is downright gleeful.

15. The MTV-Video-Games. And that righteous dude in heaven.

16. Cow tipping. I’m entirely sure that this is what teenagers in bumfuck Ohio do, even now.

17. “Sorry, I’m just feeling a little superior tonight.”

18. Mineral water = being gay. At least in 1991, it seems.

19. Who has a three way at dawn in the woods? Can’t you at least rent a motel room or something?

20. Okay, I kind of only now realized that WR wears a monocle when she writes in her diary. Where do you even get a monocle in central Ohio in 1991, in the days before the interwebs and Amazon? And what kind of an asshole do you have to be to wear it?

21. Actually, maybe Madonna’s Express Yourself video inspired that monocle. That would make sense.

22. Very true-to-life representation of Midwesterners’ addiction to 64-ounce beverages. So, so true.

23. “Adults? You want to be treated like adults, little miss voice-of-a-generation? Just how exactly do you think adults act with other adults? Do you think it’s all just a game of doubles tennis? When teenagers complain that they want to be treated like they’re human beings, it’s usually because they are being treated like human beings.” (Veronica’s mom, voice of reason, yo.)

Editor’s note: found at the 6:00 minute mark, yo.

24. Hot Probs. I would so listen to that shit. (7:45)

25. Good lord, how big is Westerberg High? Getting those signatures must have taken ages. (Fun fact: so-named for Paul Westerberg, legendary troubadour for the equally legendary 80’s punk-rock icons, The Replacements. Also: absolutely LOVE that the school’s mascot are… Rottweilers? How unconventional, and befitting of a world class fad.)

26. “I’ve already started underlining meaningful passages in her copy of Moby Dick, if you know what I mean.” (Slater’s delivery at 4:31 just fucking slays me.)

27. Es. ki. mo.

28. Noose too loose. Wasn’t that a rejected Dr. Seuss spin-off series?

29. No one ever enjoyed a pep rally that much and that sincerely. This is severely lacking in verisimilitude. I take back every good thing I have ever said about this movie.

30. Whoa, what’s with that totally out-of-character move to a belief in heaven? No.

31. Reading comments on YouTube is almost always a bad idea. But this whole generation who hasn’t seen Heathers astounds me. This movie was such an integral (read: intensely formative) part of my early teen years that I can’t imagine not having mental access to it. Poor kids. No one got blown up in Mean Girls.

32. Slater’s death is pretty vile, but ultimately worth it for the gorgeous pull-back shot of Veronica all charred like a piece of kindling and smoking on the concrete gym steps. HAWT!

33. And last, but not least, the BIG FUN tee shirt, which we added to the Found Item catalog just last week!

On screen at 4:26.

Whew. That was a mouthful…

Like our tees? Follow us on Facebook! And Twitter!

pep talks, continued

Perhaps not a pep talk in the Hoosiers sense, but the St. Crispin’s day speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V must be included in this round-up. I’m not inclined to follow anyone into battle, but if you’re gonna die for God and king and country, this is a nice send-off, I suppose.

Here’s the Kenneth Branagh version, when he was still exceedingly fresh-faced and young. He really should have done his Hamlet when he was still this age, rather than like, 45.

My favorite Branagh film is, of course, Much Ado about Nothing, which manages to be miraculous, wonderfully acted, and simply beautiful to look at all at the same time.*  It remains so to this day, despite the super jarring presence of Keanu Reeves, who, really… what? I know he was a big deal back in the 1990s, but a convincing conniving villain he does not make.**

*Can I just add, these are scored SO WELL. Epic, for reals.

**Yesterday I read in Time Out that there is an interactive staging of Point Break taking place in Chicago, where the Keanu Reeves role is played nightly by a different audience member.

Called “hilarious” by Variety and “uproarious” by the Los Angeles Times, Point Break LIVE! tells the story of former College-football-star-turned-FBI-agent, Johnny Utah, in pursuit of the surfing, bank robbing, skydiving, bare-hand-fighting adrenaline-junkie-cum-Zen-master Bodhi Sattva. In Point Break LIVE! the lead role of Johnny Utah is played by an audience member. Anyone can volunteer and step up to the challenge of a grueling (meaning fairly ridiculous) audition process. Using the latest in Applause-o-Meter technology, the winner is chosen by the audience and goes on to star as action hero Johnny Utah for the night, reading all the lines off of cue cards. This method really catches the essential rawness of Keanu Reeves’ acting style. When the action bursts out onto the street, the audience can keep track of it via a real-time feed from the Keanu Kam. At the end of the show, the “volunteer Keanu” is handed a VHS tape of his or her performance.

This sounds AMAZING. And I think going to see it would be the perfect tribute to Patrick Swayze, no? Who’s in?